Where do we go from here? UP: The Sound Part 1 - Recording

One of my greatest moments of listening to any form of music was about five years ago whilst listening to Robert Johnson.

Robert Johnson is a delta blues player from the 1930's and is in my opinion the master.

However what struck me to my core was nothing musical. It was the sound recording, it was the legend of the recordings. When putting this music on I felt like I was listening in to a moment in time some Seventy years ago. On these recordings you can hear this, at the time unknown musician, putting his songs down on tape with one microphone, I felt like I was there with him in the room.

He was saying to me "This is not an art form Richard, this is a document of me in the 1930's recording my songs and you are now here with me whilst I play them".

It was spine chilling.

It was then that I fully realized what had been trying to come through me for about a decade - Music does not have to be presented in some 'Spectacular' way or polished or in a way that we perceive to be perfect. It can literally be a document of a time period and can be true unto itself - just on that level.

But I wanted to take this further, I wanted 'Where do we go from here? UP' to acknowledge itself as a document and not be ashamed or manipulated in any way that would take it away from it truly is. What I also wanted though was to serve the songs and to recognize what this time period actually was - because on a higher level the actual songs themselves are also 'Diary' songs - as in documents of moments of my life. So you could say "Why not just record them on one microphone?"

Well that in itself would be creating something that would come of as "artistic" over the fact of it being "true". I did not want an "Artistic" record but I wanted a true document. That would mean true on every possible level. A true document of the Vocals - Pianos - Drums - Guitars and Bass not only unto themselves but as a whole a true document of the whole band in that particular moment in this particular room.

True foremost to the place that these songs were coming from. Let the narrator tell his tale and let the moment in the room strengthen that.

They are not made up. They are moments of true magic that actually happened.

So with each instrument being given its own microphone(s) we would be ready to go.

Keep in mind that all of the songs are recorded live i.e everyone playing at the same time - just like you would see a live band, real and raw. To push the stakes even further as a producer I try to demand that we record no more than 5/6 takes of each song because usually anything further than that creates a more "thought out" piece which does not sound like an document of time but starts to sound more like a "Record".

"Record" as in what "Records" have evolved into since Robert Johnson - which is a manipulation of sound to either earn money or to please an audiophile ear very rare is it that you get to hear a real moment.

When I was writing 'Where do we go from here? UP' I was writing many songs a day and trying to catch just one each day in the net, then I would put that song down on my dictaphone and forget about it.

After having maybe 50 songs in a 30 day period I had no-idea what we really did have, I was just following the journey.

A couple of months later the band and I came in to record these songs. I would listen to a song from my dictaphone on the morning - once - then when the band came in I would play it to them - live on the piano - tell them the chords, give them maybe 10 - 15 minutes to read the lyrics and think to themselves and that was it. Press record and try to capture the song and the moment as quickly as possible before it became a "thought out" record.

During the recording was where problem No.1 came in. With my studio being so small and the band having to be within a very close vicinity to each other every body's microphone(s) would be picking up each others sound.

So to get around this I had to mic everything very close and this would contradict the "moment in the room" sound. We ended up with a very "Dry" recording. The exact opposite of the room sound. Ultimately I would have had some microphones just dotted around the room to capture the room sound however as I said - in a room as small as my studio this would have just created technical buzz and bleeps that would actually go against the "moment in the room" and would present it as something that it was not.

This was to be a doccument as if you was there in the room not a doccumnet of anything you want.

So with the album recorded I had raw takes, real moments captured on tape. What I did not previously consider though was that I was re-connecting with a feeling that I now call 'Magic' and I knew that this was there in the room with us as we recorded -

How could I capture this?

We would be allowed to 'overdub' (record over the top) the live recordings, the moments and add the magic that we felt was in the room with us. Creating a real moment containing the hidden things that we don't always tune into in life - like spirits or love or destiny.