We are Dumber Than Chickens. I think Roger would be inclined to agree after our four days together. We are a six-piece Oxfordshire-based band who, after playing together for around six years, were keen to record some of our own material.
A web search soon brought us to the Born in a Barn Studio where we speculatively entered the competition for free recording time while we continued to look around. Winning the competition concentrated our minds and we arranged a few hasty practices to remind ourselves what we wanted before going into the studio.
We arrived to find Roger looking pensive, not because of us but because England were due to play that afternoon in the group stages of the World Cup.
The studio really is on a working farm and it took us some time to find the right farm building, all the while acclimatising ourselves to the rural atmosphere.
After a cup of tea, we set up our equipment and bashed out a few songs to warm up while Roger busied himself setting levels and miking up the instruments including our electronic drum kit that caused a bit of head scratching. Roger eventually elected to take a simple stereo signal from the drum kit and overdub the drums properly later.
The challenge we had set ourselves was to record and mix four songs in four days. Things started reasonably smoothly as we ran through each song with the bass isolated, the intention being to record each instrument individually, including the drums. We played three of the songs straight but Roger was keen to control the variable tempo of the fourth with a click track. We all found this quite demanding but eventually we had the bass tracks down and adjourned for a stress-filled late lunch watching England scrape through to the next round.
That afternoon one of our guitarists, Mike, overlaid the rhythm guitar parts under Roger's watchful eye. At that point half of us returned home to family while three of us elected to stay at the studio overnight in order to continue with the recording. After a pleasant meal in the garden of the local pub we returned to the studio to add the lead guitar parts. Roger worked John really hard in order to perfect the lead guitar parts and we eventually got to bed just before midnight with three of the four lead parts in the can. The accommodation is pretty basic so we'd advise taking your own bedding, which we hadn't been aware we had to do, but we managed to improvise with what was there while John elected to use the hammock slung from the rafters of the TV room.
The next morning Roger was up early listening back to the bass from the remaining track and adjusting any errant beats using his comprehensive digital editing suite. As the other Chickens returned, Roger and I wired up the electronic drum kit, ready to re-record the drums. It took me some time to get used to playing along to the bass and guitars without being able to influence their tempo, particularly when there was a click track to keep to but Roger patiently repeated the process until the drums were done.
After lunch we cleared out some of the instruments to make room for the singers. We were on the last leg of the recording process and were beginning to flag. Chris and Amy worked hard to get both the lead and backing vocals down before we wrapped up around seven.
Mike, Simon and I returned the next week for two days of mixing. With England out of the World Cup by this stage, there were no football tensions to distract us this time. Roger had already spent the morning tidying up the tracks, moving missed beats on the drums and bass, tightening up the timing of the guitars and tuning the occasional wayward vocal. It really was amazing to see what was possible. The occasional loose note is fine when playing live but Roger was well aware that such things stood out in a studio recording and went to great lengths to ensure that our performances were as good as they could possibly be. By the end of the third day, we returned home with a basic mix of two songs to mull over. We returned the following afternoon to continue the process, Roger having been working on the remaining two tracks from early that morning.
As the end of the fourth day approached, Roger worked very hard to finalise the four mixes and then set about mastering them onto a CD. We were working to a hard deadline of six o'clock and Roger handed over the final CD almost exactly on the hour. As we drove home, it was very satisfying to have a CD of our own songs to play, although we gave ourselves half an hour of peace and quiet before we did!
What would we have done differently?
Well, a few more rehearsals beforehand would have helped, as this just led to more work during the mixing process. With hindsight, it would have been easier to have recorded the bass and drums together rather than overlaying the drums later but to do this I would have required more cables than were available.
It had been an intense few days but the end result made it all worthwhile.