Watercolours win VNZMA Critics Choice

Readers of this blog will know that for the past few years I have been playing guitar in and had been working with Watercolours towards some demos, as well as of course the first Watercolours single "Under"

The other week we played at the Kings Arms for the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards Critics Choice award, up against stiff competition for the award in the form of Beach Pigs and Loui the Zu. Any of the bands could've taken out the award, the other two bands were and are amazing but somehow the judges decreed Watercolours as the winner.

Its pretty special to have been involved in this project so far and hopefully I get to continue as a guitar player for as long as possible. Anyway, big congratulations to Chelsea on this award, its well deserved.

Chelsea Recording.

Jonathan played some piano (Chelsea singing a guide track) (this photo may be staged)

he also brought his newly acquired Univox organ which is VERY COOL and doubles up as a guitar amp that James used. All the photos of it were really blury so here is one from the auction Jonathan won it from

great keyboard sounds and as a bonus its an amazing guitar amp! We recorded some cool flutey sounding keys on Phoenix with it.


James played some guitars!


Chelsea made him wear a shark cape.


It made for many lols whilst serious work was being done.


Chelsea recorded some Glockenspiel.


The next day Liz came and round and played some flugel (which was recorded with an MD421 if you're interested and sounded lovely) Chelsea also sang a bit and I think we have one song fully tracked (except maybe an explosion of harps and birdsong... but we'll see about that)

Progress is being made! Tracks are sounding really cool! Hooray!!

Chelsea.

Some time ago I helped mix and master a one week EP that Chelsea from Teacups recorded with Jono, Alex and Reuben from Artisan Guns. If you haven't heard her solo stuff before its very different from Teacups, lots more electronic and atmospheric but still very pretty.

We just started working towards her album and I am very excited. Very. Today we worked on a song called "Under" recording a whole heap of vocals and some piano and guitar and bass.

My converted Valve Radio guitar amp was made use of in to the Vox Cab.

I had exactly the same bizarre old guitar that James has just under my bed collecting dust. Now he has 2.

Mali Mali Recording

Recorded some electric guitars for a Mali Mali song yesterday, Andrew ran his Ibanez AS200 through his fender twin and Peter used my Gretsch through my Vox AC15. Both such great combinations, barely any playing around with sounds, just stick a mic up and go!

Then we added another track of acoustic to a different song before they had to rush off, all in all a fairly productive few hours! We're slowly getting the peices of this puzzle in to place.

Pink Pound Experience - Mr Happy Chappy

I had the Pink Pound Experience here again recording another Demo "Mr Happy Chappy" they recently got an NZ On Air Grant to make a video for one of the songs I recorded "Easy Come Easy Go" in November last year, so expect to see them on your television in the not so distant future!

This time they came with new drummer Dan. Those more observant may notice I used a hi-hat mic in this instance, which I hardly ever do, this was due to the drum beat revolving mainly around kick and Hi-Hat and occasionaly a cross hit on the snare. I opted for an SM57 on the Hi-Hat, I could've used one of my other pencil condensers but I wanted less of the tops and more body from it and I've been seeing quite a few SM57s on Hi Hats recently, worked ok but as I say I am not a big Hi-Hat mic fan and I am still not sure if I'll use it, but its there if I need it!

I am pretty envious of Simon's new SIB Mr Echo, its very nice peice of gear. (I do enjoy a good peice of gear) The other week I put some heavier guage strings on my Musicmaster and adjusted the action of it etc, it sounded so great today that we used it for all of Simon's parts while Stu went tele for his guitar parts.

I (somewhat begrudgingly) ended up showing them how my new telephone mic sounds and it inspired a vocal part over the bridge. I don't like using tricks or gimmicks just because I have them and at first I was really not very keen to use the phone. However, when I thought about how I would effect the vocal in the part it was used if we didn't use the phone I knew I'd be striving to get back that sound. So I let it past.

(I am just wary of the fact that I often get very excited about new peices of equipment and try and use them on everything!)

Mali Mali

Ben and I started work on Mali Mali's second EP this evening with recording acoustic guitar for 3 songs, we have plans to possibly record another all live and another with piano. I am looking forward to seeing how these songs evolve over the coming weeks.

Great North Tracking - Finishing Touches.

Today we had planned to just track some tom overdubs on one of Great Norths tracks and that was all. Last night we got almost all the piano done, so left it in my room to finish the last song. While we were at it we got the others to come round to record some group vocals on a couple of songs and then some harmonica and guitar parts. A very productive day and I think we're done with tracking.

I am so glad to have real piano on the songs now instead of the guide keyboard I've been listening to for weeks. The songs have started to feel alot more organic than they were before and everything is gelling together better.

I guess its time to start mixing them now.

Kingston Album Tracking

Kingston are so close to finishing their Album. They've been over in Canada and New York tracking Drums, Bass and Guitars. They came back to New Zealand a couple of months ago and their producer Brandon Friesen has been over for the past 3 or so weeks finishing off Vocals and adding more guitars and synths etc out at a batch they've been hiring at Piha.

Brandons headed of to Australia and New York before returning to Canada and I've been left to track 3 songs worth of vocals, plus some doubling of vocals and harmonies and some more guitars.

Today we finished the Vocals on "Miss You" and Scott put down a fair bit of guitar pieces here and there.

What I've heard of the album sounds HUGE. Can't wait for Brandon to give it his final touches so I can see how its all going to sit in the mix.

Great North Album - Guitar

Strahan came round and we finished the guitar parts for the Great North Album (I think we finished... maybe there will be more, who knows.) in the picture above he is modelling one of many solutions to many problems.

Often when you start to record there'll be squeaks, buzzes and rattles that you won't usually hear. In this case what appears to be an ordinary yellow cloth is in fact a special string mute; muting all of the strings behind the slide to prevent them making noises. Very high tech. The string mute is a custom peice of equipment that I designed and made myself out of a yellow cloth. Haha.

Anyway recording went well, we made some very loud sounds (and some not so loud sounds) ate some cheese toasties and then Steph came round and we watched one of my favourite films of all time that they recently found second hand in a video hire store on VHS.

Mannequin. Incredible.

Splore

This weekend I took a visit down to Splore with Clap Clap Riot as their guitar tech. It was my first real guitar teching job and it was somewhat eventful; basses getting knocked out of tune, straplocks exploding, stage hands hiding guitar amps from me, guitars just not going along with the scheduled guitar changes etc.

Despite this everyone held it together and the boys played a great set to a very appreciative audience.

Feeling slightly worse for wear and in need of some clean toilets we headed home today. Splore is an incredible festival set in an amazing location, however with the majority of the lineup being DJs or Dance acts its just not really my scene music wise. Had a pretty good time despite this though, bumped in to my good friend Tom, had a few drinks, watched Lupe Fiasco, ate some Jamaican food. Good.

(filming a song on the beach)

Great North Album - Guitar tracking.

More Great North guitar today. More geeking out with pedals and amps and guitars and cello bows...

Album is getting to a point where I think its close to being all tracked and ready for mixing. Just piano left to track on some songs, exciting.

Glass Owls Day 3

Day three of Glass Owls EP tracking, Tomas showed up first thing this morning with some rather impressive bandages (due to a small incident whilst longboarding at considerable speeds)(apparently) Fortunately he only had one song left on guitar! We almost finished all the guitar parts today, (we had an idea for one more just as they were leaving) and we finished vocals on a couple of tracks.

Tomorrows plan: finish vocals for 4 remaining songs, record some clarinet, handclaps tambourine and shaker.


I love spending days geeking out on guitars.

Glass Owls day 2

Glass Owls again today, we got drums bass and acoustic tracked on the remaining 3 songs and then started some electric guitar tracking. It gets pretty hot in studios generally when they don't have air conditioning, it was SO HOT today in my room with the doors and windows closed and up to 5 of us in one room with doors and windows closed playing drums etc... So we made sure to take lots of breaks and managed not to die. Chris Tom and I went to feed the Chickens, they are lots of fun.

Pretty pleased with how everything is going, I'm looking forward to hopefully finishing electric guitar tomorrow and starting on some vocals.

Artisan Guns: Second EP

Sorry in advance for lots of photos but this post spans a week!



A little over a year ago Artisan Guns came round for a long weekend to track their first EP Bird and Bone, we did it mostly live in my bedroom and bathroom, the EP was released a few months ago with distribution through EMI and a great video for their single "Autumn" things are really starting to pick up for the band.

I spent almost every moment of the last week with the band recording their second EP in a private studio in town which came with the luxury of nicer tuned rooms, Protools HD, some more mics, more pres, seperate rooms and its considerably closer for the Howick boys than Oratia! Its located in a block of offices and thus we had to record loud stuff (such as drums and guitars) from after 5pm, so we ended up getting in to the studio around 2 or 3 tuning and setting up and recording through till 4am most nights. Fortunately we our good friend Rose's lovely family let us sleep at their house over the week while they were away.

Over the 5 evenings we managed to track 6 songs completely I've had a listen through at home now and am really happy with the result so far. I'm going to be mixing from here so hopefully should be done in a few weeks.

We opted for quite a stripped back mic up of the kit, using only the overhead, room, kick and floor mics for most songs. We had my Kiwi set up in the hall for a couple of songs that warranted a bigger drum sound and we stuck up the TLM170 as a second room mic for the few songs that needed a wider drum sound. I like keeping things pretty minimal but its good to have some backups like the snare and rack tom mics even if I don't end up using them.

Vocal Mic Shoot-out, from left to right; TLM170, Blue Kiwi, TLM103 and Shure KSM353
We went for the TLM 170 on Matts Vocals and then my Blue Kiwi on Reubens

My Princeton+Ac15HH, Dave Dobbyns Les Paul, My Gretsch, Jonos um creation and my Tele

Beatiful Gibson reissue, wish I had taken a picture but we ended up tracking a very expensive beautiful GIbson J200 with an SM57 through a cheapish valve pre for an old grimy sound

we recorded the intro Guitar on "Brand New Game" through this tiny practise amp, it sounds perfect!