WorshipCentral

First day doing vocals in a brand new studio, having an awesome time.

I drove down from London this morning with Liv and baby Kester, a little family outing, and we’re at a beautiful place called ‘Street Studios’ which is Delirious’s home studio. It’s a large room with an awesome desk, comfy sofas and a great live room to do vocals and guitars in. The studio is attached to Martin & Anna Smith’s house, which is cool, as it feels a bit more like a living room than a studio. It has windows, which is a novelty after a week at ICC. Martin and Anna are the loveliest people, and keep popping in with cups of coffee and to say hi. They’re expecting their sixth baby any second, which is keeping everyone on their toes.

Liv and Kester hung out for a bit, then headed back home, which is the hardest part of this whole thing. Every time I go away to record, Kester changes a little bit and I feel like I’m missing out, but it would be equally really hard for the guys to be camped out in the studio.

Anyway, after saying goodbye we cracked on with the songs. The team is much smaller this week, just Trev the producer and Adrian, the A&R man from Survivor Records. We’re just doing my vocals and the acoustic guitars, which sounds simple enough, but is really hard work.

We started on ‘Nothing Is Impossible’, one of the more demanding songs vocally, as it has a rhythm that jumps around. The way it works is we listen through to it, I start warming up, drink lots of hot honey and lemon, then jump into the live room, strap on the headphones and start singing. We usually take about ten takes (which apparently is normal, they keep promising me, before Trev ‘comps’ them together, taking the best bits. Then we’ll listen through and then redo any bits that really did not work. It’s quite a hard process, as there is so much that’s just 90% there, but not quite right. It’s amazing how much you can get away with live, that you get punished for in the studio! I’m having to work really hard on the breathing, tuning, rhythm and tone.

While it’s challenging, I’m enjoying it. On one level, it’s my first time in the studio, so I’m slightly nervous, but at the same time, it’s my first time in the studio, so it’s all very exciting!

We grabbed a curry for dinner. Beautiful. Then we started on a song called ‘Because of Your Love’ which is one of the bigger ones on the album. It felt easier to do, as I guess it’s a simpler song, but also I’m getting a bit more settled.

My top tip of the day came from Andy Piercy, who I worked with at HTB fro ages, and who produced Delirious and Matt Redman. He’s over from the states and I caught up with him yesterday. His advice to anyone recording vocals was ‘just relax and enjoy yourself, that’s all you have to do.’ I’m trying my best to excel at both…