HOW WE MADE “THE GREATEST SHOW”
While sitting in our producer’s studio mixing “Save Your Song”, Martin had a brief idea. A thought of us collaborating. His channel “Skar Productions” focuses on covering music from movies and games, and that’s why he recommended us choosing from those categories.
Joachim thought of “The Greatest Showman” instantly (being in love with it at the time), and started fantasizing about how it would’ve sounded Third Season-ized. When we met the week after, we started talking about this cover opportunity that Martin had given us. Joachim mentioned that the opening scene from “The Greatest Showman” would be perfect. Even though everyone wasn’t as enthusiastic as him at the time, we started listening to the original track.
Cramped up in our tiny old studio, the cover started coming to life. Petter with his acoustic bass, Lasse behind the electric drum set, Joachim with an acoustic guitar, and Jørgen behind the computer. Just after a few minutes of listening to the original track, the ball started rolling. Lasse came up with some awesome drum fills and transitions that set off the imagination for the rest of us.
When everyone had an understanding of the track, we stopped listening to it. We wanted to make our cover with as little impact from the original as possible. First, we found a suitable key, and then the verse pretty much wrote itself. Everything just made sense. The bass line, which is one of the highlights of the verse, made us dig hard.
Now, the chorus! We really wanted to make it as pop punk as possible. Lasse came up with the idea of doubling the tempo halfway. After going back and forth, we ended up with alternating between original and double tempo. This effect really brought out the pop punk-ness. At last, adding an energizing lead guitar, we were very pleased. We decided when making it, that we had to do all the choruses differently, with pauses and syncopations. This would intensify the pop punk feel of our cover.
The excitement had really won over the rest of the group now. Smiles and laughter all the way. For each part we did, we got more and more excited. We realised that this cover was going to be GOOOOOD! At this point, we started discussing what Martin was going to do, and realised he had to take the role of “the bearded lady” in the bridge. We wanted Martin to do something that we couldn’t do. That being screaming. Screaming can be quite intense, so we wanted to soften it up with some typical Third Season harmonies. We wanted Joachim to introduce the bridge, before letting Martin take over with his screaming. The drum transition that Lasse came up with here was class. From here on out, we visualized Joachim and Martin singing/screaming together, and answering each other.
Recording this part was really fun. We brought our recordings to Martin and did his vocals there. Experiencing a talented screamer like him was mesmerizing. The collaboration really toughened up the track. Martin is a really talented musician too. He had many ideas, including the “come down” answering that we really love. 
We mentioned that we wanted the screaming to be as “soft” as possible, and what he did next was so cool. He said: “I can imitate the melody while screaming. Even though screaming doesn’t have an exact tone, I can manipulate it”. If you listen closely to the cover, you can hear that he uses the vowels to change his tone. This way, we believe that the screaming is more accessible to the general public. None of us are quite “into” screaming, but we freakin’ LOVED it!!
Tweaking the final touches, adding a “20th Century Fox”-esque intro and some other effects, we were done! The rest of the job was Martin’s mixing and mastering. Demo after demo, we heard the song evolve into something awesome. Time after time he impresses us!
At this point, we contacted our video and photo guy Thomas, ’cause we wanted to make a music video.
Stay tuned, and we’ll post a story on how we recorded the music video. It was a fun and surreal experience.