Warwickshire, U.K. (March 27, 2026)—Brookspeare Music, which specializes in remote string recording plus other sessions, has upgraded to a new 32-channel SSL Origin analog mixing console and UF8 DAW controller.
Sound designer and mixer Richard Brooker and his wife, Rachel Shakespeare, a cellist, musician contractor and director of Leos Strings, focus on string sessions for TV, film and games at the studio, which is in a building behind their home in a small village in England’s West Midlands. Adopting an analog console in today’s digital audio world is a homecoming of sorts for Brooker, a 35-plus-year veteran of the business who cut his teeth mixing on analog desks in the theatre, on the road, for broadcast events and in the recording studio.
Brooker was previously using a DAW control surface at the studio, often having to dig into menus and sub-menus. He comments, “I feel like everything is in front of me with the Origin. It becomes an extension of you, what you’re thinking and the way you have it set up. I can see everything that the console is doing just by looking from left to right. It works so well as a traditional analogue console, but it also fits perfectly into a modern DAW-controlled studio, especially with the UF8 controller.”
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Some of the studio’s global composer clientele listen in and view the sessions remotely from afar, Brooker says, while some simply send the score and a demo. Typically, in commercial recording, there is a three-hour minimum for a session. Uniquely, Brookespeare Music can also offer an alternative. “We book the musicians for a day and then we sell slots, so composers just pay for an hour of the studio and the musicians’ time. We get a full day of work, the musicians all get paid properly, and the composers don’t have to shell out for time they don’t need.”
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In fact, Brooker has recorded a diverse assortment of instruments and voices at the facility. “We’ve done vocals and dialogue recordings. I’ve had a drum kit in there. I’ve had bands in there. We’ve had brass, woodwinds and a harp. So it’s not only strings.”
Brooker’s theatre credits include Dreamgirls, Funny Girl, The Bodyguard and Bend It Like Beckham. He has mixed various live music broadcast events, such as Glastonbury Festival and the Proms for the BBC. He also has a long list of live mixing credits working live with the likes of Bjork, Simon Le Bon and Petula Clark. Currently, he is FOH engineer for ‘80s stalwarts Haircut 100 and Tom Bailey of the Thompson Twins, who all still tour, and also, this year, will work with Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.