Tony O'Connor (composer) - Composing and Recording

Composing and Recording

An independent artist, O'Connor recorded all of his music in his own recording studio. Situated on a 42 acre rainforest property called "Hidden Forest" (also the name of an album and a song) on the Blackall Range in Queensland, O'Connor described it as "a most inspiring place to live and work", as the studio itself was positioned above the trees, where "...birdsongs fill the daytime... in winter a magical mist floods through the forest and surrounds the house. At night, the sounds are amazing... owls echo across the gorge, crickets and frogs lull us to sleep every evening." O'Connor also recorded as he wrote, with most of his pieces beginning on the guitar or the piano and advancing from there. O'Connor wrote, or began writing, most of his pieces in the early morning, saying "...in the wee hours of the morning... I begin to hear/feel a melody and I simply cannot stop myself from sitting at the piano or picking up a guitar and trying to capture it... before it leaves."

O'Connor considered himself a guitarist more than anything else, claiming that many of his songs would begin on a guitar, even if there was no guitar in the final recording. He played a range of different guitars including 6-string steel string guitars, classical guitars and 12-string guitars. O'Connor mainly played Taylor Guitars, although he claimed that his favourite guitar was a hand-made Mirabook, built for him by Gary Albrecht, admitting, however, that he favoured a 'very special' Takamine Guitars Sante Fe classical. O'Connor's secondary instrument was the piano, in particular, a Yamaha C4 baby grand piano. O'Connor claims that this is where most of his composing came from. As well as the guitar and the piano, O'Connor also played the flute, both metal and wood based flutes, as well as an Electric Wind Instrument (EWI) which allowed for a wide variety of instrument sounds to be produced on one instrument. He also played percussion, the bass guitar and keyboards. O'Connor was a solo artist, playing all instruments in his recordings. He did, however, collaborate with guitarist Paul Clement on the album "Summer Rain", with songs written by both artists featured on the CD. Paul Clement was also featured playing the guitar on other albums - "Mariner", "Tales of the Wind", "Bushland Dreaming", "Lovesong", "Live in Concert", "Dreams and Discoveries" and "Whispering Sea".

To record his music, O'Connor used AKG Acoustics and RODE Microphones mics on a Sony digital console. The microphones were first fed through two Amek Channel-In-A-Box units for equalizing and compression. All Taylor guitars were recorded directly using Fishman pickups. As O'Connor was passionate about achieving the best quality recording possible, the equipment he used changed as technology improved and, as a result, the exact equipment used to record each album is not known. "Wind Seeker", however, was tracked, mixed and mastered within Emagic's Logic Audio software, using Digidesign digital interfaces on a Macintosh G4 466Mhz computer. The album was recorded in 24bit 44.1kHz digital audio, however the final master was dithered to 16bit using Waves software plug ins.