Another recording session been and gone...

So after a big mess up with who's being recorded and what equipment to use etc, our recording session went very well.

Me and Alie got to Xtreme Studios early in the morning like we usually do anyway and decided we'd get a head start on setting up the live room for the recording. After getting all the equipment from the technicians which consisted of 2 C1000s condenser microphones, 2 XLR leads and 2 microphone clips. 

First off we had to try and move the piano forward so we were able to place the microphones behind it, but after my shoulder decided to die on me whilst doing this I wasn't able to move the piano properly so Alie done it instead. After this we got straight on with setting up and plugging the XLR leads into the patch bay in the live room. We had the left microphone for channel 1 and the right microphone plugged into channel 3 as channel 2 doesn't work. 

Setting up the live room didn't take long at all and we got straight on with powering up the desk, as we done so and loaded pro tools we had a problem with picking up any signal from the microphones on the desk. Anyway after restarting the whole studio Adam turned up and got straight on helping Alie out getting the studio set up ready for me to perform. 

Whilst they were working out the solution I decided to go and get a start on warming up for my recording session. I played 'Charlie Brown' by Coldplay through a few times before I was fully ready to get started and record as soon as possible to make sure there's plenty of time for any retakes. 

It didn't take Alie and Adam long to work out what the problem was and straight away got everything prepared and made sure I was ready to record. After the first recording of 'Charlie Brown', Alie realized that the left microphone didn't pick anything up as something was wrong with the input, this didn't take long to resolve and straight away went ahead to record 'Charlie Brown' for the final time. After hearing it played back to me in the studio I was satisfied with the outcome and decided it would be the final recording for the acoustic EP. 

Next up was 'To Sheila' by The Smashing Pumpkins. I went into the live room to practice the song through a few times as I wasn't as confident with this song, this showed when it came to the recording of the song as I had to do lots of retakes as I kept on cutting bits short because I was coming up on the pedal too much, then I was playing parts too quietly and too slowly and some completely out of time. Alie, kindly came into the live room to give me some advice when recording which I found helpful and I thought was rather nice of her too. So after a few more times I finally got it right and was satisfied with the outcome. I orginally decided I would record different layers of piano to get a different texture but after not knowing what to add and how complex it would've been to do this Alie told me to think about it and see if I would like to do this another time. 

Overall, I thought that we all worked well together and that Alie and Adam were helpful during the recording process with lending me advice and understanding the feelings of the performer and not just telling me what to do and instead left it down to me to let them know when I was ready to start. 

Thanks for reading, 

Chazzy.