Part 12 of 18 serialised by Nuance, New Straits Times
28th October 2002
I haven’t spoken about Kum Loong the Erhu player much. Let’s rectify that.
I was introduced to Kum loong by people in the local Chinese orchestral music scene. When we first met in pre-production, I was surprise to find a long haired and cheery chappie with an insatiable appetite for music of any kind. He’s been so enthusiatic over this project that at time it bordered on being fanatical. Anyway, it was his turn to go under the knife today. And because he has had extensive rehearsals with Sherry and I before Ronan arrived, I expected it to be a short and easy session. But it turned out to be far from that.
Put simply, it was hard to get a Chinese classical musician to play tightly to grooves set down by a modern rhythm section. The fact that Kum Loong didnÃt speak a word of English didn’t help. The fact that we were tired and grumpy helped less. Thus, it developed into a 7-hour and somewhat frustrating marathon. Still, it was absolutely amazing to hear the songs with Erhu on them – especially given how some of them were written with precisely that instrument in mind. You be the judge when you hear it, but I think it sounded really good.
A friend, Shiori Takeuchi, who represents me in Japan, arrived from Tokyo tonight. She has come to KL just to sit in on the sessions. Those of you who have never spent time in a studio for weeks on end don’t know how tiring it can be – everyone looked visibly drained in the last few days. I am hoping that Shiori’s arrival will give everyone a much-needed boost.
29th October 2002
I picked everyone up (including Shiori) at noon and we started the day by re-recording some of Sherry’s guitar parts. It took longer than we anticipated because it was one of the hardest guitar parts on the record. Shiori said she was surprised at the amount of detailed work required to make a guitar track work. She was struck by how anal we’d been. The truth is, in our search for a ‘loose’ and ‘live’ sound, we were actually intentionally sloppy compared to normal industry practice. Oh well.
Lewis arrived shortly after and added percussions to about half the songs on the record. These were simple tapping parts done for reasons of texture more than anything else. Anyway, it’s kind of weird that we asked one of the best drummers in Asia to play the simplest things on bells and tambourine. But Lewis once again came up trumps with a superb professional attitude. Many drummers would have felt insulted if you haul them in to play the things we required today – but not Lewis – judging by the smile on his face, he actually rather enjoyed himself. Good man, this Lewis.
Anyway, Sherry later told me that he was observing the LCD meter on the mixing console as Lewis was being recorded. He noted that the sound volume of Lewis’s playing was pretty much constant for the entire duration of a 5 minutes song. Sherry was amazed – this is control at its best…
What? You don’t think that’s a big deal?
Try it yourself.
Use a chopstick. Tap a whole note (say, on the first beat of a 4/4) for 5 minutes on the table. Record yourself doing it. Then play the tape back and see (i) whether the tempo was consistent throughout; and (ii) whether the ‘touch’ and ‘loudness’ is consistent throughout. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to keep things consistent for that length of time.
Anyway, the songs took on different dimensions once percussions were added. The fast numbers gained energy and the slow quiet ones gained depth. It is now very clear how the record will feel. It will have a very fat sound and a depth of field that most mainstream records lack. It will also be a very strange record – I don’t mean that in a bad way – just ‘strange’ as in ‘uncommon’.
After dinner, we waited for our ‘Sheng’ player Aaron to come. It had taken me the best part of a day to get hold of him and he did not arrive till just after 10pm – 2 hours later than promised. Reason? It took Aaron 2 hours to re-tune his instrument from the Chinese orchestra concert pitch to the more common 440hz pitch that we were using. Apparently you re-tune the thing by dropping bits of wax onto all 32 reeds of the instrument. Geez, no wonder it isn’t pulling up trees at the Yamaha music school. But what a sound! The closest thing to it I know is the oboe, which we were also thinking of using in the record. Oh well, it seems there’s no need for the oboe now.
We didn’t end the session until half past one in the morning. Shiori was very excited about the sound we were achieving, especially as she’s used to the stuff on my demo, which are simply recordings of my solo ‘live’ sets at No Black Tie. Anyway, from demo to production record, the tempo had changed, the arrangement is more complex, and there is now a full band backing me. She described it thus: ‘the music in the demo CD is like a monochrome photograph and this is like a colour photograph’…
Still, one more week of recording left. We have some guitars to do, lots of main vocals, some backing vocals and other odds and bits. But I can finally see the end now. Can’t wait for it to be mixed. Hopefully, it won’t disappoint.
Must go sleep. Good nite.