This all started when Tim Finn sent me an email from his home in New Zealand, around the time of the first lockdown in April, 2020. He was feeling nostalgic about his trips to Cuba in the 1980s and a couple of latin-themed albums he worked on in my studio in London around that time.

He asked if I had anything with slow latin grooves lying around that he could write lyrics to. As it happened, I’d been preparing an album of my latin material and sent him a few pieces I had laying around. He had lyrics ready to go and sent them back the next day with singing and all. I was absolutely thrilled. Every day I would send him something, and he would come back with more words.

LATIN GROOVE

‘Caught By The Heart’ was originally done with a latin groove, and does have a little bit of a latin thing in the middle section. But once Tim added his lyrics, I completely reimagined the song. I started putting on the guitars you hear at the beginning. I used my 1964 Gibson Firebird guitar using a pen instead of a bottleneck slide. A lot of my gear was back in my main London studio, so I used whatever I had lying around at my disposal to create the sounds.

My setup in my country home studio is an old, small Fender amp which David Gilmour gave me for my 60^th birthday, a Shure SM57 mic and a Universal Audio OX Amp Top Box interface. Along with my Firebird and a ’51 Fender Telecaster, that’s all I used and it brought out the best sound. You can spend weeks in a studio with different amps and mics to achieve a sound, yet this seemed to automatically give me a sound instantly, which allowed me to concentrate on actual playing. Afterwards, if I needed to treat it, I could treat it. And using Logic Pro I would do combinations of sounds. Over time, I kept upgrading the track, and I’d send it to Tim for a listen, to get his thoughts. 

Some of the sounds on the track such as those in the middle section weren’t there from the beginning. I worked really hard to get that section right, until one day Tim finally sent me an email to say, ‘that’s it. I love the sound!’

I sent the track to my bass player friend Yaron Stavi in Stuttgart to add bass guitar. His wife Corinna is a violinist and viola player, and she performed all the strings at their home.

“As soon as I heard ‘Shape Of You’ the day it was released, I immediately knew that a) I loved it and b) I had to make some sort of remix for it. I knew the chances of doing an official remix for the biggest artist in the world were far-fetched, so I downloaded the full song and dragged it into Ableton Live to see what I could do with the original and how I could flip it. 

“I listened through a few times, and found the one part of the song where it was just a group vocal with no instrumentation. I sliced that part out, put it on a new audio track, and pitched it up 12 semitones, and then 24 semitones, adding compression, a low cut EQ, Valhalla Vintage Reverb, and a Kickstart to add that ducking feel. Then to create a drop for a song that didn’t have one, I wrote in brass stabs with the original chord progression of the song, as well as my own 808 drums with a kick, hi-hat, and snare pattern to create a groove. 

“Putting them all together and arranging two drops to come in between the Chorus 1 and Verse 2 and again at the end of Chorus 2, it became a full song. I made the whole thing in a few hours when I was home over the holidays, and immediately sent it over to the head of Trap Nation [music curation channel on YouTube]. His reaction was very encouraging and he even predicted that this remix could get over 100 million views when uploaded on their channel, which it was the very next day. 

“Today, it has well surpassed that incredible 100 million milestone mark! I think the last time I looked on Shazam over six months ago, it had at least half a million Shazams as well, which tells me that people really are really loving this remix and are hearing it all over the place, which is the best feeling in the world as a producer! Someone once told me too that an A&R played it to Ed Sheeran himself, and that Ed said it was really cool, but I don’t know whether that is true or just a rumour. Hopefully though, one day I can get to actually work with Ed in the studio!”