PRODUCING an important message from a bevy of Kiwi musicians in a matter of days was tough, Whakatane martial artist, drummer and music producer Brad Kora says.
“There were no real meetings, no face-to-face contact, but it was all done through a camera,” he said.
“It was a hard-out project, the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Stay is a Covid-19 message driven home by more than 20 Kiwi musicians, each working from their homes after government consultant Anaru Mill had a brainwave.
The wave travelled on and it wasn’t long before Te Manga Paho music co-ordinator Nadia Marsh contacted Loop founder Mikee Tucker about a project to enthuse Kiwis about staying home in lockdown by a musical message from the stars.
“It was easier than expected to pull together 20 musicians – that’s because they were all at home for once,” Mr Tucker said.
“It’s been great to get such a positive message out.”
Hence, Kora received a call from his record company on Monday last week, engaging him as the overall music producer of the project, with L.A.B. bassist Ara Tamatea-Adams and Loop’s Scott Tindale as co-producers of the collectively written tune.
As all the singers abided by the lockdown, recording their waiata from their home or backyard, Kora soon received 230 vocal tracks he needed to blend.
And unlike how it would have been in Germany or Sweden, where the first task would have been devising a naming standard for the files the artist would send in, well…
“When L.A.B. are producing albums, Ara and I work in shifts – he’s methodical and organised,” Kora said.
“So, he set out to tidy up and rename all the files so they made sense.”
Now faced with a “wall of sound”, Kora worked 16 to 18-hour days, bringing it all together.
“The individuality of all the different artists had to be retained – and yet, all their work needed to be blended into something cohesive,” Kora said.
“It also needed to be a commercial, poppy song.”
Needing the final product to have a “studio vibe”, Kora was unable to mix the final product at his home studio, but had to send the files to a professional studio with outboard gear for getting the right sparkle and authenticity in the sound.
“I sent the files to Lee Prebble in Wellington and we had to mix it over Zoom,” Kora said.
“The Zoom audio quality is terrible.”
Listening to the music being mixed, supervising the process over Zoom was “brutal”.
“There were a thousand notes, this has to come up, this has to come down and this needs to be wider,” Kora said.
“I don’t know how we did it, but we did.”
Kora said the project was lucky to have so many talented Kiwi musicians onboard, including Stan Walker and Tiki Tane.
“The song isn’t my style of music, but it’s a type of music suitable for the message,” he said.
“I had to remind myself that I needed to surrender my ego for the message.”
The tune then had to be mastered and then the video had to be completed, lining up the name of the artist against the time code.
“Being on this project has aged me,” Kora said.
However, the validity of the message, working with so many amazing people, and the fact that the project got across the goal line was most rewarding.
“In 12 hours, Stay got more than 500,000 views,” Kora said.