Sound & Motion Studios Biggest Upgrade, like, EVER

Hi all, here's some info on our most ambitious upgrade since we opened for business late 2002.

Those of you who've visited the studio before will be familiar with the old layout, with the mastering room and main live room on the ground floor and the main control room on the middle floor connected by camera. This was a requirement of the order in which we took over the various floors of the building, but after Fuzzy's recent adventures in studios in America and England, he decided it was time for a change—and the whole crew came up with a killer design, with Matt being responsible for the cool plan on the top of this blog entry (one of many) and Carel designing a new electrical and power system. After many redesigns, meetings and comparison's to what Fuzz had seen abroad, Matt, Carel, Jenna and Koos all had a mud wrestling match and settled on the design you see here.

WHY THE CHANGE?

There are many ways to record a band, but the one that's always proved very successful in the history of the art has been having the whole band, all togther at once, PERFORMING together. Sure, there will be overdubs, layered additional parts and drop-ins, but the ability to capture the energy of that initital performance is what's made so many great songs.

These changes are being made specifically with this in mind. With a substantially bigger live room, a new “dead booth” with a decent high ceiling, and a control room big enough to eat our 4-seater Coricraft couch, we reckon these changes will have a huge impact on our overall sound—and of course our baby grand piano isn't quite so cramped anymore!

THE STORY SO FAR

We naturally called on the services of Toni Van Vuuren of SMF designs to oversee the construction as they've been with us from the beginning and were involved in both the CT and Joburg branches. (www.smfdesigns.co.za)

After all the planning was done it meant moving a few of the studios round. Mainly the mastering room was moved to Paul Ressel's old studio next to our cinema, since the Humanizer now lives in the UK.

After clearing out the White Room (no White Room Sessions till March!!) we were ready to build, thankfull for the other studios in the complex so business could go on more or less as usual.

We're about halfway through the overall, which is scheduled to be complete for the 1st week of March, and we're making some great progress! Check out some of these pics and pop back again soon for updates!