Watch Downton Abbey USA ad campaign feat. Temposhark's song 'Irresistible' on Masterpiece PBS now!

Watch Downton Abbey USA ad campaign feat. Temposhark's song 'Irresistible' on Masterpiece PBS now!

For those who haven't heard yet, my Temposhark song 'Irresistible' is being used on the USA advertising campaign for the upcoming series of Downton Abbey on PBS. To find out more about the series, please visit PBS online (click here).

To hear 'Irresistible' in full, visit YouTube (click here) or you can download at iTunes or Spotify, taken from my second Temposhark second album 'Threads' (2010).

Downton Abbey is 'Irresistible' in the USA

Some good news.

My Temposhark song 'Irresistible' will be used on the USA advertising campaign for the upcoming series of Downton Abbey on PBS.

To find out more about the series, please visit PBS online (click here).

I'll try to update this blog soon with a video clip of the adverts. But in the meantime, to hear 'Irresistible' in full, visit YouTube (click here) or you can download at iTunes or Spotify, taken from my second Temposhark second album 'Threads' (2010).

"Destroy All That Is Keeping You Back"

Sean McGhee writes the blog: It's been non-stop here at Canonical, although from our not-quite-as-daily-as-we-promised reports, you may think otherwise. Far from it! We've had a couple of tough days with Song 4, which was proving to be hard to get just right. And, so it will remain, because we've decided it's just not right for this record, so off it goes! We gave it a good chance, but in the end Rob felt there were stronger songs on the record that were similarly themed but better expressed. Strangely, it felt like a weight had been lifted - sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind.

Sean was working very hard when this photo was taken,
hence only being able to see the back of his head.

Where does that leave us, you ask yourself? Far from idle, I answer. We went for lunch, then had a think about writing something new, and came up with something that might just plug the gap. It's only an hour old as I type, but it feels like it's really got something special about it. So, our plan tomorrow is to get it properly knocked into shape so we can decide its future!

What I said the other day about not being precious can be as true for a whole song as it can be for single part. On the way to this album, we wrote an awful lot of songs. Not all of them can be right at the top of the A list, and you have to be brutal when you choose what's going to make it to the final album. We can normally tell quite quickly if an idea is just not strong enough, and cut it loose accordingly. Alternatively, you might labour over a song for a few days only to find that the whole is less than the sum of the parts. And if it's not right, you either have to fix it or let it go!

So, we're a song down, but better to focus on the great moments. Let's see how the newest new song sounds first thing tomorrow...

"Feel Good, Shake It, Shake It, Shake It, Feel Good"

Sean McGhee writes the blog: Ah, song 3, how we love you.

Seriously, it's hard not to feel very smug but we've pulled a real blinder with this one. It wasn't a song with an easy start - it began as a deliberate ploy on my part to push Rob in a certain direction to get something a bit faster happening. It worked, too - he came up with a really strong chorus very quickly, and the rest fell into place with the minimum of fuss.

Shh Shake it, Shake it, Got to Shake It, Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture!

Problem was, the music wasn't right. At all. So, what to do? Well, I did what I normally do - improvised. I started throwing a few musical ideas at the song to get it heading down a different road. First off, the bassline changed from a buzzing synth to a cut-up piano. Then some scratchy strings. Suddenly, something clicked. A touch of percussion and some careful layering of drum sounds led to a groove akin to a rowdy marching band. So, how about some brass? In it went - fantastic. And we were away!

I've learned over the years not to be precious about what I do - no matter how great a part might sound, if it's not working in context, you either have to ditch the part or change the context. The latter approach is what we've taken on song 3, as all the parts that I put in at the writing stage are still there, but performed in a very different way.

The only bugbear was the words. We had quite a few strong ideas from our various improvisations. We needed a solid direction, so we brainstormed and figured out what it could be. Great - a concept. But where to start? I was stumped. But then, Rob showed me a very interesting picture of a certain celebrity wearing singular shoes. Hmm.. could there be an idea in that? There was indeed, and, once again, we were off and running.

We did agonize over the words rather, but it was worth it - conceptually, the song makes perfect sense now, as well as having plenty of swagger and attitude. Listening back after Rob had sung the new words in, we knew we had something really special. Amazing how these things creep up on you.

So, song 3 is almost done. Vocals tomorrow, then song 4 (which I've actually already started).

"Let Me See You Stripped Down To The Bone"

As you'll hear in a minute from Sean, Song 2 is almost complete! It's got all the parts now, I might just re-sing a few bits in it next week.

Last night I saw Emiliana sing live which was so so so so so incredible. I was still smiling this morning when I woke up! Her show was in a tiny church in Denmark Street, central London, called St Giles' Church. She sang all the songs from her past two albums 'Me And Armini' and 'Fisherman's Woman'. I strongly recommend you buying both of these as YOU NEED THEM IN YOUR LIFE!

The gig was so refreshing and each song she sang gave me a big kick in the stomach - it reminded me why I love making music so much, and why I started writing songs in the first place. Life is good! :)

***

Sean McGhee writes the blog: Getting nervous today, knowing it's now a week since we wrote Song 2 and it isn't quite finished. It's nearly there, though! I spent a lot of today just getting the drums right, and making sure the song sounds consistent all the way through, which is harder than it sounds, especially when you're working piece by piece on a computer. I sometimes envy bands who just set up and go, working it out as a team, but then, I make those records too, and it's rarely that simple.

One of our concepts for this album is to make it brasher and more upfront than "The Invisible Line". Proud as I am of that record, I knew I didn't want to make it again, so I'm trying to approach everything in a faster, less precious way this time around. A quick listen to something like "Blame" on the first album will reveal a lot of detail - and it's brilliant, of course - but it was slow, detailed work, with every section revealing a new sound or texture. I still do that now, of course, but now I want to not use 6 noises when 1 or 2 will do.

I think my experience of drilling the band in the rehearsal room has made me think about this - there is so much happening in songs like "Crime" or "Battleships" that it's hard to make it communicate live without stripping it back. For this album I'm using my best time management skills by putting less in to start with! And so far, so good...

Tomorrow, we take a look at song 3. It needs some help before we can make it shine...right now, it's got a great, great chorus melody but the music going on around it isn't right. We know what it needs, though, so we'll get in there and get it sorted. I'll mix song 2 on Sunday.

Also, here's a clue to the title of song 2 - it features the letter "O". You heard it here first...

"One Of Those Days"

Sean McGhee writes the blog: It's been one of those days today. Yes, *those* days. It started so well; we knew we wanted to write a new song today, and we knew what sort of thing it was going to be, but somehow it just never happened quite like we hoped it would.

I spent a while referencing tracks, trying to get some ideas going, and then started three different ideas - sadly, two of them were rubbish, so they got ditched pretty quickly. The third one was going pretty well, until Rob pointed out some pretty obvious problems with it (i.e. some of it was a bit monotonous), so I went back to the drawing board and retooled it a bit. Finally, we got it sounding interesting, and Rob picked up the mic to sing.

And...

Well, like I said, it was one of those days. So, we packed up and moved on sharpish! Rob has taken the idea away as an mp3 so he can think it over, but we've decided that unless he has a 4am lighting strike of inspiration, we'll put it to one side for the moment.

So, what will we do instead? Well, next order of business is to start producing the new song we wrote at the end of last week. It's a thing of slowly unfolding melancholy grandeur, and we're both delighted with it. The direction it's going to take is already quite clear - we put quite a bit of music in as we were writing it - and I'm looking forward to getting it finished. There's nothing worse than something you've written being only half-done, so here's to getting it done and dusted!

"Play It On Your Speakerphone"

October is here... which means it's my birthday VERY soon!! Not that I'm trying to throw you all a hint or anything!!!???!!!

Today was another busy one... and *drum roll* - Song 1 is now complete and sounding HOT! I'm very happy - it was just a case of adding some special touches today, a little fine tuning...

I had to leave studio at 4.30pm to go to a band rehearsal on the other side of London for our gig on Sunday for the marathon event. I played Song 1 in my iPhone on the tube journey and then again in my car a few times on way back from rehearsal and it sounded great so we're definitely there!

I'm very happy it's passed BOTH the iPhone and the car test, as Sean will explain in a minute... this is the KEY to greatness!! :)

Plus, Sean has just emailed me the final edit as an MP3, which kick started the following reaction - me dancing like a mad freak around my flat, as my iPhone blasts out Song 1 on its mini speaker system! It works, it really works!!! :)

I Wanna Dance With Somebody!!!

Band rehearsal tonight was great - hadn't seen the lads for a little while so was cool to catch up... at first it felt a tiny bit mad to suddenly be singing all the songs off our first album, as my head is now so into the future and the new album, but it was good as it reminded me where I was and where I am now... the new music is definitely a step forward, and I'm feeling energized by the new developments musically... and I can't wait to get going with Song 2 tomorrow morning!

Mathis on drums.

Mark Ferguson, at tonight's rehearsal.

Luke Juby and his keys.

And my rehearsal mic, tonight.

***

Sean McGhee writes the blog: "I like tall speakers, I like small speakers". Thus spake Cliff Richard in the inestimably wonderful "Wired For Sound", and how right he was. People listen to music everywhere and on anything nowadays - hi-fi, lo-fi, no-fi - so it's important that to ensure our songs will work well on pretty much any speaker. Genelec speakers are my monitors of choice and they deliver a good sonic picture overall.

Wow, it's a speaker! An actual speaker!

But mixing on one set of speakers isn't enough. Piling into a car to check out a mix is a well-worn trick, and we did that plenty of times on "The Invisible Line" - the trick is to try and get the bass so deep that the car starts spontaneously bouncing up and down like in a hip-hop video. But now we've got to deal with laptops, iPods... even phones. How can we ensure maximum listening pleasure for all?

With all this in mind, visitors to Canonical this morning would have been treated to the sight of me bouncing around the studio whilst listening to a rough mix of Song 1 on my mobile phone. It seems ludicrous that I want my fantastically funky, layered mixes to work just as well on a crappy little phone, but I have to be realistic about how people will listen to the record when it's done.

McGhee's magic mobile!

In the old days (i.e. the 1990s), the speaker of choice for this job was an unassuming square brown box called an Auratone. More commonly referred to as Horrortone, they were designed to emulate a crappy AM radio speaker, so you'd have one to listen to the mix in mono. They were nasty, but if your mix sounded great on one of those, you knew you'd nailed it.

So, the phone is just the modern equivalent. Happily, Song 1 is now sounding rocking on phones, computers, cars and headphones. Now, I wonder what it would sound like on heavy rotation...? :)

Song 2 tomorrow. Very excited!

"Clap Your Hands, Clap Those Hands"

Song 1 is sounding HOT... :)

We've recorded lots of hand clapping today which was very amusing, I kept wanting to go 'Woo Yeah!' like a 90s dance record, but something tells me that wouldn't quite work... oh please??? Sean??? Picture it, me going WOOO YEAHAH, WOOO YEAHAAAHH!!!

Actually, Sean just told me that some of my Woo Yeahs actually MADE IT INTO THE TRACK!!!!! OMG!!!!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!!! I AM THE WOO YEAH LEGEND!!!! :)

It's all a blur........ or is it????

***

Sean Mcghee writes the blog: There's nothing more pop than handclaps. It's true. Everything Motown, "We Will Rock You", "Joy" by Temposhark...yes, all the best pop combos end at least one session with bruised hands (I've done this, and more than once.)

But, I hear you ask, what's the secret to good handclaps? Well, it's easy - flamming. Or, in layman's terms, making sure that the people clapping are all slightly out of time with each other. There's nothing worse than getting a bunch of really rhythmic people to stand in front of the mic and asking them to clap - you'll get something so boringly regimented that it'll be unusable. No, what you need is the people who can either fake being a bit rubbish, or those who are genuninely not that great at clapping in time. One of us is the former, and the other the latter, although I couldn't possibly say which one is which. Well, I could, but Rob would slap me, and who can blame him? Bet he'd miss, though.

Anyway, my advice is to put down some flamtastic takes of clap "action" and pop perfection is but a moment away. Here's us glamourously handclapping, earlier :



My favourite claps on any record are probably the ones on Radiohead's "We Suck Young Blood" - a fantastic song, and made even more entertaining by the funereal tempo and death-march handclaps. Radiohead aren't exactly competing with Girls Aloud, mind you.

So, Song 1 approaches a conclusion. I feel like I could spin some great advertising speak now, as it's at least 50% more funky and 100% more satisfying than it was yesterday. We have, however, identified a problem vocal, so we'll be starting tomorrow with some more singing. But we're this close to greatness now...and then it's time for Song 2!

My, my, that's a good photo.

"Sunday Sunday"

Sean McGhee writes the blog: Seeing as Rob was talking about songwriting yesterday, I thought I'd continue the theme. The new Temposhark songs were almost all written over the last 12 months or so, in 3 distinct bursts. We set aside time to get together regularly, which was very important - sometimes inspiration strikes when you least expect it, but a slightly regimented approach can work too, because it puts you in the right frame of mind to write.

One approach is for me to come up with a groove idea for Rob. I might spend an hour or two working on an idea for Rob to sing over; anything goes, as long as it's inspiring. Sometimes we'll get the beginnings of a song from his piano jam sessions - one song we've written for the new record started as a long, improvised set of ideas Rob performed at the piano. He brought it to me and I sifted through it until we found a part we liked. We took took this idea as a jumping-off point and wrote a whole new song around it.

As soon as he's ready to sing an idea, I'm ready for him - the handheld mic and his headphones will be set up ready before he arrives, and with just a couple of clicks in Logic, we're off. Often, his first pass through will be full of goodness, and it's a question of finding the great ideas and refining them. You're always looking for the moment when the track stops being a jumble of ideas and starts being a real song - and it regularly happens without you realising.

Canonical, Sunday evening.

There's a lot of passing the microphone back and forth; we'll both throw ideas into the pot. We want the song to be the best it can be, so we're critical and picky about what goes in and what stays out. Often I'll start doing the backing vocal arrangement whilst we're still writing so I can flesh the sound out at an early stage. Lyrically, we take ideas from anywhere - a piece of gibberish buried in a melody idea might suggest an angle, or a story; sometimes Rob has some lyrical ideas he plays with as he sings melody ideas. Once the melody is set, we'll work on the words. Sometimes this takes minutes, and sometimes days. Song 1 was quite a simple one lyrically - the (proper) title came very early on while Rob was improvising, and it was simple enough to extrapolate a lyrical angle from there. A couple of hours work, and we were done.

Of course, once the song is sung for real, things might change - what seemed like a clever piece of alliteration or a flowery way of saying something simple might go straight out the window if it doesn't feel right when it's sung. Rob keeps the worst of my lyrical excesses at bay - if I try to be too clever, he's brilliant at getting a simpler, more direct way of saying the same thing. It works both ways - he knows I'll pull him up sharp on a bad line! I never let a duff lyric go unchecked, so there's often a lot of tapping on the keyboard and frustrated grunting until I'm sure it's the best it can be. And I never ever ever ever ever use rhyming dictionaries. My songs are free of any toast / ghost / most nonsense.

You can't write a great song every day, though. and plenty of songs go into the bin on the way to the final album. A couple of weeks back we had a run of songs which would have been perfect for the end credits of a crap 80s teen movie - we managed to escape them.. But the time, the sweat, the swearing, the desperation and the endless Madonna impressions are always worth it - nothing beats that feeling of nailing a good song.

***

Not too much to say after that amazing piece by Sean! We did lots more singing today and managed to COMPLETE all the vocal sections for Song 1! Woohoo! :) It was a good day, hard work paid off... more tomorrow!

I'm going home now to watch the movie Atonement on DVD to wind down... hope it's good.

Putting my shoes back on... going home now... night...

"Where You From, How's It Going?"

Sean McGhee writes the blog: Comping (short for compiling) is an essential part of recording vocals for almost everyone who makes records. After Rob performs, I chop his vocals up into lines or words and use my comp sheets to navigate through what he's sung. I pick my favourite sections and put them all together. We'll listen through; if one of us isn't happy with something, it's sung again. We very rarely tune any vocals.

Song 1 is more time-consuming than usual as we wrote it at a slower tempo, then decided it was dragging a bit, so we sped it up. Speeding up the music was easy as it was all based on synths and samples, but all the BVs had to be reperformed.

I'm singing quite a lot of backing vocals these days (hi, Alanis fans!) and most of the new songs have got me in there somewhere. I prefer to do the vocals in small sections, looping around a small section of the song and repeatedly singing it again and again. And again. Yes, it's maddening, but it's necessary, and it's always worth the effort.

Don't listen to Rob - it's all about me...

When I know I've got it right, I'll select my favourites, delete the rest, then move on to the next section. After a while, the Logic screen looks like this :

Comp, comp, comp.

Meanwhile, Rob's next door, listening to leaks of Britney Spears' next single. Yes, it's a hard life.

***

Er... actually Sean, I'm not just sat next door listening to Womanizer!!!! Well I am, but I've also been very busy posting the video clip (see below this entry) for all to watch on the wonderful land of YouTube! Incidently, HOW GREAT IS THE NEW BRITNEY SINGLE???!!! Ha ha...

"You got the swagger of a champion", Sean, but the mic is mine!!!

Sean is almost done now with his backing vocals, which means it'll soon be time for me to steal back the microphone from him and sing the last chorus section... I can't wait - well I can actually, I'M STILL WAITING SEAN, stop hogging the mic!!!

Gimme back the mic Sean... I'M WAITING!!!!

"Day One, Day One, Start Over Again"

Hello everyone, it's Rob here writing to you from Sean's recording studio in London, and I have some good news: WE HAVE STARTED to record the second Temposhark album today!

Me at Canonical, earlier.

We'll be working on this new record almost every day for the next few months and thought this blog would be a good way to both keep us sane, and let you guys learn more about how we make this album.

Today we've been recording my vocals for.......Song 1! This meant starting off with a vocal warm up, which I really needed today - having just been on holiday for 10 days without singing at all!

***

Sean McGhee writes the blog: Hello, I'm Sean. Welcome to Canonical, my studio.

Rob has done quite a bit of vocal recording with me now, so we're very comfortable with the setup we use. I have a corner of my room set up as a vocal area. It's surrounded by acoustic panels and I use a Reflexion Filter on the mic stand to act as an acoustic "fourth wall". This device kills off any nasty "springy" reverb bouncing back from the walls of the room, so it sounds comfortably dry and well-balanced.

I use a Gefell condenser microphone for Rob's vocal. It sounds clean and warm, but crucially it can take high sound pressure levels, which is very important to get a good sound from Rob, as he sings very loud when he goes for it!

Rob's view from the vocal area - the Gefell mic and the Reflexion Filter.

I used to use a TL Audio Ivory preamp for him, but I now use a Focusrite ISA220, which is a great all-in-one preamp, EQ and compressor. This was an invaluable part of my rig when I worked with Guy Sigsworth, so if it's good enough for Britney and Sugababes, it's good enough for Rob!

A very fuzzy photo of the preamps and the mixer - the blue box is the Focusrite preamp.

We both monitor on headphones when he performs. I have a 4 way headphone amp with 2 mixes available - I either hear what Rob hears or I can set up my own separate mix from the Aux sends on the mini-mixer. In my opinion, all engineers should be forced to be a singer for an hour to realise how critical a good headphone mix is - make the vocalist feel comfortable and they'll deliver at their best.

While Rob sings, I make notes. Here's a comp sheet from today - I number takes and use my own arcane system of symbols to keep track of the best parts of all the performances. Then it's just a case of comping it. Of which, more another time...

A comp sheet, today.