Firstly, it was something new to do. We are all “band veterans” who have clocked up plenty of studio hours. For me particularly, it was something of an adventure. I spend my day talking and writing about recording and production technology and I have experience of working in decent facilities. But this was an opportunity to work on a complete project using the kind of equipment a band working to a budget would buy, without the aid of professionally designed rooms and thousand pound mics.
Thirdly, we had a very clear idea of the sound that we wanted. It can be a real case of pot luck whether an engineer “gets” the sound if you’re not paying top dollar for a good producer. We wanted the finished product to be the best possible representation of the sound of the band playing the songs – not a rough live demo sound and not a massive production sound either.
Fourthly - money. The Filthy Lucre. To record 10 tracks in a studio the minimum I would expect to budget for is 10 days - 6 days of recording and 4 of mixing. That, by anyone’s standard, is rushing things, once you subtract from that a day or so to set up and get the sounds you want. A 10 day session in a half decent studio will cost around £2000. Its great to have someone (management or label interest for example) prepared to pay for you to record, but ultimately they need to recoup all the money they have spent plus production costs before the band sees a penny, and thereafter take cut of the profits.
The flip side is that you can easily buy modest kit for the same amount of money as you will spend on studio time. At the end of the process, you can sell any equipment that you may not need to use again to fund the next stage in the process. Or buy beer.
Finally … its fun.