Stewart Kirwan is one of my students, and besides that he is also an extremely funny guy. He is one these people that basically will shit stir anyone just to get a reaction. But he does it in such a funny way, that you can’t help being part of it.
He also possesses one other very useful skill – he plays a mean, mean trumpet. He’s part of the Australian Idol band and pretty much every week he tells me which famous star he played alongside. Last week it was Liza Minelli, and the week before that Harry Connick Jnr. He’s been part of so many other bands and projects too including Midnight Oil circa 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 (drool, drool). Let’s say he’s just been around.
But tonight was my turn. So as part of the “class” (there was only one additional student, and even he didn’t last too long), he did the trumpet parts to Someone Else For a Day. Using Cam’s score, and some liberal interpretation, he laid down the tracks. First were the actual trumpet parts which went down very easily, and it was then followed by the rather difficult (in Stewarts words “fucking impossible”) to play piccolo trumpet. He borrowed a friends piccolo trumpet especially for the occasion, but alas had actually only played it ever once or twice before. Given Cam’s impossible part (there was no room for breaths) it took a bit of effort on Stewart’s part to get it together. In the end, it was also a little out of tune, and will need editing in the future.
I only used one mic for the job – the Rode K2. This proved to be ok, and certainly produced a reasonable sound. A little brightening was required in the EQ and some gentle compression courtesy of the Impact plug in and we were done.
Stewart did a number of takes and after class I did a quick edit of the takes. I used the Playlist feature of Pro Tools and some liberal Elastic Audio after that.
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