Reform's recording session

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Today we had a recording session at SAE. We were very excited and had great expectations. We arrived at studio 2 which had quite a small recording room, but a big control room with a huge mixer. We set up the drums and then we waited for almost two hours while everything was rigged. They used 14 (!!) mikes on the drums, two channels for each guitar, two for the bass and two for the keyboard. After that we had to check everything which took about an hour more and after that we had to try out the sound in our headphones. The last phase took quite a while since there was some trouble getting the guitar and bass volumes up. After that it was finally time to play.

I have recorded a great many times in different studios and in my opinion it is a lot different recording jazz in a digital studio in comparison with a an analogue one. Why? The majority of the studio engineers want to record with the highest in-level possible. In a digital studio you have to be very careful with the peaks and in an analogue studio you don't have to because the only thing that happens if the signal peaks is that there will be some band compression. When you record jazz you want to be able to alter your volume. Another matter is that about recording with headphones to be able to separate everything when you mix; you do not want leakage. But when you play jazz, or any kind of improvisational music, the most important thing is to feel comfortable when you record otherwise you won't be able to be creative. And when you play jazz you seldom think of overdubbing, substituting or erasing. Every time you play the tune it comes out differently.

We recorded our last studio album analogically on tape in a great studio called Real Music Studio. It is run by a guy called Per who knows his studio extremely well. There we recorded an entire album on a weekend, mixing included. There were four mikes on the drums, one each on guitars, bass and keyboard. We used no headphones, we had a great laughable atmosphere and since we were so comfortable playing there everybody played extremely well.

I don't know why but I always get the feeling that a computer is not a genuine "music machine" and that slows the process down and changes the focus from the music to the technology.

Anyway, at SAE they really have everything and the engineers really know their gadgets! Let's see about the result!

Regards
Jesper