A few weeks ago I was out on location in Chippenham with 4 Part Music do do a 1 channel location recording with a new client, Suzanne Askham. Suzanne is an Intuition Consultant and was looking to make some CDs of her meditations. I really enjoy these sort of projects as they incorporate a number of different elements.
Part 1 – Location Recording
Suzanne wanted to record 14 meditations in order to create 2CDs which she could then sell to clients and use as a marketing tool for her business. The first stage was therefore to go to her studio in Chippenham and record her reading her meditations. As recordings go, this was a fairly straightforward one as it only required 1 channel. However, given that 4 Part Music’s name was going on the CD and my motto is that you are only as good as your last job, then I still used the proper 8 channel digital recording rig that we use for other clients.
Suzanne’s studio in Chippenham was an ideal space to make a recording as it was a long way from any traffic noise and also she specifically wanted to record the meditations in her own space. It took approximately half an hour to set up and then 2 half day sessions to capture the 14 tracks that Suzanne had planned to record.
Part 2 – Post Production
For a job like this there is little in the way of Post Production at this stage. The main task was to edit the various takes and remove things like page turns and the occasional random bird singing in the background. This process took approximately half a day and left me with 14 clean voice tracks so I could move on the Part 3.
Part 3 – Composition
The final part of this job is to compose music to sit underneath Suzanne’s meditations. This is all done back in my studio mostly using sample instruments on this occasion. Depending on clients budgets I can compose music and either use Sample library sounds, such as East West or record the music using real instruments. Obviously the latter is considerably more expensive so doesn’t suit everyone. For this work, the sample sounds are ideal as the music is essentially secondary to the main function of the CD.
Below you can play an extract from one of the Meditations which will be released in the new year.
You can find out more about Suzanne’s work by visiting her website.