The Recording Studio in a Few Words
Posted by admin | Filed under The Band
Saturday morning we arrived at the studio early, bright eyed and bushy tailed (as opposed to being tired and hung over) and very excited about the prospect of concentrating a whole 3 day session on just one song. Moolah Rouge Studios is located on the top floor of a huge old mill in Stockport. FINELINES were using their top studio called Studio 1 and it did have a little air of Abbey Road about the huge cold white live room.
Like little boys in a toy shop we ran round picking up and messing with the weird and wonderful old guitars, amplifiers and keyboards that adorn the walls of the studio and felt inspired to make some great sounds.
Knowing that Doves, Elbow, Cherry Ghost, Badly Drawn Boy and The Ha
ppy Mondays had all recorded there helped elevate the excitement and when Pete sat down at a £20,000 Steinway grand piano and started tickling the ivories the sheer class of this instrument was immediately audible. That was it, we were in business and it got us all very giddy anticipating that the quality of the track would be head and shoulders above previous recordings. With access to very expensive old instruments like a 1930’s Black Electro Acoustic Gibson guitar and a £4,000 German handmade acoustic guitar (which we used on the recording) we were going to enjoy every minute.
When the string quartet arrived it was four young girls who Joe had recruited from the Oldham Music Service and it was hilarious listening to him orchestrate them from the live room while we’re sat in the control room listening to him say things over the microphone like “…We’ll do you all individually and then do you one at a time..” Everything he said became a childish filthy innuendo from then on. We shut our gobs when they started playing as the sound of the Cello, Viola and two violins combining to play the melodies we had chosen for the track the week before was awe-inspiring. Joseph ‘the medler’ Weaver should take full credit for scoring and conducting the music for the strings It must have took ages to do with the band constantly changing and adding bits to it. Nice One Weaver! You professional Legend you.
On the Sunday Tooley arrived and laid down his acoustic guitar track and then Dawn and Keith arrived for a nosey at how we were doing. Den kept getting told off for talking, laughing, messing with percussion too loud and generally being a nuisance by Keir the sound engineer (Durutti Column) who kept putting a vocoder effect on Neil’s vocal to make him sound like Cher to the amusement of everyone else. We had a break for dinner in the Bamford Arms pub across the road from the studio and talked about getting the track sent out to radio stations and record labels and maybe playing a big launch gig for releasing the track.
We went back and Neil nailed his vocals superbly probably much to the relief of Keir the sound engineer who had only heard Neil’s half asleep, croaky, screechy guide vocal the day before and we finished recording around 7ish.
Just the mixing to do now… Watch this space kids