Recording at last

So yesterday at 9.30 in the morning (that's on a Sunday morning, suffering for your art or what?!?) the bad met up at the SAE insitute Littlemore to record the tunes that we'd been playing. Our band in general is a bit of a nighmare from a sound perspective, we have the flute and violins doing most of the melodic stuff and then the accordian/bass/drums giving it some bass (so very different sound needs). Originally the plan was to put us all in seperate rooms with headphones on, however we've only ever played in the same room as each other (and none of us apart from Loz our drummer have ever recorded before) so it was decided we would be recorded 'live' and Loz would be put in his own room (so the bleed from the drums didn't effect the recording of the rest of the instruments).

After the organised sessions finished there was a definite practice plan but due to illness/holidays etc we hadn''t practiced as a band since before Christmas, which wasn't ideal. The plan was to lay down three tracks all containing two tunes. We started with the one we were weakest on which I'm still not sure was the right way to do it as we got really demoralised because it wasn't going to plan. It took us 3 hours to get a take that we were anywhere near happy with. So this meant that we had limited time on the remaining 2 tunes but that they were both pretty much nailed on the second takes as we were a lot more familar with them (good that we didn't spend ages trying to get those perfect and then run out of time for the 3rd one). The actual recording experience was really fun (it's always nice to get the entire band together anyway) but what I felt a bit weird about was that one of my tunes was being recorded (something that I wrote in our living room is now going to be put on a cd, it exsists as a recording, weird huh?).

I was really nervous before the recording, but the sound engineers were really awesome & reassuring & moved the microphone out of my eyeline so I wouldn't be freaked out by it, it also really helped that the rest of the band were nervous too. We've been told the mastering will take about 2 weeks then we should get a copy. The next massive challenge is getting ready for a 20 min slot at Oxford Folk festival (we are on the second stage on the Sat afternoon, I'm actually on twice as I'll b perfoming with stranger things and then again as part of a duo). Listening back to the recordings in the control room I think we have a few consistency issues to address as a band (some of it was brilliant, other bits were a bit touch and go) but at least we know what we've got to work on...