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Corona: Xavier Demay turns to home recordings during lockdown

Xavier Demay, general manager of French rental company Dushow, who is also a singer, songwriter and guitarist in his “other” life, has called on some of his friends and colleagues to help him in a little DIY recording, which resulted in the new track ‘Never Ending Sunday’, a tribute to health workers and heroes in the age of Covid-19 and a true story of “life under lockdown”.

This tested Demay’s musical, technical and multiplexing talents. In addition to writing the music and lyrics, Demay was the lead vocalist and guitarist and mixed sound and video. Posted on YouTube and Facebook, the track received over 6000 shares so far.

Demay had already written the basic rhythm sections of ‘Never Ending Sunday’ about six months previously, then put it on ice as the winter season was busy for Dushow’s Paris HQ where he is based in Roissy, near CDC airport, with - normally - around 140 other colleagues.

“I reached out to bass player Dom Escoffier initially,” he comments, “who thought it a great idea that we develop the tune, and before long, plenty more colleagues, friends and family were involved.” Gilles Lovighi joined them on drums, percussion and backing vocals, with others lining up for BV duties including Sylvain and Roxane Demay, MariLou, Manon, Arthur, Jules and Nawel, plus Séverine Ferrier.

Demay sent everyone the music track and asked them all to record their parts - plus their own accompanying video - on their phones, laptops, or whatever recording devices they could lay their hands on. Lovighi recorded his in his “cave” and Demay cut his lead vocals and other parts in his own studio. This all took around two weeks. “There were some variations in quality and technical expertise, but I’d say that by the end of the exercise, everyone was quite adept at portable recording,” Demay recalls.

He utilized Logic Pro X, a digital audio workstation and MIDI sequencer application for Mac. To produce the video, he invested in new More AV software Movavi which enabled him to create the final multi-screen picture. Not having mixed a music video before, this was more of a challenge, but also a good learning curve, balancing a variety of different lighting and colour temperatures. Once happy with the result, he posted it online - and was delighted at the response. “I was expecting about fifteen or twenty shares, so this was a nice surprise,” he says.

(Photos: Xavier Demay)

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