Choir recording project

Angel studios welcomes NSC

Our choir made a recording at Angel Studios, London. Most of us had never been in a recording studio before, never recorded before, and indeed, our local choir didn't exist a year ago.
The building looks old from the outside, but inside you have no natural light, no idea what’s happening outside and most of the inside is sound proofed, padded and stripped of its originality. You can still see character in the stair banisters, and the old gas fire at the end of the ladies’ loo. We were about 80 people to fit in our studio, of which there are at least three.

We recorded only six songs, about 20 minutes worth, but those took all day, doing takes and retakes, as well as the director reminding us of parts or to be quiet, and freeze at the end of a take, not claim, cough or shuffle. We finished with a minute to spare at one minute to six, time enough to take some more photos of the choir to go with the CD.

A few of us stayed after recording to watch the mixing. I walked into the mixing lab as they were playing one of our songs and was stunned to hear what we sound like. You usually hear only your own part, concentrate on that and can't hear the blend. We're good!
The technology was fascinatingly powerful; look at this speaker on the wall. It's as big as quadraphonic speakers, so you can imagine the quality of sound that it produces..

Speaker

Mixer board with two choir acolytes 

Look out for the Next Stage Choirs Christmas recording in the autumn. This is going to be amazing.

Disappointment - no ice-cream

We went to Castell'Arquato, a village, a short drive from here in Cergallina. LIke many Italian villages it is on a hill with the church at the top. We parked in a low car park, promised the little girls gelati (ice-creams) and walked into the town, through the narrow streets, but past the first cafe. The next one too had a big sign "GELATI" but we walked past that too. Their parents revealed their intention to walk all the way to the top of the village to get the ciecreams from the cafe opposite the church, at the very top of the village. So we walked, marched and sang:

"One rainy day at the battle of Waterloo,
the brigade made a glorious charge to see what they could do."

You can find the words here. Granddaughter was pretty plucky, and kept going for at least three full renderings of this, but marching up a hill, encouraging a five-year old and singing too, I was flagging by the time we arrived at six flights of eight steps and needed her daddy to encourage.

We arrived, sat at a table, ordered coffees and ice-creams.
No ice-creams!

What a disappointment. The girls were great and settle for biscuits.