Bally Rehearsal Studios.
Tottenham Hale, N17. London. 

1) How do you hear the music while recording? 

You will hear the guitars/bass and drums just like you would in a normal rehearsal, without any additional amplification.   The only difference is that instead of the vocals coming out of the PA, instead you will hear then via headphones.  This ensures that the vocals don't get picked up on the other microphones within the studio, giving you much more control and seperation when mixing them.   The vocal microphones get plugged into a splitter box, so that these signals can then be sent to both the 8 track recorder and the headphone amplifier at the same time.   You then have the option of having reverb on the vocals while recording if you wish, without the reverb being present on the recorded signal.  As the record and monitor paths have been split, any changes made to the vocals while monitoring won't affect the recording.    We'll provide you with x5 Superlux HD681 Studio Monitoring Headphones, to allow you to hear the vocals throughout the session.    

2)  - What backline equipment d0 you have at the studios? (Amplifiers, drum kits, etc) 

Sure, here's a link to the backline equipment that you can use, for no extra charge at all.  

3)  - How much help will I get with the recording? 

We will set everything up for you, so that everything ready for you when you get there. Then we'll check that everything is recording properly and show you how to use everything.   Then we leave you to it -  we don't stay in the session while you are recording.  This is the biggest difference between the service that we offer and the usual recording sessions that other studios offer.  There are two reasons that these sessions are so much cheaper, and why they can get results quicker:

a) The simple, stripped back format of 8 track recordings.
b) The fact that you have to do most of the work yourself.    

You'll only get help from us with technical aspects of the equipment. We'll provide you with the gear and show you how to set it up, and if you have any problems with the equipment then we'll help you with that, but otherwise you'll engineer/record the songs yourself, or you have the option to bring your own sound engineer with you. Bally Studios will not help you engineer the sessions, but this format is specifically designed to need less input anyway.   Once everything is all set up you can either just let it record the whole session as one single track and split the audio up at home later, or you can press record + play before every song you record, and stop the recording at the end of every take so that all of the individual tracks are separated.  Think of it like a live gig, where the sound engineer sets up the microphones at the soundcheck and then leaves them in place for the whole gig without needing to adjust them.  If anything then goes wrong during your sessions.

4) How much can we record in the session?

The recorder comes with a 32GB SD card, which will record 530 minutes (8 hours 50 minutes) of 8-track recording at the highest quality, 24 bit/44.1 kHz and WAV format setting.  If you use the 16 track function then you’ll double the amount of tracks, which will halve the amount of time that you can record for, which brings it down to 4 hours 25 minutes of 16 track recordings. However, we’ll have multiple SD Cards in the office, so you can also keep on swapping them over, and so long as you bring a large enough external hard drive, you can record as much as you want to.  

5) Can we do recordings over consecutive days?

Sure!  If you book sessions over consecutive days then you can leave the microphones set up overnight, no problem at all.  There is no increase in the cost of the recording equipment hire. 

6)  How do we get the data/stem tracks at the end of the session. 

The songs get recorded direct to SD card, so band's can receive that data by:  

a) Us sending it to you after the session.   We have a Google Drive account with 100GB of space on it, which we can upload everything to. Each band member can then download the data individually at home, meaning everyone has a copy of everything that has been recorded.  
b) Bring their own laptop to the session, and plug a USB cable into the recorder, plug the other end into your laptop and then drag the files to your laptop that way.  If your laptop has an SD card slot you can safely switch off the recorder, then take the SD card out of the recorder.  plug it into your laptop and then drag them onto your computer.  
c) You can safely turn off the recorder and then bring the SD card into the office, along with your external hard drive and we’ll put the data onto your USB device for you.