Recording Music is 95% Admin
A progress update on 'Glory' + community news
Hi everyone — hope you enjoy this episode, but don’t miss the new segment further down, “Community News” which highlights some cool stuff happening in our little world.
Peace and love, Graham
Admin is not my strongest gift1.
My personality, as far as I could be accused of having one, is mediator, or peacemaker2 (Myers Briggs INFP) which on the 16 Personalities site is depicted as someone skipping through a meadow.
As someone who received numerous school reports with the words “daydreaming” and “head in the clouds”, I suppose it’s encouraging to know that my personality made me do it. It’s not my fault, miss! Myers Briggs made me do it!
The point is:
No one told me how much admin was required to make music.
To make music, I thought there was supposed to be this ultra creative ‘flow state’ where you connect with God and he writes through you and the words and chords just spill out and it takes shape and everyone who listens to it starts crying for joy.
Or maybe you’d be in the studio with friends, and have a breakthrough moment where a song is born in about five minutes and then it’s on the radio and you can’t believe how quickly it all came together, and then you fail to handle the fame and success, fall into depravity and then write a book about it.
Or perhaps, like Raye, you can write 200 songs per year (frankly, ridiculous3). The songs just fall off you like dandruff from a geography teacher.
There might have been a moment a little bit like that when I first wrote Glory, the single we’re releasing later in May. (BTW if you missed the story behind it, have a read):
In the end, the lyrics and the tune came together, we jammed it out in the studio one evening, and I was happy with the result (the demo, also in the link above).
Then came… The Admin.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that once you’ve got the demo, it’s pretty much plain sailing. I mean, the song is written… this is where I guess music producers come into their own. They really put the producer into music producer.
I mean, they actually produce something.
Which if I’m honest, has always been the difficult part for me. As a floaty mediator who’s already starting to dream about catching other butterflies in others parts of the meadow4, producing stuff actually feels quite difficult.
Dating vs Marriage
If creating music is like dating, then producing music is more like marriage.
Creating music is the exciting, exploratory, discovery phase. It’s new, it’s different, you don’t know where it will lead. Will this song be the one? Maybe you’ll ditch it after a while. It didn’t work out. It wasn’t you—it was them5.
While marriage is punctuated by some of those same exciting moments, making a life together also includes a sizeable chunk of admin. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been married for sixteen years and I love it. But you can’t expect marriage to function like your dating life or you’re going to be in for a shock when the grind kicks in. It’s the same way that a 5k run is fun and all that, but doing a Marathon has greater value and prestige—for the level of toil and suffering that you bore to get there.
So with music. In a way, anyone can string a song together.6 But crafting a song and then taking it from paper into a demo and then into a produced song—that’s both skill and toil, and to be celebrated! Speaking of which, I’ll be celebrating a few in the community news a bit further down.
Producing ‘Glory’
With the music production for the track Glory, for example, this is my extremely inefficient process so far:
Record guide track (me on keys, playing badly in my bedroom). This is just the framework of the song, nailing down the tempo.
Record Zoë’s guide track vocals at her breakfast table (complete with beeping dishwasher). She sounds incredible, obviously, but it’s just a rough take so that we can now…
Record Tobias playing drums. We took a fun road trip to Upper Room in Dunstable and spent the day laying down three whole tracks (and eating chicken from Tim Hortons). Notable moment: Tobias played me an emo song that he wrote during lockdown, and it was really, really good.
I then went to Brixton Hill Studios on my own to record bass, guitar, and some guide trumpet parts. No photos or footage of this as I was too stressed trying to use the time well to remember to do any marketing.
About this time I’ve done a gentle review mix to see how things are feeling. I’m pretty pleased, but the horn parts need re-recording, and annoyingly so does the guitar because the amp was a bit buzzy (the dangers of playing on a single-coil guitar like a Telecaster). Here’s a tiny snapshot for you:
At this point, the only feedback I’ve sought out is from Tobias (to check the drum takes I used and make sure he’s happy) and Stephen (who has a great ear for what works). So:
I head to Zoë & Naomi’s place for a reality check. I play them the whole track a couple of times and the feedback is good! Phew. Zoë is exhausted and falls asleep on the sofa, so I take the opportunity to record Naomi on the Rhodes (electric keyboard) which adds some lovely extra sweetness to the track.
Vocal time! Zoë and I head to 9M studios in Elephant and Castle to do the final lead and harmony vocals. I also do a cheeky electric guitar re-record.
We’ve found that recording Zoë while listening to speakers on a low volume (instead of headphones) works best as she can express herself more fully. For me, any slight recording quality perfectionism is totally overruled by the vibe and feel that she brings with this freedom!
Present day: this is just one track out of five I’m recording this year, and already I’ve been in three studios, on one road trip, and I’ve written, scrapped, and re-recorded parts. I’ve had to keep track of who I’ve booked in for what (the band are super busy with their London lives, so I have to sometimes book things a month in advance). It’s an admin slog.
But it’s totally worth it.
All that’s left to record now is the piano (replacing my guide track) and then re-record the horn parts. Then, I’ll be heading back up to Upper Room to do a final mix and master with Stephen, ready for release later in May. Watch this space!
Community News
For some time now I’ve wanted to have a place to share cool stuff that some of my friends have been working on. In the absence of a better idea, I’m going to start sticking them at the bottom of these posts!
1. New Single: ‘Maker’ by Jono Thorne
Jono Thorne is a friend and talented singer-songwriter who’s launching an EP this year. His latest single, ‘Maker’ just came out and it’s lovely stuff:
Where to follow: Substack, Instagram
Notable mention: artwork for the EP and each track is by the very talented Rebecca Lim:
2. Our Zoë gigs with a jazz band in Farringdon
Zoë Grace Wang played some huge (big band) variations of her EP, ‘Forming Shapes’ to a packed audience at Piano Smithfield in Farringdon last week. She performed with Rev21 at their residency there, and blew the roof off.
Zoë regularly gigs around London, so make sure to follow her on Insta to stay up to date. She’s got some really exciting new music in the works too… Also, buy her stuff on Bandcamp eh? Musicians should get paid!
Come to think of it, I think I’ll do a feature on her soon.
3. ‘The Making of a Mother’ short film
Something a bit different — Emily Downe (who created the artwork and animation for our Christmas single) has just released a stunning animated short film, and I’m telling everyone I know about it.
Here’s Emily’s Linktree.
4. Ama Adem, ‘Skin in the Game’
Ama is one heck of a vocalist and songwriter - this soul-lifting single came out a little while ago but that was before I was writing this Substack, so here it is for your listening pleasure, in case you missed it:
Here’s Ama’s Linktree - make sure you check out her newest single, ‘Walls’!
That’s it for this episode, but please subscribe (free or paid) to get notified when we release ‘Glory’ — very soon! And let me know what you think of the community news bit and what else I can include!
Much love,
Graham x
Ask my wife. On second hand, please don’t
I sometimes wonder if a peacemaker is just a coward in a wig
But she is ridiculously talented
A pleasant metaphor that makes it sound less capitalistic than it is
Keep telling yourself that
Sometimes I sing songs at (yes, at, not to) Lucy about things like cleaning up the dog poo. These are the sorts of songs that just come out, unbidden, like a sneeze. They usually dissipate like a sneeze, too. But if they are really bad, they might become part of the lexicon of our marriage. She really is blessed.