Studio Survival

So tomorrow we will once again be heading off for a days hard graft at Ascape studios.  “Hard graft?!” I hear you shout.  Oh yes my friend, oh yes.

Recording studios are generally in out of the way places and they don’t have windows.  When I stumble outside after a nine-hour session into an industrial estate car park my first thought is invariably “has everyone died”. 

But enough of my anxieties…

Getting On Each Others Nerves

You’re locked in a room with the same people for hours on end.  You’ve listened to your colleague screw up the same bar of a guitar part 20 times in the last 15 minutes.  Someone’s blocked the toilet and no one’s admitting it.  The lighthearted banter about someone’s facial hair has gone too far and feelings are getting hurt.  It happens.

My best advice for men would be wrestling.  Someone will get hurt, apologies will be made and the atmosphere will improve and you’ll move on.

For woman, sit in silence looking like you’ve swallowed a bee and inwardly seethe.  The boys will assume this is due to hormones and will therefore leave you alone.  Result.

That’s Not How It Goes

Getting it wrong while everyone is watching the clock seeing the pennies drop down the drain with each tick is horrible.  You will feel like a twat.

Be prepared and don’t go in with a steaming hangover.  At least then if you screw it up, it’s just because you’re crap.

The Smell

Nothing delights me more about Ascape Studios than the fact that it has a separate ladies toilet.  There is nothing more revolting than having to push a urine-stained seat down to then sit on it.  In fact, I don’t understand why we don’t teach men to pee sitting down.  Surely that would improve their aim?  But I digress…

Studios are airless spaces that groups of (rolls eyes) largely men occupy.  There is always an underlying smell of decay about them- vaguely reminiscent of a teenage boy’s bedroom.  This is soon dissipated when someone farts.  As funny as farting is, it doesn’t make for an environment conducive to creating the next Mercury Prize winner.  I have no real advice here but loudly exclaiming “that stinks” and wafting it back to whichever boy is smirking passes the time.  It will never completely go away but you get used to it after a while.

 Food

In times gone by, food items for Peryls recording sessions would generally consist of boxes of miniature brownies and flapjacks, Ginsters pasties and a token bag of bananas that would languish in a corner turning black and mushy.  Beers would generally be cracked open at 10am and by 3pm everyone would be ‘just resting their eyes’.

We take a more middle-aged approach to food these days.  We have a blanket ban on any form of miniature cake (did you know that they contain 100 calories each!) and the bananas actually get eaten.  This probably makes no difference to our performance but no one falls asleep.  Progress indeed.