I’d been looking for somewhere to do some proper professional recording for the last while. I had a small list of things that I wanted from the studio:
- I needed an actual real piano – with keys, strings, pedals and all.
- I wanted an engineer who had recorded a piano before and who was someone I’d get on well with enough to work with.
- The studio space itself needed to be somewhere I’d be comfortable in.
When I was doing a live video shoot in Charlie Byrne’s for a forthcoming Galway based music website, one of the camerafolk was the bass player for Ambience Affair. We got chatting about recording and the difficulty of finding a studio with a piano that was in my budget range. She recommended Charthouse Studios to me, and said that the band had used it for recording and recommended one of the engineers.
After a few emails back and forth, I was off to Dublin for an afternoon to play on the piano and see what I thought of the place. Left to my own devices for an hour of piano time while Ian was upstairs doing bits of work, a nice long chat about the studio and what I wanted to do, and another hour or so of piano time while he finished up some work and gave me a lift back to town. Sold. The piano is a lovely little Yamaha upright that has a gorgeous sound – much nicer than I was expecting.
So, yesterday I had a day in the studio to see what I thought of actually recording there, and recorded three little tracks that weren’t going to be too much hassle. It was probably one of the more enjoyable studio experiences I’ve had. But that could also be because I was playing my own music, and in charge of what was happening. I also didn’t have to do any of the engineering, recording or editing work that I’d have to do in my little home studio set up that I use to demo songs. I could just focus on the songs, the piano, and not worry about anything else.
Now, the question is, what next? More studio days seems to be the logical step, and I have plans forming in my head of what songs I want to do, how I want to do them, and who else I want to draft in to flesh out some of the arrangements.
I’m toying with the idea of using Fundit.ie to crowd-fund the recording project – I’d previously looked into sites like Kickstarter, but Fundit is specifically for projects based in Ireland.
Question is, if I set up the project, would people Fundit?