What Kal Does – Vocal Harmonies

March 27th, 2010 | By Kal

I thought I’d kick off this series of blogs about what I do with possibly my favourite ‘job’ within Rob and Kal – providing vocal harmonies.  Within our music, my harmonies range from something subtle on tracks like The Island Without a Name and Can’t Help Me Now to something very clear cut and almost separate on Vedere.

What is a vocal harmony?

Well as the name suggests, a vocal harmony occues when two or more voices, that compliment one another, sing simultaneously  – pedants, see wikipedia…

It’s something that’s not really talked about within mainstream music, but if you listen to nearly every track in the charts for example, it will have vocal harmonies – be they simply the same vocal sung by the same artists, or another member of the band chipping in on a different set of notes.

The obscure nature of vocal harmonies means it’s fun to cite influences.  It allows me to mention major artists and bring you another talent that these guys have, that you may not have associated with them, or their image.

I remember the first time I really noticed or cared about a vocal harmony.  I was at Rob’s house with a few friends and it was the night before our last ever day of school.  We were waiting for the early hours of the morning to come so we could go to the school and set up some pranks for the next day.  To pass the time we found ourselves watching an Oasis tour DVD.  Listening to a rendition of Stand By Me, at first I wondered why Liam Gallagher’s voice suddenly had this extra power and sounded so much better at certain times during the chorus and second verse.  Then as I listened more closely I realised that Noel was singing a harmony, to great effect.  I have tracked down an acoustic version of the song on Youtube to illustrate that more clearly.  Give it a listen:

As well as add power to a vocal, a harmony will also emphasise a line for a songwriter, Noel has also used vocal harmonies here in the second voice to create a bit of variation.  The verses, one with just Liam singing and one softened by a Noel harmony are now different, giving the song a dynamic, as it is building from start to final chorus, even with just a guitar, two vocals…and a man sitting by a swimming pool on tambourine!

The way I see it, the other use of vocal harmonies or should I say the main use of them, is when they are the focal point.  Perhaps Rob and Kal doesn”t have a song like this yet, although I’d say the closest we have is in the chorus if All I Ever Wanted. A tight harmony is one of the most beautiful things on the ear, and that’s why we all enjoy a barbershop quartet.  Don’t think you do? Well each generation has had it’s edition of a vocal quartet or group. Motown fans need look no further than the Supremes, while those raised on 90s teen pop may enjoy listening to The Backstreet Boys – every genre has them, or I assume they do – I have yet to scope out death metal!!

My personal iteration of the vocal group is Boyz II men.  Listen to this completely acapella version of their biggest hit End of the Road.  I say totally because if I didn’t know it myself, I’d swear they were singing with a full band – they’re not:

Who are the biggest band in the world?  I’ll leave you all to argue that, but one of the front running contenders (at least), who are gracing the Glastonbury stage this summer when I go are U2.  And leaving religious beliefs aside, if God does exist, the gospel choir and the beautiful harmonies it creates would be his music.  Listen here to Bono belt out U2‘s classic I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For with The New Voices of Freedom gospel choir from their Rattle and Hum tour:

To wrap up, I urge you to listen closely to any of the music in your ‘record collection’; to any of the artists you particularly like; to even those who you don’t care for so much.  They’re all at it – vocal harmonies give music an added dimension, they give it a polish and more emotion at the same time.

Leaving all of these possibly pretentious adjectives aside, to me, vocal harmonies make music sound good.

Kal Walks to Work for Sport Relief

March 23rd, 2010 | By Kal

Let me go off topic for a few of your minutes and tell you about something I did recently.

This past Friday, I walked to work for charity – the only snag being the fact that my house is 24 miles from Central London where I work.  I set out at just before 6am in the morning as the sun rose above Harlow and walked through a mixture of lush countryside, forest and finally the streets of London to reach Westminster in almost exactly 8 hours.

Last Friday was Sport Relief Day in the UK – if you can call it that – a day on which our  sport stars and comedians raised money on television, showing their stunning feats of endurance.  Against Eddie Izzard’s 43 marathons in 51 days, walking 24 miles pales into insignificance, but none the less I joined in.

The reason I joined in was two fold.  First of all, Sport Relief – and it’s sister charity Comic Relief – fund projects in the UK and the world’s poorest countries.  Almost selfishly this means you can see how they help those in need on your doorstep as well as those living abroad.  Clearly I have been rather rubbish at explaining what they do, so if you do want to find out more, you can go here.

The second reason I joined in was because of the challenge.  I had a “I wonder if…” moment about walking to work and from that point I was pretty much locked in to doing it – it’s a trait that’s gotten me into quite a few scrapes, not least on Friday night and all of Saturday when my legs stopped working and started hurting!  It was totally worth it though.

Along the way, I took some pictures and recorded some footage, so I compiled it and made a video, and of course, it features our music!

The Island Without A Name – Writing Music to Poetry

February 21st, 2010 | By Kal

In this blog I’ll be discussing what happens when you already have the lyrics before you’ve written the music. It may seem like something usual, trivial even, but as I mentioned in All I Ever Wanted – The Story So Far, lyrics are something I consider once I have a large chunk of the music sorted.  To do it the other way around produces something different.

To explain how things work the ‘other way round’ (with the lyrics coming first), I wanted an example – a song where this had been the case – and here it is:  The Island Without a Name.

Rob wrote lyrics to a song of the same name, a long time ago – BRK (Before Rob and Kal) and I suppose it reinforces the idea that we usually write lyrics to music and not the other way around.  The song formerly known as Island was a completely different song might I add and the lyrics that we’ve ‘air lifted’ now form the verses of the song you see here, a song for which we didn’t come up with the basic musical idea until around a year ago.  Four simple chords.

When you write a song, on an acoustic guitar, piano or even with just bass notes, as in this case, you don’t know the direction the song will take.  What I mean by that is,  no matter what melodies or chords you start with you can go in any direction emotionally.  Do you want the song to sound cheerful? Eerie? Depressing (some people like that!)? It’s up to the the song writer, and in the case of our Mubla 2.0 project, it’s up to you.  :)

In my experience, when we’ve written songs, Rob and I have started with the music, developed it to a certain level and then added lyrics.  The words and the theme have been heavily influenced by the music we had to start with and while this might not be the case for other ‘artists’ out there, it’s how we do it!

So in the case of The Island Without a Name, Rob already had a set of lyrics, that he had used for a different song.  (Perhaps if we ask him nicely enough, he’ll post the midi version of the song formerly known as Island!)  With this set of lyrics came a set of emotions and a theme that we had to mirror when we developed the song.

The words refer to a break up.  An angry one at that.  ’You thought I’d be upset, but I’m not!’  And with that said, something that sums up my whole point is the ending of the song.  You know the bit I’m talking about, right?  Listen to version 4, and it’s where the electric guitar comes in.  Rob added that part to the structure of the song not long before we recorded version 1, to give it a resurgent feeling which really suits what the song is about.

We had some lyrics and a mood.  We then brought in a musical idea, and fleshed it out with the feeling of the lyrics.  You provide your comments that we work on, and Dave and Matt (soon!) come in and add their expertise. As I say it’s not the way we usually do it, but maybe with how well Island is turning out, it’s something we should do more often. ‘Writing lyrics to poetry’ has a nice ring to it. Let us know.

Update – 18 February

February 18th, 2010 | By Kal

I just thought I’d give you guys an update on what’s been happening with us.  It suddenly dawned on me that if you don’t have us on Twitter or Facebook, you wouldn’t have heard about the goings on over the last few weeks!

In music news, Rob and I have been working on some new songs.  In particular, we’ve now worked out a full song version of “my tune“.  To my surprise, Rob came up with the bridge, and further to my surprise, it was one of the best we have!

More recently, we’ve been rehearsing with Matt in preparation for some studio time next week.  This is the second person we will have collaborated with and judging by the session we had a couple of evenings ago at Riverway studios, it’s going to be as good as Studio day 6!

Speaking of collaboration, an update on that front is that we’ve added a brand new section to robandkal.com.  Click here, or on the cool looking guitar at the top of the screen to find out more about the people we are working with.  If you want your profile up there and think you could really add something to our songs, just do what Dave and Matt did and get in touch.  Details of how you can get involved are in the collaboration section too!

Before I sign off, I think another update would be to thank everyone who has commented on our music over the last few weeks.  Every piece of advice has had an impact on how we develop our songs – and every compliment has inflated my ego sufficiently! Thanks!

I look forward to hearing from more and more people, and the same old faces.  Until next time :)

Studio Day 5

January 11th, 2010 | By Kal

Studio Day 5!  What a day.

Twelve hours ago, i left my house to embark on a journey across the icy plains of Harlow to meet Rob, who had been held up in traffic.  Somehow, we still made it to Riverway for 2 minutes past 10.  Rock and roll.

Before I get into this, you will notice, at some point tomorrow, that there will not be a Studio Day 6.  Or at least, not in the next day.  That’s because, on Rob’s suggestion, we are just doing one day on its own this time, but the strange thing was he got a LOT done.

First off we started with Rob going in to the booth and playing down Acoustic guitar parts for Vedere and All I Ever Wanted.  Needless to say, Rob “One take wonder” Martin stayed true to form and reeled off great recordings in no time.  The pressure was on for me to deliver and eventually I laid down an extra acoustic track for Irish Girl, a song that you can download free by going here!

To top the morning off, Rob and I recorded a song we’d been wanting to record between us for a while.  The Devil’s Got a Friend, features me on acoustic guitar and Rob on lead vocals – it has a real live feel to it and we hope you’ll be able to give us suggestions of how we can really take it forward when it goes up on the site.

The afternoon featured the use of my electric guitar, to boost some of the tracks.  First off, Rob used it to record a new guitar track for Can’t Help Me Now.  It gives it even more of a summery feel – if that’s possible!  Give it a listen and tell us if you like it.

Then the distortion pedal came out and we all got serious for a minute.  For those who liked The Island Without a Name before, or Becci who requested more rock in our music, I added a new part which should give you the first glimpse of what you wanted, and it really makes the end of the song a lot more interesting.

The rest of the guitar was me adding parts that were almost invisable.  The aim was to make it almost unnoticeable to hear the parts I added to Can’t Help Me Now or All I Ever Wanted, but with the effect that if you took the parts away, you could hear that something was missing.  Did we get that?

You may have vaguely seen on twitter that I was having a go with a shaker on Can’t Help Me Now.  Thanks to Matt for the suggestion, and we promise that coming out of Studio Day 6, will be a version with the shaker.

All I can say is, keep checking the song section and you’ll see the latest versions of the tracks we worked on today.  We definitely felt a lot better coming out of this session than we did the last, even though last time in hindsight we got a lot of good work done.  But as always, we want you to be the judge of that and then give us ideas for February 1st, Studio Day 6.

What I can say for Studio Day 6, along the lines of collaboration, is that we have something very special lined up – we’ll keep you posted. :)

All I Ever Wanted – The Story So Far

December 26th, 2009 | By Kal

All I Ever Wanted is the epitome of a Rob and Kal song.  It may not be totally there yet as a sound – hey, it’s not my favourite of the 6 in the songs section – but the way it has developed is a great example of how Rob and I write music.

1) Chord Progression

The first step is for one of us to come up with a chord progression.  For All I Ever Wanted, it was me.  I remember randomly playing around with the guitar in my room at university and hearing the chords.  Rob and I were in different cities at the time, so I recorded the chords using a cheap computer microphone and sent the audio over to him.

2) “Making a song of it”

The next step is making a song of it.  When we collaborate, this is Rob’s domain.  He’ll take the chord progression and play around with it, adding the structure to it that makes it feel like a song rather than a group of chords.  With All I Ever Wanted, I thought nothing would come of the chord progression, having just sent the chords over because that was something we did, but when we got back home after uni, Rob had created a song.

Each step of the process moves the song on, so when I heard the song, I was able to hear additions I hadn’t heard before when I was just playing a cycle of three chords. Rob had used the chord progression to make a verse and chorus, and had made up a bridge from scratch – when I heard the arrangement, I added a pre-chorus and without using any more technical language(!) that pretty much got the basics of the song to where it is today.

3) Lyrics

In the process of creating a song structure, Rob will usually add lyrics.  I assume that at first it helps him feel where the song should go and what new parts would work, and then it forms part of the song, but that would be something you’d have to ask him – he won’t tell me his secrets!

4) Switching Instruments

During a creative process, it’s hard to come up with a scientific way of working.  This whole blog is just an example of an approach that has worked a few times, but many developments occur “by accident”.  This next step is an example of these accidents that we have now started to use.

Rob and I play both guitar and piano, and as is only natural, we each have different strengths on each instrument.  We use this to our advantage by learning potential song ideas on both instruments.  Then as we get used to playing it on both instruments we naturally come up with some additions that occur to us on the guitar and some that are easier on the piano.  This step keeps on cycling around until we know all of the additions and extras on both instruments and so it continues.

This was a significant step for All I Ever Wanted.  As you can tell, this song idea stayed a song idea for a long time because we were unable to get it to sound right.  It involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between guitar and piano – you can even see that happening really recently as version 1 was piano based and version 2 is guitar based, which we think sounds better.

5)  Record

Next step, you guessed it, we record the song idea in the studio.  It’s hard to accept, but at this stage, what we record may not please us, but it will allow us to draw on our most powerful resource…

6) YOU!

As soon as we’ve recorded the tracks, we put them up in our Songs Section where you give your thoughts.  This really is the bit that helps us, be it to suggest radical changes, or just to polish off a song at the end of the creative process – it’s great to get other perspectives on the music.

With All I Ever Wanted, we definitely responded to comments that the songs sounded too samey, by basing it around the acoustic guitar, and we’re glad you like the harmonies in the song, but we want more of your views.  Tell us what you think and rate everything about the song with out new 5 star rating system – that way, we can get a feel for what works and what doesn’t and maybe you’ll come up with that idea that we didn’t think of that fits the song perfectly.

Bonus Download: Irish Girl

December 16th, 2009 | By Kal

Guess what?  We have another song for you!

In our last session in the studio, we put down another song idea – Irish Girl.  This is definitely one of my favourites, not just because I sing lead vocals, but because of how simple it is.  Rob plays the piano and I play the acoustic guitar, with both parts linking together intricately.  And then there’s the guitar solo that I get to play.  It’s almost like I write them in deliberately!

Anyway, look out for a blog soon about how the song came to be, but for now I wanted to keep this blog short.  So click the snazzy (yeah I don’t know why I just said that word) link below, download the song and tell us what you think right here in the comment section on this page!

How does Kal come up with Lyrics?

December 10th, 2009 | By Kal

I was speaking to a friend who I had not seen for a while.  She’d been on the site, as most of my friends have been coerced to, but as I hadn’t seen her, I hadn’t introduced it to her like I would most people I know.  For me, this is a nightmare, because it leaves me unable to ‘help them shape their view’ shall I say!  What happened though was really useful, because it got me thinking.

Anita said, “OK, so you’ve got these song ideas and you develop those, but how did you get to that stage?”  And she’s right of course, because we haven’t covered that have we? So from now on I’m going to endeavour to describe it to you. What happens first?

Lyrics

Anita actually mentioned lyrics when she asked me about how I came up with songs.  What did I think up first – lyrics or the music?  Good question.  The answer is, I don’t know.  Both come to me at different times, and when I come up with one it doesn’t come neatly packaged with the other.

Let’s take lyrics, hey, I’ve titled this lyrics already so I’m kinda duty bound.  Lyrics can come at any time.  Generally something really really good or really really bad happens and when I have some time to myself (generally when I’m travelling), I get my phone out and write a text about it. Save, drafts, come back to it later. I don’t try and make it rhyme – if that happens, it comes later.  I just write whatever comes to me to get it out and ‘bottle it up’ in words.  A lot of the time it’s more for healing than for anything I’ll actually use, but I find that trying to force words onto a page, sitting a piano, and making them rhyme always sounds emotionless.

Maybe I haven’t been to Brit school and don’t understand, but for me, lyrics are about what you feel at a particular time, not what you can brainstorm!  With that said, my lyrics aren’t particularly abundant on the songs we have so far.  In fact, they only appear in one chorus – I Wanna Know.

I wanna know if she knows,
I wanna know if she cares,
I wanna know if she’s playing,
I wanna know if she’s there.

I first came up with these lyrics over a year ago.  I wrote them because I’d recently met someone and I couldn’t figure them out.  They seemed to have a certain way about them, that I didn’t particularly like.  The question was, did they know that they were doing it? And if they did, did they care?  Obviously it annoyed me at the time.  I can still feel that, everytime Rob or I sing those lines. It’s almost like having a picture, documenting a particular feeling I had.

Testimant to this, I feel, is the fact that in recording 1 and even in recording 2 of I Wanna Know, when Rob sings these lyrics in the chorus, it changes the feel of the song completely.  From a verse that is a little eerie and fairly contained, emerges a much more aggressive feeling.  Someone shouting for answers, which is exactly what I felt at the time.

On what I think is definitely a related note, and to definitely muddy the waters of what comes first, the music or the lyrics, I had already worked out the tune for the chorus along with the chords before Rob and I started to work together on it.  If I’d written those lyrics down, showed them to Rob and he’d thought, I know I’ll put them in a song, here, they might have lost their original meaning in the swapping of ideas.  But with me writing the music and already singing the chorus, the original feeling stayed intact.

I tell you what!  I’ve got a few ideas for lyrics on the go at the moment.  Let me get back to you with them very soon and we can see where they go and it will really demonstrate the whole process I’ve tried to describe above. Stay tuned, Lyrics II coming soon!

Studio Day 4

December 3rd, 2009 | By Kal

We started Studio Day 4 with the return of the piano.  We decided to re-record three piano parts that we already had from the first two days for various reasons.

Vedere, which I felt came out best this time, was recorded far to fast first time round.  I remember thinking at the time, that it was hard to take a breath between singing the lines, but with the pressure of the studio, we pushed on.  The beauty of the way we are recording material is that at each stage, not only do you get to hear the tracks, but we do as well.  A few weeks of listening to it and we decided to start from scratch.  This didn’t just mean redoing the piano, but we also had to redo the vocals, because they would be out of time with the new version.  Again they are guide vocals, but they really help when you’re adding new parts, or when you want to know what the finished song will sound like.

The other songs we started from scratch on Day 4 were All I Ever Wanted and Can’t Help Me Now.  These were re-done for another reason.  You.  One of the most frequent comments I heard was that all the first versions of our songs sounded the same, and you had a point!  How different can 6 tracks of piano and vocals sound?

Now, as you will hear on their latest versions, both songs are based around Rob’s acoustic guitar, which I feel gives them more of a rhythmic nature, if you’ll pardon the pretentious undertones of that statement!

Speaking of Can’t Help Me Now, while I may have mentioned this a lot, it really does sound different.  Give it a listen!  When I added my bassline to it on Day 4, Jim commented that it took on a Caribbean feel.  While that wasn’t my intention to start with, I kind of like it, and at least I now know that if all else fails I’ll have a career as a Calypso bassist to fall back on!

The day finished with an hour or so mixing down the tracks.  This basically means quickly sorting out each song that we had worked on so that you can hear every part, and then burning it to a CD.  Unfortunately, this also means that some parts interfere with others, or don’t mesh well, as the tracks have not been finished, but we really want your feedback on what parts you think work and which do not.

All in all, after a good nights sleep, I can say that I am proud of what we have achieved so far.  At first I might have been lulled into the idea that because we had added more and more parts to the songs, they could be compared to a finished article, but now I see the recordings for what they are – a stepping stone, that we need you to jump on and tell us what you think.  We are currently booking the next two days in the studio with Jim and between now and then, you will really be able to help us.  Like Matthew, one of the people who said that the songs sounded quite similar, your comments could drastically influence what we do next!

Studio Day 3

November 30th, 2009 | By Kal

No, you haven’t missed anything, this IS studio day 3.  Our first two days were back in October, when we put down piano tracks and guide vocals and you can find out about our exploits here and here.

Back to day 3, and it was refreshing to start off with some basslines.  We are using a method called track recording.  This means that rather than just play everything at once and record that, we record each instrument one at a time – which kind of makes sense as there are only two of us!  When a band track records songs, they would usually record the drums first, then the bass, and then the rest of the song.  Without drums, the basslines were the next best thing to get our song ideas sounding song-like.

The first song I got to add a bass part to was I Wanna Know and before long I’d worked on Island… and Something to Me.

The order of the day meant that electric guitar came next and I can report that I managed to rip a couple of solos – which is obviously the dream.

After a quick spot of lunch we were back in to the studio with an afternoon of acoustic guitar.  I don’t know how many acoustic guitars you will have seen, but for me there are two types.  The type you can plug in to an amp – ‘electro-acoustic’ – and the type that you can’t.  For these parts we each used Rob’s guitar, which is an electro-acoustic.  However, rather than plug it in – as would seem obvious to me – we went into the booth and played into a microphone.

This was the method that Rob used, for example, to record an acoustic part for All I Ever Wanted, and it added a more ‘natural’ sound.  The recordings allowed you to hear every sound coming from the guitar, not just the note, but the sliding and percussive sound of the strings.

In and out of the sound proofbooth, playing acoustic guitar, the afternoon seemed to pass very quickly, but we got a lot done.  If we are anywhere near as productive tomorrow as we were today, then we’ll certainly have some very new-sounding songs to upload for you.  As ever, I will post a blog tomorrow night telling you all how we got on.  Tomorrow we’re due to really get into Can’t Help Me Now, and we’re planning some big changes.  It might finally show what the music in the project is going to be like – constantly changing.  You’ll have to head over to the Songs section as soon as we upload the new versions, to have a listen and tell us what you think.

Anyway, speak soon, I’d better get some sleep, as we’ve got a long day ahead of us, tomorrow!