I Recreated Another Brick in the Wall, Kids' Choir and All

Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) is a funky record hiding inside a rock record, and I've wanted to rebuild it for a long time. The plan: play as many of the instruments as I can myself, and for the parts I can't play, use SoundID VoiceAI by Sonarworks, who support this channel.

And there's one part I definitely can't do myself: a school choir.

Listening first

This is when the headphones go on. Before I touch anything I want to understand what's really happening in the arrangement.

The first thing that jumps out is a big floor tom carrying the groove, with a guitar following it. My idea for that guitar was to use SoundID VoiceAI's voice-to-guitar instrument: you sing the part into a microphone and it comes out as the instrument. It works for any instrument you can't play, and because it's that quick, the idea is down before the inspiration runs out.

Bass, a tone down

Next, bass. This line is really, really funky, and the whole song sits a tone down, so the bass is tuned down to D. I think I know the line well enough to do it in one take.

Guitars

I'm not a guitarist. I'm doing it anyway.

There are a lot of guitar layers on this record, so this took a while (the video fast-forwards through it). By the end I had the full stack of guitars in place, and with bass and guitars together the groove was already there. That made me happy.

The men's chorus

Now the vocals. The verse needs strong male voices, and I'm the wrong person for that. Listening back to the original, there are at least two or three men singing down low, and they need voices much bigger than mine.

So I recorded the part myself a few times, pushing it a little harder on each take, and then handed it to SoundID VoiceAI.

This is where it gets fun. You choose a voice model, capture your take, and it processes it into that singer. The first model I tried was Elton, and it was pretty good straight away. Then the real-time controls come in, and they're what make it sound like a group rather than one person:

• Unison mode and number of voices, to turn one performance into several singers
• Pitch variation, so they're not all perfectly in tune with each other
• Timing variation, so they don't all land at exactly the same moment
• Width, to spread them across the stereo field

I was after that crowd, stadium kind of vibe, so I pushed both variation controls up and pulled the width back a little. Then I put a second model, George, on another take and paired the two. George was exactly what the song needed.

One tip from experience: record a few more takes than you think you need. Real variation between performances gives you a much better result than copying one take.

The kids' choir

This is the part I can't do in any universe. SoundID VoiceAI has an expansion pack of children's voices, and auditioning them was the most fun I had all day.

The first boy I tried was almost too good, but I liked him, so he stayed. The next one was perfect: his pitch was all over the place, which is exactly what you want, because the kids on the original record aren't polished and that's the whole charm. One of the girls sang a bit too well for me, so I moved on to Kate. Then I stacked a few of them in unison with plenty of pitch and timing variation, so it sounds like a whole class rather than one well-behaved child.

Solo all of those voices together and it really does sound like a playground. I was laughing out loud.

The finished track

Watch the video for the full play-through: my bass, my guitars, my keys, and a men's chorus and a class full of kids who were all, underneath, my own voice.

If you've ever had a part in your head that you can't play or sing, have a look at SoundID VoiceAI. There's a seven-day free trial. And if you'd rather pull apart other classic records, our multitracks and sound packs are the place to start.