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California Dreaming: 1^st Studio-CD 

November/December 2008

In the beginning of 2008 we talked about our purpose to record a pure studio CD as our next project. Now we have completed it.

This CD includes three well-known songs: San Francisco by Scott McKenzie, California Dreamin' by The Mamas and The Papas and Hotel California by The Eagles. "California Dreaming" was our year 2008 project, consisting of the studio record and the videos. On this page we write about the first part - the studio CD. For the videos and their making-ofs click here.

Though a full year has gone by it doesn't mean that we've been idle. This year school did occupy us quite a lot, and the summer holidays we used to videotape a lot of footage in order to create some great videos to each of these Californian songs.

To have the music lip-sync in the video we used mp3 players. While our Dad was filming we were singing playback to the original songs in order to have the correct mouth movements.

In fall we produced the "soundtrack" to the videos in the studio. Now we had the exact time of the original song as a "click" in the background (similar to a metronome) to which we sang and played the single tracks.

We did all vocal and instrumental tracks ourselves. We used the "band" only for three instruments: Daddy played the bass in all three songs (wow, especially "Hotel California" is quite a challenge for someone who has not much time to practice besides video cutting and recording :). Michaela played the tambourine and saxophone parts in "California Dreaming". Yes, we preferred the sax to the flute, because we think that it sounds more interesting. But everything else we have done ourselves - all voices, all choirs, all guitars and the drums. You can imagine that this took us quite some time.

But now some words on the MonaLisa specials of each song, so to speak the "personal touch":
 

California Dreamin'

We wanted to express both the feeling of the song when we heard it the first time as well as our own experience with California. We liked the mixture of travel bug and joy of living very much. When playing the guitars we orientated ourselves very much by the original sound. At that time we didn't have a 12string guitar yet but our Line-6 served us very well again as it is able to imitate a 12string guitar sound.

We also find that Mona did a very good job on the drums. It does not attract attention but fits the song perfectly. Daddy played the bass in his usual practiced way and Michaela replaced the flute part of the original with a great sax solo. But in this song the vocal part was the most work. Our Dad did not slavishly stick to the original voice-leading but attuned the arrangement to our voices.
 

Hotel California

Key feature: Difficult guitar parts! Here we definitely hit the wall and therefore admire the Eagle's guitarists even more. As you probably could hear, Lisa had a cold when she sang the vocals. That brought the interesting coloring in her voice. Stunningly Mona "retched" the solo-guitar as well as Lisa, although she isn't playing that long yet. As said above, we find that our Dad did a great job on the bass.

He also changed the vocal arrangement a bit. Mona sings second voices on key spots that gives the song an interesting new touch. We are very satisfied with the total sound of the song which is on the one side mellow and round and on the other side crisp and clear in the heights.
 

San Francisco

With this song the most important thing was to revive the "summer of love". Of course, in the 60ies all was not gold that glittered but nevertheless people remember this time as something very special. We got our teeth into the vocal arrangement of this song too. Basically Daddy wrote it new. While we sticked pretty much to the original in the first part we added a polyphonic canon-like choir in the last chorous (which is only hearable in the song's full version, not in the music clip). At this part the song ist totally grooving and beautiful.

We had lots of fun with playing the guitars for this song as we experimented with sounds like mad. Lisa used our Line-6 again to imitate a 12string guitar and a sitar. Mona conjured a sensational mandoline track in our sound painting. Sitar and mandoline are those who sound so "weird" in the background when it says "all across the nation - such a strange vibration ..." ;).

With Mona's drums we took care to find a sound matching the 60ies feeling and we added some clapping to come closer to the original. Dad's bass also has this typical 60ies sound. By the way, he liked our voices so much that he decided to use them as an a capella intro at the beginning of the song.

All in all we are pretty proud of ourselves to have gotten it so professional. It's huge what these musicians (especially the Eagles) present. But as we said elsewhere, in the studio we like to step outside our actual musicianship a whole lot. Setting the bar too high does not make sense, but we can stretch ourselves a little to get better and to develp our own style.

To listen into the single guitar tracks of the original is an intensive occupation with music. We love that very much. First it trains the ear and then the fingers. HaHa. We split e.g. a solo in small parts which we then practice. In doing so we try to imitate sounds and distorsions and everything to get a feeling for how to experiment with the instrument in order to achieve this or that sound. Genial!

But now it's time to eventually present you the piece. With three songs a CD is called an EP in gobbledygook. It stands for "Extended Play" and means something between a single and an album.
 

The cover of "California Dreaming" should get romantic and dreamy.

And that's what our newest oeuvre looks like - designed in pastel colors it should bring across the "Good Vibrations" we experienced through this music and that we now want to pass on to you by our interpretation.

Mona: "The studio work was exciting and interesting. Sometimes we spent many hours in the recording room to figure out choirs, 2nd voices or guitar lines. It wasn't always that easy to discern what the musicians play in their original versions.

With all songs I could play the drum-parts quite easily on my e-drum, but then it took us some time to find the best matching sounds.

When we played or sang difficult parts I recognized clearly how far we still have to go. Most of all I admire the guitarists of the "Eagles". Unbelievable what they are playing in "Hotel California". In the studio we were able to play the soli and guitar parts bit by bit, but I deeply venerate them for performing that live with the greatest of ease. Just brilliant musicians ;) I am very looking forward to the next studio session."

Lisa: "The recording was simply great. It was interesting and lots of fun, but in some way also quite demanding. The "Hotel California" solo e.g. made me sweat. But in retrospect I've learned a lot by that. The vocals have been a challenge too cause I wanted to really pass on the feeling and the story of the song. Also the choirs took us a lot of work, but it was worth it.

As for me the favorite of these three songs alternates often, but I think that I like "San Francisco" most. I know that I don't share this opinion with all of you but I find it the most natural and freshest song of all."

	If you'd like to support our projects, click here.

We hope that you like our interpretation of the songs and that we could get across some "California Dreaming" feeling to you!

Yours, MonaLisa

 

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