TN:181 Tom Misch

Introducing Tom Misch and Full Circle

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1:00Hello, I'm John Kennedy and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes is Tom Misch to talk about how he wrote, recorded and produced the album Full Circle. I was joined by Tom at Strongroom Studios where we dug into his writing process, the stories behind the tracks and his method of bringing the album to life. This is the second time we've spoken to Tom. We first spoke to him remotely during the COVID days, talking about what kind of music, his collaboration album with Yousef Days. Tom then had a bit of a break from music and this album explores the moments that shaped his life over the last four years.

1:34It was so good to meet Tom in person and do the interview face to face. Such a lovely guy. And it was really amazing to hear about his production techniques, stories, a recording to tape, his approach to making music and being in the studio with some incredible musicians. And of course, lots of great guitar chat because he's just such an amazing guitarist. We filmed the entire conversation. So if you'd like to watch the interview and see into Tom's logic sessions, then head over to patreon.com forward slash tape notes. Membership also gives you the chance to ask our guests questions, see behind the scenes content and get entry into our monthly gear giveaways, among many other things.

2:13A big thank you as well to our partners at Tape It. They've recently released their new Denoiser plugin. If you find your recordings often have unwanted background noise, then I would highly recommend checking this out. It is excellent and currently half price. So head to tape.it forward slash Denoiser to check it out. But now, without further ado, let's get started.

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Musical background and album context

3:39Tom Misch is an English singer-songwriter and producer. Known for blending hip-hop beats with soulful vocals and his distinctive guitar style, Tom first began releasing music on SoundCloud. His self-recorded debut album Geography arrived in 2018 and became a UK top 10 hit. A collaboration album, What Kind of Music, with drummer Yousef Days, was next in 2020, which Tom then followed with a series of releases under his club-focused alter ego, Super Shy.

4:15After a brief hiatus, Tom returned in March 2026 with his second solo album, Full Circle. Also self-produced, the record has been widely praised for its mature sound, carrying a deeply personal and intimate tone throughout. Today, I'm at Strongroom Studios with Tom. And what better way to start than by hearing something from Full Circle. This is Sisters With Me. When life moves so fast, it washes away, we're ocean deep, yes, we are the same.

4:52The youngest of three, we evolve and we see, the love life can bring, it's uncertainty. My questions remain, they keep me sane, cause we are the same, yes, we are the same. With my sisters I breathe, it's my sisters I need, my sisters with me, my sisters with me.

5:27It is Sisters With Me by Tom Mish from the album Full Circle,

Returning to the studio in person

5:34and I'm very pleased to say that I am back at the Strongroom Studio One with Tom Mish. Hello, Tom. Hey. It's great to see you in person, because we have been in communication before. You were on tape notes back in the kind of COVID era, and we did an online conversation about what kind of music. Yousef wasn't there, but you were there. But now we're actually in the same room. Thank you very much for joining us. We're going to look at three songs from Full Circle. Is there anything we should know before we start with our first track about this album

6:05and what approach you were taking? Yeah, I think it was born out of me taking some time away from my music career, I guess, you know, stopping doing other things I didn't really get the chance to do in my 20s, because it was kind of so go, go, go, and so it was born from a lot of space and reflection, and it's kind of about the songs, which is previously, you know, I'm kind of foremost a musician, then a producer, but, like, I've never really thought of myself as a songwriter, and this record is really stepping into that territory.

6:38Interesting. That's great.

Making Red Moon in Nashville

6:40Excellent.

Making Red Moon in Nashville

6:41And we're going to dig deep into those songs today. The first song we're going to look at is Red Moon, so maybe you could play us a Blast of the Master, and then we'll find out how you create it. Let's do that.

7:15Tell me how to make it right Cause I'm blue just like the sky Yes, I'm lost where you shine tonight I know that I need help It is Red Moon by Tom Mish from Full Circle,

8:10so when and how did this start? So this, yeah, this track I made in Nashville Was it last year or the year before? I actually can't quite remember But it, yeah, this was like one month I had in Nashville The idea was to go and finish the record slash make it I mean, I had a lot of demos and stuff like that but I hadn't really I wanted to go in and kind of produce something with Ian Fitchup who's a great producer

8:41sort of plays like every instrument guy from Nashville and I heard his music through this track called Slow Burn by Casey Musgraves And I was just like, shit, this is really good This is like, right up my street It's like good, good pop music Yeah Basically With the kind of real instruments Recorded really nicely So Yeah, I went to Nashville and started that process And Ian drew you there

9:13rather than Nashville itself Yeah, Ian drew me there Yeah I didn't really know much about Nashville but I came to I mean, I kind of just realised it's an incredible place for music There's so much stuff happening there I mean, you walk down the street everyone's playing in a band everyone's insane So it's a real music hub And yeah, so this track was I think it was a day I had a session So we had this guy Daniel Tashian who I was writing with Ian was there And I think the idea actually started with some piano

9:43It was like Ian on the piano playing these chords And then it kind of turned into something very different through the sessions Do you have early versions? Or what should we hear first? Yeah, I've got I've got an early demo but I haven't got the piano demo, unfortunately I couldn't find that but I've got This is a bit further down the line and it was this kind of answer and call response with the moon So, you know, asking the moon for some advice

10:14relationship advice, basically And yeah, I'll play the early demo Yeah, that would be great Which sounds, yeah somewhat more demo-y Thank you, anytime I can't do it Hey, remember There's some I have a flight but- That's no

Drums, tape, and guitar processing

10:50so what had survived from the piano demo in terms of what had you transferred from the piano was that rhythm was that that that groove there initially or were you just changing the piano chords into guitar chords yeah the um so yeah so the kind of you can hear on the guitar that was

11:25originally on a piano it was like kind of held pushing piano parts it was quite funky and then i think i think because of the rep you know the record's kind of so acoustic guitar driven and kind of intimate we wanted to capture we wanted to move that to the acoustic so you know and something that i can play on my live show yeah so so yeah it changed it changed to you can hear i haven't actually listened to this since we made it so it's very very different yeah the percussion

12:05is really different the percussion is different there's a bit more stuff going on but actually the drum loops quite cool it's quite interesting because we we recorded a bunch of drums and i think this was like a little loop that we found we slowed it down on the tape machine kind of gave it this warped effect i really love so the drums just they're very soft like the tape machine did something really special to that to the transients which i really like yeah and and that transferred to the to the finished version yeah that's in the finished version yeah yeah yeah

12:39yeah so recorded direct to tape as in like real tape recorded to pro tools and then ran to tape post and then slowed down and then slowed down on the tape machine yeah yeah so it was a bit it was a bit of experimentation just kind of trying stuff and then it was actually ran to tape again later on in the process you know when i was back in london uh i was at miles james's studio it's like the tape guru guy plays everything and he uh yeah he we ran stuff to tape again which was yeah double double tape

13:14yeah yeah yeah um because yeah he he had a more kind of high fidelity sounding tape machine whereas the one i used in nashville was it was i think it was a two what do you call it a two reel to reel yeah two two reel yeah small thing yeah which had a sound more lo-fi so which bit of taping are we hearing now so this is double taped yeah uh this is pre-mixing drum stem and then you can hear some spring verb on

13:50and you can actually hear a bit of bleed some guitar in the back because this was from a jam and then we just cut this and ended up using it yeah to then layer up the other instruments yeah exactly yeah yeah and i like how how the track when the track starts you can hear you can hear that bit of bleed i'll play again it's sort of in key as well which is nice yeah so yeah it's kind of just leaning into the

14:26real organic elements in this record i really wanted to keep it human and and live because the lyrical content was you know was so much that yeah you know yeah so what should we look at next i mean the guitar phrasing and the sound of it what have you got going on there yeah so in terms of acoustics two like close mic'd acoustics and and they they love that in nashville they they really go in on

14:59the different tones and stuff and i think this was a gibson was a gibson acoustic that just had a real woody real woody sound so this is also ran to tape um double tracked and then we've got that electric guitar sound which is a kind of wah thing which is a uh i think it's my strat i've got a john mayer signature strat that i'm

15:31running into a distortion pedal into a mooga fuga which is the uh the moogs kind of wah thing bass is it bass movie i think it's bass mooga fuga right and is that that's a pedal is it's a pedal so it's a envelope pedal so you're playing the electric and do it using the mooga fuga yeah yeah exactly you just play into it and yeah and it opens up or closes mooga fuga mooga fuga such a great name yes

16:02with a bit of verb and stuff on the this is a sound i use quite a lot actually but never used it on a record but i used it i did a tiny desk like seven years ago or something there was a guitar solo that i did on this track called i wish and i used this sound and then it kind of became a bit of it was like i felt like it was like not my thing but something i did quite a lot you know and i was like i want to get that on the record yeah interesting we've got um some

16:32questions that we're going to scatter throughout the course of our chat from patrons via patreon and is diego fernandez who says can you share your pedal board which is quite a big ask i think yeah um you know what i i actually can't even tell you what i've got because i didn't make the board so i'm i'm putting my hands in there i'm i'm pretty clueless with setting up gear so i've got my my guitar tech did that for me and i i can explain basically what i mean i've got a but i don't know

17:03exactly what i've got so i've got like a clone drive thing that kind of fattens up the sound a bit i've got my uh mooga fuga pedal which i love i've got a kind of three in one pedal that gives you delay drive and oh what are they what are they called i wish i had a photo of it maybe i'd be happy to share a photo yeah cool well you know i'm not there's no yeah that would be great i mean send it on through and we'll we'll share it oh yeah but i mean it's an interesting thing isn't it because um and it's so many musicians is if it works it works don't know what it is it doesn't

17:38matter it creates what i want yeah and obviously at the same time um it's useful having friends who are very knowledgeable about these things i can put them together so that you can then use them to make your art exactly because my strengths are not in the technical side of things yeah yeah and

Vocal chain and adding backing vocals

17:54going back to red moon what what else can you share with us yeah so i think the vocals are quite a big theme in this one you know the kind of low quiet vocal that i'm doing which is i wanted to lean into my natural my voice how it is naturally which is kind of i like to sit within my comfort range vocally you know which is i'm i'm a bass really i sing quite low and quietly and i uh i used an re electro voice re 15 on this which i think was like used a lot in the 70s and yeah i'm just sort

18:30of almost speaking into the mic and let me get the chain up because i really drove it up with with like a preamp which gave the sound i think this actually would have just gone into my apogee uh duet interface so nothing kind of fancy

19:00preamp wise analog wise but then i'm i'm juicing it up with the neve yeah this uad neve thing tell me how to make and then it's going into the acoustica l-ray which i've used a lot on this record actually it sounds really analog to me uh the spike stent preset vocal analog warmth and then into another tape plug-in talk and then another uad one which i was kind of using it more for the eq aspect the vocal warmth preset and do you have all this set up when you're recording your vocal or do

19:33you do all this after you've recorded your vocal no no this it's all kind of experimenting really while i'm going along i don't know what i'm going to do but you know i kind of find i discover like you know that mic with these plugins for me is like a match of a great match so if i go back to do something like this i might use a similar chain yeah so sometimes i save chains yeah which is good are we able to hear maybe it with the effects and without the yeah yeah definitely so right so this

20:03is without tell me how to make it right

20:10because i'm blue just like the sky and now i'm going to turn them on because i'm blue just like the sky

20:20yes i'm lost will you shine tonight it's subtle but it um it's compressing it and it's yeah just giving it for me that kind of tape machine if you're driving into a tape machine hot yeah i like that kind of effect yeah and it yeah it has an extra warmth to it you can hear it an extra warmth yeah sounds great got the bass which i played in originally and then um i had a session with alex befanti who's a great bass player and on a lot of my record previous records i've played a lot of the other

20:51parts but i wanted to kind of make it feel as if i'm making an old you know an old record you would have various different musicians yeah you know get a real bass player to actually do the thing actually no that that's me actually my bad yeah that's not you're doing yourself down that's not

21:25it sounded great yeah so that's kind of and then and then i've got some b i've got some bvs going on you know the answering cool thing um how to make it right those are me i'm doing some of the red moon answering calls and then did some um i wanted to have like the same female bvs across the record so i met up with uh rosie elena and she tried some stuff which was cool and izzy from womb tried some

22:02stuff as well are you able to maybe build up layer by layer the the whole track yeah as we hear all the different elements come in start with drums i had a shaker from congas bass

22:30acoustic guitar

22:38wah guitar main lead vocal

22:54there is actually some piano that comes in in the chorus here

23:00that's not the chorus yeah so there's not too many elements really this on a lot of the record the whole the whole album yeah it's quite sparse there's that great soloing though and it's

23:18yeah it sounds so cool and it is like another voice isn't it definitely yeah yeah for me it is like my my voice and my guitar is like the signature thing i wanted to lean into that you know yeah yeah yeah yeah such a great groove um anything else we should hear before we move on from red moon

Studio accidents and natural sounds

23:35yeah there's um i had a lot of people asking me about this noise that they hear in this record that sounds like a accident or something and it's a glass falling during a guitar take and i remember lex who makes the record was like should i take this out i just i was like no keep it in i feel like it's uh yeah it's a vibe and i'll play it because it's pretty loud as well it's kind of um i'll solo the guitar part there it is so it's just somebody knocked over a glass in the background or did you

24:19i can't remember if i did or if ian did but one of us knocked over glass yeah yeah and then within the whole track within the record in the mix yeah yeah yeah it's i can move the time

24:35yeah wow now that you put i mean i hadn't noticed it when i was listening to the song before yeah um in preparation now well that's really funny but people have noticed it and have been asking about it yeah loads of people have asked me what's that annoying sound at 240 or yeah just like that's funny because i did notice something when you were isolating the vocal track um i thought i heard some birds in the background and i is that my imagination or you know what i just i noticed that were you recording outside or so yeah i i recorded my vocal in in bermondsey by the river where i was

25:11where i was living last year tell me how to make it right i actually hadn't noticed until you just yeah yeah yeah yeah there oh my god it's like the sky

25:27is that a crow that sounds like a crow because i'm blue just like the sky

25:38yes i'm lost yeah so that's um i was living by the river in bermondsey last year and there's there's a lot of birds out you know during the price of me recording this they'd be going all day just and i yeah i've never had that before so that's quite cool yeah yeah that's great and when you're recording your vocal outside in that way using a particular mic yeah but you also know i recorded this inside my house but the windows were open but the the birds are so noisy they just it just comes through wow that is amazing yeah yeah yeah yeah that's great some actuality

26:14in the life of tom mish that's brilliant um should we hear the ending of red moon again just to round things up let's do it

26:24i think i'll just play the end of this guitar solo because this is the first time on a record i've kind of i guess distorted my guitar guitar more i'm more previously i've kind of you know originally i started using the logic pro 9 acoustic guitar amp and i use that on geography and a lot of early records and these days you know especially my live show i'm leaning into like using a wah pedal crybaby wah pedal and just really getting expression out of that um so this is like

27:00i think it's one of the first takes i did as well so i'm not i'm not perfecting stuff i'm just trying on it yeah yeah yeah just letting it out just laying out and responding so you would just kind

27:32of pretty much have the rest of the track all done and then just would do that yeah it would it would have been i did this in nashville to be fair yeah yeah we can we quickly solo the solo oh yeah let it hear it in all its glory oh god it's gonna not gonna sound that good so this would have been overdrive into mooga fuga into a crybaby right

28:05and when you solo what do you think about is that is there are you thinking when you're soloing is it an intuitive response to the music or to the mood or are you conscious about what you're there's not much thinking not much thought yeah it's all doing it's all doing and um you know responding and you

28:36know you i think it's extreme you're extremely present yeah i think i think there's melodies going on you might hear i sometimes hear lines but i'm i'm not um there's no thought there's no numbers or yeah i'm not a numbers guy so that's not yeah i know some people do have that yeah you know and could be precise about what they're gonna do yeah yeah i don't know what i'm gonna do um yeah that's great so you would probably carry on until you were happy with what was coming out and then think so that could be a couple of takes or it could be yeah would you really persist if it would

29:10you go 10 takes deep trying to find i would i would and i do you know i think i'll try something i'll see what comes out if there might be things i like that i'll keep and then i'll do another one and it's kind of yeah a process of refining it yeah yeah so good so interesting to see how you created

Writing and recording Slow Tonight in Lisbon

29:27that that is red moon by tom mish and the next song we're going to look at is slow tonight we're going to take a quick break you know that moment where you thought everything was silent and then in the mix you hear hiss hum distant voices electrical buzz a constant low level background wash

29:49ah oh no thankfully tape it's new denoiser handles it for instant studio quality sound just drop it on any mic'd track and it lowers or if needed completely removes any background noise to scratch the surface it analyzes audio in small slices creates checkpoints every six seconds and instantly re-adopts save settings as you move through your track so it adapts seamlessly to changing noise it was trained on years of real world recordings with a simple brief work on any source not just voices

30:22and don't introduce audible artifacts so whether it's instruments full band sessions podcasts live recordings or long takes with evolving noise the tape it denoiser can handle it all to find out more and to get a special launch offer of 50 off head to tape dot it forward slash denoiser and hear the difference for yourself that's better the new linkedin hiring pro can't undo your last hire the no show who set you back because they didn't show up on day one or day two or ever again and now your

30:56product launch is delayed because you're talking to alien abduction podcasters to track them down but linkedin hiring pro can help make sure your next hire sticks in fact businesses who use linkedin are 24 less likely to reopen a role in the next 12 months hire right the first time with linkedin hiring pro post a free job today at linkedin.com quality the next song we're going to look at by tom mish from full circle is slow tonight but before that i've got another patron question for you via patreon this time from gabriel goethe what is your writing process and philosophy towards the structure

31:31of a song do you feel like it's more complete when working with other musicians or do you like to sit on your own more with your work um i think it's i think it's a real combination of both really you know i kind of these days i'm liking to write with with other people a lot i'm really leaning into jamming with uh different musicians and connecting with different people but i do need time to reflect by myself you know and i think that's that's an important part of the process for me um like i'd find it hard to make a record like just with everyone there and have no time to yeah to process it by myself so

32:07so it's a real combination yeah fair enough right let's hear a blast of the master of slow tonight

32:20so flashing lights there's a rush downtown it's a friday night is the siren sound and i'm racing home put the pedal down oh i can't wait till we get to touch baby we could take it slow tonight take it off overdrive

32:50come to mind and dim the lights just you and me because baby we could take it easy like the rising tide from the moon until the morning light just you and me it sounds so romantic tom that is slow tonight um it has such a great groove how did this start did you

33:34have a demo of this yeah yeah so this this started in um in portugal i was doing a road trip in my camper van and i was in lisbon i ended up um doing a day session with uh max wolfgang songwriter and and yeah we we just started kind of vibing on this on this uh i think he started playing some synths or something and and it changed drastically the sims got sacked which is often how not not the sims getting sacked but like it often just changes from where it starts for me and um yeah so i can play the demo

34:08which is pretty pretty different is that whistling that'd be me watch it through when we saw it brown and something goes and it hits the ground and i knew it would but i see it through and there's something around and there's some good baby there's this slow tonight

34:43i need to go over try there's something from the door right so nonsense lyrics just getting the melody down but you can hear the early stages

35:13and is that a drum machine or is it a loop it sounds like a drum machine it's um it's a logic drum kit probably like the liverpool 70s kit or something and then it's going into it's slamming into this torp plugin yeah which brings out all the artifacts kind of smashes it it sounds like a drum machine though

35:39and it was a hollow body hofner bass so a kind of liverpool theme i guess so yeah yeah and i love the the idea that you're kind of traveling around in a camper van and you hook up with a another musician or songwriter and hang out with them for a bit and then get back in the van and off you go exactly what happened that sounds like such a brilliant troubadour lifestyle yeah no it was a good few months actually yeah yeah and then i drove back to london from from lisbon right wow it was a good it was a real road trip yeah but this this was in that period of

36:10you know i've had four years away from like i haven't played a show for four years up until i played the show my first show you know a few weeks ago but before that there's a real period of just like yeah having space and time to do other things yeah which was really good yeah but you took instruments but yeah but music was still music was still there yeah yeah music was still there um but it was a spontaneous session with max yeah fantastic so you've got this demo demo yeah then what happens next do you then take it away and and work on it when you get back home

36:42yeah so then then then i end up going to nashville and i um and i i'm like how can i bring this sort of drum machiney demo into the world of the nashville world or the world that i wanted to create which is more live and this is pre a lot of this track changed a lot when when i had the mixing process with lex so i went i went into the studio with lex and we we did a lot of sonic shaping together of stuff you know even nudging things here and there so it sounds a little bit different the drums sound a bit off to me but we we kind of yeah got that got that feeling good so yeah i'll play

37:16and who's playing the bass on this now is this you this is me on on base yeah

37:33but the vocal is is from nashville so i kept the vocal and i reworked everything else but yeah really minimal not much going on but it's just getting the right again the right tones

37:46slow tonight take it off overdrive yeah i think a lot a lot of the vocals that i used on this record is going into i bought a neumann u47 during this process i bought a vintage neumann u47 and that was like me really uh committing to my vocal tone you know i wanted to wanted to have a mic that just really sort of married with my voice yeah and previously i'd like take a lot of low end off my vocals but on this record i've kind of embraced my voice as it is so yeah less less eq more more

38:20natural ran to tape again i can't wait till we get to touch baby we could take it slow tonight

38:29take it off overdrive it's quite compressed on this track i really wanted that vocal right at the front it's just you and me because baby we could take it slow tonight are you still using some of that processing you were talking about in red moon less so much on this one actually this this was from nashville and it was kind of just good ready to go really um so yeah there's that and then

38:55let's see what else we've got the drums were we actually we recorded a kick and a snare and then hats was done separately so we've got this

39:06there was a reason for doing this i can't remember exactly why we did that but

39:11you've got the hats on top so it's pretty basic sounding set up you know um and i mean it's interesting hearing the demo and you can hear that you used a drum machine and in in a way that mimics that steadiness but at the same time it's much more organic and real because you've transferred it to real instruments yeah exactly there was some yeah there was something quite kind of drum machine here that we wanted to yeah continue so i think maybe that's probably why we did kick

39:42snare first and then just go yeah to have that rule kind of regimented thing going on um but the bass is pretty um so this is a bass actually this is a bass from before this isn't the bass on the on the uh on the master this is one that we i did in nashville that i ended up retracking but it was it was very similar to this but this one was just slightly distorted yeah so you had to redo that when you got back to london i redid that yeah i redid that in suffolk

Refining bass, vocals, and harmonies

40:23right um what else should we hear from slow tonight and in terms of inspirations in terms of the sounds that you were searching for were there any artists that you were particularly inspired by for full circle yeah i mean there's all sorts and i mean in terms of this track there's a bit of dire straits right i think going on you know in the kind of guitar this part here

40:47it just kind of suited the vibe yeah uh there's a bit of james taylor in inspiration so you know maybe a bit of joanie mitchell it doesn't sound like it but i was listening to a lot of that and yeah no i think i do draw from a lot of different stuff yeah yeah what else have i got here so you say i don't like your friends that much well and then towards the end we've got some bvs from izzy

41:23maybe a bit of a fleetwood matt five yeah somewhat i don't know 70s thing with the harmonies easy like the rising tide from the moon until the morning light just you and me

41:49feels a bit yacht rocky to me yeah and that kind of thing in a good way in a good way yeah yeah i like your rock yeah it kind of gets you i think it's it's it's got such great rich melody yeah in it that um it seduces the listener it does you know yeah it's feel good and yeah yeah yeah and it has yeah that kind of vibe laid back feel that again creates this lovely atmosphere for people when they're listening to it i think that's one of the reasons why it hits so hard yeah definitely and so i mean we

42:22heard a bit of the demo and in terms of the lyrical evolution for a song like slow tonight and you know you were saying how you know some of it is just improvised in the moment and then how do you hone what you you're going for is it a word that just kind of stumbles out of your mouth that you think oh actually that's leading me in a good direction with this one yeah i think um it's often like i i'll sing a melody with nonsense lyrics but there'll be something in there that i can pull out and um

42:52you know i think i really express myself through melody and and and chords and production and and and that's my initial outlet you know i'm going to do that and then i have to sit down i like to write with people you know a big you know max wolfgang i wrote this track with but uh matt maltese was a huge part of this record and and just sitting down and um and talking about life and being honest and finding things that you can that you can talk about that feel authentic yeah so would matt maltese be more of a lyric person that you would discuss with yeah i yeah i i go to matt for to to write

43:29lyrics with him you know that's interesting yeah because he's incredible songwriter i think and yeah and we have you know we got on really well so it's like uh it's a good match yeah yeah that it's just really interesting that one person is is right for one aspect of songwriting and another could be right for yeah a completely different definitely yeah i wouldn't have written this with matt this isn't very matt but this you know this is you know max wolfgate i mean he's an he's an incredible pop songwriter he's done a lot of olivia dean's e-records so yeah yeah could you build this track up

44:06through the layers do you think yeah it's it's so minimal it's about four bucks won't take long yeah so we've got kick and snare

44:18got these hats

44:25bass

44:36why such a mess this logic file okay guitar parts lead vocal

45:08there's a bit of whirly in there just kind of padding stuff out other than that it's really sparse can we hear just the backing vocals with izzy and do you give direction like do you say i i want this i want that i do that sounds a bit tutorial yeah yeah yeah yeah no no i do i do i mean it it's it's a case of you know i often know what i want but it's trying stuff it's definitely trying stuff and seeing what feels good and seeing what what the other person

45:43brings they might have a certain thing you want to lean into let's take it slow tonight izzy's beautiful voice take it off overdrive

45:53come to mine and dim the lights just you and me seems like an important element in this song because you're saying let's take it so tonight she's she's agreeing

46:06so she's on board so it's on board yeah well yeah yeah yeah yeah no it's got to be the right the right voice um and i love i love this group womb easy like the rising tide and that's i heard their stuff and then that's how i contacted izzy and said you want to come and do stuff she's got a real like take it off overdrive old school sounding voice come to mine and dim the lights just you and me and do you put processing on her voice or not much so so i've got a bit of eq and then i've got this l

46:40ray plug in again the vocal analog warmth setting and that that's it really i've got i've got a bit of bit of verb going into the what am i using i use different plates sometimes i use sound toys play i'm using the uad plate reverb here cause baby we can take it slow tonight solo my vocal as well cause baby we could take it slow tonight take it off overdrive come to mine and dim the lights just you

47:12and me cause baby we could take it slow tonight easy like the rising tide from the moon until the morning light just you and me

47:32bit of scatting

47:35over the final guitar bit

47:42it's funny how when you when you sort of finish your project i often find there's so many things i'd change now it's out i'd want that acoustic guitar louder and i just i really like it turned up yeah yeah um but that's just how it goes yeah fantastic maybe we could have a a blast of the ending of that and then we'll go to our final track today let's do it so

48:18so I guess when you perform these songs live, you can make some of those kind of adjustments then maybe if you want the acoustic louder in the frame of the song

48:52Yeah, it's always different live Excellent, right, the next one we're going to look at is Days of Us

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Unearthing Days of Us

50:01The next song we're going to look at is Days of Us From Full Circle If you could give us a blast of the master That would be brilliant, Tom You say

50:31It's not the same Things have changed You know it's so hard for me to hear What's from What do you need It's not enough So many days of us

51:02And can't you stay Let's meet halfway I know we've got no choice I hear it in your voice So we need our time To grow No matter where we go You'll always feel like home

51:35It is Days of Us by Tom Mish from Full Circle So I guess the first question is about That saxophone Yeah Sounding so fantastic Who's that And how did that come about Yeah that's Kaidi Akinibi Who's like a A good friend of mine And someone that I've kind of grown up with You know lives locally And we've kind of I've always known his family And yeah he He's come on tour with me a lot He makes amazing music himself And we wrote We had a session like

52:05Five years ago In Unwound Studios in Deptford And I remember I think we were just messing about We were doing something else I can't remember what Might have been something for Superstri actually And then He just started playing This arpeggiated sax part And we just started Yeah messing around And And I think this is Really interesting track Because I love the I love the sparseness of it And And just the sax doing That arpeggiated thing Like Yeah I just I haven't really heard much Much of that before So yeah It's a cool one But then also to put

52:36Your voice on top of it Is Yeah Different move I think Yeah So is this the oldest song On the album then Yeah this will be The oldest song on the record Yeah This is This is like five years Six years old And how Realised and developed Did it Get back then Was it kind of Right we've done this And Or did you kind of Dig it out And revisit it I knew it was something It felt really special to me And it was sitting around For years And I never had the right time To put it out And I Yeah the original demo Is often how things

53:07Turn out for me Where I don't have a lyric I'm just singing a melody And you've got the kind of Structure there And then I ended up Writing the song with Carmody Who I love to write with And yeah So it's actually It's been sitting around For a while And I can play the demo Oh right Great Which Is Wow 2021 March Don't go

53:46Lost Lost Lost I could say Waiting Away I Go I Said Watch You Go I Will Go I could say too

54:17And I will say today You move away I could go round it all But anytime you show I never would wait and show Don't you let it go It's a slightly different structure

54:49But you can, I mean, it's basically the track Minus a good vocal take and the lyrics Yeah, yeah, it's amazing So, I mean, you just were able to take the Oh, sorry, there's some drums Which we took out Yeah But you just used the whole of Kaidi's part again Yeah Basically, so that stayed Yeah Luckily it was on a separate track So you were able to do that easily

55:20Yeah, yeah, yeah And then you kind of rebuilt it after that But with them, the vocal melody is very similar Yeah, pretty much the same, yeah So you didn't get Kaidi back in to re-record anything? I think we might have re-recorded a few bits But actually, yeah, I think it was mostly from the original demo And he plays it live And it's a really challenging part to play live Because it requires so much breath But you force him to do it I force him to do it He does it every time, incredibly But it hadn't been

55:53So, I was going to say it hadn't been part of live sets But then you hadn't been playing live So it wouldn't have been But it is now So that's quite exciting I mean, so having had that demo

Arranging strings and the album ending

56:05And in effect, that idea for such a long time Going back to it How did you approach it? You know, because you obviously didn't want to spoil the magic Of what you had created there But you knew you needed to develop it Yeah, I think there's a question of Does it fit on the record? Because it really kind of sits in a space of its own It doesn't, you know, it doesn't exactly You know, I play it next to Slow Tonight Which is in this kind of like 70s Yacht Rocky Sultan's, what are they called? Dire Straits thing You know, it really feels like its own thing

56:37But I think it's a beautiful track It was either going to start the record or end the record And we put it at the end Yeah, it really didn't need It just needed perfecting And I needed to write the lyrics And I needed to record it well And that was what needed to happen And then we got some strings And did a little outro thing with some drums Yeah Maybe, I guess, talk us through all those elements, maybe Yeah So you really just got This sax part

57:07Which I think needs the verb So it fills that space So I've got a bit of El Rey Using the vocal analogue warmth Setting again Actually a bit of pitch correct on his sax Because there was stuff that was slightly out And Echo Boy Dark Echo Can preset And then some verb And this is actually an incredible Plug-in Which I use for I often use this on vocals and boosts Bit of top end But this acoustic plugin sounds incredible

57:39The purple too I'm doubling up on the El Rey on the vocal So you can hear I think there's so much space in the track That I'm allowed to You know, you can have that vocal just being so full Which in other tracks it wouldn't You know, it might not work But So yeah, it takes up a lot of space to vocal Very loud What do you need

58:11It's not enough So many days of us And can't you stay I've got the Liverpool Logic bass Which just kind of works No choice I hear it in your voice Because we need our time And quite a badly recorded acoustic guitar

58:42But I just kind of liked it I know we've got no choice I hear it in your voice Because we need our time to grow No matter where we go You'll always feel like home

59:14And this section of the saxophone playing Was this all on the original demo? This was on the original demo, yeah Kind of goes into a waltz Which I've never done before Yeah, and then verse two And strings come in Which I don't annoyingly have on this project

59:45But they're in there on the record So verse two And then we've got this kind of Outro thing Where it gets a bit psychedelic And Kyde's just an incredible player He just loves to Like go off Somewhere Somewhere Somewhere Thank you.

1:00:34That fade out. Kind of takes us to another world, I think, at the end of the album. Very much goes to another world, yeah. Yeah, which is really exciting. It's like the world is full of possibility for Tom Mish. Where are you taking us now? No. So, thinking of the troubadour Tom, who's off in his camper van, going maybe eastward.

1:01:11Fantastic. And such a combination. And to think that you're playing that live now is really exciting too. Yeah, it's a great part of the show. It really draws people in. I think they're just like, how can he do that? He's just constantly, he's playing for three minutes. There's this, he does something called, I think, circular breathing, where he's like breathing in and out at the same time. I don't know how he does it. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. It's a magic, isn't it? Fantastic. We've got a few more Patreon questions. So, we've got a couple of questions that we ask everybody. But maybe we should have a blast of the ending or maybe that string section, if you've got

1:01:43the, can I access the master from? Yeah. Let me play the master. I think it'd be nice to hear the string. So, do you have go-to string people or do you do those, write those yourselves? Yeah. So, Toby Tripp, someone that I've worked with for years, I like to work with Toby and it's just him and he layers stuff up. Right. I did do the strings on Flowers in Bloom myself, but then Toby did the rest of the record. Yeah. But let me play the ending. And what would you have said to Toby when you were suggesting that he do something?

1:02:29I think, you know, it's just capturing the feeling of the track and I think there's something quite ethereal and mystical. You know, they might have been words that were being thrown around in the session and because I play the violin, I kind of know the lingo of, you know, it can be like, give us a trill or, you know. Yeah. Because the violin was your first instrument. That was my first instrument. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't pick it up, but I'm going to start using it in the studio, I think. It's a waste. Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:11Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah i kind of wanted it to go like pretty chaotic towards the end and fade out yeah

1:03:56beautiful so that is days of us featuring kaidi akanebe um we're going to let you go tom but we

Gear choices and advice on the process

1:04:11have a couple more questions that we ask everybody who comes on tape notes and i've got a few more questions from our patrons on patreon nico k has got in touch to say you are a guitar hero uh the new album is mixed very dry intimate almost demo like on some tracks what was the thinking on this style of production love it of course says snake i mean it is very intimate isn't it that that you would as you've been saying that's what you wanted to create yeah yeah yeah exactly i think um yeah it was you know it was thinking about what like what is signature me and and and my voice

1:04:45and my guitar playing so it's leaning into those things stripping back production and having space for that for those things to shine and for the song to come across so so yeah it's like um i think it's just keeping things minimal yeah leaning into those yeah um robbie sco says is there a synth or patch you've leaned on for so long it's become part of your sonic fingerprint something you reach for even when you're trying not to i mean thinking of that i'm i'm thinking of the mooga fuga possibly yeah the

1:05:17mooga the mooga fuga is is is definitely one that i've only recorded you only used on one record which is red moon but that i'd say that's like a signature thing i'd say the liverpool logic base is something that i seem to come back to a lot and it doesn't even sound that good but i just come back to it i think it's uh maybe habit it's reliable i like the sustain on it so mooga fuga and liverpool base yeah very interesting we ask everybody who comes on about a piece of tech or equipment that they feel they couldn't have made this album without the current record yeah i think

1:05:52i think i've got it's a hard question actually i mean my you my vintage u47 mic is a big part because the vocal is so important and i think i've really kind of honored the vocal with with something that captures all the frequencies in such a warm present way so i'd say i'd say you know that mic is incredible and i love it and there's something about it being vintage that you just kind of sing into it differently or i i find i do yeah and did you have to hunt high and low for this

1:06:24or did you was it easy to pick up or it was expensive cheap it was expensive yeah yeah and um i did a shoot off i kind of i went to a studio and and tried some different 47s there's one at conch that i really love this is this blue uh u47 that just sounds so nice so i i did a kind of shoot off with that and it was almost almost on par so i was happy with that yeah yeah excellent i love that fantastic and we ask for advice you know looking for your words of wisdom that you can share with other people

1:06:56so is there anything that you've learned along the way um that you would pass on to other people or are there any words that people have given you in the past that you think you know people need to to hear these i think uh you know really trying to enjoy enjoy the process of of making music and and and performing it and um you know find ways of doing it that feel good for you because i think a lot of people make music but it but it comes at a cost or they're you know they're not they're not really able to enjoy it and i think that's a shame because there's there's a lot of joy to be had in

1:07:29you know in making music and sharing it so yeah you know not necessarily rushing things taking time and work out what you really like and what excites you yeah and and it seems like it was important to you to be able to have taken some time out of the the treadmill of having a music career in a way you know yeah to go back to enjoying music and putting yourself in different positions situations places yeah yeah yeah it was vital for me really and um you know even just just as a person i think

1:08:01you know if i'm happy and healthy and feeling good and then music will just happen because it's an extension of me and uh you know but music isn't i don't want to i don't want my life to be focused around music i want it to be something that happens because i'm living a good life yeah that's my kind of philosophy yeah yeah seems like a great great approach to me yeah no and it shines through the music the album sounds fantastic we should play one more song as a as like an outro number um what should we go for from from full circle maybe we haven't heard um echo from the flames

1:08:41yeah okay excellent tom thank you so much great to speak to you and this is echo from the flames by tom mish from full circle thank you for listening and in particular thanks to all of you who have signed up to support us on patreon i'm just one part of the team that brings you tape notes and it relies on your support access to patreon includes the full-length videos of new episodes where possible ad free episodes and detailed gear lists among many other things if you'd like to join head to the

1:09:15link on our socials or website for pictures highlight clips and behind the scenes content head to our instagram or youtube channel and on discord you can join the growing tape notes community once again thank you for listening until next time goodbye i'm burning up face down in the ashes i'm reaching up no one's there to catch it i saw

1:09:49sat by the fire you i saw this one cool or was it just another echo echo from the flame echo from the flame Echo from my face

1:10:24While I look around

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