Recording in Real Life – Pt. 1: Why We’re Doing It Ourselves
Being in a band is hard.
Being in a band in your 30s, with full-time jobs, growing families, and calendars that look like warzones? Even harder.
We’re Wild Isles — a five-piece alt/indie rock band based in the South West — and right now, we’re in the thick of recording seven new tracks. All of them already exist in live form on YouTube, but we wanted to give them the proper treatment. The twist? We’re doing it all ourselves.
This is the start of a short series on how we’re pulling it off — the process, the setup, the compromises — and the reality of being a fully independent band who can’t just vanish into a studio for a week.
Why We’re Going DIY
We’d love to say we’re taking the DIY route for some cool, punk-purist reason. But truthfully? It’s logistics.
We tried to book studio time, but syncing up five adults — most with families, careers, and real-world commitments — was nearly impossible. Getting everyone in the same room at the same time felt like trying to organise a wedding. Twice. The result was long gaps between sessions, slow progress, and a lot of wasted time.
Eventually, we had to be realistic. We needed to find a way to make recording work around our lives, not the other way around.
The Hybrid Approach
Once we realised locking ourselves away in a studio wasn’t going to happen, we took a step back and looked at what we did have — and what we didn’t.
We’ve got Kempers, mics, a decent vocal booth setup, and enough technical knowledge to get tracks down clean. What we don’t have is the space (or soundproofing) to record live drums that actually sound the way they should — and we’re not about to release anything half-baked.
So we’ve landed on a hybrid approach: we’re recording everything we reasonably can at home — guitars, vocals, layering — and then handing it off to someone far more skilled than us when it comes to mixing and mastering. It’s a balance of control and quality.
The Plan (Loosely Speaking)
We're not aiming to release everything in one go — this isn’t an album. It’s a backlog.
The idea is to record all seven tracks now so we’ve got ammo in the tank. We don’t want to be forced into a release schedule just to satisfy The Algorithm™. Singles will roll out across streaming platforms, digital stores, and YouTube — when they’re ready.
If You’re in the Same Boat
If you’re in a band with careers, kids, or just wildly different schedules — do what works.
Sure, we’d rather track everything in a pro studio, in one clean run. But that just wasn’t realistic for us. And forcing that idea would’ve meant not recording anything at all.
This method isn’t perfect, but it lets us keep moving forward. And in an age where every algorithm wants weekly content, just making anything at all is a win.
