LIVE STREAMING HERE 2PM (BST) SATURDAY 19 JUNE

June 18th, 2010 | By Kal

At 2pm (BST) you can go to this link to listen to us live: http://mixlr.com/robandkal/live

If you’re here early, why not bookmark this page so you can come back to it approaching 2pm BST (9am Eastern) on Saturday.

Look forward to having you with us, and hearing from you.

As I said to the members of our mailing list, if nothing else, it will be interesting.

Studio Day 8

March 9th, 2010 | By Kal

Coming just 10 days after Studio Day 7, this one really crept up on us, but we really got a lot done!

Coming off the previous two sessions where Dave and Matt had come in and done their thing collaborating with us, it was a real shock to our collective system getting in the booth all day long and not just sitting there in awe at the work of one of our collaborators.

It was Rob who took the brunt of the work in the morning.  ”Lead vocals need to be there before backing vocals go down,” I groggily pointed out first thing in the morning.  And as we both warmed up, we were able to put down vocal tracks for all of our songs apart from Vedere.

I’m particularly fond of Rob’s main vocal on I Wanna Know.  We did several takes, and were going to stick with quiet a safe take, but on his last try, when Rob sang the first Chorus , I knew we had to go with it.  I might elaborate what I’m most proud of in a separate blog, but my crowning achievement of the day took about 10 seconds to do, and wasn’t particularly difficult.  If you listen to the outro of The Island Without a Name, when Rob starts singing “And I’ll be singing alone…”, there’s a tiny harmonic “woah”.  See if you can spot it.  I think it makes the song sound even better.

Subtle things like that were brought out a little as over the last couple of hours we were able to improve the mixing of the tracks.  This meant that we brought all of your comments and our thoughts about what we already had, what needed to be more prevalent and what needed to appear more in the background, and adjusted the volumes accordingly.  That sort of thing is actually more tiring because it requires intense concentration, and by the time 6pm rolled around, we were more than ready to head home.

But what came out of it was a set of tracks that are a lot closer to their final versions.  Keep your comments coming – this is really a vital time for your views to be heard, because we are due to return to the studio soon to perform the final mixing and at that point the tracks will be finished.

So get commenting!  Get over to the song pages, tweet us at http://twitter.com/robandkal, hit us up at our facebook fan group or even drop me an email at kal@robandkal.com – it doesn’t matter how you do it.  What matters is, your voice is heard.

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 6

February 1st, 2010 | By Kal

I think I’m running out of superlatives here – seriously!

“Studio Day 5! What a day.” Well I can top that, and you will totally understand when you hear the latest versions of our songs. But until they come out, this week, you will have to take my word for it!

It all started early this weekend. Dave Chase, aka Douvre, came over armed with a couple of ideas and a lot of talent and wowed us in rehearsals. I say he had a couple of ideas without exaggeration – Dave had prepared ideas for I Wanna Know and All I Ever Wanted. The rest was improvised between Sunday and the Monday recording sessions!

And that was the theme of the majority of the day. Dave managed to record violin tracks onto all of our songs, apart from Can’t Help Me Now, with the remainder of the day dedicated to recording new song ideas (Coming soon!).

We might go on about it a lot, but it truly struck me today. The whole collaborative part of this project is going to a) produce great tracks and b) be a LOT of fun for us!

The tracks will be uploaded over the next week, but until then, check the video below, which we filmed with Dave last night…

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. :)

Photos from our photoshoot with Marcus Maschwitz

January 2nd, 2010 | By Rob

Well, it’s taken us about 3 weeks to get these uploaded for various reasons but finally we are pleased to be able to post you the photos from our shoot with Marcus Maschwitz.

In case you missed it at the time we posted a video of the shoot here and blogged about it here.

We are really pleased with the photos and hope you are too. A special thanks to Marcus Maschwitz! You can visit his site here: London Band Photography.

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!

Update: Back to the studio on Monday

November 28th, 2009 | By Kal

I’ve just got home from Rob’s house where we spent the whole day (from about 8.45am!) rehearsing ahead of our return to the studio on Monday.

It must have been the pressure of having a deadline, but we had a really productive day.  I got the bass out again (see last time here) and we worked out basslines for most of our song ideas and similarly, the strat was working over time.

In readiness for using the aforementioned instrumentation in the studio, Rob and I went to our local music shop and bought a tuner, and maybe it was my brain trying to justify how much it cost, but it all sounded a lot better after I’d used it.

What does this all mean for you? Well, when we’re finished in the studio, we’ll be uploading the latest versions of our songs as soon as we can, and you will be able to see how they’re progressing.  In rehearsals today, some of the songs sounded very different, which surprised me, and I co-wrote them!

I’ll post another blog on Monday night after our first day and let you know how we got on.  Forgive me if I’m not as eloquent as usual though as it’s all a very long and tiring process, but I can’t wait because it’s what I love to do.

Bass Lines Part 2

November 22nd, 2009 | By Rob

Another video from a couple of weeks ago. In case you missed the first part with Kal playing along to I Wanna Know then you can catch that here.

This time he’s playing bass to Something To Me. You can hear us discussing what to do while he’s playing which maybe will be interesting to some of you. Let us know what you think!