RECORDING    
Purchase your copy of the CD

The new recording, Nenqayni Drummers: Generations, was done in the spring 2003.  We recorded at Trax 24, Williams Lake, British Columbia.  This recording is called Generations and inspired by our children and elders whose pictures are below. 

The group Lil, Patricia and Val arrived to record and Sandra came as an observer.  Sandra was very ill with pneumonia and felt she could not sing.  Well the group began to sing and Sandra's heart started to pound.  The drum is called the "heartbeat of the nation".  Sandra decided to join in and see how long she could last.  She managed the full eighteen hours that it took to do the entire album.  Within the first couple of days, Sandra returned to her doctor only to be told that her pneumonia had cleared up.  She cannot take any antibiotics so normally, Sandra fights with illness for a long period of time.  The recording was done over a period of a month and a half.  The group would not be the same without Sandra involved.

The drum that was used was a Pow Wow drum was generously donated by Marie Sharpe Elementary School.  This drum was built by Lil and the students.  The group felt that recording the voices separate from the hand drums would not work this time.  We all needed to be drumming at the same beat, therefore a floor drum was used.  It took two hours to set up the microphones on the drum and the voices.  So much for thinking that we could just sit down and start singing.  Every song was done over and over until we could get through it without a mistake.  Any little crack in our voices and we began again. 

The sound effects section was a lot of fun.  People that were involved in the sound effects were:

Tanya Hutchinson     
Stuart Kohut                
Jack Duncan
Sandra Sellars            
Lillian Squalian           
Val Duncan                  

We used the following sounds:

Horse Neigh
Horse Gallop
Grizzly Bear Growl
Loon
Crickets
Water                                  Euphrasia Squalian
Birds                                    1911 - 1984
Wolves Howling
Wind
Rattles
Wind Chimes
Rain Sticks
Lehal Sticks
Bells
Laughter

Many thanks to Dennis Manual at Trax 24 for his patience and all his jokes to keep us from being too serious.  The pictures of the horses that are seen on this site are his quarter horses.

Dennis Manual
Trax 24 Sound Studio
Box 2531
Williams Lake, BC
V2G 2P2
(250) 989-9898                                Val Duncan