Recording Studio Middlewich Cheshire
A Creative Space for Musicians
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Services

Recording Studio in Middlewich, Cheshire close to the M6 - easily reached from Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. The studio boasts a wealth of high quality equipment including a Solid State Logic mixing console and a fully maintained Grand Piano in a spacious live room with a nice high ceiling. An ideal place to record or film showreels, live bands or track in a relaxed, professional environment. Please get in touch if you have a project that you would like us to produce...

Recording

We are offering both recording and video solutions for a variety of projects. Simple showreel projects can be completed in a day, you can leave the studio with a finished video - mixed, mastered and edited. For bigger projects we can involve our team of professional engineers, producers and videographers. Prices start at £300 per day including a sound engineer. The studio's C7 Grand Piano offers a sound unattainable in many facilities.

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Mixing

Get your mix to sound great - not just in the studio, but everywhere! The highest quality ATC SCM 25 mkii monitors ensure that the balance of mixes can be properly judged. Mixes can be summed in analogue using the studios incredible SSL Console and outboard. Mixes are outputted to professional standards, either ready to be mastered elsewhere or can be mastered in-house to the levels required for either streaming services, YouTube or CD.

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Full Production

Dave can take your songs and turn them into full arrangements using a combination of programmed sounds and session musicians (mostly Dave!). The studio has lots of virtual instruments, including Native Instruments Komplete and Maschine. If you need professional acoustic piano, drums, brass, strings, guitars, bass or anything else on your track - Dave is friends with an enormous network of the UK's top session players.

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Portfolio


Here is a small selection of the work we've already done...

Dean Stockdale Quartet

Dean Stockdale

Live in the Studio

Dave Speakman

Dave Speakman

Dave's Music

Tokyo Sauce

Tokyo Sauce

Live in the Studio

Ben Williams

Ben Williams

Piano Duo

Hot Jazz Biscuits

Hot Jazz Biscuits

Live in the Studio

Nathan

Nathan Fairless

Showreel

Studio Spec

If you want a tour of the facility - please get in touch. The studio is based around a Solid State Logic XL-Desk with boutique point-to-point handwired Neve 1073 and Classic API Preamps (AML clones - better than current AMS versions) and mastering quality digital converters from Focusrite Pro (RED). Other flavour preamps are from SSL, AEA, Focusrite and Universal Audio. The contemporary hybrid studio environment means that you aren't locked into a particular sound - we use the right tools to fit the genre and style of your music. With 32 inputs and the ability to do up to 8 individual headphone mixes the studio is ideal for recording anything from a solo vocalist to 8 piece bands. The large live room with amazing quality in house instruments and additional break out spaces allows bands to record live, capturing a vibe often lacking in studio recordings. We pride ourselves on having a fast turnaround of projects; you won't be waiting around for ages waiting to hear your mixes. Sessions are run in a relaxed, productive way; equipment that can be set up prior to the session will be, removing the familiar frustration of wasted time and energy often associated with the recording process. The studio has a wide variety of instruments and amplifiers including:

  • Grand Piano

    Keys

    Yamaha C7 Concert Grand Piano
    Native Instruments Maschine,
    Elektron Digitakt II,
    Akai MPK, Arturia MicroFreak,
    Fender Rhodes (available on request)

  • Guitars

    Guitar & Bass

    There are numerous guitars at the studio including; Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, Martin 00028, Taylor 410, Fender Jazz Bass and many more..!

  • Guitar Amps

    Amplifiers

    2 x hand-wired boutique Gartone guitar amplifiers, Marshall Plexi, 70s Fender Champ, 5E3, Fender Twin Amp, Analogman King of Tone, Timmy, Klone, Big Sky + loads more

  • Drum Kit

    Drum Kits

    60s Ludwig (22", 16", 12"). Ludwig Supraphonic LM402 Snare 14 x 6.5. Zildjian K Custom cymbals. Other kits are available on request...

  • Fender Rhodes

    Software

    Pro Tools, Logic, Sibelius, Adobe CC.
    Universal Audio, FabFilter, Waves, Eventide, Native Instruments Komplete, Melodyne, SoundToys and Slate Digital.

Microphones

The studio has all the usual industry standard microphones you would expect to see;
Neumann KM184 x 2, Neumann U87, AEA R88, Coles 4038 x 2, Royer R-121, AKG D112, AKG C414XLS x 2, AKG 414eb, Shure SM57 x 3, Shure SM58 x 3, Shure Beta 58a, Shure Beta 57a, Shure Beta 52a, Oktavia 012 x 2, Rode K2, Rode NT 5 x 2, Rode SmartLav+, Rode Videomic NTG, Groove Tube GT67, Groove Tube GT44 x 2, Telefunken M60 x 2, Telefunken M82, Telefunken M80-SH, Telefunken M81-SH x 3, Sennheiser MD421-n x 2, Sennheiser e906, Sennheiser MD441-n, Sennheiser 935, Sennheiser 945.

Preamps/Outboard

Solid State Logic XL-Desk (32 Inputs at Mixdown), 8 X AML (Neve) 1073 Preamps, 2 x Classic API VP28 Preamps, 2 x AEA RPQ2 Ribbon Preamps, Focusrite RED 8Pre Converter, 8 x SSL VHD Preamps (on the console), 4 x UAD 4710d, Purple Audio MC77 (1176 FET Compressor), Audio-Scape LA2A Optical Compressor, 2 x Empirical Labs Distressor, Warm Audio WA2A Optical Compressor, 8 x SSL E EQ, 2 x API 560, 2 x Classic API BT50 (550a), DBX 560a, DBX De-esser, API 529 (2500 Compressor), SSL G Series Bus Compressor, SSL SiX Mixer, Rupert Neve Designs 542 x 2 Hardware Tape Emulator, Avid S1 Control Surface.

Monitoring

ATC SCM25 mkii, Dynaudio BM7, Sennheiser HD660, Sennheiser HD280 x 4, Beyerdynamic DT100 x 2.

Meet Dave Speakman...

Dave has worked as a session guitarist and educator for the last 20 years. Working as a musician has taken Dave all over Europe and given him the delight of playing live on BBC radio and in many of the UK's best jazz clubs, hotels, restaurants, festivals, theatres and recording studios. Dave's career has seen him performing with The Hot Jazz Biscuits, The Manytones, Hayla and Andy Prior along with members of The Kooks, Go Go Penguin, The Cinematic Orchestra, Lamb and Aim. Dave's guitar work can be heard on many TV programmes as a session guitarist for prolific composers Vedhall (BBC, Broken, Race Across the World etc). Dave also teaches guitar at Manchester Metropolitan University and works on the team at Edge Studios as a sound engineer.

Working as a session musician has gradually changed, requiring musicians to do more and more recording themselves. Dave's work has naturally progressed in this direction and he began working as a freelance sound engineer in 2013, recording and producing many of the bands and artists he already toured with. Dave’s background as a musician is a major asset as a producer/engineer, particularly if you need string arrangements, extra guitar/bass parts, percussion or programmed tracks. In 2019 Dave took on premises for his own recording studio. Dave's extensive and continual training includes a BA (hons) in Popular Music and Recording from Salford University, an Advanced Diploma in Studio Production and Mastering from SSR and Pro Tools 210M Operator from Avid.
Pro Tools Operator

Dave Speakman

Studio Owner

Contact Us

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Free PDFs

Here are the sheets for Dave's YouTube beginner guitar course...