French Violin and the weekend

October 30, 2009

I had a great time on Monday with the surprise addition to my new album of the violin. A French one even. With all the mixes nearly done, it is hardly time to be adding to the recordings but as fate would have it, my producer's brother Ben was in Berlin visiting from Brussels and as always, he was traveling with violin in tow. Since one of the ethos for this album has been to let our instincts guide us, we decided to set up the microphone in the sitting room and see what we could come up with.

I had a counter melody in mind for the 3rd verse of "Better Way" that I thought would sound great on violin and give the song yet another colour and mood. Fabien had an idea of recording Ben playing many violin parts on the outro of "Better Way" creating a string section.

Ben is a top notch player and a lovely fellow to boot. It was wonderful hearing him make that violin sing. An make it sing he certainly did. I kept thinking, this is either entertaining the neighbor upstairs or driving him batty.

Ben also played some violin for the last part of "From Whence I Came" which sounded really cool, but not sure if it is needed. We will decide this weekend.

Speaking of which, this weekend is the final full days of mixing. Any tweaks after that will be super minor tweaks. No more full on sessions. It's time to let go and let the children fly.