ATHENS DAY 7
Estimate 4 minutes reading
We rose in the early morning to a fruit market in full swing at our front door.
The smell of oranges came from the stands below our balcony. Filing out of the house, we waded through the vegetables and fish and made our way to Viktoria Plaza. We met all as musicians and soon began to play.

We rehearsed the song we would be recording in the afternoon; Amali, the lyrical melody created by friends that stand together. Passersby soon stopped to listen. Several families with children came near, mostly fathers out killing time with their kids. It was beautiful to see the children so curious. Smiling, they chased the pigeons around us in the park.

We had the assistance of Christos Sakellariou and Panogiotis Kyriakou, two very generous sound engineers who volunteered their time and expertise.

We made many valuable connections that we would keep for a long time.

We made our way to Matrix Studios that we were introduced to through MusicaRama, to begin our first recordings for Ameli.

He practiced with Ali, to make sure that the tune of the Oud accurately adhered to the melody of the voice. They both seemed a bit anxious, it was Ali’s first time working in a music studio, and Husein had such a message to convey through this recording. Husein went to record first. They closed him into the booth, and Damien and a professional vocal coach, Lydia Theochari, were there to aid him.

Lydia showed him how to relax his face, to rest his posture so that his voice could flow freely from his core. It took him more than an hour to get a take that satisfied him. In the meantime, new songs were being worked out. Ali kept practicing, and Shayan showed us his new riffs and talked about the way he developed songs on guitar.

He called the halts and stops between chords “broken space”, an evocative phrase. Ali took his turn and quickly finished his take. We spilled out into the street feeling satisfied and secure in our first recording. When asked how he felt about the experience, Husein called it “the best day of his life.”
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