Live recording last night at the Birmingham Conservatoire

Cirrus · September 2015

Last night we were invited to record three live tracks and do an interview at the Conservatoire studio in Birmingham as a pilot for a radio show. It was one of those rare occasions where I was surrounded by mics and my only job was to play guitar and sing a bit, which was horribly daunting for me - usually I like bossing the other guys about and taking control of the session.

As it was, we had 90 minutes (!!!!) to do the whole thing, a fact not disclosed to us until we'd already spent 30 minutes loading in and setting up. We basically had time to play each track once, so the pressure was on. It also meant I had no time to take any pictures, though our drummer snapped one from behind the kit.

They've got some awesome mics in that place - the usual Shure SMs and Betas, C414s, Subkick, SM81, MD421s and 441s which are awesome - they have fake leather trimming! The control room is kitted out with a digital SSL desk with channel compressors and their famous Bus compressor, Soffit mounted ATC monitors... I think I'd enjoy having that place to myself for a couple of days.

We had plans to put Ipads, phones etc around the room and record video but there was no time for that. Our singer got this, of me not really knowing what to play while they got levels on the guitar mics.

As a final thought, the whole place is kinda cool. While we were lugging our gear through the building there were, like, REAL musicians there. Talented people. Beautiful piano playing coming from practice rooms as we walked down corridors. Bearded virtuosos studying sheet music in the lobby. Meanwhile four musical apes saunter through the scene.