HMV Studio Recording

Good evening Panjazz blog followers! Andy here, on the coach just after our first recording session, we just had our first taste of western food in the form of Dominoes Pizza and enjoying the crazy Indian traffic with the guys at the back of the coach currently suffering from the dodgy traffic calming bumps. I've been told to keep this short! Our first session at the HMV studios lasted a few hours. We took a while to get the headphones and mics set up and sounding good. Our brilliant and patient Indian sound engineers could soon see the importance and quality of the PU (Percussion Union) - me, Fin and Stef - and gave us separate pods in the corner of the studio. We laid down our first track, 'Footsteps' in three attempts having got used to playing to a metronome click - a very interesting exercise for pan players and percussionists alike, and something we should probably try more in the panyard [massive road hump - passengers airborne]. We then got 'Never Too Much' done in one...accept at the end yours truly did a PU classic schoolboy error of giving Stef some quality advice through the mic...before looking around to see the on the look on the pannists' faces that the recording was still going on and we waiting for the pan ringing sound to fade. Oops. Was good advice though. Anyway, got it second time round and then went on to Nah Goin Home; a band favourite but difficult to record as a band to the click track given its pace and rhythms. So after a few attempts we called it a day. While this is challenging in some ways a quick listen back to the first two tracks sounds like we could be on to recording something special to sell to audiences. Then we moved on to our second studio set up at our friend Rajeeb's house, he has 2 small studios. In 1 the arrangers were busy sorting out new pieces for the project to play at our performances in a few days time, in the other the Panjazz ensemble were rehearsing for our next studio session tomorrow!....Thats all for now, check back tomorrow evening for the next installment!