As work on our second album continues, the big picture is starting to unfold. After finishing all work on drums and bass, and being half way through vocal recordings, we took one sunny Saturday noon in order to record a string quartet. This was to be our greatest challenge yet.

 If you've been following our demo recordings, you've probably heard the string quartet on An Essence Recycled  Recipe For Eternity and Replacing People. Naturally, what appears on the demo was not recorded but rather placed with the use of samples. Good samples, but samples nonetheless. Recording a quartet is a different story altogether.

 Since none of us are actually classically trained, it was a bit difficult to speak music with this group of four classical musicians. Mainly, the fact that we provided them with music sheet as accurate and detailed as the Cubase feature allowed us to (and with the assistance of the quartet's cellist, Neta Cohen-Shani) suddenly became obsolete when one of the players asked us questions about the notes, and our rock musician note reading skills made it difficult for us to answer.

 The session lasted four hours, for a total of two songs. Since the entire quartet needs to be recorded together (for reasons of resonance etc.) the songs had to be played over and over and over, until we were sure we have enough good takes to use. This was also done in order to achieve the best performance, as the stringers were all playing their parts prima vista. And there were some pretty complicated parts, indeed. 

 Meanwhile, we carry on with the recording of vocals. The progress until this point has been quite satisfactory. Although we've hit a few walls, some that have actually drove us into rewriting certain lyrics, but overall we're making good time. With two more vocal sessions left (I hope), all that remains is recording some guitars and we're pretty much done. Not too bad!

Check out our Facebook group for more photos of this exhausting yet satisfying event.