Session times: 7:30pm-10:30pm
Love Was Born (On Xmas Day)
Billy brought along a Christmas song he wants to record in time for the Christmas rush. It's quite a soft tune with a Christmassy feel. We added a few seasonal instruments just to make sure.
Part of the lyrics are a list of the 12 disciples (it is Christmas after all!) and it's amazing how many I didn't know (Nathaniel and Thaddeus for starters!).
He played through the song a couple of times so I could get the feel and tempo. The 12-string acoustic part is very picky and Billy had quite a few problems keeping in time with a click track. Eventually, we decided to record it without a click. It means we can't do any copy and pasting between parts of the song (because they wouldn't line up properly), but as it's a fairly simple song, it shouldn't be too difficult.
Billy then did a quick guide vocal part so we knew where we were in the song. He then decided the ending should be more of a Christmas chant, so I copied and pasted the ending a couple of times (fortunately, this bit did line up), which we can use as a fade out.
We then added some strings and the Theramin sound we created for the previous song over the intro and the choruses.
While we were doing these parts, Billy kept mentioning things he could hear in the song, one of which was bells. I tried a few of the bell instruments I've got but none really sounded the part. We ended up with tubular bells with lots of eq to cut through properly. Initially, Billy had put down quite complicated bell parts, but I reminded him that most church towers only have 4 bells, so we cut it down to a simple 4 note motif which is really quite nice.
Billy's daughter (Dael) will sing the main vocal part with at least one child on the choruses, but we'll do that on another session. I made a quick mix for Billy to take away so the vocalists can start to learn the song.
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