The Music Mill Recording Studio, Newton Abbot ( Tuesday 10th Nov.09)

For one of my WBL placements I decided to spend a few hours at the Music Mill Recording Studio in Newton Abbot. Although I am quite familiar with the studio, I havent really ventured to learn about the recording process.
For this session, a vocalist named 'Mac' had booked the studio to record some vocals onto a backing track, mainly of swing music. Firstly, the cd with the backing music was recorded onto the studio computer system so that the vocals could be recorded directly onto the tracks. After warming up, Mac was ready to record roughly 9 songs. After the vocals were recorded the track was played back to see if he was satisfied with the take.
Digby and Shaun (studio sound engineers) then explained the process of compression on the tracks to make sure the songs were suited to cd quality. for example- the vocals were compressed to fit the backing track more effectively in terms of volume. They also used compression on the backing tracks. After effects such as reverb could also be added or altered on the recordings. After this process, the tracks were edited in terms of timing and just trimming off rougue sounds from the backing track. This was done using the studio computer, using a cut tool. The finished recordings were then transfered/ copied to the 2nd computer and were then burnt onto disc.