9.00 Wednesday morning and we arrive at HMV studio's fairly impressive compound in the bright sunshine. After being left to run the schedule I was fully aware of the massive amount of work we needed to do and the breadth of task in front of us.
Seeing as the Pans had been the focus of the first two days of recording it was Panjazz and the Bollywood project that was more urgent to start with. We were joined by Sanju Sahai on Tabla and Pratik Shrivistava on Sirod. These are some of the most accomplished performers on their respective instruments and we are hugely privileged to be playing with them. As the day wore on fairly slowly, and with members of the group starting to drop off as sickness is starting to ravage the group, it was becoming a tense affair. All members of the group though were firm on their goal and and I've been impressed by all of them with their ability to concentrate and focus, even those who had been playing and recording for 10 hours straight. Included in this bunch was the youngest of our group, Finli, 11, who would put most of the professional musicians I have ever worked with to shame for his boundless enthusiasm and talent.
Apart from obvious difficulties we managed to complete the majority of the schedule, with only the Bollywood and overdubbing to be completed at a different (and much smaller) studio. As you can tell from the lateness of the posting of this blog, the recording session lasted 20 hours. Huge thanks have to go to our wonderful Indian tech men out here especially Obi (insert Star Wars joke here) who's amazing ability to keep smiling no matter what we threw at him meant that he still looked as fresh as a daisy when we had finally finished at 4.30am. As we all sloped off to collapse they were preparing the studio for the next clients due in at 8am. Overall an amazing, stressful, fulfilling, crazy experience that no one on the trip will forget in any great hurry!
POSTED BY OUR FANTASTIC SINGER 'FOXY' KATE
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