Studio Sessions, Styania Krakow

Blog update, Staynia studio Krakow

Wed 3^rd

We went to the studio in the morning of the 3^rd Feb. We booked it for 7 hours.

This is a short time to record 6 tracks, however we were practiced and felt ready and I have a lot of faith in the musicians. It took about 1 and ½ hours to set up the mics and have a sound check. The drums took the longest. It was quite a difficult set up because there was no overdubs to record, we recorded everything totally live therefore we needed instrument separation. This entailed the drums mic’ed up in one room with the keyboard player and his amp being shut in the kitchen, the sax/flute recorded in another small room, the guitar amp in the corridor and me playing guitar with the bassist in the control room (the bassist going straight into the desk).

Once we achieved this we started to record, it was difficult at first because we weren’t used to playing with out eye contact. After 3-4 takes we got used to it and relied on our musical intuition. We finally recorded the first track after 5 takes. The next tracks we recorded quite quickly taking about 2-3 times on average. We finished everything in about 6 hours. We used old fender twin amps for both guitar and fender rhodes. I wanted the sound to be as analogue as possible and not to rely on plug ins.

Thursday 11^th Feb, Mix down

We returned to the studio to mix the tracks. The studio was quite busy therefore we were only able to book it for a few hours on the evening of the 11^th. We only had time to mix two of the tracks; Smolensk samba and Moments. First we mixed Moments. This track is quite long with 4 sections, we needed each section to be slightly different in the dynamic range and for a build up at the end, it is a sonata. The middle of the song has a moog and rhodes solo, this is where it builds up, starting fragmented and quiet it eventually gets loud and frantic with the last section being played on the rhodes. There is a crescendo at the end with a drum solo and with the band playing on, the song ends with the B section. We added delay and a filter to the moog and mixed the instruments accordingly. Next was Smolensk samba, this song was quite short and relatively easy to mix, we just matched the rhythm guitar with the keyboard, boosted the drums and compressed the bass a touch. This was all we had time for.

We have to go back to the studio one day next month and finish the other 4 tracks. See you soon Giles