Recording other bands in my studio - PART 1

I remember that last year I wanted to close my studio down because I couldn't organize myself, and also I couldn't find other bands to record there. It was a nasty period of my life, and I've lost faith in having such a studio because anyone can record his song with just a pair of microphones, a soundcard and some time..

At that point one band asked me to record an info of their 4 songs before recording their album.

I thought, "What the hell, why not - before burning down the whole studio..."

Turned out that it was an awesome night and I had a lot of fun with them, and the mixes turned out great because I wasn't obsessed with clarity and stability, but just with the character of the songs.

Even tho' it was a small job and no-one would hear the product, that band managed to get me another psychodelic-singer-songwriter duo to record their song at my place..

When those guys came in I realized that my messed up / basement / room / studio was actually perfect for that type of projects.
They played two electric guitars and sang sort of unison, and the whole song was low tempo, reverb filled, atmospheric sort of stuff. The only downside to all of that was that they put their reverbs really hard on their signal, so I couldn't reduce it afterwards. Which ended up in quite a muddy and blurry recording. But thanfully the song is beautiful, so it's not a big problem.

It was really easy to work on that type of song, where you can play around with effects, and add as much layers as you want. I ended up playing bass at that song, and from there on the guys were hooked on my studio :D. I only wished that I didn't crush the song so much in the mastering process, but the point is still there..

~the guy in the back kept repeating "who's the vegan now, bitch?"~

When people act like crazy in your space you realize that the point of every session is to have fun and keep everybody natural and relaxed, that's when the best stuff comes out :)

Two months later they came back with another song. This time they were on classical guitars.
This was a song whose lyrics were transcribed from a eulogy for the guys grandfather who died a couple of years back. But the thing that happened during those 3 days of recording was that his grandmother died. It wasn't suddenly but i

The thing that really got to me was the fact that the guy was at such peace, and just wanted even more to record the song and make it capture the whole feeling of transcending into another state. It was really amazing, and I was really struck by that, and really satisfied with the fact that some people take music seriously as a whole part of their life storytelling.

The whole song turned out great, I was really happy with the whole feeling. I actually made one of my favourite bass lines on that song - i think it made the whole song move forward a bit. As you can hear the low-end is still cluttered and full, but the feeling of the song is blue-ish with some brightspots. It sounds like a dawn - which is good.

I think the second song is made much better mixing-wise, there is much more body in the instruments and everything is sort of soft. But I guess that the next song is gonna be even better :)

CONCLUSION:
I think that even if you don't make the technically best mix in the world, If the people find their voice and poetics in your space, you can produce art that you would never do so good in a formal studio environment. I'm really happy with the fact that the guys felt that when recording with me, and are sure that they want to record other songs with me. And with every song you polish the style more and more.