Last Saturday I took the train down to London to jam with Nigel Hoyle. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. When musicians talk about having a “jam” I get a horrible premonition of standing around with a bunch of halfwits in a grotty room playing blues riffs and grinning incessantly.
But with Nigel, I was optimistic. He produced the Jont album we recorded in December, and was brilliantly businesslike through the whole process. During rehearsals he would sit in the corner, singing arrangement ideas into his phone, writing notes and recording the whole thing on his MacBook. And he wore a jacket and tie all the time. So when he phoned me up to ask if I wanted to come and invent Space Country with him, I was confident that I would at least get an interesting day.
Beautiful instruments make for great tracks
I wasn’t disappointed. I arrived at the tiny studio (one of a stable of six or so) and settled into a corner. Nigel had borrowed a Fender Rhodes for me to play, which he put through a Fender Twin and which produced (I’m not sure why I was surprised) that classic Rhodes sound. He was playing a beautiful old Gibson acoustic that sounded like three pianos playing perfectly in tune. We chatted for 30 seconds then got down to business.
Nigel had an idea. He had recorded a guitar sequence onto his phone and had it sitting on his computer, ready to go. A simple, soulful idea in A minor with some nice voicings and an unexpected twist. I played along, and we decided on a structure that seemed to work, with an A major chorus and a bridge in C with quicker harmonic movement that gave the tune a lift when it was needed.
How can you know what you mean until you’ve played it?
I put down a few takes, adjusting the click speed each time to get the feel just right: relaxed and groovy, with just enough swing and no drag. I abandoned the sustain pedal, which was making rumbling noises, and settled on a series of voicings that I would never usually play on the piano. It’s always refreshing to spend some time on a different instrument (like organ or electric piano or monosynth), because the limitations force you to create new ways of expressing the music you’re imagining.
After a couple of breaks for tea and toast (with Marmite, of course) we had the Rhodes, acoustic guitar and bass parts down. We added some of Logic’s looped beats as a placeholder drum track, and sat back to listen. I recorded a quick 12-second video on my phone:
It’s just good music. That’s it.
We have the beginnings of a great sounding track. Now we’re both coming up with melody ideas, and when we meet again in a couple of weeks we’ll see how they all fit together. I can’t wait.