Recording "Too Late"

I have had this song idea for quite some time now. It was a difficult song to write, it's very personal and is part of my therapy / recovery process.

I wanted this song to have a feel of a free flowing dialogue, no rhyming, just a conversation. And of course I needed to get back to basics - piano, vocals, bit of drums... Keep it minimalistic.

I wanted this song to feel like a live, intimate performance. Normally I would record everything at home on my own, but for this one I wanted to have a studio quality to it, you know that analogue warm sound.

I headed to the studio and we started recording the piano. I was being assisted by the wonderful Kat Chapman and Ben Pritchard (both classmates - Kat is a beautiful artist and friend and Ben is an awesome engineer). And of course everything was overseen by Colin Wright - teacher, mentor and friend.

Due to time constraints I could only do a couple of takes before we had to move on to the next part. But I felt like it was enough (which is unusual for me, I like to take 50 takes obsessively until it's perfect). I liked the little imperfections, they made it live, real and human.

Then we quickly recorded drums, it was only a small section so we didn't have to spend a lot of time. And of course Richard Seaglove (the drummer) knew exactly what I wanted and nailed that sound pretty much straight away.

We finally moved on to the vocals. I knew this was going to be the hardest bit. I needed to convey the feelings, while staying in pitch because I didn't want to edit it later, I wanted to keep it raw and authentic.

We kept going with the vocal takes one after the other... I lost count how many takes we did. We were running out of time, I felt a bit rushed... My pitch was fine, expression was fine, but something was lacking..

At the end I decided that it wasn't working and I would have to come back another day.

A week later we came back, dedicating the whole session to just vocals. We looped the song and recorded takes one after the other. It was a lot of fun and a bit exhausting! We spent 2.5 hours just doing that. Once again, the pitch was fine, and everything else seemed to be great too. Eventually I felt I was happy with the results and the sound of all the expensive gear was really hitting the spot for me. I finally felt like I could go home and start mixing this song.

But as you would expect with me, I listened to it at home and was definitely not happy with my performance. I just couldn't nail those feelings because I was so tired and even getting sick of the song... At that point I thought I'll just leave it, it's not meant to be.

And then, I was given a ribbon mic to test at home. I've only used ribbon mics at the studio, and knowing how great they sound on pretty much everything, I was very excited to try it at home! (By the way, the mic is NUDE ribbon mic - https://www.nudemicrophones.com/ - check them out!)

I loved the sound of this mic so much, it's pretty much what I wanted, it's warm and dark and very sensitive so I can be very comfortable and not worry too much about movement. Not to mention it felt great to play and sing at the same time - might be a silly thing to say, but it feels fancy, like I'm on stage and the lights are down and it's a quiet, intimate performance.. Or it might have been my imagination running wild since it was late at night when I was testing it! I can only imagine how great this mic will sound in an acoustically treated environment!

Anyway, I'm so grateful I get to play with cool toys! I'm finally happy that I can get the sound I want, and I can start working on this song again. I have a feeling it'll be out very soon! In the meantime, check out the test I filmed: