He was conjuring up bizarre noises so I felt obliged to compete. I settled on an awful, bizarre tone - resembling a bastard creation of a wah pedal and talkbox. Gavin found it hilarious - "It sounds like your guitar is vomiting!" I laughed and messed around, trying to cook up a standard stock riff. The child had gotten hold of the microphone, declared himself 'MC Dempsey' and proceeded to do a little rap. It was very random. I started stamping my foot and playing a standard stop/start macho riff. He got very into it. I stopped and asked "Which Rapper is that?" and he replied "It's me, I just borrowed a couple of words." I said "Wanna make a song....?"
I gave him full creative control and helped him with the timing of the words. The words, I might add, are entirely all his. The chorus was a throwaway thing we made on the spot. He insisted on having a deeper octave effect so he sounded like those "black dudes in America" - Ah, from the mouths of babes. When I'd finished laughing at the child's statement, I had him perform twice as the lower octave made him almost incoherent and I double tracked his normal pitched voice over it. The chorus was fun. I explained it to him and sang it out so he got the gist. I performed a lower second harmony to his to add a bit more drama and we did the cliche rap shouts in and around it. The drums were lazily pre programmed but our young producer wasn't done there. As soon as I'd popped on some bass guitar, he said "We need keyboards too". I let him choose a sound, he chose a distinctly late 70's, bright electric piano sound (think 80's Power Ballad) and hummed to me what he heard in his head. I took it and moulded it into something that pleased us both and added it. The entire process took about 5 hours. It felt like 20 minutes! Looking forward to recording the album, Gav!
