This video shot by the Grand Studios in 2016 replaces our older one which is still available at the bottom of this page.
We dropped in to The Grand Studios in Clitheroe, Lancashire (UK) recently and didn't expect a recording studio in rural Lancashire to be quite so posh and magnificent. It's a bit like something that you'd find in a very expensive part of London. Actually, Clitheroe is a wonderful town with loads of history and is a surprising expensive part of the UK to live but to record, it's very affordable!
The building is in the centre of town in a converted cinema and obviously a lot of money has been spent turning it in to a modern recording studio with SSL AWS 900 console and rather nice PMC monitors plus it's also a live venue where bands can perform and have their gigs recorded. The performance space can also be used as another large live area to track in and adds hugely to the versatility of the studio. Tie lines are running throughout the building so there are no limitations on finding a space that sounds right for your instrument.
The recording spaces are very good offering plenty of acoustic variety and isolation and the control room is rather spacious and can easily hold a band for playbacks and hanging out without getting under the feet of the engineer. The monitoring is excellent and the microphone selection on offer is good.
We met up with house engineers Simon Stride and Tom Peters and pointed the camera at them asking about the studios, the kinds of bands that work at The Grand and why they've become so popular, many of the bookings are repeat. The thing that is most obvious is the passion for recording music and making great sounding records at The Grand. The team is very friendly and where else outside of a £1,000 a day studio do you get a swanky bar and stage as part of the package?
Simon Stride and Tom Peters are both in-house recording engineers at The Grand. We were really keen to get more inside information on the studios and get a feel for their approach to making music sound great. We hope that you enjoy the video and pay them a visit, they make a great cup of tea :-)
More on the engineer
Tom Peters
Tom joined The Grand in 2011 from Liverpool University. He started out recording his own bands and is on hand in the studio to engineer plus looks after general running of the studio, handling all bookings and inquiries.
Visit The Grand Studios website for more information
Archive video shot with Simon Stride who has since left and a much younger Tom Peters
Simon Stride has since left. Simon grew up outside Oxford and after several years of playing in bands his passion for recording led to becoming engineer at NGM studios in Bristol before moving to the North West and The Grand. He has worked with bands from The Jam, Boomtown Rats, The Blockheads and Wishbone Ash. He had design and specification input to the The Grand Studio and had been the in house engineer since it’s opening in 2008 until about 2014 with Tom Peters taking over following his departure.