Play

About

Dave Grohl's 'PLAY' was, according to the final film, "Celebrating the rewards and challenges of dedicating one's life to playing and mastering a musical instrument". How did he achieve that? By challenging himself to complete one of his toughest musical projects - recording a 23 minute instrumental recording, playing every instrument himself, and in one take.

The inspiration came from his children, and their learning of new instruments as they grew up - “Watching my kids start to play music and learn to sing or play drums, it brings me back to the time when I was their age listening to albums, learning from listening" Grohl explained in an interview at the time. "when I take my kids to the place where they take their lessons, I see these rooms full of children that are really pushing themselves to figure this out".

The complete film includes an opening segment which sees Dave interviewing those young students at the Join The Band music school in Los Angeles, where his daughters were having lessons at the time. It then moves to EastWest Studios in the City where Dave would be seen recording the entire 23 minute song.

Dave wore different clothes whilst recording each instrument and then composite video techniques were used to blend each of the individual videos into one final output, making it appear as if seven Dave Grohl's were recording the song together. No other camera trickery was involved, each individual video capturing a genuine single continuous take.

The film was made available on August 10, 2018 via a special video player website which allows the user to switch on the fly between the final full 'master' video and the seven individual cameras - Bass, Percussion, Keys, Drums, and three guitar tracks. It was also possible to listen to isolated mixdown stems for each of those instruments.

The full video was also made available on streaming platforms, without any of the isolated video or audio.