| - Lots of bands are now booking much longer sessions to record their music in our 8-track recording studio. We've had bands knocking out whole albums, recorded live in a long weekend over 18-20 hours for as little as £300 in total, including ALL costs! - We've also had a big increase in bands looking to book our new hugely discounted "Saver Sessions" rehearsal sessions. Book x12 weeks in a row during the daytime and pay as little as £29.59 for a 4 hour session, including ALL equipment (snare and cymbals included too) and with storage of instruments included as well.
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Our stripped down 8-track recording facilities have been very popular with bands over the last few months. Here's a video demonstration to show what you can expect in these sessions. The band in the video is the wonderful Cody Jr., and they were able to knock out 5 songs in just over 4 hours, completely live, with about 7 takes of each song. We've muted/solo'd various channels throughout the video to demonstrate what the raw, unedited stem tracks would sound like, and to show you what level of seperation is possible in these sessions. Remember, these are the unedited stem tracks, and have not had EQ, compression or other effects added to them. This is the starting point that bands get to work from at the mixing stage.
https://www.ballystudios.co.uk/recording
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Record a whole album from as little as £300?!? |
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Yep, that's what many bands have been doing here over the last 18 months! 😃 |
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A super simple recording format of only 8 tracks, enough to record the following elements of the band on their own track:
1 - Bass drum
2- Snare Drum
3 - Drumkit overhead left
4 - Drumkit overhead right 5 - Bass Guitar
6 - Rhythm Guitar/Keys
7 - Lead Guitar
8 - Lead Vocals
Many of the bands that have recorded with us have then overdubbed extra guitar tracks, vocals, percussion or other instruments on top of that, or just kept it with the above recording format. While it may seem very primitive by modern standards, albums such as The White Stripes "Elephant", Wing's "Band On The Run", and the early albums by bands as diverse as Elton John, Lou Reed, David Bowie, John Lennon, Metallica, Beck, Crosby, Stills & Nash and numerous other artists were all completed on an 8-track recorder. Less setting up, less issues with mixing, and so long as you're a well rehearsed band, there's no reason that you can't record your music on Friday-Sunday, mix it during the week, and release it the following weekend.
We set up the equipment for you, and then we leave you to record yourself throughout the sessions, without an additional sound engineer being present, which allows you to save a huge amount of money. We provide you with EVERYTHING that you need, including showing you how to use all of the equipment, and helping to prepare for the sessions. We charge a flat rate of £50 to hire all of the equipment for the entire recording session, no matter how long it is, and we set it up, pack it down and show you how everything works, and then you pay the usual rehearsal session rate after that. If you record over multiple days and book the whole day then you can leave everything set up overnight, and still you pay the usual rehearsal rates for the duration of your sessions. The recording facilities hit the sweet spot of being sophisticated enough to get a huge amount of control over how the music sounds, whilst not being too complicated that you start to focus on the technical issues, as opposed to the music itself. 🥁🎸🎤🎹
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Mini Documentary about the recording process. |
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We've also made a mini documentary about how the whole recording process comes together, with mobile phone footage and rudimentary editing software that took us less than 7 hours in total to put together, including doing the subtitles. We will be releasing a more sophisticated version of the documentary at a later date, but we decided to release this one, in keeping with what the whole ethos of what the 8 track recorder is about. It's not perfect, but it gets the point across.
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We've spoken to many bands who tell us that over the years they were in bands that played together for years, but they never got around to recording their music. There was always a factor that stopped them; they had 8 songs, but they wanted to wait until they had 12. They had £500 saved up to do it, enough for a basic recording, but they wanted to wait until they had more money so that they could go to a studio with more options. The songs sounded good, but they wanted to wait until they sounded perfect. As a result, they never made those recordings.
Well, if the last few years has taught us anything, it's that nothing is certain, and we shouldn't be waiting for things to be perfect before making the commitment to take that next step. In so many cases, we've spoken to bands who were in that situation, that never got to record their music because the circumstances were never "perfect" for them. Now, 30 years, later they wish that they had done so, so that they could at least have a permanent record of what was one of the best times in their lives.
That is what our 8-track recorder will hope to achieve. If it's the only recording your band ever makes, for £75 each for a 4-piece band you'll be forever grateful that you have a record of such an important period in your life. If you do go on to do recording sessions over a much longer period of time, in a much more sophisticated studio, then these recordings will be the perfect pre-production for that. Why make mistakes when paying £80+ per hour when you can learn the same lessons at a fraction of the price?
We're very happy to say that we've had bands book a recording session with us for the band to make a basic recording to send to their producer as a rough guide for what they wanted to do in future recording sessions, who later decided to reclaim the creative control of the band and use those recordings for the final album.
Interested? There's more information here: https://www.ballystudios.co.uk/recording
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Cost of Living Money Saving Specials. |
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The increase in the cost of living has been hitting everyone hard, but especially bands that are playing grassroots music venues, many of which have been closing down in huge numbers over the last few years. Whereas years ago it was possible to catch an unsigned band in a local music venue for £5-£7, with a few £3-£4 pints, now it's rare you'll find tickets for less than £10 and pints for less than £6-£8, making it much harder to attract people to come to your gigs. Bands that were able to bring 30-50 people to a gig a few years ago are now lucky to be able to attract 15-20. A £10 CD sold directly to people who did attend your gigs would have provided a good £8 in clean profit, but nowadays most fans just stream a band's music, with bands receiving no money at all until they hit 1000 plays of each song. Make no mistake, these are hard times for bands in the music industry.
This is why we have launched the Bally Studios saver sessions, to balance the reduced income that bands have, with the opportunity to save on their rehearsal costs. |
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Bally Studio Saver Sessions. |
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Here's the deal:
- Book x12 weeks of rehearsals in a 12 consecutive weeks, in the same slot each week, and you'll only pay:
£27.50 for 4 hours in Studio 3 (our smallest studio.)
£31.50 for 4 hours in Studio 2 (our biggest Studio.)
No extra fees are added, all equipment is included in your session price, and you can also store your instruments for free at the studios during those 12 weeks if you wish, for no extra fees. It has the benefits of the cheap sessions that a band-share would have, while retaining the advantages of the standard sessions, with the studio being fully cleaned before the session, all of the backline equipment being well maintained, and with the equipment being set up for you by our staff members, who will be on call for you should you need any help in your sessions.
Here are the slots that we have available, x10 slots per week, in x2 different studios, meaning we have enough space for 20 bands a week to get a cheap session. |
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£27.50 for 4 hours in Studio 3. (Our smallest studio.)
£31.50 for 4 hours in Studio 2. (Our biggest Studio.)
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To confirm, no extra fees are added, all equipment is included in your session price, and you can also store your instruments for free at the studios during those 12 weeks if you wish. It has the benefits of the cheap sessions that a band-share would have, while retaining the advantages of a standard rehearsal session.
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How can we offer these sessions for such a discounted rate? |
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As you'll expect, in order to get these cheap, cheap prices (discounted by nearly 50% compared to standard sessions,) there's a few hoops that you'll need to jump through, which we're very upfront about. Here are those terms and conditions. 🙂
- All sessions need to be paid in advance, for the 12 weeks, which works out to be:
£330 for 12 sessions in the small studio. (£82.50 per member, for 12 weeks of sessions, or just £6.87 per band member, per 4 hour session)
£378 for 12 sessions in the biggest studio.(£94.50 per member, for 12 weeks of sessions, or just £7.87 per band member, per 4 hour session)
(Both figures assume a band with x4 band members)
- The sessions need to be booked in the same slot each week.
- Sessions take place over 12 consecutive weeks, no breaks.
- No cancellations permitted for any of these sessions, although you are free to give your session to another band if you wish, or split the bookings with other bands.
- We can only confirm these sessions once we have x2 bands booking for the same timeslots, on the same day each week, in order to enable us to generate enough money to pay our staff to be present for these sessions. When one band wants to book, they are able to make a provincial booking, and that is only confirmed when we are able to find a second band that wants the same slot on the same day for the entire run of bookings. Having only one band on such a reduced rate means that we can't generate enough income to pay our staff costs, so we need x2 bands in at the same time to achieve that. if you help us cover our costs, we'll help you lower your costs. 😉 |
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These sessions would be perfect for: |
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- Bands that want a cheap session with ALL of the backline equipment that they need included, as standard.
- Bands that are available in the weekday daytime, that want a studio that is clean, where everything works and is well maintained, and where if there are any issues there is a member of staff on hand to resolve those issues for you. No need to be calling around 5 or 6 other bands as part of a band share to work out what slots you can get, and no need for you to waste your precious rehearsal time in fixing problems that come up in your session. You get the benefits of booking a regular rehearsal session, at a cheaper price by booking in bulk.
- Record labels that want to book sessions for multiple bands, where they can book multiple slots and send different bands to each slot.
- Bands that require free storage for their instruments, especially for bands that don't have access to their own vehicle, or that don't have the space at home to store their band's gear. (Note, this is for guitars only, not amplifiers, which we are able to provide for free.) |
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A few years back we got x100 T-shirts printed up in various colours and sizes, and now we're down to our final 10 t-shirts. They are still available for a bargain price of £6 in the Bally Studios shop, they're 100% cotton, and made in the UK. Pop into the office and grab one for yourself.
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Coming Soon!
Buy your Band Button Badges at Bally - £5 for 20.
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We are also purchasing a new professional button badge maker, so that we can start to offer custom band button badges and bottle openers to the bands that come to us for as little as £5 for 20. You bring your design in, and we can do the rest. 🙂 They'll be to the same quality as these ones, below, and we hope to launch this new service very soon. No more needing to order 100's of badges at the same time to get cheap rates, now you can get them from as little as 25p each, in small manageable batches, with no postage fees, and no waiting 4-6 weeks for the order to be processed. Simply send in your artwork before your rehearsal session, and collect them at the end of the session.
As has been the case for the last 15 years, the Bally Badges are available for bands to take, free of charge. We will also soon be getting a new supply of Bally Bottle openers as well, for which the same will apply. |
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