The ides of March

The ides of March are upon us.... Easter on the horizon....Spring is in the air....and I've been out of the studios long enough to see some daylight after those long winter months. There's wild and exciting talk of Summer festivals and garden parties which feel more real as the days are passing and there's an optimistic fragrance in the air.

In the bunker (control room) at Skyhook studios the blinds have been opened to let the golden rays of the best Stroud sunshine stream through the windows. I'm stopping for a break to take a look at the last few weeks of intense work on some of Skyhook's current projects. There have been a multitude of sessions with widely different musical genres to keep me on my toes in terms of sonic perspectives.

Sophronie Edwards

Sophronie Edwards

Sophronie Edwards a young singer/songwriter based in Stroud has teamed up with Skyhook Studios to develop her promising career. She has a pitch perfect voice and her own self-penned collection of songs with an acoustic folky lilt. Her lyrics show a thoughtful and perceptive style which is amazing from someone of her years. The Skyhook team are midway through production of her two debut singles 'Eyes Wide' and 'Last day of summer'. As well as being supported on acoustic guitar and vocals from her brother Rohan, Sophronie has a fine array of other superb musicians contributing to her work with Pete Rosser (Accordion), Tholly Mason (Violin and recorders), Paul Boniface (Drums) and Cas Frazer (Banjo) oh and some subtle contributions from yours truly too. So far I'm really pleased with the organic sound and textures being created. I am nearly at the 'mix' stage which is going to be a marathon session and I cannot wait.

Silva

February saw a session from the band Silva who recorded a collection of accomplished covers of songs from The Pretenders to Snow Patrol. The band opted to use Skyhook's recording areas on the ground floor to put down the tracks as a 'live' performance but with acoustic separation of the instruments. The drum kit was mic'd up in the drum booth, guitars in the long room plugged into my Mesa Boogie Dual Calibre amp (mic'd with a SM57), Bass was Di'd into a valve channel on the studios A+H console as were the keyboards.

Singer 'Holly Phipps' recorded her faultless vocals using our Rode NTK mic and the TL Audio recording channel. It was amazing to meet up with Holly again having recorded her back in the late 1990's when she was still at school and I was still working on Alesis ADATs (those nasty machines, a sound-engineers nightmare from the past.....) She has been constantly singing since then and her voice has now matured into that awesome quality of a professional performer. A great session and thoroughly enjoyable.

Silva chilling out in the control room

   Here's a link to Silva's Blog

http://silvaband.blogspot.co.uk

Pete Rosser

Pete Rosser

Jazz pianist Pete Rosser has been in for a session recently. Playing Skyhook's Yamaha U3 in the Skyspace he's been recording Eastern European folk songs. His dazzling keyboard skills were captured using a multi-mic setup. After the piano tuners visit, I mic'd the Yamaha up in the middle of the room  with the top lid open. I used a stereo pair of Rode NT5s to pick up the detail sound from the hammer area of the strings and combined this with the well balance sound from the soundboard using a matched stereo pair of AKG 214s at the rear. I always double check for phase issues when using this arrangement. Collapsing the stereo image into mono will usually reveal any problems and adjusting the spacing between the mic's will normally sort this out.

Pete also played some snippets of his original Jazz which will be appearing on the Skyhook studios website shortly. I also grabbed him for some accordion parts before he was allowed  out of the studio again!!

Here's Pete Rosser's website......

http://www.peterosser.co.uk

piano mic setup, Rode NT5s on the top

AKG 214 on the soundboard at rear

Photo Shoot for Cas Frazer

Cas Frazer

Being happy and versatile people at Skyhook, who love anything artistic, a photo shoot was arranged for Cas Frazer....

I'd wanted to recreate some 1950's and 60's images for a while and being an obliging fellow Cas duly arrived with banjo in hand. 

Stroud songwriter and retro fashion expert David Ireland kindly allowed us to borrow some suitable attire in the form of awesome original suits of the right period.

 David runs 'Time after Time' in Stroud which is a gem of vintage clothing and fashion with superb advice to match....

http://www.stroudvintage.com

David is also working on an album project "Cosmic Glue' which is midway through production, more info about David Ireland is available on last months blog entry or at David's website

http://davidireland.biz

There will be more Skyhook photography viewable on the gallery at the Skyhook Studios website shortly....

I had the pleasure to spend yesterday working on recordings of Requiems from Mozart and Faure with some fabulous classical singing from Soprano Zoe and Alto Holly. These are for a local Stroud publishing company and the results so far are astounding.

Skyhook has also opened the doors to visits from various interesting artists, musicians and singers. There are some very exciting projects coming up in the next few months so watch this space and stay in the loop with my Skyhook Studios Control room blog.......

And finally for this month:

"Have you heard the one about the sound engineer with a digital mixing desk?"

"no....nor has anyone else....."  (for analogue mixer lovers )

and this was the stunning sunset sky over Stroud last week which reminded me of those anthemic lyrics from "Smoke on the Water"....

"Fire in the Sky"

next blog update due in April.           Mike Cooling (Skyhook Studios)