Tuesday 24 March 2009

Castlesound really is a very civilised place to work. Resident engineer Stuart Hamilton somehow made my harpsichord sound quite spectacular, even though the room's acoustic suited the harmonium much better. How he manages to balance harmonium, pipes and fiddle and keep them all perfectly clear is beyond my understanding.

Stuart contemplates a temporary lack of tidiness in one corner of the studio

We tried harpsichord in combination with harmonium and with piano for the first time - successfully I think - and Mairi provided some very niftily overdubbed fiddles.

Iain surrounded by esoteric microphones 

Now I'm extremely tired, as I've also been tuning the harpsichord all day and driving over 90 minutes each way on the M8 (in teeming rain on the way home). But it's good to be reminded that recording something very well makes a big difference to the end result. There are some things that home-made recordings just can't do.