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Creating
a CD
"THE
WORLD OF SOLITAIRE" Like many people, I have often wondered
about the journey of a CD from its conception to the store, so I was instantly
enthusiastic when a visit to a recording studio to interview the owner, Alan Whelan,
was suggested. As I had only seen brief clips on film of recording studios I was
not sure what to expect, and I was surprised to learn that Solitaire was in fact
housed in a small private home in a modern housing estate out on the west side
of Dublin city. I knew the studio's name, from such fame as the show Gaelforce
Dance (which used the studio in creating some of the show's music tracks)
and Mairead Nesbitt's CD 'Raining Up', which was partly recorded at Solitaire,
but that was all. As usual, I was to gain an education from my latest Celtic Cafe
assignment! My visit to Solitaire Studios, and meeting with Alan Whelan
and his partner Ella Haluk - the amazing (and beautiful) Polish violinist, who
I know will be the subject of a Celtic Cafe feature in her own right in the not-too-distant
future - was a very special experience, as is revealed in the conversation below.
It is also, I think, an important feature for study for any young person with
an interest in making the music world a career, for here is a young man who tells
with great clarity and detail of his path to achieving his dream of owning a recording
studio. Before meeting Alan it would have seemed to me an impossible dream for
a young person, and it was wonderful to hear the steps he took. I think he does
have a unique advantage in the participation by Ella, whose incredible musical
abilities are a key factor, but a lot must also be due to Alan himself. He seems
to me to have the ideal balance of being an easy-going, relaxed person, willing
to take life as it comes, and having unshakable determination that his projects
will be successful. If he could bottle that mix I think he would make his fortune!
In three short years Solitaire has achieved great things. With all that
Alan has in the pipeline, I know it has only just begun, and I can't wait to see
how its story unfolds. Now Celtic Cafe visitors can join me in a friendly cup
of tea in the tiny converted bedroom that is an ultra-modern musical world of
wall-to-wall technology, and meet the man behind it, Alan Whelan, and the lovely
Ella Haluk.
Q: First of all, how did the studio start? Alan:
I've been a professional recording engineer for thirteen years. I trained in a
well-known studio (Starc) in Dublin city for about seven years. I was trained
by the late Alan Connaughton, who was well respected and well loved as a person
in the Irish music industry. When Alan passed away, the studio closed and I went
freelance for the following three years. It had always been my goal to have my
own studio, but I didn't think it would happen until I was much older. Solitaire
was actually opened at the start of June 1999, about twoweeks before my 28th birthday. Q:
And did you have to do a lot of modification, to soundproof the rooms and so on,
as it is a private house? Alan: No, as you can see it's just a normal
house. This room, which is the control room, has been deadened down a lot, but
it's not soundproofed in the case of sound going in and out of the building. You
get a lot of odd sounds in a room; like in a bathroom you get reverberation. When
you're working with audio, you need to have it as even as possible, because you
just want to hear exactly what comes from the speakers and not have it bouncing
back off walls and so on. So I've done a lot of work in here to deaden down the
room, in some parts and leave it live in others. This gives a good balance within
the room, and it is very true sounding. There are no odd frequencies in my mix
position, so what I hear when I am working should be a true representation of
the recording and therefore sound pretty much the same on most playback environments,
obviously with a little variation depending on the equipment used. All hi-fi's
and rooms have their own characteristics.
As for recording downstairs,
I've put soft wooden floors down; and it's an odd-shaped room, with various bits
of dampening so the sound is actually really nice. This is a very tricky science,
so it was more luck than planning. A few basic acoustic techniques paid off.
Q: So you use a soft wood, like pine? Alan: Yes, it's a pine,
and it's got about five coats of lacquer. The only problem with soft wood is it
gets marked easily, which can be a bit of a pain when you are trying to keep the
place looking good, but it sounds great, and acoustic instruments, which is what
I do a lot of in the Irish end of things sound really natural down there. Q:
Did you start out in life as a musician yourself? Alan: Yeah, I started
playing guitar at about nine years of age, and in school I was in bands, I used
to run the church choir when I was about 12 for a year or 2, do school plays,
and other stuff like that, but I actually was going to be an architect when I
left school. I decided I wanted either to be in music business or I wanted to
be an architect. These were really the only things that interested me careerwise.
In secondary school, in the last three years there weren't enough people to have
a music class. I kind of let the theory side of it go to the wayside.
After I left there, I was going to go to the Rock School in Dublin. There's a
very intense course on playing your instrument, song writing, management, and
all about how the music industry works. I approached a friend of a friend of mine
who owned a recording studio and asked him if I could come in for some work experience
for the summer, thinking it would be a good area to know something about, in relation
to the course I would be doing. He took me on for a couple of months, and at the
time he was moving premises, so I got to rip the old studio apart, get to the
new premises, build it from scratch, soundproof it and install all the cables
and equipment. Q: That must have been an incredible training ground. Alan:
Exactly! I learned everything from scratch and I haven't stopped learning since
then! Q: And what made you decide to make the recording studio in a house,
rather than a warehouse type of setting? Alan: Well, the original plan
for Solitaire was that it was going to be a very big space, maybe 2,000 square
feet, but it was just too expensive; the investment was going to be huge, so as
a person on my own with no real backing it was impossible. And then actually,
in the three years while I was planning, the equipment changed so much, became
so advanced, that it became feasible to do it in a house like this. Basically
you can record anywhere if it is quiet enough and you have the know-how. I don't
do rock bands all that often. I do the odd one now and again, but generally it's
just acoustic Irish instruments or it's folk singers, and so it's not like I need
a big soundproof area. My neighbours aren't here during the day, and they can't
hear anything anyway because the music is quiet. Studios that work with rock bands,
etc., need a completely soundproof area, simply because it's as much to stop the
sound going out as to stop the sound coming in.
These houses are also
wooden frame under the outside brick. Because of this, the building rules state
that they must be fireproofed. In between all the houses, is a layer of fire-retardant
high-density Rockwool. Rockwool is basically like the standard attic insulation,
which has been compressed into slabs. This is the same substance used for soundproofing.
That was a bit of luck, because this house was bought because it was affordable
to me at the time, and I only found out later how soundproof it actually was.
In most old houses, you can hear voices though the walls. Q: Because
of that technology, can you do it all yourself, or do you employ anyone else? Alan:
I don't employ anyone else full-time; a band can bring their own engineer if I
know them or their reputation, but I use freelance engineers sometimes. There's
one in particular I use when I'm away. Her name is Debbie Smith - she's really
good. In fact she's the only one I really like to have in here at the moment.
She actually did some work experience with me when I was in Starc. She did a training
course in Dublin at Pulse, did work experience and became in-house engineer in
some studios in Dublin, and after that she went to LA for a while. Talking to
her, she kind of thinks the way I do, and I just like the way she operates, you
know. I've a very high quality here, people who work with me know how picky
I am. And most of the work I do is record company work or people like Gaelforce
Dance, which are professional shows; it's not usually like a band ringing me up
and saying they want to do a demo. So I just like the way she works; she's very
good, she's professional, and she's got a great ear and is really good with new
technology as well as being a lovely person. Q: What are some of the
highlights to date? Alan: Well, connected to Celtic Cafe interest, I
did a lot of Mairead Nesbitt's album - that was a lovely album to work on! I actually
met her years ago in Starc as well. Half of the album was recorded in Scotland
and those tracks were produced by Manus Lunny. Colm O' Foghlu (composer of Gaelforce
Dance) wrote the tracks that were recorded here, but I also did some work
on the Scottish ones. All the lead fiddles were done here and various other overdubs.
I've worked with everyone in the Irish music industry over the years, from the
Dubliners, Fureys, Johnny McEvoy, Mary and Francis Black, Eleanor McEvoy, Eimear
Quinn and a lot of others, the list goes on and on. A lot of those clients have
come with me as well, which is great. One in particular is Dolphin/Dara Records
and the Music Plant - they're all the one company - but they have a huge artist
base and so I get quite a lot of work from them, and also I've produced an instrumental
album of my own as well, for them. It's called "Celtic Instrumental Airs
From Ireland" and is heading towards double platinum sales at the moment.
It's aimed at the tourist market and stuff like that, but they sell very well.
And soon Ella and myself will do one together with full orchestrations, for that
market also. They are sold under an album title and are not associated with an
artist. Q: And could you do that from this studio? Alan: Yes,
we have to do it slightly differently. Obviously we can't bring in the full orchestra,
but we've perfected a technique where Ella plays all the string instruments, first,
second, third violins, violas, and cellos, and we get session players to do the
rest. Q: So it can only be done with someone of Ella's calibre? Alan:
Exactly! If you want it to sound authentic! Ella's tone makes it sound extremely
close to the real thing. It's a technique that works, and obviously we haven't
got the space to use a full orchestra, and moneywise that would be very expensive,
but to be honest I prefer to work the way we do at the moment. We can sit and
concentrate and Ella can do whatever she wants, rewrite the string parts, take
our time, make sure it's exactly what we want it to sound like. That's impossible
if you have to work with a full orchestra, unless you have a bottomless pit full
of money.
I don't really want to run a commercial studio for the rest
of my life. I want a private studio so that we can find our own projects, maybe
a young band or artist, take them from scratch, record an album, get them signed
- that's kind of what I want to do eventually, the production end of things, and
engineering, I love it. But I don't like to have to be running a commercial studio
where I have to take in whatever work comes to me. I'd much rather be able to
pick and choose; we'll get there eventually. Ella's album will take a little bit
longer than we thought because we've been busy doing various things, like I'm
going on tour with Spirit of Ireland for eight weeks. Q: Where
will you be going with that? Alan: We're going to Taiwan for three weeks,
and then we're going to France after that. Q: So how did you become involved
with Gaelforce? Is that where you and Ella met? Alan: First
of all, I met Colm through a mutual friend of ours, a guy called Gavin Ralston
who is a session guitarist. Gavin does a lot of work with me on various projects,
and he's great because he's an all-rounder, he can play any style you can think
of, from rock to jazz to Spanish, you know - I think Gavin went to school with
Colm, who was a couple of years behind him. So one day they met in town
and Colm was just back from tour and said, "We're looking to do some tracks
for Gaelforce, we're expanding the show." Gavin said, "I've got a friend
who owns a studio," and he got in touch and came in and we did 'Rhiannon's
Dance'. Then, later that year we did three more, we did a new song and two band
solos, and a few other bits and pieces. So I think about a third of the original
tracks were done here, and I met Ella on the recording of those obviously. Then
I started touring with the show, I think September of 2000. We did Warsaw for
ten days, and I kind of liked it and I got the opportunity to come on board, so
I thought, "I'll do this for a while!" I've always done live work, but
I'm doing a lot more since then. Q: And Ella, was it because they went
to Poland that you became involved with the show? Ella: No, I was with
them actually for a year or two before that. That was on the first tour that they
decided to have a string trio, and they picked me up in the Academy in Warsaw.
Q: Okay, let's talk a little bit about Ella's new CD, the current project.
Is it all your own material, original pieces? Ella: Most of it is going
to be original material. It's going to be written by Alan and Colm, and I'm going
to be doing the string arrangements. For now we've got only three tracks finished,
and there's another four on the way. And there'll be a few songs as well, with
various artists singing, because I'm not a singer! We want to approach some well-known
artists, so it will appeal to the mainstream. Alan: We need to have singers
of some sort. Because it's instrumental music, there are only limited places that
it will be broadcast. So we will have some songs featuring guest artists. Q:
So does the music have Polish character, or Irish character, or a mix? Alan:
It's funny, it's very modern, that's all I can say. Colm wrote the first two pieces,
one is called 'Tango', which is just a working name at the moment, and
everyone who's heard it says it has a very eastern European feel to it, almost
like gypsy music, that kind of feel to the fiddle playing. And that's just very
basic, drums, acoustic guitar, bass, and Spanish guitar. The guitarist on that
one in fact is John Whelan who plays with the Café Orchestra and bands
like that, he's a really lovely player, so that has a mid-European style. The
one I wrote, called 'Chill', is a very laid-back dance track, and the other
one Colm wrote, called 'Traffic Light Number Seven' - don't ask me where
he got the name - that is very band-orientated, very rock-y, and it starts of
with a real band and goes into very heavy dance kind of sounds, then back to a
very rock band at the end of it. As soon as you hear it you'll know what I'm talking
about! And for the songs, we're hoping to get four fairly well-known singers,
stylewise, we know who but we shouldn't print names at the moment. Q:
Irish or foreign, or both? Alan: Both. Basically the idea is that the
songs will be Ella Haluk featuring a guest vocal, and obviously if they're going
to be songs they're going to have very large string arrangements, and maybe the
violin and the vocal will talk to each other, you know, the violin answering and
whatever. We want people we like working with and admire, but it's also to get
the airplay thing. Q: And have you any idea when this is likely to come
to fruition? Alan: Well, we had hoped that the album would be ready
by Christmas, but because of work commitments it's not going to happen until later.
And we've been very picky with what we've been doing. There's a lot of tracks
that have been sitting, almost completed, for months, but we've been listening
to them and changing things and adding things. I'm used to working with record
companies, and I know that they have to be of a certain standard, and unless I
feel they're beyond that standard they're not going anywhere. So it doesn't
bother me if it takes another year, if they're the way we want them at the end
of it. We're really, really happy with these three first tracks. We have another
four started, but there's not enough on those to play to you yet. Two of them
are songs and two instrumentals. The time factor really isn't a problem
at the moment. If a record company comes back to us soon and says, "Okay,
we want it in six months," then we'll have the backing and we'll sit down
and concentrate on it, but at the moment we have to make a living as well! Q:
Tell me about the Ceol Chiarraí project? Alan: I got a call from
Eric Cunningham, who is the musical director for the Ceol Chiarraí shows,
Spirit of Ireland and To Dance on the Moon. They did some of the
backing tracks here for Moon too, so I know Eric from before. Last week
he called and said they need a sound engineer for Taiwan and for France, so would
I do it? And I said yes!
I still work with Gaelforce too. They're
going to Taiwan and Asia again around Christmas. In February, they go to the UK.
Taiwan three times in one year!
On tours in Europe or the U.S.A. we usually
get the equipment from one place, and travel it. After it has been programmed,
it stays the same, except for erecting it in various venues. I plan to go out
for about two weeks at the start of these tours and set up, train an engineer
on the particular show, troubleshoot any problems, and then I can leave. Hopefully
I can do this on most of my shows. This will give me more time to concentrate
on other projects.
In Asia, most venues have in-house equipment, so
every day it completely changes. That's why I have to stay on these trips. Spirit
of Ireland is a smaller show, with smaller venues, and it's a nice trip.
When you get into the bigger shows, bigger venues, it's very hectic and a lot
of work! Q: What are yours, and indeed Ella's thoughts, on the current
Irish music and dance scene, not only in terms of opportunity for young talent
as regards business, but also in terms of worldwide travel? Alan: I'd
been working on the traditional music end of things for a long, long time, and
there are a lot of really talented young musicians out there. New musicians keep
coming out of the woodwork, and they're of a really, really high standard.
All these different shows - you know how many of them there are now - are
a great opportunity for a lot of them. To be honest, a lot of the bigger shows
took the cream of the crop at the start, and I think that having taken so many
out of the country, now these other people are emerging, to fill in those spaces.
The only thing that bothers me about the kind of Irish thing is that...
I know it's our tradition and they're doing all the old traditional songs and
things like that, and instrumental pieces, but there are very few bands that are
actually going out and doing it and putting their own kind of slant on it, and
their own productions - now there are a few, and a few very, very good
ones, like Danu and Slide and Kila, and a couple of others who really have a great
edge. But then there are a lot of others who just sit in the pub and have a session,
and that's great, but I find that very stagnant. And sometimes you get
people like that who come in, and you could listen to three or four different
recordings and you wouldn't know the difference between them or who they are;
maybe different quality of playing, but there's nothing really outstanding about
them. And then you get a couple of bands like those I've just mentioned and they
stand out and they're way ahead, in my opinion. It's not that it's necessarily
a bad thing, but I just feel that a lot more musicians should actually try to
experiment and move forward - because it's great to be playing the old tunes,
but you can also reproduce them as well and take the next step forward in the
whole tradition. The tradition has to grow. Ella: And you can see that
with productions like Riverdance. It's not pure traditional music; maybe
that's why it's so popular. And if you see for instance Gaelforce Dance,
it's more modern, there is lots of dance and classical value... It's the same
with Lord of the Dance, and maybe it's more approachable to people outside
Ireland and younger generations. Alan: And yet they're all still traditional
tunes that are being used in a new way. That's what I like about Colm's stuff
- he's taken a step forward, and he's very into dance music now, and club music,
and techno stuff. And he's been doing traditional pieces, but in that sort of
style. It's just like bringing the past into the future. And it's not degrading
it - I mean you'll get the purists saying, "Oh, that's terrible!" But
you have to move forward as well. Q: What have been some of your favourite
places and experiences on the road? Alan: Ella's more experienced with
touring than me. Ella: I have to tell you that I love Germany, for their
standard of living. This is the best place! Q: The audiences are incredible
there, aren't they? Ella: Oh yes, the audiences are absolutely brilliant!
They just love, love Irish shows. America is great, like New York, Chicago, they're
great places to go to, and Las Vegas, you know, to have a bit of fun. Spain is
a really great place as well, loads of sun! And that was a bit of holiday for
us… everywhere is really, really nice. The audiences have been so good to
us. Q: So you enjoy the travelling? Ella: Oh yeah. It's hard
sometimes, because you're stuck with each other 24-7, you know, so it's like a
big family, and there are arguments, like in every family! But you get over that
and you still enjoy the travelling. Q: And Alan, do you like the travelling
too? Alan: The only thing I don't like about travelling are airports!
You know, like this year I've been in Taiwan twice, and that's a sixteen-hour
flight. I've been to the States twice, there and back; Hong Kong, I was there
in July. So the actual travelling parts, in airports and the flights, I can't
stand, but when I get to the country it's fine. I hate all the whole check-in
thing, the security and all - I know it's needed and the people doing it have
a thankless job, but it's stressful, you know, especially when you're heading
out and you have a lot of gear with you and you're just trying to get everything
going. I have to say my favourite countries so far have been the Asian
countries, like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Hong Kong we had an absolute ball in
July. Basically we only did four gigs in the one venue and we were there for ten
days, so there was a lot of very laid-back pre-production because we had so much
time. The gigs were really, really nice, and we got treated like kings. The
Asian people are just amazing; they're so friendly, and a lot of them I found
them very childlike in their excitement, there was almost like euphoria. When
we did Taiwan with Gaelforce, we did Taipei, and I think we did ten days
in a two-and-a-half-thousand seater venue, and we'd never experienced this reaction
before. The cast sign autographs after the show, sell the merchandise or whatever,
but all the autograph signings took two hours because everyone in the place wanted
an autograph! Usually, it's like twenty minutes or half an hour, you might get
fifty or a hundred people, but this was unbelievable. The first couple
of days, myself and another couple of big lads from the crew were standing around
at the tables because we didn't know what to make of this, we had no security
there, so we were watching for problems. But after the first couple of days we
saw that there was no need. Taiwan is an amazingly safe place. Q: It
is amazing - doesn't the whole Irish scene seem to go down all over Asia? Alan:
Oh, I think the market is only opening up, it's quite obvious. Last week, I said
to Ella, "I have to go to Taiwan again," and Taiwan is somewhere you
think you're never going to go to in your lifetime, and it's three times this
year! So it's really odd, you know. It's wonderful. And they're talking
about a Chinese tour for Gaelforce too. I have provisional dates - it's
Seoul in Korea, Taiwan, Macao, and they're hoping to put Chinese dates in immediately
after that. Then we'll come back to do the UK in February, and then they're talking
about Japan in May I think. Those dates are on the Celtic Cafe website, so if
they're up there they're probably right! Q: Now, tell me about the recording
process, from when it's planned right through to putting it into the shops. How
does it all happen? Alan: Okay. From our point of view, I'll say, because
there's loads of different ways of doing it. What we do is, first of all we write
the tunes, and we decide what kind of style we want. Q: When you say
'write', do you write music on paper or not? Alan: For me, I don't know
how Colm does it, I sit down with a guitar, and usually it's not even a case where
I sit down to write, I sit down to practice and I might just hit something odd,
and it just sounds good, so you work on it, and then an idea will come into your
head. And it just kind of expands from there.
So then we get a metronome
set, to pick a tempo. If we're going to use live drums we get the drums in first,
and at that stage we'd usually have a core structure, you know, maybe an intro,
verse, choruses, middle eight, breaks, whatever we're going to do to make up the
actual song - we have a map of it. So then it's myself and the drummer I work
with, a guy called Steve Hogan, who's a really good session player, he's young
and he knows what he's doing and what's modern and sounds good. I tell him an
outline of what I want, and he'll play a few things and we'll decide between us
what exactly we want to do. So drums go down first, then usually I play
bass - either a keyboard bass or electric bass or maybe we'll get an acoustic
bass player in, depending on what we're doing. And after that it just kind of
takes off on its own. If I've already worked out the guitar parts I'll put the
guitar down next, simply because I'm here and I can do it. Although I wouldn't
consider myself anywhere near the standard of musician that Ella is. If I want
something special, I will get Gavin or another guitarist in to do it. It really
depends what is called for. Ella will then put in a guide fiddle. And then
it really depends on who's around at the time, money - obviously, because we're
financing it ourselves - we can either work on it ourselves, where Ella will be
working on the string sections or keyboards and we'll work on that end. That usually
takes a couple of days, because there'll be a lot of string parts to put down.
We generally make it like a concert orchestra, so there's about thirty string
pieces, and Ella has to do it all. After that it's really experimentation.
Sometimes you hear sounds that instantly you want to put into it, like maybe an
electric piano, or an organ sound, or some sort of dance keyboard sound, or a
drum loop or whatever. Q: So you're layering sound, and if you get a
layer you don't like, you can take it off? Alan: Oh yes; simply put,
it's like recording into a tape recorder. In a studio you have the equal of multiple
recorders - tracks -in one machine or computer, but each individual piece is completely
separate to the next. They are all completely synchronised with each other, so
you can play guitar onto one of them, you can play fiddle onto another of them,
vocal, or anything you want, onto each of the tracks and then you can mix them
whatever way you want.
It means when you actually go to put the song
together everything is there, and you can decide how they'll actually sound, whether
you want more bass in them, or if you want to add effects to them, like an echo,
or a chorus; there's loads of different things you can do.
Then you decide
where they all sit in the mix, what volume you have for each instrument in relation
to others. And you may have different effects coming in and out. So it's very
flexible, you can really do what you want. Here we have a 48-track digital recording
studio, so we can put down 48 separate things. We actually do the string sections
and orchestrations slightly differently, because it's on thirty lines we don't
leave them all separate. Otherwise we would get short on tracks. We record them
separately at first. Generally we'll have maybe six firsts, six seconds, maybe
five violas, and four cellos - depending on what we're doing at the time. Then
I do what is called bouncing. This is where you play back the instruments in a
group and rerecord them to a fewer amount of tracks. We'll take six, make them
sound the way we want them to sound, and then bounce them down to two tracks,
so that you save an extra four tracks. But the whole thing is in a stereo field,
so you can have them all placed, in a semi-circle, between your left and right
speakers. We do that with all the strings, because otherwise you'd be using up
thirty tracks and we can get that down to, say, eight tracks.
As well
as that, we have a midi set-up here. Midi is the musical industry's digital interface,
or data interface, so all the keyboards that you play are synthesized sound, and
every time you play that sound your keyboard will send out midi information, which
basically says which key you pressed, how hard you pressed it, how long you pressed
it for, etc. When you record midi information into a computer and play it back,
all the computer does is play back the keyboard, as you played it.
Therefore,
not only do we have 48 physical tracks for real instruments, but also unlimited
keyboard tracks. That gives us 1500, 2000 sounds, loads of guitars, fiddles, whatever
we need. Most things we can do ourselves. The only reason I get different musicians
in is if we want something specific as I said earlier.
Ella's worked
with other musicians as well, with Gaelforce. When they did the show
at the Royal Albert Hall, Ella played with Steve Hogan, drummer, Rob Malone, bass
player, Maire Breatnach, fiddle, and others… there's various people we want
to get involved with this as well who have played with Ella or myself before,
as well as the singers. At the moment, we've sent out about forty packs
to various record companies and managers; they only went out last week so we won't
hear anything for at least four weeks, but hopefully what will happen is we'll
get a record company behind us, BMG or Sony or someone like that who'll say, "Yes,
we really like this, we'll fund the album." If they did that we could both
concentrate completely on it for six months or whatever it takes, and then we'll
get finished quicker. But if not, we're going to keep doing it, and if people
aren't interested at the end, we'll do it ourselves. Record companies have very
specific guidelines and it is usually just a case of getting it to the right person.
Unfortunately, this can be nearly impossible so a lot comes down to luck, no matter
how good the material is.
More and more people, like Mairead Nesbitt,
put out an independent release - even though it's on Vertical Records, she actually
paid for the whole thing herself, and had started the project before she got the
record company behind her. So it's not something that's going to put us off; if
it's a case that we have to do it ourselves, then we'll do it ourselves. I've
been in the industry a long time, I've worked in and with a lot of record companies,
and I know all aspects of the business.
We're obviously recording it
ourselves. I know a lot of designers. Everything we need on the professional end,
we know the people. So it's only a matter of working to get some of the money
saved, to go and do it. Also, if a major does not take it, Solitaire Records will
be born. Q: Is it the distribution that is the most difficult if you
go it alone? Alan: Basically, getting it into a shop without a distributor
behind you is near impossible. If it's an album you have better odds, though.
A new record company has to put out about 10 releases before they are taken completely
seriously.
I did a charity single recently and we couldn't get a distributor
behind it. I actually just gave them a bit of a hand with it, produced and arranged
it and recorded it and Ella did strings. I gave them a couple of names, colleagues
and people, but they couldn't get distribution for it, so they had to go individually
to shops and see would the shops take it. They actually got the shops to take
a lot of them, but if you have a distributor, it is all centralised. Say
it's HMV for instance - they have shops all around the country, but they have
one buyer who will take it for all their shops. He might take ten copies for each
and as they run out they come back and get more. Without a distributor, it's too
awkward. If shops were to deal with every individual person that put a CD out,
it would be a nightmare. They'd never keep track of anything, so that's the reason
it's hard.
We're really very confident, that Poland or Germany will
sign Ella immediately. Because of her whole background with Gaelforce Dance
she's got quite a following in those two countries. So on the back of that I don't
think there'll be a problem. Over here, in Ireland, Gaelforce isn't really
that well known, because they never really did Ireland. We've sent the first recordings
to the Irish, English, Polish, and German offices of various record companies,
just so if they do start talking to one another they'll all know what they're
talking about! But I think Poland or Germany will be where we'll be signed first.
Then we'll take it from there. Q: What about plans for the future with
the studio? Will it ever need to be larger, or do you prefer to keep things as
they are? Alan: To be honest, a lot of the big major studios are closing
down. It's as simple as that. One of them went recently, simply because if you
go for the bigger premises you have to pay big money. This is our house, so we
don't have to pay rent on it. If you have big premises, you're paying a phenomenal
amount, here in Dublin city. The only reason it will get bigger is if we decide
to move to a bigger house and decide to build a purpose-built external building
for a studio. And if we did that, yes, we will make it bigger. As for equipment,
I'm always updating the equipment, and I have purchased the best from day one,
so that's something that turns over itself anyway. There's a lot of these 'house
studios' at the moment, and that's why it's gone a little bit 'cut-throat' now.
It's almost reached saturation point at this stage. I don't know how many
more the industry can take, but the thing about myself and a very small few is
that we're professional engineers. A lot of the other places are actually just
musicians that have got the equipment, so they don't actually know what they're
doing on a commercial basis. I'm a sound engineer first and foremost, and a producer/arranger,
not a musician, so I specified this whole place on the best equipment I could
get within my budget, and for what I do. A lot of the other places may say they're
a recording studio but they have maybe a computer set-up and a couple of microphones
and a small console, but it's not a pro set-up, whereas this is. This would rival
most of the bigger studios in Dublin. And we don't need the big space for
our set-up. I think I was one of the first to set up in a house situation - there
were only two or three at the time when I did it, but over the last three years
now there's been lot more added. Q: And as a final question, are you
glad you made the decision to go for music and not architecture? Alan:
Yes! I've never looked back. I can't imagine sitting in an office working for
eight hours a day, I just couldn't do it. Maybe I would have got a little bit
of the travel with architecture, but never so much, and the amount of people we've
met, and the response we've had from people… you know, we have got hundreds
of friends in various different countries, from people we've met at shows to people
we've worked with in various companies, and it's just amazing to have the opportunity
to do something like this. I think we're very lucky. And as far as I'm
concerned it's only starting really. Ella's been on the road for three years,
I've only been constantly on the road two years, even though I've done other tours
- I used to do Irish folk festival tours in Germany and stuff like that, but they
would be three weeks here and a three weeks there, and not really very many of
them because I was concentrating on the studio. But I think our goal, for the
next couple of months, is to get as much of the album finished as possible and
hopefully get backing. The next tour that we want to go out on will be Ella's
tour! So hopefully by this time next year we'll be touring the globe with the
Ella Haluk band, to promote the album 'Ellavation'!
Interview: Ann
Keller
Feature: Bernadette
Price
Header, Editing: Louise Owen
Original Web Design: Alexander
Servas
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