Avalanche City at the Waihi Beach Hotel

Avalanche City playing at the Waihi Beach Hotel Summer Festival

5th of January 2013

Office Christmas Party

No this is not turning in to a food blog but here are a few treats I made for the Little Monster Studio Office Christmas Party a (to go alongside this years batch of cider of course) I know I technically don't have any staff or even an 'office' but I thought I'd worked hard enough this year to warrant a repeat of last years christmas party.

I baked THREE flavours of Macarons, Toblerone, Raspberry and White Chocolate and Salted Caramel. Plus a giant gingerbread house and soft pretzels among other things.

Jocee Tuck played some songs and the annual staff awards were given out, I managed to win a large portion of them again somehow.

Great North - Folk Album Of The Year Nomination & Video

As well as Watercolours winning Critics Choice at the New Zealand Music Awards recently it was announced that Great North have been nominated for Folk Album Of The Year at the New Zealand Music Awards for the album Halves that I produced; http://www.nzmusicawards.co.nz/2012/11/30/4977/

The winner is announced on the 27th of January at the Auckland Folk Festival in Kumeu. Just to be nominated is a huge achievement and I'm really proud of them. So amazing to see something I've believed in being recognised as one of the best folk albums of the year.

Great North also recently released the beautiful video for Lead Me To The Light starring the ex Mayor of Waitakere Bob Harvey;

'The Concert' in Christchurch & Leigh Sawmill

Last weekend I travelled down to a somewhat cold and wet Christchurch with Avalanche City to do sound for them at 'The Concert' which was organised to thank people who had volunteered/will volunteer in the Christchurch earthquake clean up. To get in you had to have either done 4 hours of volunteer work or signed up to do it in the future. The above photo is from my view, a rather nice old Yamaha Desk.

Despite the weather a fair few people had shown up and it was a pretty decent day of music!
 

The next day we flew back to Auckland (on a flight almost entirely full of musicians from the concert) in time for me to be picked up at the airport by Hollie of Tiny Ruins, Delaney Davidson and Silke and then head straight for Leigh to set up and soundcheck at the Sawmill for the Tiny Ruins & Delaney Davidson early show there that night. I don't think I'd ever seen Leigh Sawmill that full before! Both acts were amazing, it was a lovely show.

AUSA End Of Daze

Last Friday I did sound for the Auckland University Students Asocciation's End Of Daze event with Lydia Cole, Randa, The Wyld and Loui the Zu. When it stopped raining (see tarp hiding under the DJ booth below) it turned out to be a nice, fun day. More photos from the show here on the bFM facebook page.

Hula Hope and Avalanche City Tour.

I returned from a 6 day Australian tour with Avalanche City, late at night on Monday ready to start recording a couple of songs on the Tuesday with Hula Hope from Wellington. The Tour was great, so nice to spend some time with the Avalanche City guys and gals and interesting to do some shows in a different country.

The shows were pretty good, my low point was thinking I was going to have to mix a show stood on stage right behind the band with a particularly rowdy looking croud staring at me but my high point was discovering I could mix with the venues iPad from wherever I wanted! Hahahaha.

Back to recording with Hula Hope, the first day we recorded Acoustic Guitar and Vocals for the 2 songs and then I played a bit of Bass and the second day I added the rough outline of where drums would maybe go in one of the songs ready for me to redo later and some piano and Hula added a few harmonies and backing vocals. I have to finish adding some parts now while she's back in Wellington and send her the rough mixes!

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.

Josie Tuck - Drum recording

We spent a few days last week recording drums for Josie Tucks album with Stephen Thomas behind the kit. We got some really great sounds and tracked some really cool beats; a bit of afrobeat influence in a couple of songs, some cool percussion as part of the kit and a fair amount of jazz influences, even some free jazz moments! Lots of the parts are almost symphonic which should be a good base for the type of instrumentation and arrangements that Josie intends to have on top. 

Yasamin - Horns and Vibraphone

 A couple of weekends ago I recorded some horns, vibraphone, backing vocals and claps etc on Yasamins songs. Then a few days later my computers hard drive died. Its all back up and running now but there was a scary few days while I tried to reinstall OSX and had to take it to the doctors. Fortunately all of my recording projects are safe on an external drive and then backed up on to another! (if you're reading this back up everything you have NOW!)

Anyway back to recording, Finn brought with him his Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Saxaphone and Mellophone to track the horn parts on a couple of songs, I often end up trying to make a full brass sound with one trumpet but it really doesn't cut it, you need all the different horns and their tonal differences to build that full sound. Fortunately Finn can play them all and thus became our one man horn section!

Matt was also back, this time with the vibraphone to add in a couple of places and we recorded a couple of Matt and Cams BV's and some claps.

Yasamin Al-Tiay EP recording

Last weekend we started recording Yasamin Al-Tiays EP and all going to plan it should be all tracked this weekend!

You may notice some new gear in the photos, I am looking after it for my friend, excellent engineer and all round GC Tom Anderson of TA Audio. He's out of the country soon so I am keeping some of his stuff safe.

We started with some guide tracks and then some Cajon which I recorded with a close KM184 and then a pair of Mojave MA 200's as stereo room mics. Then Matt played some bass drum with a mallet (instead of using the Cajon's bass drum as the bass drum sounded much nicer) and we added a full drum kit to one of the songs and some snare to another and then a whole bunch of percussion... Lots of drum layers!

On Sunday we worked our way through Bass (DI'd with the Chandler TG2, I don't think I am going to be able to give that back sorry Tom) Acoustic guitar, Banjo and Ukulele. KM184's got a fair bit of use that day (I probably felt sorry for them having delegated their usual overhead/stereo duties to the Mojaves!)