24/01/2015

Day 3 in the studio: Finished off recording parts for Aerial View. Added in some bass synth, brass and percussion. Drank lots and lots of coffee.

28/01/2016

Day 4: Started work on a new tune, just titled Collision Song at the moment.  The demo starts off with an ambient, almost bell-like synth patch playing a loop of 4 chords with a simple piano and cornet melody floating in. I’d been going through a bit of an ambient music binge throughout the winter on Coll at the time of writing this song – lots of Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno, Pop Ambient compilations and so on, which definitely had an influence on what I was writing. I spent most of my evenings writing and recording little snippets of ideas as the wind and rain battered the farmhouse I was living in.

I was keen to stick with this ambient loop for starters, but wanted to expand on the melody, instrumentation and structure to make it more of a full song rather than a quick sketch.

Most of the day was spent recording piano and glock parts in different octaves and adding in various harmonies and counter melodies to help the song have a bit more movement. We added in percussion and a few bass guitar and synth lines as well. The song is now made up of four different parts, totaling around 10 minutes.

29/01/2016

Day 5: Coffee coffee coffee. Listened back to the stuff we’d done the previous day – sounded good (there’s always the fear that it could sound dreadful having stepped away from it).  We decided to change the feel of part 3 in the song by bringing in a more down-tempo, double time rhythm on the snare using brushes, similar to the drum part on “Christmas Song” by Mogwai. We recorded loads more percussion as well. Added in a jazz-feel ride cymbal pattern over all the percussion that helped lift it a bit  – I remember when I was on Coll I’d listened to ‘Familiars’ by The Antlers and loved the drumming on it so wanted to through in a similar part. We added in loads of casio keyboard melodies, a Korg ms10 synth bass line and more synth and piano parts  – just need to add in some brass next week.

Jumped on the 19:41 train from Glasgow Queen Street to Dundee. Listened to Kompakt’s Pop Ambient 2016 on the way. Lovely.

Andy