The making of Storm!
From the stadium-sized guitar driven impact of Cathedral, to the hyper-real California 911(on stepping outside each day, you only have to wait a few seconds between hearing the sirens of police and firefighters) Storm! had to be an unusual experience. This page notes some of the techniques used in producing the album.
Recording
Storm! consists of a dense and volatile soundworld occupied by instruments, synthetic sounds, and location field recordings.
Whilst the instrumental and electronic parts were relatively straightforward to realise, I spent a while working out where would be good locations to capture unusual outside sounds. With the advent of very high production values in mainstream TV and the movies, and the impact of personal downloadable audio, we are hearing more and more sonic diversity in our everyday lives. The challenge was to come up with sound material that could satisfy and intrigue an audience used to regularly hearing a wider range of music and audio than at any time before.
Some of my best field recordings were captured from visits to the national parks of the United States, where i managed to find interesting sounds even amongst vast open wildernesses. In complete contrast, I also chose a variety of urban locations to source the sounds of democratic protests. Useful tip: when recording in unpredictable areas it is best not to use what's commonly known as a shot-gun mic as your intentions can be easily misunderstood!
Technology-wise, i used any medium available: for 'unplanned sounds' and things i came across in the street this was usually a simple consumer minidisk recorder or dictaphone, and for the planned recording of not-to-be-repeated sessions, such as the recording of jet aircraft from the runway-edge, underground caverns, and the amazing sounds of a local metal workshop we took along a hi-definition field recorder.
Performance in the studio
It was important to me that the creation of these pieces was done in a spontaneous, interactive manner so that the album had a vitality normally found in live performance. I used a simple working method which permitted me to add elements to a mix in real-time without visual reference, so that everything had a feel that is difficult to achieve by working alongside a computer screen. Some pieces were even mixed to analog tape: a little noisy, but great sound. It's wonderful finally to now have computer software which can do this effectively, but at the time very few packages could cope with the high-resolution audio used extensively on this project. Instrumental parts, percussion and additional electronics were then written, recorded and added using standard studio techniques. The resulting mix was then re-processed extensively and edited to further develop the sound-world.
Mastering
Every effort was made to bring the resolution, bite, and outrageous dynamics of the original recording to the final product. Sargasso, the record label, were absolutely meticulous in making sure that every part of the finished master was transferred to the manufacturing plant with bit-for-bit accuracy and without digital error. What you hear on these disks, unlike many CD's, is a perfect clone of the original master.
From the stadium-sized guitar driven impact of Cathedral, to the hyper-real California 911(on stepping outside each day, you only have to wait a few seconds between hearing the sirens of police and firefighters) Storm! had to be an unusual experience. This page notes some of the techniques used in producing the album.
Recording
Storm! consists of a dense and volatile soundworld occupied by instruments, synthetic sounds, and location field recordings.
Whilst the instrumental and electronic parts were relatively straightforward to realise, I spent a while working out where would be good locations to capture unusual outside sounds. With the advent of very high production values in mainstream TV and the movies, and the impact of personal downloadable audio, we are hearing more and more sonic diversity in our everyday lives. The challenge was to come up with sound material that could satisfy and intrigue an audience used to regularly hearing a wider range of music and audio than at any time before.
Some of my best field recordings were captured from visits to the national parks of the United States, where i managed to find interesting sounds even amongst vast open wildernesses. In complete contrast, I also chose a variety of urban locations to source the sounds of democratic protests. Useful tip: when recording in unpredictable areas it is best not to use what's commonly known as a shot-gun mic as your intentions can be easily misunderstood!
Technology-wise, i used any medium available: for 'unplanned sounds' and things i came across in the street this was usually a simple consumer minidisk recorder or dictaphone, and for the planned recording of not-to-be-repeated sessions, such as the recording of jet aircraft from the runway-edge, underground caverns, and the amazing sounds of a local metal workshop we took along a hi-definition field recorder.
Performance in the studio
It was important to me that the creation of these pieces was done in a spontaneous, interactive manner so that the album had a vitality normally found in live performance. I used a simple working method which permitted me to add elements to a mix in real-time without visual reference, so that everything had a feel that is difficult to achieve by working alongside a computer screen. Some pieces were even mixed to analog tape: a little noisy, but great sound. It's wonderful finally to now have computer software which can do this effectively, but at the time very few packages could cope with the high-resolution audio used extensively on this project. Instrumental parts, percussion and additional electronics were then written, recorded and added using standard studio techniques. The resulting mix was then re-processed extensively and edited to further develop the sound-world.
Mastering
Every effort was made to bring the resolution, bite, and outrageous dynamics of the original recording to the final product. Sargasso, the record label, were absolutely meticulous in making sure that every part of the finished master was transferred to the manufacturing plant with bit-for-bit accuracy and without digital error. What you hear on these disks, unlike many CD's, is a perfect clone of the original master.
