As we neared Christmas in 2020, it was over a year since we had last performed live - and we weren't happy with that. So, I decided it would be a good idea to create a short concert made as a film in to showcase our music, which was a new option due to my improved production skills. Due to the ongoing pandemic at the time of recording, we were unable to play together. We still wanted to continue with our plans, so we instead filmed and recorded our parts separately, which could later be edited into one video. This required a backing track, which I hastily made just days before the first recording sessions began.
The first session was the drums, which was the trickiest to organise, as we wanted to get a good, clear drum sound and I wanted to use close-mics on everything other than the cymbals. Although this took a long time to set up, the recording took less than an hour. The horn parts were much simpler, as we used only one microphone, a reliable Shure SM57. The final part was my own, which was mainly keyboards, but also included all of the speech parts and sleigh bells on my leg. I used another SM57 on the bells, along with an SM58 for the speech and I plugged the keyboard directly into my mixer.
Once I had all of the parts, I mixed them in Ableton Live, and I spent a long time making sure I got a clear sound from every instrument. Finally, I found all of the corrects video footage and edited this into the final video. You can watch Lockdown Live below...
This was later released as an EP onto streaming services, which is available to listen to now.