Over the period of 18 months we recorded 10 songs. That involved recording live drums, bass, 2 electric guitars, some keyboards, lead and backing vocals. These were all recorded in our rehearsal room. The mixing and obligatory little bits of editing were done in my little studio room at home, as was the production of the masters. We had the CD booklets printed professionally, but the CDs we burnt ourselves. During this time we also filmed and edited a video, made an internet release of our first single and built our website.
We aimed for a minimal outlay for equipment. The initial idea was to use an old ProTools Mix system that I bought from auction mounted in a portable rack complete with computer, although this proved too cumbersome and we switched to more modest laptop-based system. Our full recording facility was housed in a laptop bag and a 4u flightcase. We didn’t have the option to leave everything setup in the practice room, so portability was essential. We spent money buying some extra mic preamps giving a total of 24 mic inputs.. We also bought an AKG drumkit set and supplemented them with a pair of Beyerdynamic Opus 53 condensers for drum overheads. The other mics that we used were ones that most bands would have – SM57s and 58s – and I also used an AKG C414 that I already had for vocals. The only other bits that we spent money on were a simple headphone amp and some extra headphones.