The HMS Falcon, the 18th-century English Navy group I belong to, had decided to record a CD of sea shanties (with a couple of 18c. tavern songs thrown into the mix).

So this weekend, Severin and I we loaded up my car with audio equipment and up to Jacksonville we went. We recorded in the scene shop of the Alhambra Dinner Theatre, where one of our members works. Being located in a warehouse, two problems immediately presented themselves: the place was extremely "live", acoustically speaking, and there was no air conditioning.

The first problem was easy enough to fix. There were plenty of flats available, so we arranged them to direct the reflected sound away from the microphones, which cleaned things up to an amazing degree. It wasn't as good as acoustic foam baffles, obviously, but it was actually very effective.

The second problem was just one we had to live with. Normally, the scene shop runs several big industrial fans to keep things cool, but obviously we couldn't do that while we were recording. So we sweated.

Matt, one of our two shantymen, handed out a thick sheaf of paper, consisting of the lyrics to each song. His goal, which we only learned later, was to record enough songs to cut two CDs, an ambitious project — probably a bit too ambitious.

Anyway, I requested that we get at least two good takes of each song, which turned out to be a fortunate decision; given that we sing these songs only a handful of times a year, by the second take, people were actually remembering them well enough for the songs to sound good.

I have to say, I was impressed by the fortitude of the Falcons, and especially by that of Matt and Ed (our other shantyman). We spent nearly ten hours singing in the stifling heat, and everyone remained cheerful and energetic, and everyone kept singing with strong voices until the end.

At one point, the heat got to my computer — it sped up the fan to the point where the microphones were picking it up, despite having heavy wool blankets between the computer and the microphones to reduce the sound. A few minutes in the small air-conditioned office with the cover off helped greatly.

All in all, the guys sounded pretty good. As I was running the equipment, I didn't really get a chance to sing, but through the magic of multitracking software, I can easily rectify that.

Now for the hard part: mixing and mastering.