Studio Session 2

I have to say how much I am beginning to enjoy these sessions in the studio with Matthew. It’s great to be able to bounce ideas off  him and get feedback when I ask the odd technical question. Last week was the guitar session. This went very well indeed, and we had good time for Matthew to demonstrate some of the layered vocal work he was doing on another couple of tracks.

Today’s hour-long session was to add my vocal track to Watching the Rain, and we did several ‘takes’ to allow Matthew to choose the best bits. Once little thing that wasn’t comfortable was Matthew’s insistence on me pronouncing all the words with what, by the end of the session, I was calling my “best BBC” accent. To me it felt a bit forced, and didn’t come natural to me at all. I’m the product of my upbringing, and my accent is somewhat a ‘hybrid’ of Midlands, Sussex and Yorkshire, and though I’ve never had to analyse it before, I tailor the sounds of my voice – including the accent – to fit the song. However, again, as it’s the first song I’ve done with 360, I’m letting Matthew run with this and wait to hear the result. It’s a strange feeling though, not being in control of the arrangement.

We used up the entire hour today, and so I need to be called back to do the backing vocal, so there’s at least one more session to do on this song. So far I haven’t heard any strings on the backing track, so this is either something Matthew is dropping, or is yet to introduce.