Parachute & Timaru

Paper Kites - Parachute Mainstage on Friday

This weekend just been I was working at; Parachute, Timaru and then back to Parachute again. My weekend started with Paper Kites on the Mainstage at Parachute, I went on tour with them and Avalanche City last year so it was nice to see them again, they played great! Later Avalanche City took the stage, they had a huge audience and I was really happy with how it sounded, we'd had a soundcheck earlier and I felt fairly comfortable. I love shows like that. They had a signing booked in later and had to turn half away and book in another signing because so many showed up!

My view of Avalanche City playing Parachute Mainstage on Friday

View of Fridays Mainstage performance from the Parachute Website

 On Saturday we flew from Hamilton to Wellington in a fairly small plane, then we flew from Wellington to Timaru in a 19 seater plane! We got off the plane and went straight to the South Canterbury Wine and Food Festival where they were playing. No soundcheck but apart from a few monitor issues (which I wasn't mixing!) it went fairly smoothly.

the 19 seater plane from Wellington To Timaru

A friendly iLive at the South Cantebury Wine and Food Festival (right behind me hundreds of people were sat down with picnics etc)

post show beverage in the sun

On Sunday we caught the 2 planes back to Hamilton, landed in Hamilton at 2ish, got our bags and instruments and were dropped off to the stage about 2.30. Then we had 15mins to setup on stage, patch in mics and then 10mins for me to line check each channel and make sure everything was working before doors were opened and screaming fans ran in (it was kinda crazy) while they were running in I was checking with the FOH tech which vocal mic was which and then they started! Surprisingly it went great and everything worked.

Later I did sound again for Paper Kites on the Deluxe Stage and then headed home! What a fun few days.

Avalanche City in the Palladium at Parachute

Mimsy Bass Tracking

4 x Basses
2 x DI's/Preamps
1 x Bass Babe (Cass Basil)
2 x Babes listening and advising (Mimsy and Jessie)
4 x Songs
4 x Bagels consumed
4 x Slices of Carrot Cake consumed
3 x Cups of Tea


These are the recording stats from today.

Post Game analysis; "it was good"

Mimsy Cable; More Keys!

Recorded some more Keys with Mimsy the other day, we had a few more songs to finish off, used the Pianet a bit more and then added some Organ to a song. The Organ bass was quite important so as well as micing the rotating horn (in stereo) I put a mic on the bass rotor which you can see in the bottom photo. We also tracked some of the bass part seperately so I could treat it differently to the rest of the organ and I ended up just using that 1 mono mic.

Merry Christmas Eve

Hayden and Rachel from Great North recorded this lovely Christmas Carol the other day and I added a bit of bass and organ it's available as a free download.



Hope you're having a great Christmas!

Little Monster Studio Office Christmas Party

If you didn't already know earlier in the year I brewed my own Cider. (the picture above is some of it in bottles.) It had just been in bottles long enough for me to open it for a Little Monster Studios Office Christmas party. Instead of me just sat at home on my own I decided to invite a whole bunch of people I had been recording/doing live sound for etc and a whole bunch of supportive friends to taste the cider and eat some snacks. Great North and Mimsy Cable played a few songs (and were excellent!) and everyone had a great time. 

I am so appreciative of everyone thats helped me over the past few years in getting to where I am its nice to say thanks once every now and then. I had Apple and Pear ciders open (the Apple tasted good but I was not so keen on the Pear) and various nibbles. I made a gingerbread house and 2 types of macarons (wish I'd taken a photo of them!)

Heres a few photos from the evening so you can pretend you were there. 

Mimsy Soundchecking (later photos are all blurry!)

I baked a gingerbread house.

I was so proud of this pizza, probably the most delicious pizza I have ever made.

Georgie (who takes excellent photos for me sometimes) and Jonathan (who plays excellent keyboards and guitar)

Cass (Lisa Crawley/Mimsy Cable/Bannerman/various other bands!) Chelsea (Watercolours/Teacups)

Great North about to play

Mimsy Cable Keyboard recording

We started recording some keys for the Mimsy Cable album. All the songs are written on piano so they're quite keys heavy and we're going to be working on making them more guitar focused, but I think they'll still end up keyboard driven. We recorded some Nord sounds and Mimsys Pianet T (although its quite hissy and slightly out of tune it sounds pretty good)

I ran the Nord sounds through an amp while we were recording to get it to sound a bit warmer and earthy and get some nice valve distortion happening. I actually think the Nord sounds pretty good, you'd never really know it wasn't a real Wurlitzer/Rhodes etc in the mix even if you probably could tell on its own... but who's to say you didn't record a Wurlitzer that actually sounded like that anyway... Plus the Nord is in tune (which the Wurli/Rhodes we had available to us weren't)

Great North Pianos

Dale came over and we recorded most of the piano parts on the Great North album, Hayden also plays a couple of songs on piano, but they're more suited to the sound of the piano he bought recently so we plan to head over to his house to record them at some point. I think we're making good progress but theres lots to do yet!

Mimsy Cable - Drum recording

We started recording drums for Mimsy Cable's album yesterday. Trusty Alex Freer stepped up to fill drum duties on the record. Alex is a really great drummer and I have worked with him on so many different recordings now: Artisan Guns, Cool Rainbows, Mali Mali, Watercolours, Bearcat and now this record.

He brought in an old Hayman drum kit and we went through songs that suited that kits toms yesterday (photo above) but switched things around today and used his warmer with shorter sustain Yamaha toms (photo below) for a couple of songs that had more of a tom focus.

I tried the MD421 on kick and it seems to be sounding really nice, it was too clicky for my liking inside the drum but as an outside kick mic it works well, lots of punch. I've got the D112 sat inside the kick on some dampening to capture a bit more click and a bit more low end.

More Great North Guitars

Strahan came over for more guitar recording yesterday toward the Great North Album.

We have about 3 or 4 songs left to add guitar too, but most of them need piano before we can get on with more guitar.

I've been recording both Ribbon and SM57 on Strahans Bassman (or sometimes my Princeton depending on the song)

Great North Album 2 guitars

Today was the first of what will be a fair few days of guitar recording with Strahan for the Great North album while we search for tone heaven and add new guitar parts and various layers etc/try to use all of our pedals at once in an attempt to open a black hole... 

Also the piano is still hanging out in my room from having redone Longtime Love with Mimsy this week, I didn't post about it but we re did the song with separate piano and vocals. So ignore any previous lengthy spiel about how it sounded magical live, it kinda did but it sounded better done seperately. So we decided to redo it. This is life/recording.