31 May 2006
As I arrived this morning there was a new and different sound emanating from our window; delicate, lilting and tinkly. Today is harp day!
Most of the playing on the album is going to be done by Us, the ones who play in the band, but despite a fair range of talents, no one can play the harp. Luckily, another one of Dave's special skills is that he has played with millions of musicians and can very often get you their number, which is how we found Manon.
I can't read music. I just can never remember what every good boy deserves. But imagine if I could! I could turn up at a studio never having heard the song before and just follow the instructions! How easy would that be?
Matt has generated the score from the harp parts he played on the demo. It's hard to know whether the idea of the two interleaved harp parts or the song came first. Either way it's a brilliant idea, which sounded good on the demo and even better in real life. A few run-throughs, some small adjustments to the parts and it's done in less than three hours. Thank fuck for proper musicians...
After we have helped Manon and the surprisingly heavy harp down the stairs, we have a 1st of June look at the calendar and discover that we have an awful lot to do before July.
In the interests of getting on with it, we decide that I'm going to play bass from now on. I like playing bass, but working with Lonz has shown me that I'm not really a bass player. The main thing seems to be not to do too much. You really have to understand the song to play the right thing. It's quite easy to be counterproductive because you feel like you ought to be doing more. And you quite often don't find out you did it wrong until much later on. Another issue is a fault that's developed with the right-hand monitor. When you put anything low and loud through it it starts farting uncontrollablythat's right, just like you, dear..This makes it hard to tell if your bass part is working. Or in the right key.
We start with Human Shield. Matt suggests a damped, picky, Pet Sounds part which sounds great. Next is Cinderella. We're still DI-ing the bass, but it isn't really working, so we return to the amp and speaker simulator and this time it's perfect. It's so much more gratifying to play, it completely changes the way I'm approaching the part. In this song it isn't really a bass part - it's a bit more of a lead instrument, which suits me fine. It also goes a little bit 80's (we were listening to Scary Monsters, after all), but it's good.
Finally we do Black Hole, which is much more understated, though I get to enjoy some Geddy Lee-style interplay with the chopped-up drum part. And that, my friend, is all anyone could wish for.
