Last week I had the pleasure of having two talented guys in playing on some tracks for my record. Aongus from Henrietta Game came in do some cello work, and Karl from The Young Folk was in on drums. It was a bit nerve-wracking for me initially, as it’s the first time I’ve had other people playing on my songs, aside from some friends singing with me or whatever.
I also don’t speak drums very well, and found it much harder to have a clear sense of what I wanted from the drummer. As opposed to the cellist, who I could deal with in terms of notes, pitches, and melodies, and felt way more at home with. Drumming is all about rhythms and textures or timbres – the different qualities of sounds used to create the rhythms and atmospheres. It really was a learning experience for me – the limit of my experience with drums was when I played with a rock band briefly in the UK as a session pianist, and then when Sweeney Lee had a drummer in her live band which I was the pianist for. It was always other people’s material, and never my own. But it was great to have the help of the engineer who was able to be a sort of translator between the two of us, and Karl brought some brilliant ideas and suggestions for songs I’d not even thought of having drums on.
When it came to the cello day, I had clear ideas of what I wanted him to play for some of the songs, and then just vague ideas of what I wanted and where I wanted them for other songs, so it was a mix of me quite explicitly telling Aongus what to plan and when, and giving him free rein to come up with a part for other sections. But even so, if there was something I liked better than another idea, or if he needed chord charts, that was all a musical language I was familiar with – notes, chords, keys – and I could express what I was looking for far easier.
Heading back in for the last few days of tracking tomorrow. There’s a bass player coming in, along with Meadhbh who is adding some beautiful vocals for me. The :fund:it backing singers are in too, to add their parts into the mix, and then we should be finished tracking the record at that stage. I’ll update after the next session, and I’ll definitely know where I stand at that point, but I can start to see the finished project coming together at the moment, and it’s quite exciting to see things taking shape.
