Andy Reynolds

Andy on stage in Tokyo, Japan with Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin.

Andy Reynolds

Biography

Andy is a songwriter, music producer and editor based in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. He plays many tuned, chordal and melodic instruments including piano, guitar, bass, melodica, harmonica, mandolin, mandola, er-hu, Irish whistles, synthesisers and samplers. Percussion is an important part of his film and TV writing and production and he plays drum kit, djembe, congas, bongos, windchime, temple bells, cymbals, wood blocks, log drum, dragon drums, timpani, crotales, junk yard found objects and basically everything that can be hit with a stick! He worked in London studios for ten years but then moved his song-writing, track-laying and mixing studio from London to Ireland. After working there for a while and a couple of years working as a chef in a restaurant, he emigrated to Lanzarote where he now lives and works making video production, music recording, and live gigs.

The Recording Studio

Andy is also a local singer and guitarist performing live gigs all around Lanzarote. He has worked on drama recordings for the BBC and ITV and is used to working with locked mov files using dropbox as the interface for delivery. Software and plugins used include Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Spectrasonics, Waves, Vienna Library, Symphobia, East West, Massive, Kontakt, Line6 and many more. Andy uses a large selection of top quality microphones including Neumann, Microtech Gefell, AKG, Sennheiser and Shure to record his extensive collection of weird and wonderful instruments from all around the world. He plays all kinds of guitars, Irish whistle, drums, percussion, bodhrán, bass, er-hu, gu-zin, xun, keyboards, melodica and harmonicas. The studio also is lucky to have some rare original vintage synths including Mini Moog, Roland Jupiter 6, Juno 106 and custom hardware filters and outboard.

Television

BBC TV Music for BBC coverage of USA Elections 2004
BBC NEWSROUND Theme Tune CBBC
CBBC SPORTSROUND Theme Tune, idents, bumpers, beds, loops
BBC BEING HUMAN All episodes for five seasons of this popular drama series
ITV SWITCH Supernatural teen drama series

Film

DOGHOUSE UK comedy horror full length film
MUTANT CHRONICLES Sci Fi feature film starring Ron Perlman & John Malkovich
TREEHOUSE US full length film, reached #1 iTunes film chart
ONG BAK Classic Tony Jaa Thai marital arts film
MOVIE TRAILERS Various, including Dragon Dynasty, Weinstein Company

Music

HIT ALBUMS Worlds Apart #1 Album France, million+ sales, diamond award
HIT SINGLES Worlds Apart #1 Single France, Germany, platinum award N’Sync single ‘Together Again’ hit in Germany 250,000 sales ‘Across the Broad Atlantic’ Shane MacGowan, NYC & Dublin Til Juleman 5 times platinum Denmark
IRELAND TOP 10 SINGLE Dance to Tipperary

Live Performance

TOURING Guitar for Dave Stewart, USA tours, Japan tours
LIVE SHOW Lanzarote, Ireland and USA performances

Game Music

PLAYSTATION GAME Pop Idol 2003 Featuring Simon Cowell

Radio

RADIO JINGLES FM Fukuoka, Japan, Power FM, UK Away FM
RADIO PRESENTER UK Away FM, Lanzarote

Studio Work

PRODUCED AND WRITTEN FOR: Worlds Apart (France), East 17 (UK), N’Sync (USA), Shane MacGowan, Shout, Synergy (Denmark), Marie Claire D’Ubaldo (Argentina), Mike Francis (Italy), Richard Darbyshire (Living in a Box), Sandie Shaw (UK), Billy Branigan (USA), Jane Weidlin from the Go-Gos (USA)

Guitars 85%
Drums 65%
Bass 85%
Sex 60%
Drugs 10%
Rock n Roll 100%

Andy Reynolds

Singer, Guitarist, Record Producer, Song Writer.

Hands on knobs

by Andy Reynolds | February 15, 2016 | Studio Equipment, Studio Techniques | 0 Comments

One major change that has crept in with the software revolution in the recording process is the replacement of hardware with software. This means less knob twiddling and more mouse or trackpad swiping. While the ability to automate and the repeatability is great this...

Live Percussion

by Andy Reynolds | February 10, 2016 | Studio Equipment | 0 Comments

I have always loved percussion, any kind of thing that can be hit, shaken, scraped or banged together to create unusual sounds. When record production works and the essential drum sounds are simplified to their essence then the addition of percussion adds the flavour...

Ducking the overheads

by Andy Reynolds | February 6, 2016 | Drums, Studio Equipment, Studio Techniques | 0 Comments

I have been trying a new way to mix live drums. I set up direct mics on kick drum, snare drum and hi hat and a stereo pair of condensers for the overhead capturing the whole kit including toms and cymbals. The kick and snare were gated so that the hi hat did not come...

Capturing Magic

by Andy Reynolds | February 2, 2016 | Bass, Drums, Guitars, Loops and Samples, Percussion, Studio Equipment, Studio Techniques, Stuff that really happened | 0 Comments

When you really look at them and analyse why they work, a lot of classic songs and recordings of their success to a musical hook or a particular sound. From a music production point of view this can be called the capturing of magic. When the right player with a...

Snare drum recording

by Andy Reynolds | February 2, 2016 | Drums, Loops and Samples, Studio Techniques | 0 Comments

Anyone who has tried looking for the right snare sound for a song will know that you can go through hundreds of snares that might sound good on their own but which don’t work in the track. Sometimes the only thing that works is a mic on an actual snare and yet...

Kick drum and bass level

by Andy Reynolds | February 2, 2016 | Bass, Drums, Percussion, Studio Techniques | 0 Comments

When producing tracks that need a good kick and bass balance (that would be most if not all tracks!) it is interesting to see what happens when monitoring on small monitors or headphones. If there is no sub in the system then it can be too easy to overdo the level of...

Writing a new jive song for a female artist.

by Andy Reynolds | February 1, 2016 | Song Writing | 0 Comments

I have been asked to write an upbeat Jive song for an Irish female singer. So far I have narrowed it down to a tempo of around 200 bpm with a certain kind of drum sound, bass pattern, guitar upbeats, some organ, a bit of accordion, some harmonica and a bit of...

New samples and loops library

by Andy Reynolds | January 24, 2016 | Loops and Samples, Percussion, Sound Library | 0 Comments

I have been meaning to start an online store selling loops and beats. It’s time to make that happen. I think that there is a room for a more useful format for loops where there is a lot more creativity left in the selection of sections of longer loops. I also...

A new kind of studio

by Andy Reynolds | January 17, 2016 | Studio Equipment, Studio Techniques | 0 Comments

I have been thinking about where technology has taken the studio over the last 20 years. So much of it now is software based and the actual recording of sound seems to have taken a back seat to what happens in the computer. Sure, you can do a lot without ever...

Old rack gear keeps breaking

by Andy Reynolds | January 15, 2016 | Studio Equipment, Stuff that really happened | 0 Comments

Sadly it turns out that most bits of rack equipment just don’t stand the test of time. I have been digging out some old bits of outboard to add them to the studio set up again only to find that one after the other they don’t work any more! It is probably...