Part one - introduction to the session
Three engineer/producers have fun recording Nigel Powell
Three engineers on one session? How did we avoid a punch-up?! Actually, the three people working on the session all come from different backgrounds but surprisingly to us, they got on really well and we may have inadvertently created a production team by mistake! Nigel Powell, the guest artist, had a track previously released that he wanted to re-record and was willing to be the specimen for our white coated engineers to experiment on for your viewing enjoyment.
The brief was simple: Let's try to get away from 'just producer interviews' and record some really useful production features covering the whole process. From song selection, arrangement, recording and mixing we covered everything and had an invited audience. Nigel is a super multi instrumentalist and played everything.
We spent a day recording most of the elements at Woodworm Studios and then continued over at George Shilling's studio to lay down BV's, percussion and some additional parts.
The editing of this feature has been far more involved than was expected and it will run for well over an hour. While editing the series continues, the above video hopefully gives a flavour of the recording. We will break down the feature in to shorter elements such as the drum recording, mixing, guitar recording, piano tracking etc.
A lot has been learned from this first attempt at capturing a session. In future we will try and have a story board so that we are a little more organized but if you're an engineer or interested in production we really hope that you enjoy and get something useful from this feature.
We would like to thank Nigel Powell for allowing us to experiment on his music and to Stuart Jones of Woodworm Studios for sparing us the time! Also, we are very grateful to Mike Exeter, Clint Murphy and George Shilling for their time and expertise.
Please stay tuned for the finished feature!
