The making of Me&You - pt1

In the summer of 2016, I invited my band to join me in the studio to record some songs for my new album Me&You. This video shows some impressions of our time at the wonderful Jazzanova Recording Studio. The song is called “Gospel”, an homage to the 70s and Donny Hathaway.
The recording session was the shortest and most intensive period of the album making – we recorded the tracks over two days. The musicians all played brilliantly and were also wonderful team players. You are always looking for the right balance as a sideman in the studio : on the one hand, translating the ideas of the producer and/or composer into music; on the other, providing helpful feedback or making suggestions without overloading the band leader. In this case, I was the band leader. First of all, you want to play well and sound good yourself, then you have to decide as soon as possible during the recording how good the take was. Do you do another take immediately? Do you go into the control room to listen to the song in peace and quiet? Is the song ‘there’ yet? How much time do you allow for one song, how many songs are still on the to-do list? How is the band’s energy level? And so on and so on… there are so many decisions to be made and you mostly have to rely on your gut instinct and hope that your intuition is good.
What else is part of the album making process?
At the beginning of the year I began gathering ideas for songs. A really beautiful
process in the seclusion of my own studio. At some point, the songs took on their own form and I could plan further.

In June, we played a gig at Berlin’s ZigZag Jazz Club. We rehearsed the day before,
which was very exciting. This was the frst introduction of the songs to the band and a
chance to hear how the compositions sounded. This kind of situation really gets your
heart racing. The click came during soundcheck. The sound was there and I knew then that it would work.

Then came the evaluation process of listening to the recording and thinking about how the studio arrangements should sound. What is good, what could be better?</br>
And then into the studio. I’m pretty sure that most people who take their band into the studio go through the same thing: feelings change from excitement to panic to
anticipation every few minutes. And you need a few days after the recording session to come back down again. After this comes mixing and mastering, artwork, photo shoots and fnancing, but more about that later. First some footage from the Jazzanova Recording Studio: