At Abbey Road

What can I say – I’m starstruck every single time I walk through the doors of Abbey Road Studios. That makes it sound like it’s a frequent occurrence, but I’ve only been there about a handful of times to watch Chris work. When he’s working in London, it’s either at Abbey Road or Air Lyndhurst Studios. During this particular project, they recorded in both studios over the course of a month, but during the time I was there, they were at Abbey Road. 

I can’t say much about the particular project Chris was working on yet, as he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and while it would probably be OK for me to tell you a little bit about the project, I’d rather be on the safe side and say nothing specific at the moment – when the film comes out I will tell all! But I can tell you that the composer Chris works with most often is just an incredible person who always treats me with such warmth and kindness. The entire team always makes me feel welcome. I’m so glad Chris works with these people. 

When I visit I usually sit on one of the two couches in the control room of Studio One, trying to be very still and very quiet.  Studio One is the biggest of the studios at Abbey Road, so it is the one used for large orchestral recordings. Studio Two is the most famous of the studios, and it is where The Beatles recorded.

Just like a film script is filmed scene by scene, the movie score is also recorded scene by scene. There are computer monitors in the control booth so that the composer can see the scene while the orchestra plays the music for that scene. Which means that I got to watch the scenes too. It really was thrilling. Which is why I tried to make myself very small and quiet and not piss anybody off, lol. 

Because of Covid, they had to make a lot of adjustments to their usual routine. They never had a full orchestra in the studio at one time the way they usually would. Instead they would have a day or two with just strings, and then a day or two with just brass, and so on – which made it possible to have social distancing in place, and which was the reason the score took nearly a month to record instead of the usual 10 days or so. When they record a choir they usually would have between 60 and 80 singers – for this project they had 20, and just recorded them several times over again to make it sound like a full-sized choir. Everyone involved in the recording also had to be tested for Covid every three days. Usually Chris sits with his equipment in the control booth, but for this film he had to work on a table behind the conductor’s stand. 

During this trip I saw part of a session with strings on Saturday (sitting in the control booth) and part of a session with brass on Sunday (sitting with Chris in the studio with the musicians). Although it was cool watching snippets of the movie before anyone else in the world did (except for the thousands of people working on the film, lol), what I loved the most about the entire experience was actually being in the room with world-class musicians, watching them work and hearing them create music with the type of effortlessness and grace that only comes with an entire lifetime of hard work and practice. 

Next up…Market Day!

Michelle xoxo