Mike's Minute: The First Recording Session

 Here is the path that is followed when would-be songwriter(s) actually do write a song, enter one of the Play It Strange songwriting competitions and then, if rated as ‘finalist(s)’ by the judges,  are picked for a recording session from where the song gets recorded professionally and then mixed, mastered and placed on the playlist of an online Play It Strange album. It’s not a long process despite that being a long sentence. 

   In short?  A young dedicated songwriter or two? Three? More?  enter the vibrant, creative world of the recording studio!! 

Like many current secondary school songwriters do, I walked into a recording session for the first time when I was 17. We - my brother, Geoffrey (16), and my classmate Tim Finn (17) and I -  had cobbled together an original song and we wanted to enlist magic and serendipity so that this organic song might gather the attention  of those who heard  it. There were no songwriting competitions back then. The cost of recording time? That was a Christmas present from my uncle John! $10 an hour!! So what did we do?  Well, I had read an article in the Melody Maker, the music magazine from England which ran a short but rewarding chat with a famous singer/producer and the talk was – ‘how do you prepare for a recording session?’  I absorbed every word and here we go. 

When it comes to a recording session, it's important to believe in the people who are joining you in the process. It’s as simple as that. It’s ALL ABOUT people! It’s a team effort. Don’t walk in presuming it’s a hard road filled with stress and cumbersome decisions. Be positive…..   So let’s take our schoolboy song and dissect the evolution. What happened?  

The song was an amalgam of music written by myself and lyrics written by Tim.  There was no science behind that merging together. It was just a musical sojourn weaved through a story – the lyrics.  In summary, I went ‘hum hum mumble hum hum etc etc.ˆ And the vocal melody followed the piano path. You get the drift?  Humanity does that sort of thing all the time. And the words?  Well they told a story. It was intelligible and dressed with metaphorical nuances – a 17 yr old in flight. But now rather than just a simple structural understanding, this was where the rubber hit the road. We were going to record the song in a studio with electric bass, grand piano, full drum kit, acoustic guitar, vocals and a coterie of very cool reverbs, echo, compression, phasing and sophisticated equalization. That’s what mattered. 

   And where do the players, musicians, technicians and backing singers etc come from? Well, recording is a communal craft when looked at it all from out wide. You will have students at your school that are very capable. And the studio bosses can help a lot more than you might imagine. Talk to them. Build up a rapport! That’s what we did. And……? 

   Well, the whole project was built from our rehearsal efforts along with two students that we brought in from our school-ground world (piano and drums) and then… importantly – we acknowledged and utilized the prowess and delicate art of the studio owner/engineer, Eldred Stebbing. He led us down the path and with true respect and a belief in his knowledge we put down our individual instruments and vocals. And from there he weaved those parts together with true craft.  Then he mixed the track apportioning all those separate tracks into a complementary pattern. And onto playing  back his ’finished product’. And we were blissed. We had recorded our own record! 

And does the track exist in its mixed and mastered state? Yes it does…..!! Some 53 years later.  The song is 'Near Hosts' recorded at Stebbing Recording Studio.