Coventry Music Studio Owner WINS national remix competition
Oswald "Flying to the Ground" Remix
Roger Greasby of Coventry's Born in a Barn Studios has been picked as the winner of the 'Flying to the Ground' remix competition which he entered in December '09 and got the people of Coventry to vote for him - YOU!
Roger has been running BB Recording studio in Ansty, Coventry since 2004 is married to Rachel and has a 20 month old daughter Grace.
Oswald are a Scottish Indie band from Glasgow now living in London and they have been involved in the launching of a brand new multi media website called www.randrworld.com through an organisation called R and R Music.
Oswalds approachability and the fact they make music slightly removed from the scenester template, has led newly formed R and R Music, spearheaded by former EMI boss Eric Nicoli, to sign the band up as a flagship act.
Eric was Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, EMI Group from 1999 to 2007 before engineering and overseeing the sale of the Group to the private equity firm Terra Firma. During Eric's time with the company, EMI was the world’s largest music publisher and the third largest recorded music company with operations in more than 50 countries.
So how was it done?
After entering, the band send what are called stems of their previously recorded track to entrants and its up to us to do whatever we like to the recordings.
I decided that since the band were essentially a rock band, I should keep the integrity of the song close to their roots in rock, not go for a dance remix. With this in mind I mapped out the song at the studio and decided to discrd the bass line but use its line and rewrite it on piano then change the sounds on the keyboard - Korg Triton - my baby!
After this I wanted to mash up the guitar parts so played about with them and chopped them up a bit.
The drums and guitar solo had been ommitted from the stems sent to me so I played my own solo on piano then added strings to build it to the end.
As drums is my passion I added several different beats but kept them discrete not using classic samples but programming them myself from stock sounds and keeping it simple but punchy.
Then I needed to stamp a signature on it so added 3 main extras:
Firstly a sample of a 30" brass gong I had recently recorded and did a dive bomb effect on it to sound like a slowed record.
When my daughter had been terrorising my home and throwing stones about I noticed the sound they make when clicked together and decided to sample them one day, so I used this (treated) sound to mimic / compliment the guitar stabs at the end of the song.
Lastly I used my new toy the Sabian Alubel my wife bought me in New York and shook it like mad in front of a mic which sounded great.
The vocals I felt should be left relatively untreated so just added a slight effect in parts but tweaked them where necessary.
Job done - submit.
Then came the hard bit - getting some votes, and thats where Paul Jones from the best of Coventry came in. He set up a blog with info on the competition and gave brilliant advice on how to use social networking to raise interest and get votes - so ultimately it was in the hands of the public and if people liked it they would vote.
Clearly you all did and it moved fast, up to 4th position in 2 days.
Then the organisers changed the voting parameters and we had to start voting again but thankfully you all kept fingers on the buttons and I moved into the top 3 and ultimately to 1st position. I remained there every day bar 1 for the last week and finished 1% clear as the voting finished. Then it was in the hands of the bands A&R team to judge the winners. After submitting the original to them as a WAV file not a compressed MP3 they picked me - result.
SO - HERE'S A MASSIVE THANK-YOU TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED!
Cheers
Roger
BB Recording Studio
