Great North

 

Spent the weekend just been recording the Acoustic Guitar, Lead Vocals, Bass and Drums for 4 more songs for the Great North Album. This could potentially be the last Drum tracking we need to do...

I think this is the start of something really good.

Great North Album #2

This weekend we started the initial tracking for Great Norths second Album, they like to try and get a live feel for recording. When I recorded their EP we tracked Drums, Bass, Keys and Acoustic live and then recorded Vocals and Electric Guitar on top. Then for their first album we recorded Drums, Bass and Acoustic guitar live with a guide keyboard track for most of the songs (which we redid on a real piano later) and one or 2 we did with a live lead vocal.

Before we started this album we had a think about what really worked last time and for me all the tracks that stood out as being my favourite performances were the ones we did with a live vocal. (Newfoundland, I Feel Alive and Hands) Something about them seemed to stand out as being more sincere or more real. I think we all relished in the slight vocal imperfections so this album we're mostly recording live vocals with Drums, Bass and Acoustic guitar.

The vocals are being tracked through my new Brent Averill 1073 DMP. Its essentially like having a 1073 microphone pre-amplifier section from a vintage Neve console on my desk making all my recordings sound just that little bit more delicious! Hooray! It finally arrived in the morning of the first day of tracking and is sounding lovely so far.

We got basic tracks for 7 songs done over the weekend. More recording fun next weekend (and the weekend after and the weekend after that and the one after that...)

I stuck a Studio Electronics C4 through the shockmount of the Baby Bottle to give me options for the Acoustic Sound. I'll probably end up using the Baby Bottle, its a less precise warmer sound which I think works well for Great North, but options are good.

Day #2 of Tracking Rachels using my Bass for the recording, hers is much nicer to play for smaller hands but the active pickups sound too pretty and bright. I'm getting a clean DI'd signal and one through my sansamp. We also redid the bass on a song through my new DMP, it sounded amazing, old and warm but detailed and punchy. Instant bass tone.

Tied On Teeth

Last Friday I tracked a single with Thames band Tied on Teeth.  Got it all done in a day, drums and bass live and then Guitars and Vocals on top.

I've been playing around with XY overheads for so long but never really been satisfied with the sound I was getting from them. I thought I was getting too roomy a sound with AB in the past and having listened to them carefully I really didn't like the recorderman technique I tried recently on the Mimsy Cable recording and the Great North album demos. Having recently read an article on stereo mic configurations and listened to a lot of different examples and also mixed a Watercolours song that we tracked with AB overheads I think I might be leaning back towards them, I tried it out on these guys and they sound great. Much more defined stereo image than XY and yes slightly more roomy but I think in a good way.

We used an array of guitars for the guitar tracking, it was so easy to just keep adding stuff and now I have to work out what is necessary and whats not. In the picture below Hugh's got a cloth covering the strings to mute them so he can strum all the strings and just play the one fretted note to get a really percussive sound.

10,000 Views?!

I've never really noticed the little stats section of blogger until I recently upgraded to the new look dashboard... when I did I noticed to my surprise that I was near 10,000 views. THATS A LOT OF VIEWS. I guess somebody out there maybe looks at this thing. Crazy. Well just now I hit 10,000 views 

(at least 2 of those view counts are mine from being frustrated at it being sat at 9,998)

I haven't been posting an awful lot recently, mainly because I don't like to post without pictures much because I figure thats all people are interested in and recently I haven't been taking photos (partially due to absent mindedness, partially due to awkwardness of taking photos of people all the time)


But nevertheless work is being done, slowly but surely it is happening.

THANKS FOR READING THE BLOG IF YOU READ IT. 

(there I said it, in big letters too)

The other week I was working at Fashion Week, I did sound for Watercolours (Fashion Week Edition featuring; Tiny Ruins, She's So Rad and Boy Crush) at the Liam/Ruby show.

It was a somewhat difficult setup (guitar keys drums cello and vocals)(I always find cello without a pickup a bit difficult live) in a really large reverby old printing factory. But we got it to work in the end. I bought a $2.50 piezo pickup from surplustronics for the cello. It didn't sound amazing but I could get it louder than a mic without feeding back and it sounded kinda like a cello. I also mixed a live recording of the band that morning which should find its way on to a video somewhere at some point maybe... if it does I'll let you know. I'm interested to hear how it sounds.

Look heres some pictures from Thread.co.nz