So, probably about time to update you all on the recording – given that we're nearly finished mixing it now.

We went onto piano after we finished bass. The piano was played by Bill Risby, and given we were recording the score at the Sydney Opera House, sadly the only piano we could use was an 8ft Steinway concert grad piano. This obviously was a huge compromise in quality, and Bill hated every minute of it. The piano sounded incredible, and Bill ripped through the charts. I suspect he'd had a good look over everything before he arrived, as he played pretty much flawlessly. If you're wanting to hire a pianist in Sydney, ask Bill, as I don't think you can do much better.

Piano was a big day, but it also meant we were to begin the guitar tracking. Glen Hannah, is one of my oldest friends, and also one of the country's leading guitarists and producers. He's played and written for Kasey Chambers, and co written and produced Fleicity Urquhart's album "My Life" – I don't love country music at all, but this is a seriously great album. Anyway, Glen rocks up with half a dozen guitars and amps, and a shit load of pedals. This is a good thing as there is a shit load of guitars in this show.

We also used the legendary Rex Goh for acoustic guitars. Rex is probably the number one guy in Sydney. Australian Idol, is one of his many, many gigs, and I must admit I was a little nervous in giving him my charts for the show.

There's a thing about keyboard players (me) and guitarists. See, I try to write really simple, but glorious guitar parts. They often play really simply on the keyboard, but are diabolically hard to play on the guitar. I have studied guitar a weeny bit, and do my best to try and make things as "guitaric" as possible, but there are just some shapes that are finger breakingly difficult. Fortunately for me Glen and Rex are not just very good guitarists, but also very patient at explaining why my seemingly simple guitar lines require six fingers, and an extra appendage to play. Between us all we worked it out, and the guitars going on probably made as big an improvement to the sound as the drums did – i.e. massive.

Midway between guitars, we recorded a string quartet. I needed them mainly for Nan, and The End? but used them to double my sample lines as well. Adding live players along with samples makes the most incredible difference to the sound. You get all the body of the big orchestral samples, but with the nuance and subtlety of real players. Again I was nervous going into the session, as the players, all from the Australian Chamber Orchestra, are seriously high calibre. My focus of music is in a completely different arena, and I had never really worked with live strings before (lots of brass and winds…) Again, I was lucky to be gifted with fantastic players, and between us the session went really well.

So we had spent about 8 weeks on and off recording the band, and at our final session, Bob and I had well deserved beer. And as Bob said at the time "The band sounds great, but it don't mean shit unless the vocals are shit hot". All true … read about the vocal tracking in part three of the recording blog…