I’d like to start this post off by letting you know how much respect I have for Adalita.
I am very much a child of the 90’s (and miss a lot of aspects about it) and was fully immersed in the alternative music scene. So it’s no surprise that I was a Magic Dirt fan (for those of you unfamiliar with Magic Dirt, Adalita was their front-woman). She always seemed to portray a strong sense of personality and fearlessness in Magic Dirt, and I’m so happy that she has continued with two solo records now.
Understandably, I was pretty excited for the opportunity to have her listen to my songs and offer suggestions etc.
Now to the music. What did we discuss?
Finding the hook.
We spent some time listening to the tracks and identifying the hook (the most identifiable and catchy part of a song) and looking at methods to accentuate them. Adalita gave me some great ideas to have a play with. A lot of these involved the layering of vocal tracks like a round (remember how you’d do “Frare Jauque” as kids?).
In another song the chord progression on the guitar was the hook. So we looked at how we could make that stand out more by layering a piano over the top.
All these little tweaks are making a big difference in how these songs will come across in the final recordings. These sessions are a great way to look at all the details of the songs that I normally would over look.
Picking a single.
Picking a single is a hard thing to do. We pour everything into the songs and want them all to be great! So how do you pick that one song to put out into the world to promote the rest of the release? This is something we’re trying to decide at the moment and it’s not easy!
Of course I had in my mind one or two songs that I felt could be the single when I put this question forward to Adalita. To my surprise, she was adamant that the single should be a track titled “Secondhand Book.” In my mind this was the least likely! But hearing it from her perspective has made me think a bit more about it.
Perhaps we can show the EP to a select few and see which song they think could be the single.
This was a very inspiring session! One more session to go! Next week is with Darren Middleton (ex Powderfinger).
Until next week,
Az.
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