The Course
DAY 1-
Greeted by Annie and Kingsley, where we heard lots of stories of Rockfield and got to experience the history. I got to meet everyone as they came in and we hung out at The Coach House speaking to Lisa. We got a small tour of Studio 2 in the evening and had a look at the equipment prior to the recording session.
DAY 2-
Breakfast at 8:30 and recording started at 10 with American Space. They were a mellow-rock band (reminded me a lot of King Krule) who had a song they wanted to record. We spent a few hours setting everything up for the recording. This process taught me a lot about how taking longer to set up can actually save a lot of time and get a better end recording than rushing about (which is very different to the live world). The band wanted to have a very 'raw' sounding track and played everything in the room together (without a click) which meant we ended up having lots of room mics to capture the space. The vocals needed overdubs due to drum spill and we ended up going until quite late (around midnight) before we finished. The guys in the band were happy with the end result and the track sounded great!
DAY 3-
On Wednesday, we managed to get a look at Studio 1 (which Queen and Coldplay have both recorded at) and also got to see their reverb chambers around the farm. After that, we recorded Little Thief who were also a rock band but a bit more high energy (more like Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds) and also wanted to record together as a band without a click. This day was a lot more hands on with some experimentation using the hardware units in the studio. Joe and Jack were very good at taking our ideas and exploring them or explaining why they wouldn't work as well. This day didn't go on as late as the others and we ended up all having a drink together at The Coach House and Jack and Joe joined us which was nice! We explored how we could use the final day best to get the most out of our week to which I said that I would love to check out tape machines and everyone agreed that it wasn't something explored as much on our courses.
DAY 4
A bit more of a relaxed start as there wasn't a band waiting for us so I believe we headed to the studio at 11 and began mixing through with the American Space session. Joe and Jack let us get quite hands on with the mix and explained through important mixing things such as how they would find phase issues with drum recordings and the importance of it. The Little Thief session took a bit longer to mix as there were more elements to it. After dinner, we went back into the studio where Joe demo'd some of his tape machines to create an interesting tape loop as well as how to splice tape to create a new reel made up of old recordings. Very cool stuff!
DAY 5-
Up for breakfast and final goodbyes.
