The Mix written by chris cottam
Red Room Studios, Brighton
1. Coming Home written by mark wright
The rhythm section of Coming Home was recorded entirely at Red Room studios so it always had a good solid base to lie on. I made some edits to Marcus' bass part to tigten up the notes and put more silence into his playing which meant that the whole track sounded a bit more 'snappy'. Coming Home was one of the easier songs to mix. The only major change I made on a musical level was to rerecord the keyboard take. A few edits were made between the Red Room vocal take and the original take recorded at Mark's home studio. But this one was a breeze
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Electric Guitar/Percussion/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Nick
'The Sticks' Robinson
2. Cry For Yesterday written by mark wright
Cry for yesterday was a fairly major editing job. The band originally came in with the vocal on the first verse but we made the decision to make the first verse entirely acoustic to focus on the loneliness of the lyrics. I felt that the beginning sounded a little TOO empty and so I created the low sub-bass rumble, which is actually a low piano note slowed down, to give the section some sense of rhythm.
I've always been very fond of the release that occurs when the band comes in on this song. The end section of the song also proved to be another challenge. I spent a long time selecting the right reverb, and by slowly increasing the effect level whilst lowering the volume of Mark's vocal I created a sense of the voice being lost amongst the depths of the band.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Percussion/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Piano/Keyboards - Chris Cottam
Organ - Sam Flynn
Electric Guitar - Adrian Khan
Saxophone - Dan Sherrington
Harmony Vocals - Emily Hunt
Dan
Sherrington
3. Sweet Soul written by mark wright
This one was incredibly simple. Some basic vocal editing took place. The focus of this track was built around the warmth of the Rhodes piano sound that pads out the chords through the whole track. The vocals to this track were a last minute addition by Mark just three days before the album went to be mastered. Note the panning of the vocals with Mark panned slightly left and Emily panned slightly right to keep Emily's vocal as a seperate entity rather than a backing vocal.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Percussion/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Keyboards - Chris Cottam
Electric Guitar - Adrian Khan
Saxophone - Dan Sherrington
Harmony Vocals - Emily Hunt
4. Hide written by mark wright
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Percussion/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Piano - Chris Cottam
Organ - Sam Flynn
Electric Guitar - Adrian Khan
Saxophone - Dan Sherrington
Harmony Vocals - Emily Hunt
5. She's the One written by bruce springsteen
A note must be given here to the acoustic guitar sound. This is the only song I didn't have to put any EQ on the guitars. They sounded crisp and clean on their own. So props to Mark on that sound. Whether it was through skillful mic placement or luck remains to be seen :-) . The mix was quite easy due to the simplicity of the song. I paid some extra attention to the sax part on this song, turning it into an 'answer and response' section. If you listen carefully you'll spot that each phrase alternates speaker. The final piano section had an additional track added by copying the higher harmony onto a new track and then pitch-shifting it up an octave.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Percussion/Conga Drums/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Piano - Chris Cottam
Saxophone - Dan Sherrington
6. Feelin' High written by mark wright
Mark in the studio
An editing nightmare requiring a great deal of patience! We always knew that this track had to be kept the tightest of the lot. The electric and acoustic guitars were originally recorded along to a drum machine in Mark's home studio. Then, as a band we all recorded our overdubs live in the studio and the take you hear on the album is Take 2!
For a song of this kind which is largely 'groove' based the rhythm section is the most crucial part of the arrangment. It has to be tight. However, Mark's original 'Wacka-wacka' guitar playing timings tended to drift slightly which meant the tightness was lost at certain moments of the recording. This, in turn, caused Nick's drum part to drift very slightly from the beat.
Concentrating on the drums first of all took four bars that sounded tight and tightened them up further by moving each individual drum by hand to line up with the click track. This left me with a four bar loop that I could place over the top of the song. I didn't want to lost some of the individual drum fills, however, so I placed the loop onto a different track so I could cut between the original drum take and the drum loop.
The 'Break' section of the song proved to be another issue. With everything being so exposed it meant that any timing errors on anybodys part could be clearly heard. So once again I went through note by note and moved things digitally back into place. The worst of these were the electric guitar takes which didn't follow a consistent timing, and although they had been in time with themselves and the acoustic guitar, against the looped drums they often sounded sloppy. Mark watched in amusement at how picky I was being when I went through this.
The 'Bom Shi-bop' vocals were also removed from the opening of the song and placed at the end. I added some vocal effects to thicken up the sound.
My favourite moment in this song is coming out of the breakdown. There's a great point where everything except the snare is silenced for a fraction of a second before the last verse drops back in.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Electric Guitar/Percussion/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Clavinet - Chris Cottam
Saxophone - Dan Sherrington
7. If I Could Fly written by mark wright
Marcus Duck
A monster task of automation. The slow increase in dynamics on this song meant that often the volume of the instruments relative to each other needed changing so these changes had to programmed in by hand.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Harmonica/Percussion - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Piano/Strings - Sam Flynn
Electric Guitar - Adrian Khan
Harmony Vocals - Emily Hunt
8. Hear You Calling written by mark wright
The most sorely contested song on the album and perhaps the most changed. Originally track 2 on the album a much stripped down and much slower acoustic version of this song was to have been included (Available for download from the downloads page).
THAT version had already been edited from a much longer version of the song that included a forty second accapella introduction. I cut that entire section from the front of the song and instead extended the guitar intro and added some hammond organ. Mark and I kept feeling that there was something missing from the song and it was very nearly dropped entirely.
We thought that perhaps we needed to change tact a bit. Mark had a demo recorded with his cousin Steve Knight some years ago and wanted to capture some of the essence of that original recording. The original demo, however, was much faster in tempo. I therefore speeded up the song by 5% and sent it to Mark to record overdubs.
Mark then upon his cousin to add electric guitars. With additional of the elctric guitars the song took on a much heavier feel. Whereas before the song was oft and more contemplative it now was much more of a rock song and really gave the middle section of the album a real lift.
I re-edited the end of the song to return it to the riff expecting a fade out to be added. Mark instead shortened the sectiong and had the ending as it appears on the takes.
Incredibly the recording you hear on the finished album is based on exactly the same version that made up the original slower acoustic version of the song.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Slide Guitar/Electric Guitar/Percussion/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Electric Guitar/E-Bow - Steven Knight
9. The Last Song written by mark wright
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Percussion- Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Organ/Piano - Sam Flynn
Electric Guitar - Adrian Khan
Saxophone - Dan Sherrington
Harmony Vocals - Emily Hunt
10. My Friend written by mark wright and sam flynn
A song Mark co-wrote with Sam Flynn and recorded almost entirely at Red Room studios apart from a few minor guitar additions. Sam took charge of the arrangement of this song in the studio and the recording you hear on the album is essentially a live recording complete with a 'live' ending that was never intended to be used in the final recording as the song was originally intended to have faeded out by this point. Sam also has years of studio experince recording with some of the bigggest names in the industry and so the recording was very efficient.
With a little bit of post-editing I was able to retian he original ending to the song as well as editing down the end coda of the song with originally lasted almost 3 minutes.
iIt was very easy to mix and very clear about how the song should sound.
Sam Flynn
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Piano - Sam Flynn
Electric Guitar - Steve Gladman
11. Everything and a Day written by mark wright
The arrangement of this song is quite a lot shorter than the original takes but more carefully constructed. A lot of work was done on the breakdown section in the middle of the song. Piano lines were moved around and the whole section restructured. Most of my work on this song involved making sure the song kept a sense of epicness. Particularly at the end of the song which was halved in length from the original recording. You might notice that Mark and Emilys' vocal parts drift further and further apart until they are completely lost to the band. This was to give the song a sense of width.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Percussion/Harmony Vocals - Mark Wright
Bass - Marcus Duck
Drums - Nick Robinson
Piano/Keyboards - Chris Cottam
Organ - Sam Flynn
Electric Guitar - Adrian Khan
Saxophone - Dan Sherrington
Harmony Vocals - Emily Hunt
12. Dreaming Our Lifetime Away written by mark wright
The final song of the album wasn't always the simple acoustic number it is now. We had recorded some bass, sax and synth pads for use in the final verse of this song. It worked very well but when listening to the lyrics I didn't think the arrangement sounded right. My wife, Pip, also preferred the more stipped back arrangment.
The purely acoutsic version evoked images of an old couple sat on their porch in the American outback when the guy picks up his guitar and sings a song to his wife. In my original mix of this song I even added the sound of crickets as a sound effect backing rather than the birds that appear on the final cut.
It worked brilliantly but after visiting the graveyard where his late Granddad's ashes are scattered and sitting on a bench hearing the sound of the birds singing in the trees Mark felt that he wanted to keep the sound 'English' and so he decided to move the scenario to evoke a British park complete with twittering birds. The song was then stripped right back to the basics and left that way. I even left in the sound of Mark picking up his guitar before the song starts.
Vocals/Acoustic Guitar/Harmonica - Mark Wright.
Red Room Studios, Brighton