How has the process of booking and recording at Electrical Audio changed since the pandemic began?
1Yay, the forum's back! This thread exists to encourage folks to book the studio using the studio's current best practices.
Re: How has the process of booking and recording at Electrical Audio changed since the pandemic began?
2The booking process has changed namely in that we leave a full day after/ in between each session to allow for necessary cleaning and disinfection. So there are self-imposed gaps in our schedule that put a kind of ceiling on how many sessions we can do, and unfortunately kinda penalize us for booking shorter sessions. We disinfect everything anyone has touched in the course of a session- every patch cable, mic cable, stand, switch/ fader/ button on the console and outboard, drum stand, etc. etc. so it's a significant amount of work. Moreover, we don't have interns, so it's staff doing all this work. We apprise everyone booking time of our protocols, which transitions into how recording is different...
We require masks in the studio at all times, with the exception that singers and mouth-instrument players can unmask in a room alone once everyone has passed through, and they must re-mask when they are not actively singing or playing. We also need to spot-disinfect if people in a band share a house guitar, headphones (we try not to allow this by making sure everyone has a dedicated pair), etc. We run the fans in our HVAC systems constantly to keep airflow moving, including in our bathrooms, per public health recommendations.
Eating and drinking is where there is a gap or blind spot in a lot of folks' caution with transmission. In our protocols, we encourage everyone to eat separately rather than having a meal together in a shared space, and to keep food and drink out of common areas. As we know, Covid does aerosol-ize, so even if you're sipping/ snacking alone in a room alone, if there were others in the room a few minutes ago- not to mention if there are people currently in the room with you- there is transmission risk, and extra since droplets can spread not only through respiratory transmission, but through transmission to others' food and drink.
At this point, most everyone wants to start relaxing about transmission, and we find ourselves in the position of having to restate our protocols regularly, and graciously tell people we haven't started peeling back the protocols yet. We get it- we want to make you all the fluffy coffees, have a freewheeling studio hang, and eat pizza together for lunch/ dinner, we want to book the 30-piece jazz orchestra and the unmasked video shoot because we need the dang money! And at this point at least some portion of most groups is at least partially vaccinated. But we aren't there yet.
We require masks in the studio at all times, with the exception that singers and mouth-instrument players can unmask in a room alone once everyone has passed through, and they must re-mask when they are not actively singing or playing. We also need to spot-disinfect if people in a band share a house guitar, headphones (we try not to allow this by making sure everyone has a dedicated pair), etc. We run the fans in our HVAC systems constantly to keep airflow moving, including in our bathrooms, per public health recommendations.
Eating and drinking is where there is a gap or blind spot in a lot of folks' caution with transmission. In our protocols, we encourage everyone to eat separately rather than having a meal together in a shared space, and to keep food and drink out of common areas. As we know, Covid does aerosol-ize, so even if you're sipping/ snacking alone in a room alone, if there were others in the room a few minutes ago- not to mention if there are people currently in the room with you- there is transmission risk, and extra since droplets can spread not only through respiratory transmission, but through transmission to others' food and drink.
At this point, most everyone wants to start relaxing about transmission, and we find ourselves in the position of having to restate our protocols regularly, and graciously tell people we haven't started peeling back the protocols yet. We get it- we want to make you all the fluffy coffees, have a freewheeling studio hang, and eat pizza together for lunch/ dinner, we want to book the 30-piece jazz orchestra and the unmasked video shoot because we need the dang money! And at this point at least some portion of most groups is at least partially vaccinated. But we aren't there yet.
Re: How has the process of booking and recording at Electrical Audio changed since the pandemic began?
3I should point out that bands/clients have been wonderfully helpful and compliant during all this ordeal. We've experienced essentially no resistance to doing things in a safe and careful manner, which I think reflects a generally aware and cooperative attitude in the music community. It's been heartening especially when the media is full of anecdotes of assholes being antagonistic to masking, distancing, lockdowns and other measures necessitated by the global pandemic. We've seen essentially none of that here and I'm grateful.
My life intersects with a lot of different subcultures, and some of them are less careful than others. Poker players, for example, were more reluctant to adopt precautions than musicians, and so many more of my poker player acquaintances got the disease than my musician friends. As per usual, the rockers get it right.
My life intersects with a lot of different subcultures, and some of them are less careful than others. Poker players, for example, were more reluctant to adopt precautions than musicians, and so many more of my poker player acquaintances got the disease than my musician friends. As per usual, the rockers get it right.