Recording process

About the recording process:

When selecting songs and looking for appropriate locations for recording, we first of all consulted folk song texts and accordingly chose landscapes with such key elements as hills, forests, rivers, lakes, bogs and meadows. We sought locations as far away as possible from highways, railways, flight paths and high-voltage power lines to avoid noise created by modern civilisation. The locations were for the most part in east-central Latvia, and the recordings were made on spring and summer mornings and evenings.

A portable multitrack recording system and several microphones were used to record both the singers and the acoustic environment in which they sang. These signals were mixed in the studio without the use of artificial effects. The singers and sound engineers experimented and took into consideration the acoustics of each location and recording session in determining the placement of microphones for each individual song, how the singers should stand, and in which direction they should face.