Recomposing the Classical Favourites Series Part 2: Inside Abbey Road Recording Sessions

Part 2 of our Classical Favourites deep dive is here, and this time we’re taking you inside the recording and editing process!

Imagine spending 4 days in the legendary Studio One at Abbey Road, squeezing in 36 hours of recording sessions witg a 65-piece orchestra and choir. No pressure, right? 

In Part 1 we talked about the concept, choosing the repertoire, and recomposing famous classical music into editor-friendly versions for TV and Film. 

In Part 2 we move onto the recording stage. Working in one of the most famous rooms in the world, navigating union rules around how much music you can record in a day, and the nerdy world of editing, mixing, versioning and plugins.

We also share some slightly ridiculous stories that happened along the way, including the time we decided to record a cannon shooting for the 1812 Overture. You can’t say we composers don’t commit to our art!

Whether you’re a film composer, classical music enthusiast, or curious about the world of production music, this one’s for you!

#composer #classicalmusic #productionmusic #abbeyroad #recordingsession #orchestra #filmmusic #productionmusic #composing #audionetwork #syncmusic #librarymusic #classicalcomposer #filmcomposer #funnycomposingstories #abbeyroadstudioone 

Transcript

Jeff (00:00.45)

We're still here. 

David

Jeff Meegan.

Jeff

David Tobin.

David

Two Composers Two Continents.

Jeff

Part 2 to the Classical Favourites.

David

The classical collection. So, in the previous episode, we talked about the concept of what it is and making editor-friendly versions of the most famous pieces in the world. Recording them with live symphony orchestras, choirs...

Jeff

We talked about our process of choosing them, arranging them. Yes, pretty much all we did.

David

Yeah, did that take us 35 minutes? But anyway, there we go. So let's move on. Recording.

Jeff (00:50.114)

The next member of the team now appears, Rob Kelly, who mixed the whole of the Classicalcollection, is now on board because we have reached the recording phase. So he, of course, was present at all the recordings. But tell us about the recordings. Where were they? How long were they? 

David (01:09.686)

Oh boy. So they were, well first off, on those collections, in fact the whole classical collection has all been recorded at Abbey Road, sometimes Studio One, sometimes Studio Two. SoStudio One is this huge studio for those people who haven't been there or know about it. Much film music that you would know from that. 

Jeff

Star Wars, Indiana Jones, all kinda stuff. 

David

Jaws. So Studio Two, famous of course for The Beatles and many other things. And we even recorded some of it in Studio 3, which is -

Jeff (01:43.85)

We did, we did Carnival of the Animals in Studio 3.

David

In Studio 3 where Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd recorded some famous stuff. So anyway, we were for a lot of this Studio 1, not entirely, some of it was 2. We were there for 4 days, I think.

Jeff (02:00.2)

Yes, in Abbey Road for four days.

David (

But we've got to say that pre-covid this was nine hours of recording time right a day, not the case now, but this was nine hours a day. So we did uh, uh 36 hours of recording. 

Jeff

Yeah. Three hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon, and then three hours at night.

David

Yeah, we were doing 10 till 1, 2 till 5, 6 till 9.

Jeff (02:27.214)

Yeah. And I will say that I think this is probably, we had been there before, but I think three days in a row was what really got me hooked on the Abbey Road English breakfast. 

David

It's four days. 

Jeff

Four days. Yeah. The breakfast at Abbey Road in the Cantina is very good. Anyway, that's a sidebar. Sidebar. Yes.

David (02:45.038)

So let's talk about the recording itself. So we brought Rob on.

And the first thing, of course, there was quite a lot of discussion between Rob and Andrewand Andrew Dudman about the mic plot, where we put microphones, how we make this sound, because we wanted it to sound almost filmic, usable for these. It wasn't supposed to sound like a traditional classical recording. Rob had very specific ideas about what he wanted and good ones. And he and Andy Dudman, really the two of them, with Andrew's help, I seem to remember we stayed quite well out of the way of those discussions at that stage.

Jeff (03:33.486)

Honestly, I wasn't I didn't even know they were going on. Yeah, I figured they were but -

David (03:37.794)

You're hearing about this for the first time now! They had discussions, but yeah, there was a lot of diagrams.

Jeff (03:44.447)

I couldn’t add anything so yeah.

David (03:46.572)

Yeah, well, if I heard that before. But we didn't just record at Abbey Road for this stuff. Right. Not everything got recorded there. No. So tell me how it felt, Jeffrey, when they said, you should probably do all of the percussion on this stuff.

Jeff (04:03.374)

I suppose it was a budgetary thing and we wanted to be able to have some individuality or some isolation on these tracks and we didn't want necessarily all the percussion to be recorded with the orchestra. So, I'm sure I was like, well, I'll record the percussion here. And then they were like, okay, that sounds good. 

David (04:20.781)

And now you're on the hook for it. But how did it feel when you ended up saying, okay, I've got to record the snare drum on the 1812.

Jeff (04:29.422)

I think at that time, you know, it was bizarre because I'd never done anything like this. I mean, I live in Chicago. I have a studio in my house. Um, and so we come back from four days at Abbey Road and I throw these things up in Pro Tools and I'm like, set up my snare drum and cymbals and all the things I got to use. And I'm playing along with these Abbey Road tracks. It was just, it was a little surreal and bizarre. I gotta be honest with you.

David (05:05.966)

And I didn't get to do that on that. I did do some recording on these things, but not on those tracks.

Jeff (05:10.497)

You did! Well, you got to actually record at Abbey Road.

David (05:13.41)

Yeah, that was a terrifying experience, I have to say.

Jeff (05:16.14)

So David played recorder, Brandenburg Concertos.

David (05:19.926)

Yeah, in a previous life, I was a concert recorder player and they said, we're going to do these Brandenburg Concertos and we're going to do them with recorder rather than flute. Come record them live in Studio One with a crowd watching. I was absolutely terrified.

David (05:46.83)

And out of practice and had to practice for months. Yeah, but what an experience to do. 

Jeff

I'm jealous of that. 

David

But anyway, so we recorded some stuff there, obviously live. And we should say we had a, like a 60-ish, 65-piece symphony orchestra. And then on some pieces, we recorded a huge choir. I think it might've been the Crouch End Festival Chorus.

David (06:25.56)

It's just a lot of stuff and a lot of planning of what happens on what day at what time and who has to be where and in what studio.

Jeff (06:33.214)

Yeah. One of the things about recording, there are some union rules about how much actual recording you can do in a session, right? With these musicians. And so this was always a huge concern of ours when it came to these pieces because, and I do know that at times we had to edit down what we had written just so we could get it all recorded within a session.

David (06:57.804)

Yeah, we should we should say when you say how much you can record, we don't mean how many hours you can record we mean the length of the piece of music. And these rules are valid because what would happen is you'd record, you know, a piece of music that might be very simple. So you would flog the musicians to death recording piece after piece after piece after piece. That shouldn't you know, you should that ,you shouldn't be working people like that.

Jeff (07:24.568)

Yeah, the rules exist for a reason. I have no problem.

David (07:27.726)

But it did mean that if we've got 22 minutes of music and the rule said 21 or whatever, at that time it's slightly different timings to how it is now. We'd have to say we need to shave a minute off this piece so the pieces would be dictated by union rules.

Jeff (07:42.382)

By how much we could actually do. And I think a lot of times it came down to some of the bits we were recording at the end, you know, where we may have had...

David (07:49.998)

58 stings became 56. Yeah.

Jeff (07:52.974)

So we're always looking at less we had to change our process

David (07:57.106)

We'd look at Andrew Sunnocks and you know we get to the 15th sting and he say really Are you sure you need to do this so well? 

Jeff (08:00.974)

Funny story though. 

David

Sidebar.

Jeff

Sidebar. This is about the TV. So we got back and we were doing some RX-ing on whoever was singing. Was this, this is opera, wasn't it? So hold on.

David (08:19.798)

Hold on, you’ve just used a word that I mean nobody's gonna know what that means. Sowe're talking about we get a recording back and one of our jobs in this is to edit, and we're gonna talk about editing because some of this stuff we hadn't used these tools before. So we didn't know what we were doing and we bring up a recording of a vocal I guess.

Jeff (08:41.607)

So it was in the main booth there, the ISO booth.

David (08:45.73)

Yeah, so we've got opera singers. This is really should be told on the pod about opera. But anyway, we bring up this recording and we're looking at it on effectively a graph where it looks orange and you can see what's going on where a bit, you know, it really is like a graph, if you will. And then we see this flat line, which really means there's a noise, there's something and we think it's ruined. I mean, and like we said last time, they've thousands and thousands of pounds. And we get this recording, and we think, this isn't usable.

Jeff (09:22.53)

But your heart skips a beat when you see something like that, even though we couldn't really hear it. But we're like, what?

David (09:30.254)

I didn't know if an editor would say, uh-uh, unusable when they see it. So I remember calling Andy Dudman, the chief engineer, and saying, I don't know how to tell you this. And I'm really quite, you know, like, I don't know what to say here, but there's a line across. And he just laughed. And he said, yeah, that's on everything. I'll send you the recording stems of Harry Potter.

Jeff (09:57.262)

Literally. So, so it's just because there's a CRT television that's in this ISO booth. So the people in there can see the conductor.

David (10:05.634)

Right. And it emits this high pitched, inaudible…

Jeff (10:08.824)

Whatever, yeah, some Herz, you know, I'm sure. So he said that it’s in everything and I downloaded a Harry Potter, because they recorded the Harry Potter soundtrack there and lo and behold, it’s in the Harry Potter soundtrack.

David (10:23.114)

You can see it on it. I breathed more than a sigh of relief. I was like, could you imagine getting all that back and it being like, yeah, that would have been horrendous. So yeah, we should talk about the other recording story while we're on recording before we go into endless editing stories. We should talk about doing the 1812.

Jeff (10:45.696)

Oh yes, so we recorded the 1812 for this and of course there’s the big cannons at the end.

David (10:52.574)

Dun dun dun dun dun dun.

Jeff (11:04.782)

We though wouldn't it be fun if we actually shot off a cannon?

David (11:08.364)

Well, we didn't come up with that idea. I mean, he's going to shoot off a cannon. This is Andrew Sunnocks’ idea of we should definitely shoot a canon.

Jeff

And it wasn‘t really a cannon right? It was just fireworks in a bucket.

David (11:18.892)

It was like a stage cannon. Like a, I don't know how to describe it. But you have to put it in something. So Andrew, we were on Andrew's property in quite a large field, just running as there's like a timer before this thing explodes. Put it in a bucket, but the noise was unsatisfying. Andrew looking at his bucket and saying, you shot a hole in my bucket. Slightly funnier.

Jeff (11:45.454)

I think he still has that bucket.

David (11:46.452)

We then went into a corrugated farmhouse building, farm building. 

Jeff (11:52.31)

And blew off some stuff in there.

David

I mean the noise was just, it was one of the loudest things I've ever heard in my life.

Jeff

Hey, you gotta suffer for your art. Has anyone got a farmhouse we could use?

David

Is the right time to tell him we couldn't use those recordings and we ended up not using that. We didn't say that. So yeah, it was pretty crazy. Let's now move on to the editing.

Jeff (12:33.09)

This is probably, like we said, maybe 12 years ago, 13 years ago, something like that. And in the beginning of our collaboration, we were only using Logic, right? We were not Pro Tools guys. And because of all the stuff we were doing in studios, we learned Pro Tools. And this particular project was one of the first things, first projects that we really did the editing in Pro Tools.

So all that is to say that here we've gone to Abbey Road, spent four days, spent all this money, and then they give it to you and I, the two dopes with Pro Tools, and they're like, hey, why don't you edit these up? 

David (13:11.288)

You know what, even worse than that, these days what we tend to do is get back stems by and large if we're working with a mix editor. We'll get stems back but yeah I guess so this is that. Let's start that bit again.

Jeff (13:31.384)

Yeah, well, that's okay. We'll explain after we get things mixed, make their timed edits and that sort of stuff. And we do those from stems, but we used to do them from the whole project. Yeah.

David (13:40.97)

We should talk about quite how big these projects were. I mean, it's not just one mic, one instrument. You you've got strings and you might have a bunch of mics on the strings. And a bunch of mics on the wind and a bunch of mics on everybody. I think we got up towards 200tracks.

Jeff (13:58.142)

I know that we did. Especially the tunes with full orchestra, lots of percussion, choir. I mean, that was just a ton of tracks.

David (14:16.56)

And I was just terrified. I would open these up and it was completely...

Jeff (14:19.682)

We were editing, yeah, I mean, I think we did a fine job. We did a great job, but it was a lot of learning. It was...

David (14:29.214)

I have to say thank you to Rob. I don't know about you, but Rob Kelly, wherever you are in the world right now, thank you so much because he was teaching us.

Jeff (14:37.782)

He showed us lot of methodology that he used.

David

Methodology and how to approach this stuff, cross-fading, so moving from one clip to another clip and making them seamless, which in the software we were using was not so easy. But doing that in Pro Tools is a joy.

Jeff (14:54.998)

Absolutely. Well, even, you know, just editing just the tiniest little things. I mean, sometimes with these big classical things, we were just pulling out one horn stab from one take to clean something up that was a split note or something. And I mean, it's really, really fine editing.

David (15:14.35)

How did you find that? I mean, when you were doing that kind of editing, do you enjoy that?

Jeff (15:18.414)

I do now, yeah, it's kind of like, it's like a, you know, it was learning. So, yeah, I thought it was cool. It's almost like a, it's almost like a treasure hunt. It's certainly a puzzle, right? That you're trying to put together. Especially on these huge sessions. They take a while because I don't listen to every single track, but when you find an issue, and you have to start solving that issue, you tend to be, then you're listening to every track and seeing where it is.

David (15:48.591)

And it’s not just issues, it’s the performance.

Jeff (15:52.16)

It’s yeah, everything. And then when you're doing that across the whole orchestra and then the choir and you know, just all the different things that are happening at same time. It's pretty cool.

David (16:00.558)

I mean, I gotta say, I would come in, it's different from composing, obviously, but I would come in from the studio and realize at night that I was exhausted, absolutely exhaustedbecause the critical listening you're doing. I'd come in and think, why am I so tired? It's ridiculous, I've just been sat in a chair. But you're listening so intently for performance, for intonation, for timing, but then when you've gotta make an edit, it was so easy to make a mistake that I've moved something, but I didn't move everything and now I've got to start over. How many times did you start over?

Jeff (16:38.99)

Yeah, when we were doing - so this is, I think now is a good time to talk about with, with Rob, um, in the mixing of this, we went, we were in London and he got together, uh, a pretty great rough mix. then you, me and Andrew sat in the studio with him for three or four days.

David (16:57.516)

After we've done a bunch of editing to get them ready before...

Jeff (17:00.366)

Right we added it and send to Rob he did the you know got the mixes really close and then we sat in the studio for four days to just do the final tweaks and stuff so after that point and, well previous to this Rob had, we'd all needed to have copacetic systems because we were gonna take these actual Pro Tools files and then open them up in our places, and then we needed to have the same system. It gets a little in-depth, but just plugins and the different things that he was using, the programs he was using to mix the music, we needed to make sure that we had the exact same thing at our place.

David (17:39.662)

We should do, I don't care if it gets nerdy now you'll just you've got to fast forward if you don’t. I mean, we're talking about if a program was, you know, version 12.1.3. No, you can't be on 1.2 you have to be right.

Jeff (17:55.252)

I mean, it literally has to be on the exact same…

David (17:58.21)

So how do we check? How do we know that it was what he was giving us?

Jeff (18:02.644)

So he figured out this ingenious method of we'd open it up, we'd burn a copy of it, and we would play it along with his burned copy, and we'd flip the phase over. And if everything was pretty much canceled out except for the reverb, then the systems were good to go. And if it didn't cancel each other out, then there was a problem, which was very cool. 

David
Did it work? 

Jeff

Yeah, worked flawlessly.

David (18:27.702)

Took me a while to figure out, I could hear words coming out of his mouth about how we were going to do it. And I was saying, that's a great idea. And thinking, I don't understand anything you just said. So that's great. But I've been saying, how do you do that? And he was showing me. So what he meant was this.

Jeff (18:45.678)

It was cool, it was great. It was a complicated journey, the post-production on these things.

David

Yeah.

Jeff (18:56.878)

We would do then what we call packages. We did all these versions of the pieces. 

David (19:01.928)

So what kind of versions we talking?

Jeff

Of course, there's, you know, 60 second versions, 30 second versions, 15, 20, all kinds of stuff like that. Stings, which is just the ba-da-bump kind of stuff.

David

Thanks Beethoven.

Jeff

That's a classical favourite. And a thing called bumpers, which is like a little longer bit that might be on the end of a TV show or something. And then for these we did, you know, if there was a choir, if there was a percussion, if there was whatever versions with and without. So, there was quite a lot to do. and the editors versions, which were well, in most cases on these, we recorded the, in the studio, the editor's version with the gaps. So, we had to put together the main version and take the gaps out and, and paste them together, if you will.

David

But one of the versions would be, just talking back to how we talked about it last time, da-da-da-da, and then a gap where an editor could go, OK, I'm going to just use that bit, or whatever it was. Or it might have a version where it starts from bar 1 to 20 and then goes to a quiet ending that never existed before. So those kind of things where you'd say, OK, I don't want it to get big. That doesn't suit what I'm doing with my picture. And the original had this linear growth but we didn't do it that way. So you've given them a version with a quiet ending and a louder ending. And then you might just release just the quiet ending without the bit before it. So on some of them there were a lot of versions and I seem to remember also us having to decide where to cap how many, because you could you do a hundred versions. And nobody's going thank you for that.

Jeff (20:44.174)

Absolutely. No, yeah. And there's diminishing returns at some point, right? An editor just sees all that and is like, Jesus, I don't know. I'll use this one.

David (20:58.712)

So let's see, how long are we talking from getting a phone call before you were even awake?

Jeff

I have no idea. It was more than a year.

David (21:09.63)

It was a lot longer than that. It was nearer to two, two and a bit years from the first phone call to the end of packaging something was just over two years.

Jeff (21:22.958)

It's a huge, huge project. 34, what were you saying? 34 pieces of music.

David (21:28.718)

There are to date, and I say to date because we've already recorded some more stuff that isn't out yet, which you can look out for when it comes, but we've done 21 albums of this stuff now. 

Jeff (21:39.49)

Yes. All available on your streamers. Yeah. Go ahead.

David (21:49.582)

Although I do like, the word favourite, when you get down to the 190th favourite classical work, is starting to wear a little bit thin. But then that's true, you still find works and go, how did we not think of that thing? And then of course you get the thing that wasn't public domain, if you don't know what I mean, look at episode one, the thing that wasn't public domain when we did this 10 years ago that now is. Things like you’ve got Ravel’s Bolero, which any day now will be a thing or…

Jeff (22:25.198)

Rhapsody in Blue. I mean, there's a bunch of things that have come out of public domain.

David (22:30.678)

And the law changes. So Rhapsody in Blue actually is... Well, anything with the lyric from Ira Gershwin isn't...

Jeff (22:36.174)

So it's not in France yet?

Jeff (22:42.168)

Right, because Ira died first later. Well, Rhapsody and Blue doesn't have any lyrics, so that is in public domain.

David (22:48.206)

It could have. I've got one for you. There you go. Lyrics. So this has been a pretty intense.

Jeff (22:54.856)

It has, how do we how do we wrap this up here what do we need to talk about anything we didn't tell well-

David (23:00.174)

Well, the first thing I would like to say is a big thank you to Audio Network for entrusting this insane idea of a collection to us. This has been a big part of my life. Yep, so I thank you for that. To a lot of musicians.

Jeff (23:10.958)

Likewise, yes.

David (23:18.55)

And no, think we've just about covered the classical collection. Check it out on streamers. Check it out if you are making a show and you need some music. It's available on Audio Network. And we have more of it coming out.

Jeff (23:32.28)

We do. We'll let you know when it's coming. Some good stuff. 

David 

Until next time.

Jeff

Thank you. Thanks for watching. 

Hey guys, Jeff here. I just wanted to say I hope you guys really enjoyed our podcast about our project that's never been done before in the history of the world.