Late Night Poets

Some more Late Night Poets recording the other week. We recorded another 3 songs. One of the songs I previously recorded with them was voted number 1 on theaudience.co.nz unreleased chart, winning them $10,000 to make a video for it.  

Great North Album Recording

Over the past few weeks quite a bit has been happening on Great Norths album, Acoustic guitars have been recorded, Piano, Bass and we've started Vocals and Electric guitar. Lots of recording, very little blogging. I've been enjoying my latest purchase; the Royer R121's. They're used as Overheads, Acoustic Mic's, Piano mics (behind the piano) and as a Guitar amp mic so far and I'm sure plenty of other things to come.

Pedal Steel to record on Friday and more Vocals before Christmas.

French For Rabbits - Blue Barn Studio

Spent last weekend in Wellington recording Drums, Bass, Strings, Guitar and some Vocals for French For Rabbits, again at Blue Barn studios.They're due to come back up to Auckland to finish it off next weekend.

French For Rabbits

 I spent a few days at Blue Barn studio in Wellington with French For Rabbits working on a Single that might feature on their forthcoming album. Pretty fun getting in to a different space for a bit although I hardly felt like I was in Wellington as I didn't leave the studio except for sleep! We worked hard and got all the tracking done, now I'm back in Auckland ready to mix it all.

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!

More Mimsy Guitars

Today Mimsy finished off a few more vocals for some songs but a couple of weeks back Hayden came back to finish up some guitar parts. I forgot to post this photo, but progress is (slowly) being made!

Great North

One of the many recording faces of Hayden Donnell. He had just re-recorded guitar and then vocals for a song for the album that had a little timing issue, but we decided it would be better to start again with it. Then we doubled some guitars on a couple of other songs.

Hayden is obviously really excited about the prospect of more recording this weekend.

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.

Teacups EP

I started recording Teacups new EP last Friday. Its always quite exciting for me to have another chance at recording a band I've recorded before and both Teacups and myself have come so far since we recorded their album. The songs are already sounding so much more mature, as are the band as musicians. Talitas gone through a few double bass's before this beautiful vintage Russian bass (a vast improvement on the student basses we recorded the album with) and I have an immensely larger and better microphone collection than before! 

The Double Bass I used a KM184 to capture string plucking detail and any high frequencies that might be lacking in the mix from the Ribbon, which I will most probably use as the main mic (if I can help it it'll be my only mic) it sounds great for a vintage bass tone that they're after. Plus just incase I needed the extra low end I put up the D112.

Acoustic I opted for KM184, again for upper end detail and the Blue Kiwi for more body. 

We'll be recording more soon.

Christmas Album - Artisan Guns

Apparently 17 songs just wasn't enough for a Christmas compilation and I agreed to record Artisan Guns Christmas song this Saturday (despite it all needing to be done before Tuesday) we'd planned to record it the other week but Jonathans hand ended up being put in a cast and a couple of members just couldn't make the recording.

Anyway its recorded now and is really great. We ended up using all of my guitars, Matt used my acoustic for the main part (and then doubled the end with his jumbo) then added a rhythm track on the Musicmaster, a dirty rhythm track on the Gretsch then played a part on the Tele, which Jonathan also used again later to double the Organ part.

Theres some really cool backing vocals in the end part where the "bay" and "bee" of "baby" are split in to two parts sung by reuben and matt. One sings the "bay" and holds that note while the other comes in with the bee over the top and they end together. So we recorded this part with them both infront of the mic together.

Alex added a few layers of toms, rims, tambourines and samples from his drum pad that don't make much sense on their own but together work really nicely off each other. We recorded the electronic drums with a delay plugin in time to the click so that they delay would be part of the drum performance, but also so I could adjust the delays various settings and sound later. The final section has a pretty big sounding drum kit in it, I've got 2 room mics up in the recording (and they're both fairly high in the mix) the ribbon which you can see in the photo and my Blue Kiwi set to omni in the corner behind where the photo was taken, just next to the door.

Finally Jonathan (who came straight from cricket) added some Organ which helped to tie the song together, for a couple of the parts we turned the leslie up to 8 so it was just starting to break up. Its probably one of the most satisfying sounds ever.

The album is coming out on the 6th of December as a very limited CD release in stores and online as a free download from www.littlemonsterstudio.co.nz

Christmas Album - Alaska

Another Christmas song, this time from Alaska. They made a really nice arrangement of an old Christmas song "Oh Holy Night"

The Alaska arrangement features Harp, Acoustic guitar, Mandolin, Cello, Vocals and some stripped back drums. 

Recording was good. Nice sounding instruments, played well, captured with good microphones. Really its difficult to mess it up.

Here are some photos!