Ahhh… the first blog post…
Ok folks, so I’ve decided to start a blog. My trio is in the midst of preparing a new album to record so I figured it would be an interesting thing to start a blog about the whole process so you can see what all is involved in it.
I really wish it was as easy as just going into the studio and just blasting out some tunes on el harpo and that was that, but well, ach, it isn’t! I’m a self-releasing artist (it means I release the albums on my own record label) and there’s so much work involved in it beyond just playing tunes into a mic.
Many, many folk and celtic musicians are self-releasing albums these days so I’m hoping this will give you an insight into what is involved in the whole process.
So, why a new album now? Well it’s been over 3 years since my trio set foot in the studio to record tracks so we’re very much overdue to record an album!
This time of year is a good time for us to record as we’ve currently not got many gigs in the calendar (well, bar a 2 week tour of Norway that starts next week, but more about that during another blog!) and we’re all pretty much around in Glasgow just now.
For the past while we’ve pretty much been having weekly rehearsals to get new material together, and once we come back from Norway things are stepping up a gear with a week of more intense rehearsals, before a week of pre-production (more about what exactly this is later) and then 2 weeks of recording. Mixing and mastering is taking place in the first week of January, then we’re actually going to be relaxing a bit as we’ve no plans to actually release until May.
You might ask if that’s the case then why rush to get it all mixed and mastered so early on in 2015? Well the reason is Celtic Connections festival. There’s a very important, I guess kind of trade event called Showcase Scotland, which sees agents, promoters and festival organisers from all over the world come to Glasgow to source out acts for the next couple of years. The plan is to give these folk a pre-release sample of the album in the hope they give us some gigs in which we can perform the album live at. So if you’re lucky enough to be a delegate there you will definitely get to hear some of our new material before anyone else!
So yeah, that’s why we’re doing what we are now.
I’m going to try and write this blog regularly over the next couple of months, so please do share it around on facebook and twitter and I hope you enjoy reading it. I’ll hopefully work out how to post photos, some photos an maaaaaybe even some sneaky new sounds. Oh, and apologies in advance for the spelling and grammar mistakes… English was never my strong point at school!
Rachel