Skye Ladder - 16th August 2012

Session times: 8pm-11pm

Janie had brought her keyboard and Paul brought his acoustic guitar for this session.  I set up a stereo line and MIDI connection to the keyboard, and a CS02 mic for the acoustic.

Skye May Fall

This was a song that was new to me, so we planned on just recording a demo, but it turned into something else. Janie and Paul played and sang this one a couple of times while I got the levels sorted out.  Janie was messing around with some sounds on her keyboard and ended up with a piano plus some sort of phasing which sounded very nice, so we agreed a tempo, I put on a click and Janie recorded the keyboards.  After a couple of takes, we got one that was pretty good, and with a bit of quantizing sounded just the ticket. Due to the spacey sound from the keyboard, I thought the vocals would be good drenched in reverb and echo, so I set this up whilst Janie sang the lyrics.  Paul thought a distorted guitar playing power chords during the choruses. This added a bit of punch and he then suggested a Trumpet or Cornet solo. We spent about 30 minutes working out a solo that someone will play at a future session.  We also played around with different fade outs and ended up with one where the instruments fade out just leaving the vocal for a couple of lines until the vocal itself fades out on its own.

The result is, I think, the most powerful, anthemic songs that I've heard from Skye Ladder.  I can picture a full stadium with everyone waving torches.  It's quite long (nearly 5 minutes), but I think it's great.