On Saturday, 2nd April 2016, Ana Alberts came to the studio to sing and record gang vocals, and to have afternoon tea. Jude Abraham was also in the studio with us – Jude sings backing vocals when Meet George Brown performs live.
The original plan was that we have gang vocals on the ending of a song called “The Afternoon Show”. Felix and I had thought that some sort of “hubbub” would end this song nicely. And then we had a better idea…
There are six songs on the EP – at the beginning of the project, the plan was to have five but we decided to add another. The current sequence of songs (ie the current order of the songs on the EP, and I say current because it tends to change every few days) has it that “Apart From You” is the penultimate song and then the EP ends with “Denver”. The thing is that “Apart From You” is a song about loss and “Denver” is a roadtrip song. So we needed something more than the average two-second gap between songs to create space between the very different moods here. Enter our gang vocals session…
So on Saturday the 2nd, Ana, Jude and I recorded a segue to sit between “Apart From You” and “Denver”. It is a cappella and in three-part harmony – with the exception of “Apart From You”, all the songs on the EP have three-part harmony vocals doled out liberally right through. You can hear the recorded segue in the video.
We then had some time to record a version of Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” with Ana taking verse 1, Jude taking verse 2, and all three of us singing the chorus in three-part harmony.
Even though the plans for what we were going to sing had changed, having afternoon tea was an immovable fixture in the day. My selfie stick made its way out of my bag and captured a few moments. From some of the photos, it is evident that I have to work on how to hold a selfie stick properly / still.
We had good fun and worked hard during the three hours. So now we have six and a half tracks on the EP. Thank you, Ana and Jude!
[The Gang Vocals Session was one of the perks of this campaign. Please note that as this perk has already been fulfilled, it has been taken down from the campaign page.]