The 52NT Christmas Single – Recording!

Last night the 52 New Things project realised a life-long dream and entered the recording studio to lay down a Christmas song. A makeshift band of volunteers, professional musicians, family members and me arrived at a small recording studio in Bow having never been in the same room together before. We’d learnt our lyrics and practised the song alone, only coming together at the last minute to attempt to record some semblance of a song.

Through the magic of Twitter and the internet I’d sourced a fabulous fiddler by the name of Declan Daly, a legend of a bassist/producer in my old school chum Joe Lee, the lovely Lizzy Spit, two generous chaps to engineer and donate recording space, and my little brother Simon Thorpe to video the whole thing. In fact, everyone involved was hugely creative and, in the most part, massively musically gifted. Except me.

Kicking off at 7pm, songwriter Lizzy taught everyone the lyrics and laid down her guitar part. From there it was a blizzard of creativity as parts changed, improvisations showered down, funny things with chords and Apple Mac technology occurred, and a magic fiddle was produced. The creative spark in the room was electric and for a beginner like me the way the song took shape was amazing to watch.

Within four hours we had a fully-functioning Christmas song, complete with percussion and the obligatory “studio applause” at the end. I’d even managed to sing the chorus with Lizzy and it only took me three takes! What emerged from that studio is nothing short of miraculous and I am still buzzing from the process now. I cannot thank the musicians, technicians and friends who worked to make this happen enough. Without them this would not have been possible.

The song and video will be released next week for download and I encourage everyone to help us get to number 52 in the charts if we can. In the meantime, here are some exclusive shots of the evening.