Recording

There were a few scares regarding guitarist Paul’s ability to play the necessary chords and play them well. But after an emergency rehearsal with me and him it more or less worked out and we knew our parts for the recording. Wednesday on Halloween we headed to Musicbox Studios to record our piece and despite some of us being cold, some of us being unprepared and some of us under the weather we recorded the song in about 30 minutes. Vocals went smoothly and the guitar parts took a bit more time. Overall there were/are some doubts over the admission of drums or percussion in the song as well as the general end product, it is however unique as it’s the only pastiche jingle amongst them in the module and it lacks drums and bass (giving it a particular sound). And regardless of the quality of our recording the experience of being in a studio was undoubtedly the highlight. When presenting the finished product to the other jingle groups we got fairly good reviews and despite not being the most popular jingle, ours did seem to be the most controversial due to everyone else’s pieces being originals with accompanied percussion.

 

Me and Will visibly contempt with the recording at Music Box Studios

 

Individual Evaluation

Prior to this task I had never considered writing a jingle and was unaware of how it differs creatively to writing a normal song. Learning the different forms and characteristics of jingles, as well as learning how to compress a catchy and informative tune into 30 seconds was certainly something new to me and something interesting.

 
Writing a jingle has definitely been the most creatively challenging assignment that I’ve been given so far in this course and possibly the most fun since we are required to come up with new lyrics and musical layers rather than just replicating and playing a song the best we can (which is what we have been required to do in some of the other modules). What made it even more interesting and challenging was the randomised selection of the group members on the very first day which led to our group consisting of two guitarists and three vocalists.
We decided on doing a pastiche (essentially a cover of a well-known song with altered lyrics) since we assumed it would be different to others and I feel it’s a form of jingle that, due to its familiarity, listeners recognise and get comfortable with very quickly as opposed to a completely original piece (although copyright issues surrounding pastiches do understandably tempt people to stray towards original pieces). We chose to do “Come on Eileen” since it is instantly recognisable and loved by most, the only risk was that we needed to cover and honour the song in a good yet different way, which I think we did.

 
I feel that, despite being one of the two guitarists, the vocal harmonies and lack on percussion were in fact our strongest points that set us slightly apart from the other groups. The vocalists Jessica, Zsofi and Will did a great job in both writing lyrics in English and Welsh and in providing a great harmony between them, making up for the absence in other instruments and making the Dexy’s Midnight Runners song seem sweeter and certainly different to the original. As for me and Paul on guitar it seemed to be slightly more complicated, I chose to take a step back and play a playful “bassline” on my guitar (which worked surprisingly well in my opinion) while allowing Paul to play a bright “Ska”-type chord progression that would be the lead instrumental part. While I was happy with our different roles and how they complemented each other well I personally felt that Paul’s part could have been better and cleaner, in addition to teaching him what the chords were and how to play them I also decided to have a few emergency practice sessions with him prior to the recording in the aim of helping him improve his tone. There were also issues with Paul in the recording session regarding tuning (or lack of) as well as playing with clarity and on time (the segment we took from the song gets faster and faster). Ultimately it worked out but in short: I feel that the vocalists did a better job of the jingle than me and especially Paul.

 
In terms of ideas, we all contributed very well. We all settled very quickly on the idea using an old hit that people of both Adam Walton’s generation and ours would recognise and it didn’t take long for us to decide on the catchy interlude that takes place toward the end of “Come on Eileen”. There were never really any disputes or arguments when deciding the song, we all seemed to be on the same wavelength during the creative process.

 

Looking back on it, it is tempting to redo it and add further instruments (for instance drums) and to be more creative, but I feel that us sticking to our guns as well as working on a pastiche rather than an original made our project stand out more than some of the other jingles. I feel ours was certainly the most controversial jingle which received mixed views from the others, and personally I like the fact that we took risks that led to a divided opinion amongst some of the other groups. The only thing that I would perhaps change would be to spend more time working and harmonising with Paul as well as maybe even contributing vocally with the harmonies. Overall the idea was perhaps better than the execution in terms of our guitar playing at least, and Adam Walton himself claimed the piece was “lazy” and I do slightly agree with him. But regardless of my criticisms and of Adam Walton’s comments, I’m happy that we kept it simple and modest.

 
The best part of this task was definitely the recording at MusicBox Studios which was the first time we really heard our project come together (thanks in large part to our producer). Before that, all we had was several phone recordings of our rather sloppy first performances of the piece. Writing and combining ideas in the beginning and listening to everyone else’s pieces were great moments but working and recording in a professional environment was undoubtedly the highlight.

Doubted, Defiant and Dungarees

Seeing as were only 3 singers and 2 guitarists we knew that it’d be a challenge. We presented our then vague idea to to our Module leader Matthew Evans who found it “interesting”, leaving us with concern and doubt. We soon worked on it during our first rehearsal all was promising: the 3 singers applied some nice harmonies while laying down some clean, melodic and informative lyrics ( Jessica even suggested singing in welsh), Paul supported it by playing steady-ish ly the guitar chords and I sluggishly did my best to impersonate a drummer and clap to the ever accelerating rhythm of that particular part of the song. We created our first recording of jingle and proudly presented it to Matthew in the hope of being the messiah to his doubting Thomas. And we succeeded, he was pleased and we went full steam ahead with the song, leaving the dungarees behind along with the video because that would just be silly…

  

Improving and Name changing

Due to Skidmarkz being deemed slightly inappropriate not really fitting with our objective we changed our name to “2 late” (inspired by our inability to think of a good name aside from “group 2” in the given time). We carried on with ideas for the song, Jessica managed to incorporate welsh lyrics into the song and me and fellow guitarist Paul figured out some guitar parts where one of us would play a Ska-ish strumming pattern on the downbeat while the other would play some sort of a “bassline”. It more or less worked despite our cynicism, to make us more confident our coach Matthew remained confident in us. All that is left is to play alongside the producer/drummer on the day of recording to fill the void, but for now we’ve more or less got it all figured out.

                       

 

 

Beginning

Faced with the task of creating a jingle for BBC radio Wales’ “The Adam Walton Show” for it to be played on radio in December,  we were put into groups regardless of our chosen instrument and were given several weeks to prepare. Our group went by the name of Skidmarkz (inspired by the the first thing we saw on the theater floor) and consisted of me (guitarist, second from left), William Powell (singer, far left), Jessica Griffiths (singer, 2nd from right), Paul Gialanze (guitarist, middle) and Zsófi Pásztori (yet another singer,  far right).

  

Getting Creative

Follow a brief meeting over a pint of beer at the zen bar in the Cardiff campus, we all agreed on doing a pastiche (covering a previously made song and incorporating new lyrics)  over writing an original piece which as we later found was more popular choice amongst our competitors. We also agreed that the song to best represent Adam Walton’s music taste would have to be an old yet timeless song that is irritatingly catchy, and even better, welsh. We struggled to find any suitable welsh songs but we all agreed on Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ 1982 hit “Come On Eileen” that had a simple and catchy 40 second segment that fitted perfectly with our requirements.

 

Adam Walton is a welsh born radio presenter for BBC Radio Wales, hosting Science Cafe at 6.30 PM every Tuesday, and his weekly new Welsh music show called The Adam Walton Show on Saturday nights at 10.

On his show you can hear a variety of genres ranging from punk, to pop and jazz, acts such as boyband Westlife, Fairport Convention, and american composer Sun Ra. Adam also frequently supports and promotes up and coming welsh musical acts.

Born in Wales in 1971 and moved to study in Liverpool, he formed a band called Daisychain and left around 1996 after their last gig to start the welsh radio music channel Revolution and later interviewed 90s musical acts as big as Oasis, Pixies, Rage Against the Machine and Blur.

On his latest radio show however he prefers to not only play a wide variety of genres but also to sniff out underrated and exciting acts that are currently around today (particularly in his beloved Wales).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton