Rock Chick Day

I'm so glad I got out of the flat today.  And not just to go to Tesco.  (Hurrah!  Finally!)  My turning feral and moulding at the edges has been averted.  I had a date with a studio.  Yippee!

I put on my charity shop Lily Allen type dress, my black leggings and my green, biker (grove!) boots: 

and did the rock chick thing.  I listened back to my 'Sweet Silver Ride' track and wrote out the lyrics and wrote in where the guitar bits need to be (for my own clarity on a rather old song as well as to help the guitarist) and sang along momentarily with rapture at the thought of resurrecting an old friend of a song.  Nothing like a bit of rock singing to fire up the engines...

I got my somewhat delicate flower of a body (thanks to the beginnings of period pain) carefully over to the studio.  It is a wild labyrinth of a building with no bell and as luck would have it, on the day I'd purposely set out earlier in order to be on time, I couldn't get through to the producer guy on his mobile.  "Ten mobil je mimo provoz..." the message told me in Czech, to the background music of 'Knight Rider' .  In other words, it's out of order and I now had no hope in hell of contacting the guy that I was waiting outside.  No direct windows, so no direct contact.  So I kept re-trying and waited in the lunchtime Prague summer heat like a goth on a beach and sweated it out.  (Literally.)

Thankfully, he texted me on his other mobile, to say that this was his other number and didn't we have an appointment today...?  So I called straight back and we got started.  There aren't many ways to describe this guy other than he's the genuine rock god article.  He's much less producer-looking than Hollywood Rock singer/guitarist, but man, is he quick at ProTools!  He's got it all down to a "T" and I was amazed that we got the guitar parts recorded within the hour.  He listened to the mp3 I had of the old version and copied the parts I wanted flawlessly, with a couple of variations and a bit of doubling-up and copy and paste-ing here and there.  He even got some lighter, airy sounding bits done in the verse that I thought we'd run out of time for.  

The guitar itself lived up to the rock god look.  I sneakily took a picture of it:  

He said he bought the guitar feeling that even if it wasn't great to play he wanted it because it was so 'pretty'.  (That sounds less pathetic when said in an American accent for some reason.  I don't know why.)  Anyway, it was great to walk away knowing I could look forward to doing some kick-ass rock vocals on this track soon.  I took this in my euphoric mood on my walk back home:

However, a tip-off about a cellist who might be able to record the original cello part I wrote for it means I might delay a while in order to get that done first.  We'll see what transpires.

It was so much fun to be back in the singer-songwriter's seat today.  I was so excited when I got home I took arty pictures and played my keyboard loudly with my boots still on.  

I can't wait for Rock Chick Day 2...