Watercolour Reflections...
Looking back on a week of writing and recording in the Scottish Highlands.
Shortly after the winter break, I was lucky enough to be selected to take part in a song-writing residency at Watercolour Studios near Fort William. The premise for the residency was to send a variety of students across the 4 years of study from Perth to the Highlands for 5 days of writing and recording together and see if we could come up with enough work for an album.
Up until this point, my preparation for time in studio had always been extremely meticulous, scoring out most parts for songs and rehearsing thoroughly with band members. For the Watercolour experience, I made a conscious decision to take a different approach, instead of bringing any pre-written tracks and trying to re-work them in a new setting, I decided I would go to Ardgour armed only with a rough chord progression that had a kind of cyclical nature to it without any real resolution and absolutely no idea of what I would do with it.
So early February arrived and we (myself and 12 other music/audio engineering students) headed for the Highlands. We arrived on Friday afternoon and would be there for 5 days, leaving the following Wednesday.
So we arrived on the Friday and began unloading our gear and setting up kit in the studio. One of the benefits of being a performer meant that we were generally considered obsolete when it came to helping set things up so I found myself at home behind the baby grand piano - a rare treat to play. Really it was quite an overwhelming feeling to be in a remote location with a group of people that didn’t really know each other and we spent that evening getting to know each other, sharing ideas, interests and influences with one another and trying to get a bit of writing done.
On the Saturday we had an improv session planned with the wonderful bassist, Roberto Cassani. He joined us for the day to gather research relating to his Masters and led us through his improv sessions. During this he asked if we had any songs we wanted to work on so I shared, Counting Teeth - a song I had recorded during my session at Eastlake in late 2023 but wasn’t entirely happy with. Keep an eye (or ear) out for the Watercolour version to drop!
Over the next few days we had a fairly loose schedule of who was working in the main live room at what time, with my session first thing the next morning. Sunday, I woke up with a nervous excitement, knowing I had a few hours in a beautiful studio but having no idea what I was gonna do. I had woken early with a funky lyric/melody in my head and quickly began writing in my notebook so as not to forget. I didn’t wanna disturb Scott, my roommate, so was up early and headed down to studio to see if I could flesh it out as an idea. It became clear quite quickly that although it was a promising germ of an idea, it wouldn’t be one I could envisage starting and finishing in a morning and I only had the studio access til 1pm.
Around 9am Ailsa joined me in the live room and we began chatting about what could be worked on. I shared the chord progression I had been playing over the last few days and explained what it made me think of/feel in order to try and get an idea of a story-line or structure. Ailsa jumped right on board and together, we began writing with a sense of direction of where we wanted the song to go. We decided that the A section would be a Radiohead, Amnesiac style piano and voice section that would have a build up leading into a gospel choir led B section.
Even after the fact it feels odd to type that, those ideas should simply not work together.
The choir idea was sparked out of the location and situation and I figured it would be long enough before I’d have another opportunity to develop choir ideas - not to mention that this was Ailsa’s bag and she was running with it!
The inception of a song, with Ailsa Black.
So that was how the track ‘Free’ was written and recorded, on a Sunday morning in Watercolour studio with no expectation or preparation. I am super excited to get to share that one, it’s currently going through the mastering process after overdubbing some brass and other instruments, it’s a really unique song that I really am so proud of!
The rest of the time at Watercolour was spent collaborating with each other, recording piano here, recording guitar there, writing at the dinner table or in whatever spare room could be found. Generally just trying to make myself useful in any way I could. It was such a valuable experience to gain an insight into how others approached the songwriting process and to challenge myself by collaborating with people and on projects I wouldn’t normally be engaged in. I had a really awesome time recording guitar on some tracks and am super excited to hear how they turn out. Not to mention getting to be involved in another choir setup on the last recording session of the week - another track I’m stoked to hear back.
I’ll be sharing the tracks of mine that were recorded soon and there are hopes to package all the material that was made over the week in an compilation album format, so watch for that!
The week at Watercolour was undoubtedly the highlight of my studies (and career so far) and I am extremely grateful to Sean MaLaughlin for organising.