Robert Maitland (left) and Rich Anderson work on the arrangent of "Surprise"

Songwriter and musician Robert Maitland has been recording at the Offbeat studio now for several years on various projects. A while back he began demos for the musical Taking Care Of Business. The musical is based around the time of the first Edinburgh Festival in 1947 and as such the music is fashioned on the period. Lastweek Robert came back to the studio ,this time with arranger and pianist Richard Anderson, Drummer, Ross Whyte, Bassist Andy Sharkey, Trumpet player Gavin Spowart and Sax player Leon Thoren to perform two songs from the musical entitled  Surprise and Alibi.

Andy Sharkey on Bass and Ross Whyte on Drums

The rhythm section and piano were performed live and the horns and guitar, which was played by Robert were dubbed.

The resulting recording is still to have vocals added before mixing and mastering at the end of November. Surprise is a soulful ballad, beautifully played and Alibi is an authentic big band arrangement.

Gavin Spowart on Trumpet and Leon Thorne on Sax

Robert has also been in the studio with a dance track entitled Passion, playing guitar and singing. I produced the tack and played guitars, bass and programming. Amy Fowler aka DJ Siren produced a remix of the song.

Robert is also about to launch a mp3 download site featuring tracks unavailable anywhere else. More news to follow.

james performing at an open mic night in edinburgh

18 year old Singer Songwriter James Ross is currently in the studio recording one song after doing a series of demos on his home set up using a Zoom multitracker. The song entitled Right Next To You is an epic guitar based composition which features James on Drums, Guitar, Keyboards and Vocals. Classically trained, James surprised us all with his proficient drumming and guitar playing and vocals. I’m playing Bass and producing and Amy Fowler is engineering. James has recently signed to Red Monster Records, we hope to get the chance to produce more of his amazing songs here at the Offbeat Studio.

Singer/songwriter Chris Bradley has just completed his second album which he recorded and produced himself at home. I’ve  been involved in the mastering of the record over the past two weeks and I love this album.Chris played all the instruments including drums, guitars, piano and bass. he started off the tracks by playing the drums unaccompanied and added the parts once he was happy with the rhythm tracks.

There are eleven great songs on the album which will be released on Seventeen Seconds Records, date to be announced. The title of the album is still to be decided.

Chris also plays with Scottish band Aberfeldy.

Alexandra Townsend Rose came into the studio last week to record her first ever studio session with her own composition China Horses. Playing piano and singing, Alex, aged 17 did a fantastic job of performing her song.

I accompanied her on drums, bass and guitar and the whole production was completed in just 6 hours from start to finish.

Alex plans to come back into the studio towards the end of October to record more of her highly original material.

Listen to the song on the offbeat website

http://www.offbeat.co.uk/musicproduction.html

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Iain McKinna has started working with drummer and composer Tamas Arady on a new album for the Offbeat Scotland label for a 2010 release.

It wil be the first release on the label since Tam White’s Hold On album in 2007.

Based on compositions by Tamas and Iain participants will be invited from all over the World to join in on the album using the application Dropbox, new file sharing technology .

I’m back to Heartbeat Studios this week for the recording of the third Spirit Of The Glen album, this time for Decca Records. The first album reached no1 in the UK Classical charts, the second achieved a Classical Brit for best album of 2009 so there are high hopes for this album also.

Producer Jon Cohen has entrusted me to record this initial stage of the album this time, so I’m looking forward to the challenge. As usual I will be taking my Mac based Logic audio system to be wired in to the studio. Heartbeat use Cubase and are not yet Logic compatible.

To record the pipes I will be using a stereo pair of Neumann U87’s. The album is being done remotely with Jons studio using Drop Box. An amazing application that allows file sharing between studios. Once drop box is installed any file updates done on one system is automatically updated on the server and appears on the desktop of files shared between participants. This does away with the need for sending big files over the net or CDs etc.

universal music group

crabbit the musical

Just completed the final backing track mixes for the musical – ‘Crabbit’ at the weekend. In all there were 25 pieces of music ranging from songs to themes and atmospheres. The show will be on for the entire duration of the Edinburgh Festival fringe at The Gilded Balloon starting on Wednesday. after that it will be on at Londons West End.

Based on the popular childrens book “Michelle in Crabbit Comes To Stay” by Julie Hegarty, the musical is packed with great songs including the summer tune ‘Best Day”

The musical is suitable for all ages with songs written by Ti Hegarty who has written songs for Gloria Gaynor, Dream and many others.

Check out this youtube film of Tim and Willie Carson working in the studio.

Allie Fox – Waylands Blues

Five years in the making, the acoustic guitar album, Waylands Blues by Allie Fox, is now being mixed.

The album will be released on Vixen Records lateer this year.  I worked with her on her debut album Diving For Pearls which was critically acclaimed by Mojo, Q magazine and BBC Radio 2’s Bob Harris. It was a collection of songs, unlike this album which is completely instrumental collection of mainly her own original compositions.

I used to wonder why some albums took years to make and now I know! This one started when I had a G4 computer using Logic 4 and has been transferred several times onto each version of Logic I’ve upgraded to over the years. Allie, who lives in Selkirk, travels to Edinburgh once a month or so to spend 4 hours at a time on the recording, initially establishing a live take per session and some guitar overdubs. We created a click track for each tune, creating rhythms that suited the track which would eventually be removed. That was a good decision as endless comping of layers of takes have been involved.

There are quite a few guests on the album, Dobro slide guitarist Rod Clements from Lindisfarne,   Harmonica player Fraser Spiers,  Ben Ivitsky – producer of Elisa Carthy on  Viola, Ron Shaw on Cello, John Wardell on Pedal Steel , Dave Haswell on Drums and Percussion,Pat McGarvey on Banjo, Frank Usher on Acoustic Guitar, Gavin Dickey on Bass, myself on Bass and Keyboards and programming. One track in particular – The Meaning Of Life And Death, I really wanted to get on with Rod Clements,  just so I could say I played with them. OK, it was me playing one sustained note on synth strings with one finger, but hey, call me shallow ….they can’t take that away from me.

Each musician made a great contribution on two tracks each on average.  Mostly they didn’t know the tracks they were guesting on and jammed lots of takes each, from which Allie and I painstakingly edited down into performances. That was the time consuming bit. It would sometimes  take 3 to 4 sessions for us to comp parts together that really worked with the tracks.

The challenge was always making sure that Allie’s own guitar parts didn’t get swamped by the guests and each resulting comp track was reduced even further throughout the album. Getting to what sounds like a simple natural performance was a process not unlike editing a film. The vast majority of guests ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor. Another good analogy is the distilling of whisky… nobody complains of how long that takes!!

I think this is a fabulous album and considering how long it’s taken to do, it always manages to sound fresh and vital. I look forward to the release later in the year.

It was fantastic to be part of the team that recorded Spirit Of The Glen – Journey – for Universal Music Group. recorded mainly at Heartbeat Studio, the album was also party recorded in Basra, Iraq last August/September. Competition for the Brit Award included Katherine Jenkins, Mike Oldfield, The Male Fron Choir, Andrea Bocceli and Hayley Westenra.

Although credited as the engineer for the job I also received the help of Heartbeats Dave Valentine and Ed Logan. the producer of the album Jon Cohen is up there with the best Classical Crossover producer. A real Logic Audio wizard and amazing musician, I really hope to get the chance to work with Jon on a third Spirit Of The Glen album if Universal decide to do it.

This  week we have Tim Hegarty in the studio putting together a 45 minute music programme for the forthcoming musical of the childrens book written by Julie Hegarty. The show entitled Crabbit -The Musical – will be directed by Sarah Townsend who has just finished producing a feature film for release in the USA. Very much along the lines of The Lion King, the show is set to be a massive Fringe success. The show will transfer to London’s West End after the fringe.

Tim had already created the music in his Yamaha workstation, so it was a  matter of reprocessing sounds through logic and mixing the programme down so that rehearsals can start on the muaical. Musician Willie Carson worked on the music with Tim. Nearer the event we will be adding backing vocals and  finalising the mix for the show.