We were closeted in Studio 2 at Savalas with Michael – and his faithful and incredibly patient hound Somhairle (reference Google for spelling, it’s Gaelic for ‘Sam’) –  for about 8 hours bashing out the final mixes for the two films. Michael is the third sort of engineer/producer type we’ve been lucky enough to have tolerate us at Savalas, and his skills confirmed our suspicions that an entry qualification for working there is ‘devastating ProTools speed’. If we asked him to do something to a mix, he had either already done it or was finished by the time we were done trying to vocalise it. Which was handy, as we used every last drop of time we had, trying out different things…I suspect our seemingly limitless indecision threatened to drive Gaia quite mad as she kept us on deadline…

At times throughout the whole process, we’ve discussed with Roddy and among ourselves the peculiar dynamic we’re working with here – we’ve never really soundtracked anything before, and Roddy hasn’t been that involved with soundtrack-ers. Hey, that’s why we’re all here, I guess… However, today in particular I really got the feeling we were all pulling together and speaking the same language – there was even a strange sort of excitement when we all realised we were obsessing over the same single note at the end of one of the films. We were literally leaping out of our seats over a single plucked violin note – it may seem a bit pedantic, but in a heart-warming way. A lot of the process thus far has involved us sending sound mixes and film edits back and forth, sort of like audio/visual tennis, so it was great to knuckle down both with the locked edits and for the first time properly really together, with ourselves and Roddy. Obviously we’ve met up and so forth before, but we’ve never done a huge amount of work while in the room together, more just showing off results and taking reactions from that – more tennis. We were able to be open and honest about what we were aiming for and doing, on a point-by-point (almost note-by-note) basis, and it really showed up the collaborative side of the project. Even where we had disagreements  - no, it wasn’t all plain sailing, which I guess rarely really happens when you get five or six creative people bouncing ideas off of each other – we knew it was because we all genuinely cared a lot about the project and wanted to make the best soundtrack possibly possible, and we came to conclusions we’re all happy with.

And that’s the sort of final word, the perfect cadence at the end of our little bonus-features composer commentary here…we got a bunch of creative people together, and created something that we all like. “This is making me happy”, as Roddy would say. I think I can speak for the entire Wasabi collective when I say it’s been a tremendous experience for all of us, both as a sort of learning-curve, a creative challenge, and in terms of just being great fun. You’ll notice I’ve not said that much about the actual details of the soundtracks or indeed the films themselves – so I guess you’ll just have to come along to the Edinburgh International Film Festival next Sunday and see them for yourself…!

Phil (Fear Wasabi)

There has been a rise in the amount of blogging by the other members of Fear Wasabi recently, which I’ve been glad of.  In the earlier phases of the project I worried that I was failing to properly represent them, being as we were submitting collectively and so on through my individual profile.  Writing in the 1st person can have an ego-trip effect on me, I bet this turns into a philosophical ramble of some sort…

Anyway, following our now-customary travel disaster, yesterday we were back at Savalas “plush is not the word” Studios, situated in a renovated section of the old Govan Town Hall, which we found still has it’s main hall area hidden away, in all it’s grandeur.  While part of the team played with recording the reverb in there (leaping around in the dark, frightening the janitors), the others got on with some recording and arranging in-studio.

Fear Wasabi has been referring to Giles as our “5th Horseman”.  At one point yesterday while he was out, we de-tuned a violin (a hammer would have been a more subtle method to how we achieved this) and bowed some double-stop harmonics, creating a frankly bizarre noise.  That kind of stunt would have swiftly lead to our expulsion from any orchestra in the land, but upon his return, Giles simply grinned and said “cool sound”.

Apart from being tremendously encouraging and understanding, Giles has been manning the mixing-desks for us, and until we met Iain he was the fastest man we’d ever seen at the controls of Pro-Tools.  There were one or two moments of revelation for us in there, first hearing our rough sketches played through the Dolby system in the studio, and then hearing the difference once Iain had a chance to do a quick (really quick) 5.1 mix and give the various sounds some space…completely different listening experience.  The skills these guys bring to the table totally transform whats being produced.

Yesterday afternoon also brought an always-welcome opportunity to talk with Roddy and Gaia about the ideas and sounds we have been toying with.  Different perspectives and opinions are, to my mind, essential in the creation of work that is interesting and satisfying not only to those making it, but objectively too.  I can’t help but feel privileged to have been able to work with such a group of diverse talent as this.

Enough talking about working, best go get on with some!

Andy (Fear Wasabi)

PS. Told you I’d ramble.