Classical Rock — The London Diaries

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 - Day 1

Thusday, June 12, 2008 - Day 2

Friday, June 13, 2008 - Day 3

London Diary Day 1: Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The same thing that deprived America of new episodes of our favorite TV shows has also allowed us to move part of our upcoming albums to London to finish some critical tracks. Yes, I’m referring to the Hollywood writers’ strike: Because the scripts ceased, the screenplays of some movies that had been scheduled for production didn't get done on time. This pushed all production out of schedule, and that created an incredibly rare open few pages in the appointment book at famed AIR Studios.

More important, Geoff Foster, lead engineer for George Martin's studios, was also available, as were some of London's best studio musicians. Some of our tracks from the first album, Classical Rock, needed an ambience that could only be found in the finest studios in the world, and AIR fulfilled that requirement. Likewise, a great many tracks from Classical Rock 1965 were originally British hits, and so that was the sound we were looking for.

Lyndhurst Hall is considered possibly the finest soundstage in the world for recording movie soundtracks. It did not go unnoticed by me that the recording time schedule for the newest and upcoming Harry Potter video game was sitting on a table in the Scoring Panel Room; head engineer Geoff Foster said he had just finished the work on the Batman film set for this summer.

I took along Dan Smith, my conductor, Tim Kimsey, our lead Dallas engineer, and Tom Demer, our lead violin and viola player and our concertmaster. While we wanted that famed British sound added to our albums, the team would ensure the continuity of the album tracks.

On Day One we managed to get a prodigious amount of work done. We laid down the 1st violin lines for no fewer than seven tracks from Classical Rock 1965, plus the violin lines for “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “White Rabbit” and the “Canon in D” from the original album. Tom added parts of the harmony track for “I'll Never Find Another You” from the second album, while cellist Caroline Dale thrilled us all with her interpretation of Donovan's “Catch the Wind.” Then she added the cello line to “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” What was truly a surprise is that Caroline had already done a solid day's work with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame prior to our sessions.

Typically, I get a bit beat after 8 hours of non-stop recording, but here it's a completely different story. Here 12-hour days are the norm, and during one of our very few breaks Geoff regaled us with the story of one London session that went 50 hours straight — no one had left because the session was going so well, and the project was way behind.

You can see all of Geoff's film, album and classical credits on the DFW Power & Light Orchestra page.

Great first day for recording. I'll give you updates as the week goes by.

We will be doing our show this Saturday morning from the BBC Broadcast House here in London.

— Ed

London Diary Day 2: Thursday, June 12, 2008

Typically, when someone says, "It's just more of the same," that indicates poor news. Not true here in England, where Day Two of our recording sessions at AIR Studios again went remarkably well.

Today we were working with five British violinists, plus Tom Demer from DFW. However, this time around we had three songs that required the six players to perfectly mimic a vocal line. I expected it to take the better part of one four-hour session; it was so laborious a task that it could well have eaten up both four-hour violin sessions we had scheduled for the day. Not so: The level of performance was little different from doing primarily 1st violin tracks. Ahead of schedule for the second time in two days, we were able to knock out a few extra tracks before awaiting the arrival of Caroline Jones, our cellist.

Caroline had booked a little less time today. She had started her day working with Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd (she had been the cellist for his acoustical projects a few years ago) before moving on to a memorial service, and then came in to do a couple of tracks for us. What was truly amazing is that at 7:30 this evening, after a full day of gigs, Caroline knocked out two incredibly difficult songs in less than 1 hour and 40 minutes.

This was also the day that we had time to talk with some of the players about all the other projects they were passionately involved in. David Juritz has created a charity, MuseQuality, to buy musical instruments for children in poverty around the world, while Ralph de Sousa of the Endellion String Quartet and I spoke about his multi-disc Beethoven project coming out soon from Warner’s Specialty Music.

Lead engineer Geoff Foster talked about working projects with Joni Mitchell, Chrissie Hynde and Paul McCartney. Here we had something in common; McCartney's former trumpet player with Wings, Steve Howard, led our horn sections in Dallas.

All in all, a second incredible day for the project.
— Ed

London Diary Day 3: Friday, June 13, 2008

On the third day of our recording sessions at AIR Studios, it was time to record some of our viola tracks. As they say, it's a small world. We had hired three London viola players to work with Tom Demer on these tracks; and one, strangely enough, was Ivo-Jan van der Werff — who is a Professor of Viola at Rice University in Houston. He had accepted that position last year and was back in London for the summer doing studio sessions. Apparently more than just my group had taken a 10-hour plane flight from Texas to make these sessions in London.

Of course, the smaller the group the faster the sessions go, and only having four violas to record proved no exception to the rule. This freed up enough time for Tom's solo work in the afternoon, laying down some of the vocal and harmony tracks on both violin and viola. That being said, pushing 40 hours in a recording studio in three days’ time gets to the best of producers, musicians and engineers. By the late afternoon, with some time on our hands, Geoff Foster was treating us to some more stories from major recording projects. Certainly of interest was his work on Beyond the Sea, Kevin Spacey's biopic of Bobby Darrin; famed producer Phil Ramone (best known for his work with Billy Joel) had produced the project over at Abbey Road Studios.

In fact, our three viola players left our session for another at the Abbey Road studios and invited us over for a look, but the reality was that we just didn't have the time to make the two-mile walk. Besides, studio etiquette dictated that the invitation should have come from the producer of that project, and so we just finished our work instead.

This would be a good time to mention our second engineer. Chris Barrett is certainly one of the quietest individuals we've ever worked with, but his knowledge of digital recording and his skill at ensuring that the tracks were laid down correctly were beyond impressive. Not once in what turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of takes did Chris say he had missed a cue, or hadn't gotten a proper recording of the musicians.

In addition to Razorlight recording their newest album in Studio 1 at AIR, the last few days we found The Foo Fighters mixing their latest album in Studio 2. Needless to say, the outdoor patio was covered with more than a few “names” during the afternoon breaks.

The one downside to our great work so far was the fact that not one, but both of our brand new Glyph hard drive cartridge holders failed on the first day, nearly ending our project before the first musicians arrived. Fortunately, AIR's engineers partially fixed one holder, but we were forced to move our work over to the studio's hard drives; we will have to wait for an American power cable to arrive before we can move forward on the final mixes.

At the end of the day we asked about the possibility of picking up a few AIR Studio coffee cups. Unlike Abbey Road Studios, which sells these items, no such offer exists at AIR. We were told to feel free to steal a few cups to take home. I asked if Sir George Martin questioned the high rate of coffee cup theft from his studios and the reply was that he was well aware of it. In fact, the reason you have to simply "walk out" with the merchandise is intentional: If you are in possession of a coffee cup from AIR Studios, it is proof that you have actually worked there — not just been a tourist buying souvenirs.

With that, it's time to put a show together for broadcast in a bit.
We'll get together on air.

— Ed