Keeping safe, bored and need entertainment?
Over the course of lockdown starting back in March 2020, I had collaborated with a wide selection of other musicians, looking to perform and get creative during those strange times! In fact, the range of music created during this period of disconnect from the physical world has amazed me in the fact that I experimented and tried out many genres of music, which ceratinly helped to broaden my scope of music.
The Youtube playlist of all the songs that I believe I was involved with is at the bottom of the blog, if you want to get straight to viewing, or have the music playing in the background. As this is an update post from my old website, I’ve decided to update and include the details regarding each video here, as no doubt I will forget all of this in the next few years to come. Consider this writing for my own musings!
Before the world shut down, several projects happened. My father in law celebrated his 60th birthday which my wife and I arranged a party for him at a local pub known as The Oak in Andover, during the later part of January. We called in favours with a group of my favourite musicians, alongside his friends in the local brass band, Test Valley Brass. We picked a small helping of songs, and I arranged them for our surprise set for him (which did feature him as I arranged Tuba parts for him!). My function band Discovered also performed a set, which due to the world’s events, turned out to be the ONLY gig we played the whole year! Although we recorded this gig, this remains private for the family. Still, it was a great evening, so trust me on that one!
However, due to lockdown, as like many musicians, I needed something to do something. I decided that it would be great to make use of a song amongst the set, which was When I’m Sixty-Four by the Beatles. I believe this may have been one of the first bigger projects I created, which involved giving instructions to all those willing to participate on how to film their videos (1080p in landscape!), and if they had an audio interface, record that audio separate to capture the best sound. The song was fun as this features the clarinet trio, and we had access to a bass clarinet as well! I read that the song was actually recorded in C Major, rather than Db as it sounds on the original Beatle’s recording. So to make arranging and vocals easier, we stuck to the easier key to work with! I sung vocals on this, and managed to do the harmonies myself as well. The banjo got thrown into the mix (there’s not one on the original), and my daughter played the bells as best as a 2 year old could!
The first actual video we created during this time was with Discovered, where we recorded a tribute to Bill Withers, who had recently passed away at that point. The song Use Me was a regular song we’d played at shows needing a more ambient/background setting, so it was fun to overdub some more parts over the top of what was usually just drums, guitar and bass.
There’s a fair bit of back and forth on this one with the preparation, which involved creating a template click and cue track, for everyone to follow along to whilst recording their parts. This also included the first set of instructions in regards to video format and really needing everyone to film landscape to give more cutting options for the video (as you can see with the drums/percussion edits). Our drummer Simon didn’t have suitable access to his drum kit, so used his Roland SPD-X to create his bit. I then overdubbed tambourine and shaker parts, whilst Si recorded the hand claps for the peak of the 3rd verse. Bass was fun; just recorded it in a single take straight into my Sansamp Bass Driver DI then to my audio interface. John recorded the electric guitar part, and Lisa sung lead vocals and overdubbed Acoustic guitar as well.
One technical difficulty we had was the audio interface that Lisa used (a cheap Behringer) was added clipping to her recordings, even though the gain staging was created (as we saw on video calls). I actually had to add a warmer distortion on top to smooth it out, and was noted it had this Lenny Kravitz vibe to the sound. She ended up getting a Focusrite Scarlett for future recording sessions along with a condenser microphone to go with it.
The video edits are a little rough on this one, as I hadn’t worked out a way to make cleaner borders for different clips together when working Da Vinci. I do remember editing this one all night and finishing pretty much when dawn was breaking.
The next song we recorded was My Lovin’ (Never Gonna Get it) by En Vogue. Lisa got the chance to show off her great vocal abilities, and recorded harmony takes (complete with different looks!). Audio is definitely much clearer with the new kit. Otherwise similar setup for bass, drums and guitar. I added the keyboard and stabs to the recording. My wife recorded flute for this one, which was awesome to have her part of the recording process.
Our next cover was plotted by myself and Lisa. Many years ago, we created an acoustic medley of Girlband songs (think Destiny’s Child, TLC etc.) and perfomed this at various gigs in our younger years (mostly O’Neills pubs). We wanted to bring it to life with some of our musicians from other groups we’ve worked with. On drums is Camille Philips (currently part of the band The Subways and once part of the Lisa’s band the Ramona’s, a female Ramones tribute band), which features drum recording from a Roland TD kit. I enhanced this sound with some drum replacement (or rather layers) of kick and snare drums. My mate Chris contributed electric guitar, alongside Oli on bass. Michael Whiteman (of I Am the Manic Whale & Spock’s Beard) contribute keys and synth to the medley. For this, I stuck to acoustic guitar, tuned down to D standard to make it easier to play ‘Scrubs’ and ‘Angel’.
Next is ‘My Love is a Red, Red Rose’, which I believe our version is based on the Eva Cassidy cover (should find out!). Lisa put the video together for this, whilst I handled the audio production.
Keeping with the Robert Burns theme, and as none of us were out gigging NYE 2020, we recorded a version of Auld Lang Syne to share around the socials. For this one, Cherese joined us to provide flute and piccolo.
I got asked to play guitar for a theatre company performing ‘Opening Up’ from the Waitress musical. I don’t make a point of wearing aprons often..
Towards the end of the playlist are some Christmas covers that we released as well. I will write more about these songs in future.
Enjoy!
Playlist of all videos I was part of during lockdown 2020.
