Recording Studio

Blog no4.

There are only very few places I feel comfortable, one is on my lazy boy couch eating gunk and drinking red wine, the other is the recording studio.

I have been recording music you could say from the age of 7 as was proven when my best man Jimmy at my wedding pulled out a tape cassette of our band “The Lazer Boys” recording a song called “Flyin in the air”. Priceless stuff!

My first real experience with this was back in the Draft days when the night before what we thought was our biggest day in the music industry we went to a place called Tramco and got absolutely hammered. Anyway we arrived to the studio as immature and ignorant of the process of music making. Donal was at the helm in what can only be described as a trailer inside a portable building. “Its a different wordled” were some of his phrases using the north Dublin accent. He also used words like Midi which back then we hadn’t a breeze what he was saying. The producer was awful the recordings were worse but the highlight of the whole two days was our Bass player Duffer puking at the window in front of the kitchen while he shouted “rock n roll” through the glass.

Many years past and when my girlfriend gave me recording time as a gift for my birthday, that sparked new passion to go for it. She had sorted out studio time in Driftwood studios in the temple bar music centre. Myself and Hughie had a new guise “The Ambertones” I required the services of my brother Dave (Bass) and his good friend Paul Donnelly (Drums) older brother of the lead singer in Draft Jim. We were to record an EP of 4 tracks written by myself and Hughie. Again we were a little ignorant of how things are done but we went with it and left the producer/engineer to his our devices. The tracks came out bare as we never had any pre production which is where you spend weeks in a room playing all the songs knowing what instruments are in certain places. Thats why the on the Ep there is just 4 instruments on each song with nothing sitting behind it or adding to it. The whole experience though was amazing and we had such a brilliant time. David Brent quotes for 2 straight days.

 

2 years later and we really thought we hit the big time. We saved up and spend a crazy amount of money booking Grouse Lodge. This studio had been home to likes of Michael Jackson, Snow Patrol, Will I am and many more, It was basically a big mansion with a heated swimming pool its own bar and pool tables etc. Amazing stuff, we really thought we had made it. It was November 2013. We were there to record 2 tracks with the help of Dave and Paul again. This time we went and got our own producer Nick Brine whom we heard had a long list of talent that he worked for. I literally looked him up and saw Oasis and didn’t need any other names. That weekend was remain with me forever, It was magical. The worst part though was being the singer all you do is wait around till the very end and you can’t drink or anything because you need to keep your voice safe. Having said that running in and out of the pool and going outside in nov destroyed  me and I got sick, Lorcan and Doireann constantly running out to get me hot lemon drinks. The tracks came out great and the memory will last forever.

In the last few years myself and Hughie had been working with Scott Halliday a long time friend of Hughie at Orphan Studios owned and run by Gavin Glass. What a pleasure it is to work with Scott, He has a massive future in my opinion. So down to earth and really easy to work with, He knows your strengths very quickly and is a genius around the interface and protools etc. We had a plan to complete an album with Scott but it just never got finished and things have fizzled out sadly. Some of the recordings we have done with Scott have gone to get playlisted on RTE 1, 2FM, 98FM, 104FM and many more local stations around the country.

Lately, from my experience in studios over the years, it has made me try my hand at a few things myself. I enjoy the experience even more when I have full control but I have so much to learn and I am really only scratching the surface of engineering and producing myself.

You control your future, your destiny. What you think about comes about. By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands – your own.       Mark Victor Hansen

 

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Gig