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.

Late Night Poets Recording

New band Late Night Poets spent the past 5 days recording 3 songs, perfect timing to get to try out my new Royer R121 and BeesNeez Arabella.

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.

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!)

Mimsy Cable - More Bass

Cass and Mimsy came back and recorded more bass for a couple of songs on Mimsys Album, same inputs as last time, a track through the 1073DMP and a track through the Sansamp.

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"

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.