Abubilla Music

A Thank You Note from The Bridge….

Written by Jimmy

Introduction:

We have not been our normal chatty selves for awhile.  Nor have we released a ton of music.

 “No chat?” you ask?   “No music?”, you cry.  “Pray tell, you please, dear fellows, is all ok in Abubilla-land?”

“Indeed yes“, we answer. ” Indeed yes.   Just a bit of moving and painting….and thanks for the cuddle by the way.”

So we’ve moved into more professional studios and are formally openning the studios today, January 19th.   Your 3 most commonly asked questions?

1. Where are we ?   Near Hammersmith, not far from the Bridge
2. What have you got?  A nice little studio now, thank you very much.  With lots of rooms and no dog sounds.  No, not even a door bell.
3. How’s the crowd at Richmond studio reacting?  They suffered from a bit of shock initially as they described a lot of the archeological finds on the floor of the old studio.  Pizza slices from 2008 to be exact.    Once that awkward moment was over, the folks in Richmond are full of new wonderful possible uses of the house on Saturdays.  Quiet sanctuary is most popular use currently.

The New Studio:  Overview

Here’s what we’ve built.  You walk into a very shoddy entrance (we want expectation to start low) and go straight ahead to our office/meeting space, referred to as ‘The Mess.‘   This is the first of two rooms devoted to ‘everything else.’  Here we blog, we eat, we talk, we distract one another and generally make a racket.   It has its own basic kitchenette so we make tea here.  Big desks to work, hold Singing Wells Trustee meetings, etc…  Jodie, Olivia and Vicki will like this room.

A little bit further down the hall, you turn left into ‘The Video Room.’  It is basically a big white room.  An empty canvas that will gradually come to life as more and more videos are made in the room.     This is Greg’s room.  This is Helen’s room.  This is Hunter’s room.  It also doubles as our ‘acoustic’ studio, where we can do a lot of live video recordings that we used to do in the ‘front room’ in Richmond.

A little bit further down you get to the three rooms that make up the full studio suite.   First you get to the Isolation Booth, a room fully dedicated to our isolation booth.  Mike will do a lot of drumming here.  It has a window that is aligned with the window to the Control Room.    The control room has the mixing desk and a window to left (to Isolation Booth) and to the right to “The Studio.’   The studio is a 5 meter by 5 meter rehearsal space and recording studio.  Nice and big.

This was very much a DIY Thing and Everyone Helped:  Thank You!

So here’s more ‘behind the scenes’ (later, when we’re proud enough, we’ll show you the studio in its glory).  This is more a thank you to all those who helped:

1.  The Mess is a Mess:   When you come into the studio, you go to ‘The Mess’, where we will have training and website work for both Singing Wells and Abubilla Music.    Here’s some photos of the ‘mess’ as a mess:

2. The Video Room Takes a Long Time  to Look Like We’ve Done Nothing:     We have long halls that take you from the front door past the mess, the video room, the storage room, the control booth and the studio.  The first room after the mess is the Video room.  We worked very hard to make it simply a ‘blank white canvas’ upon which Greg will sprinkle magic.  Or so the theory goes.

3. The Control Room gets under control:  You continue past the video room and you get to our control booth.  Enter.  The window to the left shows you the isolation booth and the window to your right is the studio.   The control room needed to get some windows installed, then get painted white and then get some basic acoustic treatment.  Oh, and we put up some wall hangings – with fabric purchased in Africa and turned into hangings in Sheen (Thank you Salena!).

4. The Isolation Booth:   So, you’re in the control room above and look at window on left.  You should eventually look into the window of the isolation booth.  First, we needed to order and build the isolation booth.  We will then need to install the live drums.  To manage expectations, this is the story about the booth, not the drums.  They are still being ordered….  First we needed to paint the room…

Andy on the roof of the new isolation booth!

5. The Studio:  Well this is it.  The heart of the studio, the studio.  Thus the name.

That’s it for the build.  From now on we’ll just post about a working studio.  Thanks to all who helped with painting, dragging, moving…and now on to the music…

Jimmy