We are both self taught musicians and have both earned our living from music for over 30 years. Rob is a guitarist mainly, while I am predominantly a keyboard player, although we can both play a fair few instruments between us. We both write, record and produce songs of our own. Why, you may ask, have we never worked together? Our problem is that Rob is in New Zealand, while I am in England - 12000 reasons why we cannot get together - that is, until now.
Despite our advancing years (he will love me for that) we can both fumble our way around a computer and so the miracle of technology has bought us together - working on our own album of 12 original songs - 6 written by each of us - and produced via emails.
Because of the distance involved, Rob and I had not really kept in touch, apart from news via my sister Jean (Rob's mum). In September 2009, Jean played me some extracts from an album Rob had recorded with a girl singer (Hayley). I liked what I heard and obtained Rob's e-mail address to request a copy of the album. Whilst writing to him on 28th September 09 - I hit on the idea of perhaps doing an album between us via the internet if we could. Rob replied the next day saying we could certainly give it a go.
Neither of us knew what capability each other had for home recording, but as it transpired, we both had the same Cool Edit program on our systems and also both used a master recorder - we were in business.
As a try out, I added a piano track to one of Rob's songs recorded with Hayley. Rob responded the next day with a demo of our very first song - one he had written the day before called "The Last Goodbye". We were off.
Click on the play button of the player below for an extract of our first number.
Well, sounding great so far.. can't wait to hear more!
ReplyDeleteHey Paul - Richard here (another chap who may or may not have something to do with working with Rob musically, do I deny or admit ? :-) - great to see you guys have finally got the opportunity to work with one another - and so far what I have been fortunate to hear from these sessions is pretty beaut I have to say. I look forward to reading more of your posts and hearing more of your material, it shall be a pretty good album by all accounts.
ReplyDeletecheers
Richard
ps I am interested in what track you tinkered with that Hayley sang on, as this is news to me LOL
Hey Richard
ReplyDeleteThanks for adding your comments to the blog. We like being "beaut" in the UK - normally we are all so un-cool (apart from James Bond). We are pretty pleased with most of the stuff we have recorded so far. Sure - it's easy listening - but there are a lot of fans for that kind of material out there so - fingers crossed. Hoping to get the album finished by the end of Feb if we can - at the rate we have been going so far, no reason why not.
Paul
PS I honestly cannot remember what the Hayley track was - first one on the album I think - but it was only an experiment. If Rob makes any money on it - I want half ha ha!
Hey Paul,
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure man - I felt it important that you know that even a hardened rocker like myself can appreciate a good mellow tune or 12 :-) Actually I quite like the overall style you've got going on here - when Rob said "something like The Eagles" I thought that would be cool as I like Don Henley (more solo than with the rest of the band for some reason) - the whole vibe of the tracks I've heard thus far are all good 'uns (see I've picked up the pommy lingo from the old fella LOL).
Rob's told me what track it was - "I Can't Help But Feel The Way I Do" - tis a shame we didn't know you were up for some playing when we were making that album actually.
LOL Haven't you heard ? nobody with any talent actually makes any money in this business LOL
cheers
Richard
Paul has covered very well and in great detail when and what went on during the construction of these songs, so I'll try to not cover too much of that ground again, but I would like to give my own thoughts on what took place from down under, while these songs were coming together. These are pretty much the order in which I worked on the songs!
ReplyDeleteI can honestly say that once the project became a reality, and my thoughts turned to writing songs for the project, I just did what I normally do, I went with what ever ideas came along at the time. One or two ideas were quicky disregarded along the way, but once I had something that seemed to run together,
I just went with it without really analyzing too much whether the song was truly great or not so great.
I have found from past experience that ideas for songs, however basic at first, can be worth pursuing, as some of my best songs have come from writing that way.
Some ideas I have thought were going to be fantastic, have turned out just ok! but some ideas I thought were average at first, have turned out really good when completed, so I just go with the song and see how it turns out usually.
I have also found from other people that what I think is an average song or B track, they say is one of their favorites of mine, so what do I know?
Anyway! and that leads me to the first song I received from Paul, (which I shall get to in a moment)
The Last Goodbye
Once Paul put the idea into my mind to do an album together, and also mentioned something about doing some music along the lines of the Eagles (country rock) an idea virtually went (ping) into my mind right away! and my first track to Paul "The Last Goodbye" was born shortly thereafter.
The song is a little sad I guess, about a relationship break up! something most of us have experienced, but I do wonder
if the loss of my sister Linda (Paul's niece) to a brain tumor in 2008 may of had some bearing on the song?
Once I had completed my parts and had a demo mix ready to send off to Paul, I thought I had done quite well to comply with Paul's wishes of an Eagles styled song and waited with expectation as to what Paul would think of it?
Well his response of "a good song Rob" left me a tad deflated, but he has since told me he loves the song, so I'll forgive him for that.
I was rather more excited about the piano track that Paul wrote into the song and sent back to me as a demo mix, even though I could tell right away that the piano needed to be louder, but Paul also told me later he was being cautious as he didn't want to stomp all over our first collab together (so kind)
I really like Paul's way of thinking there, and I realised I could be working with someone here who actually put the overall song first, before their own playing abilities. Something I have not always found with some musicians I have played or recorded with in the past.
So our first track was born, yet from a producers point of view, (as I got to do the final mix) this song has not been an easy one
for me to get right, and I have been working on it on throughout the making of this album, making little adjustments to the song
here and there, mainly EQ and volume. I also thought originally that it should be somewhere at the tail of the album with the subject
matter, but later decided it needed to be higher up the running order as it is a good song I think.