THE ABBA UNCOVERED EXPERIENCE
Welcome to the fourth day!
The Name of the Game
I hear all the time that people don’t know about this song. So maybe this one is a bit harder to digest.. But I love the groove, the story, all the different parts… it just goes on and on! And I really enjoy singing The Name of the Game.
How The Name of the Game came to life.
The original arrangement starts off with a very distinct, groovy baseline which gives the song a lot of character. I wanted to repurpose that baseline in some way, but paint a different picture, so I got inspired by Swedish folklore style to get some Scandinavian heavy heartedness in there. Or I guess, even more than it already had :) I kept the first few notes of the baseline, lifted it up top, evened it out, and added some more melody, but can you still hear the baseline behind there, right? I changed some chords and phrasing too so it has little bit of folklore, jazz and gospel… And then the orchestral strings! Many different parts just like the original version, but still very different! Andrew gave me advice on the chords along the way, it was great to have someone to bounce things off of. And it took a while to get it down how I wanted it. Here is an iphone recording I sent to him in the early stage of arranging it. Later on when I had finalized how I wanted it to be, I made a recording so I would remember, and also so I could listen to it and see if I liked it. This is the full song so maybe you want to listen to the full production first :)
The arrangement
I first considered this song to be only my voice and piano. But less than 2 weeks before we were about to record the strings for "Dancing Queen", Andrew encouraged me to write an arrangement for "The Name of the Game" as well. I would have 7 excellent string musicians gathered in a fabulous studio - I should take advantage of that!
So I spent all my free time towards this arrangement. I traveled and had lots of family commitments that week, but I must admit, it was great having a deadline. I worked so hard! It took me a while to finish it cause even though I have many ideas in my head, it takes a bit of time to get it down in the music notation software for me. When I arrange, I usually just sing to show the musicians how to play, but it doesn't really work for a full string arrangement :) I'm grateful I have wonderful friends and collegues who gladly took a peek at the arrangement before the recording of it so I knew that I had kept each instrument in their best sounding range, hadn't added any hard to play intervals, etc. Fortunately, all was good! I love the sparkling strings on the first chorus and also the dark and rich cello throughout the song! What's your favorite part?
Below are the excellent and friendly string players who participated with their beautiful sounds on both "Dancing Queen" and "The Name Of The Game". As usual, I was singing in the control room to show the swing feel I wanted the strings to have on the chorus, and so on! :)
Piano and vocals
We recorded the piano and vocals in Andrews studio. The piano for this one was easier than Dancing Queen, but still I worked a bit on getting the groove in there!
When it came to the vocals, we took one take through the whole song which felt pretty good. I had not really decided how to sing this one, I just went for "in the moment singing" and what my voice already knew about this song. Then we took one more just in case we needed extra, but it felt wrong to cut the first take up. I often want it to be perfect and see if I can get it better, I want to have several takes to choose from.. But something with this one take felt simple and right. So we both agreed not to complicate things and just use the whole thing!
We mixed all of the songs with strings in Andrews studio. Many hours spent in his basement, haha! So many decisions to make, trying to find the right balance between the piano, voice and strings, how much reverb (echo), do we need more high end of the overall mix, etc etc etc... And when listening in different speakers and headphones, the sound changes of course. But you have to just be done with it at some point!
Andrew and I were a good team. We were listening for different things in the mixes, which made it balance them well. I sat next to him while he patiently listened to my input and ideas. You can only imagine what he had to deal with..๐
I usually went there for a few days at a time, driving down or taking the bus to Philadephia from New York City. A pleasure getting to know his wife and adorable kids, which I got some playtime with in the evenings when we took a dinner break. And then, we went down to the basement again to continue our work. Below is a quick view of the studio!