Come hither, young shaver pull your
coat and scarf tight around you, for the winter chill seeps inst through the
door and wraps unwary limbs in its cold embrace. Sit here by the
fire, and I shall tell you of the hinterlands, the dark places where
old lore hast not yet been driven out by the briskness of modernity.
The hoot of an owl, the scurry of the muntjack, a bustle in your
hedgerow – don’t be alarmed now…
Mr. Wendell and I are on our way to
an undisclosed location in Mid-Suffolk where, behind a hedge of epic
proportions lies The Hovell and inside the rambling adjunct without, Fiddly Richard – a man as drawn by Quentin Blake as an
approximation of what the protagonist of Roald Dahl’s great
unreleased “The Woodcutter and The Canoeist” might best
resemble.* We wipe the mud from our boots – he’s vacuumed in anticipation of our visit, after
all – and put down guitar cases. We are here to embark on perhaps
the most magic alchemical process of all – that of overdubbing
the electric guitar onto an acoustic demo.{FX: Roll of Thunder}.
It’s the sort of process which used to beget all those outtakes and
alternate versions that now turn up on remastered reissues of classic
albums, but with the advent of computer technology much of this “...is
it rolling, Bob?”-style malarkey has been superseded by the mere touch
of a button.
To my left, sits Mr. Wendell, fully armed with a
Fender Telecaster, an amplifier and an electronic effects board, which has a
bewildering number of knobs, dials, pedals, and numerous flashing
lights aglint. “I mainly use it as a tuner” he explains. Fiddly
bustles off to make tea. At this point I should explain that Mr.
Gibbon and I have already contributed a bass part and an acoustic
guitar to proceedings, La Mulley has donated a guide vocal so we
don’t get lost half way through the bewildering middle-eight and
Neighbourhood Tony is due in to record some melodeon and harmonica
the next day. He’s the banjo player, for those who haven’t been
keeping up. We have experimented with many examples of the long-form
recording format, however with the dearth of solid Baptist chapels in
the area and conflicting diary commitments ever at our backs, we’ve
decided to entrust recording the latest example of our ouevre to
Fiddly. In his shed.
He’s using Cubase which, again for those not
overly familiar with the white hot development of recording
technology over the past few years is - if you ask some people -
somewhat akin to holding up a ghetto blaster outside a rehearsal
room, pressing Play and Record at the same time and
hoping the sellotape doesn’t fall off the C-90 your big sister used in order to enable her tape the top forty off the radio at the weekend. I’m not saying
it’s old school, but he has to keep a spare elastic band in case
the hard drive starts running slow and if the system needs rebooting
he has to rub a balloon briskly against his jumper whilst pressing
CTRL+ALT+DEL. This is why it’s obviously handy if there are
two or three of us involved in each session.
Nevertheless, the actual sounds he
records in the room are as the surroundings suggest – warm, woody,
rustic. For someone who regards Neil Young’s Tonight’s the
Night as the modern apotheosis of production capability, as I do,
this is welcome fare. We’ve already had a discussion about Helen’s
vocal take on the new song. “It fades in and out and there’s a
bit where it wavers a bit at the end of the phrase” runs one
argument. “It sounds like her...” I counter “...singing
in a room”. Mr. Wendell runs down the chords, adjusts his vibrato
and delay settings**, confirms that he can hear the monitor mix in
his headphones perfectly and goes for the vibe. The tension rises as
we reach the bridge – has he remembered the double-stop arpeggio
and 6/8 chord reversal which introduces the breakdown before the
penultimate verse? He has! We both relax – me with a gentle
exhalation (we’ve got a DI from the Boss rack and a mic on the
Marshall combo, so quiet please in the room) and him with a desultory
swipe across a capo’d Em which breaks both the rhythm
and mood of the song. Fiddly, in the control booth awakens with a
start. “Do you want to hear it?” he enquires solicitously. “No
thanks, let’s go again” responds Wendell. The endgame is in sight
- but as the kids say these days, it’s not over until Ed Sheeran
sings. The hum of the amplifier hangs sonorously in the room. “It’s
what an amplifier sounds like” I say.
A couple of takes later and it’s
almost in the bag. There’s one more chord to drop in – at the
very last Mr. Wendell’s nerve has failed him and he’s waited a
nanosecond too long to hit the climactic Am in tandem
with my ringing double-tracked acoustic. One quick flick of the mouse
to get us on to a new track and he’s paused ready to caress the
strings of steel. Job done, we ask Fiddly to put it on the big
speakers so we can listen back to our work. It’s already full and
resonant, and the lengthy (five minutes plus) running time leaves
little room for error in a one-take working scenario. Just before the
last chord, we hear it. Someone suggests hesitantly “I think you
fluffed that picked note just before the end”. I think I did,
responds my internal monologue.
“Fuck it” I say out loud. “These
box sets don’t compile themselves”.
*Spoiler alert – it’s the same
guy.
**I know – once it’s down, it’s
down. No post-production remix and remodel for you, Mister.
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