North - Session 1 - 23rd September 2012

Session times: 11:00am - 4:30pm.

Today is the first day in the studio for North, who are recording a new album over the next few months.

George (drums) had arranged to come to the studio early so we could set up and soundcheck his drums before the rest of the band arrived around 12:30pm.  By the time Rebecca (vocals), Wayne (guitar) and Jack (bass) turned up, we had most of the drum levels set and we managed to fairly quickly get everyone else plugged in and warmed up.

New Toy

This track is a mid-tempo pop song with a haunting chorus melody, which I think is about seducing someone (that's my take on the lyric anyway).  There were a couple of fills where a cymbal was missed off a the end, so we recorded a couple of hits of the cymbals on their own, which I will be able to line up in the correct place of an otherwise good take.   It is possible in the studio to make a not-quite correct take into something that sounds really good, it just takes a bit of digital magic and enough parts to re-arrange into the correct order.  It doesn't have to be perfect every time.

In His Way

A fairly up-tempo pop song.  Jack plays some great bass lines on his Fender Precision.  This song has a one bar stop after each chorus, I suggested a 'false ending' where the stop was two bars.  We tried it a couple of times and it sounded great, so we left that in.

Hmmm.  What is the next chord?

Gravity

Another track that runs along at a fair lick.  We had a little trouble with this song, getting the tempo right and keeping to it.  We kept two takes, and the band will decide which one to keep during the week.

Cuppa time for George

Your Hand

This song was a complete change in style.  A slowish song; George playing his drums with soft beaters which gave a more subtle beat.  We tried several different approaches with this one, trying to get the right drum sound.  As this song is so different to the others, we decided to re-visit this on another session as it will need a different drum setup and mic placement.

George greasing his pole!

It's easy to tell the band play these songs a lot as Rebecca didn't need a vocal crib sheet for any song we did today and everyone was very together and there were very few obvious mistakes.

Rebecca 

We finished the session about 4:30 with a quick mix to take away.  George left his drums set up to make it quicker to get up and running at the next session in a week's time.