day 2,3 of session 1 - in the studio

roger was feeling slightly better on 2nd day so we began our recording of the guitar for two of the tracks, "more than friends" and "coming home".

our recording method is to record vocal and guitar on separate tracks. we want to record guitar first with our singers singing at the same time. once the guitar part is done, we can take our own sweet time to concentrate on the vocals. this approach can "free up" roger since he is not based in kl and he can't spend more than 3 days in kl.

for "more than friends", it took close to 10 takes before jin liang is happy. it is apparent that roger was struggling doing chinese ballads for the first time. the tempo was much too slow than what he used to with double take and farid ali's no strings attached.

doing "coming home" was much easier tho' as it took only 4 takes. we were all gasping when roger started doing a "line" guitar (a 2nd track added to the 1st), a solo interlude that was gorgeously, heartachingly beautiful. i looked at winnie when the guitar solo came out, we couldn't believe any guitarist can do such magical improvisation.... we were amazed, impressed, touched and moved, all at the same time. "coming home" is gonna be our single, for sure. for the first time, i witnessed the magic of a line guitar... gosh, it is breathlessly beautiful!

the 3rd day saw roger smiling and getting more talkative as he had recovered a fair bit. we have two more songs to cover on the last day of our first session. we started with "march", a personal favourite of mine, composed by jin liang. naturally, jin liang's expectations were high; as a composer only he knows the love story behind this beautiful song. roger attempted many times but didn't manage to satisfy jin liang. our producer wanted roger to give a very sad, lonely and mellow tone to the song and he thinks roger's playing is too fast and too "happy". everyone was getting exhausted so we ended up with a "not-too-bad" version of the guitar but all of us instinctively know that jin liang wasn't happy. in all likelihood, we want roger to re-do this song when he returns next week, after having a deeper appreciation of the song and the story behind it.

the last song is "endless love" that we wanted roger to do a bossa nova arrangement. roger sat down, armed with his mac laptop and his maton, and he did it within one hour. the end result is a latin-infused tune that is completely different from the original 'feel' of the song and that's what we wanted. winnie was visibly impressed with roger's improvisation and she kept uttering "i like it! i like it!". i smiled approvingly.

by 6pm, we have completed recording the guitar part for the last two songs for this session, and roger was ready to head to LCCT for his "journey home". during the journey, roger admitted to me that he faced some difficulties on the first two days, mainly because he has never played anything that slow and sentimental before but now he's got the hang of it, he is happy. to him, it is a minor breakthru working with a chinese producer of jin liang's calibre. i am so glad that he sees it that way! on a funnier note, roger himself has started humming to the songs!

the first session ended well with roger himself immersing himself more and more into the songs and our two singers getting to know each other better and work out the chemistry. we are all happy but we are sure we can even do better in the next session which begins this saturday.

for me, it was an exhilarating session witnessing "the making of 2V1G". having winnie and regine singing infront of me is already a blessing, what more can i ask for?

i can't wait for the arrival of the AKG mic and witness winnie pours her heart and soul in "coming home" when she begins the vocal recording next week.