Spirit Of The Glen II

The recording for Spirit Of The Glen has now been completed. Producer of the project, Jon Cohen, arrived last Friday for the set up at Heartbeat Studios. I took my Apple G5 and Cinema Screen, Mackie Controller, Emagic Midi and Metric Halo sound unit along to the studio for the recording and engineered the session. Not a demanding task as once the mics were set up on day 1 there wasn’t that much for me to do and it was all up to the guys in the band who did a great job of performing their parts. On the last day I was kept busier when it came to recording the drum parts which required multi microphone setups.

Following the chart success of the first album the atmosphere on this one was amazing and we all felt part of a winning team. The pipes and drums went down really fast and the session was finished ahead of schedule. Jons arrangements were great as usual and despite having recorded in Prague with the Czech Film orchestra for the album earlier in the year we worked with Jons initial midi parts for the recording This time we worked with the midi arrangements throughout the recording and not in isolation like the last time. This definitely produced a better result and seemed to speed up the recording process. We also worked using Interleaved stereo files using 2 Nuemann U87s for the entire Pipe recordings. Last year we used a pair of Rode mics too and recorded each mic on a seperate track which made Jons editing job of four tracks per take a bit unwieldy as a result. Dave Valentine, the owner of Heartbeat had invested in more acoustic screens which provided a much better working acoustic for the recording. Also the guys used pipes in concert pitch unlike last year, maiking Jons job easier still when it comes to pitching them against the orchestra.

Not all the pipers of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards were able to come over from Iraq for the recording so later this month Jon is off to Basra with his laptop to record the other pipers for the album. he’s already been measured for his body armour for the job.. a brave man! I did ask if he needed an engineer for the job but I wasn’t required..perhaps just as well!!

All in all this was an inspiring session and we all hope the album is as successful as last years. I personally liked the material more on this one. The majority of the tracks are awe inspiring and the orchestral arrangements are fantastic.