My recording experience stretches back over 40 years. I made my first profesional recording in 1964 for a local folk duo who wanted a tape so they could enter the BBC folk singer's contest. I was paid fourteen shillings (70p in today's money). From then on I recorded many friends in local bands and continued at college, recording bands for the weekly university programme on BBC Radio Nottingham. At this point everything was mixed live and recorded in mono with no overdubs.
For many years I did on location demo recordings for local bands. As I was working at the time, in what little spare time I had, I made free demo recordings for bands that had not yet made the big time. I started with a two track reel to reel recorder and later upgraded to four track, then an eight track analogue set up that fitted in the back of my car. I took this to wherever the band normaly practiced - a village hall, front bedroom (I've even recorded in a factory) - set it up and in an evening we could usually get down four good tracks with overdubs.
Back home I remixed to stereo, add a few effects and made the band a cassette copy. Why did I do it? - simple, I hoped to be rich one day when they were. You see they got the cassette but I kept the master tape and I retained the copyright to the original recordings (not the songs just the recording of them). Then, when they were incredibly famous I would have the master tapes from one of their earliest recordings which I could sell for an obscene amount of cash.
I then upgraded to a completely digital set up consisting of an AKAI DPS12 digital personal studio, a Sony PCM R300 DAT recorder and a Philips CDR870 stand alone CD recorder. Even though this little lot cost me over two grand I still did free demos - but now the band got its demo on CD. As time passed the DAT and the stand alone CDR recorder began to gather dust and the DPS12 was replaced with a pair of AKAI DPS16 digital workstations giving me up to 32 recorded tracks.
I have recorded lots of local bands over the years. Many made the demo so they could get more gigs or gigs at better venues - some sent copies to record companies hoping to get a recording contract. Several had their demos broadcast by local and even national radio stations. I have also recorded some choral and classical works, and the odd musical.
Needless to say, not one of the bands I recorded has yet made the big time but I still have the master tapes just in case. Now have retired I am lucky enough to have a large outbuilding (24ft by 12ft) as a permanent studio which my neighbour Bob and I recently refurbished. We insulated the roof and covered it in plasterboard so it will be warm enough to use through the winter. There are some pictures of the studio at the bottom of this page.
I still record demos and I still do them for free but the last couple of years have been spent mainly working with my next door neighbour Bob who is a Country & Western singer/songwriter. We have just completed his third album, all mastered on my trusty DPS16 and he already has 20 songs ready for the fourth.
For information on some of the bands recorded by Ruff Records click here
The original RuffRecords site (about ten years old now) can be found here.
You can contact me here
This page was last updated in November 2005.
