On Sunday evening, starting at 6pm – three of us were engaged to add six individual string parts to 8 tracks being independently produced by a singer songwriter. The studio we recorded in (After Dark Studios in Soho) was chosen by the client and this was the first time that we’d recorded there.
Our brief was to record live strings for 8 songs (with us recording in the region of 40 minutes of music) and this was completed within the 3 hours which had been allocated for the session. One reason that the recording went so smoothly was that plenty of preparation had been done on the scores beforehand, with me arranging and notating the string parts on Sibelius software and emailing these over to the client for approval. By the time we arrived at the studio, the scores were all ready and note perfect so that nothing needed to be changed on the evening (which could have disrupted the session and eaten into valuable studio time).
The client was delighted with the result at the end of the session and commented that adding live strings to the track had added a sophistication and soulfulness that could never have been achieved with samples.