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.

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)

Ruby Frost - Lennon Cover

Ruby Frost and band were over yesterday recording a John Lennon cover. It was quite a different process from all the recording I've done with her so far. In the past we've done almost everything in the computer with software synths, plus maybe some percussion here and there and a bit of electric guitar or bass (and some hammond of course) but this time round we recorded real drums, real synths, even guitars played by real people...

Cam, Haddon and Jimmy (and even Ruby herself) are all really good musicians so the parts are played really well and its got a really nice groove which I think is important for this song. However it doesn't give me as much flexibility with the sounds as I would with programming the parts, so we spent a lot longer thinking about synth sounds etc instead of programming all the parts in and then considering sounds.

We recorded what was probably one of the most obscenely rock and roll guitar parts I have ever recorded. Haddon played power-chords through my big muff and stood leaning back and forth to get just the right amount of feedback to keep the chord sustaining... We tracked it for the whole song but I think I might just use it here and there and maybe quietly in the mix.

Drum sound is pretty huge, I've got a ribbon set up quite far back in the room which I've got limited really hard to almost sound like distortion. But it really helps to have a consistent and central hitter like Jimmy with a really nice sounding drum kit.

Christmas Album - Glass Owls

Just finished recording Glass Owls christmas song. I think they showed up with it in mind of being quite folky and had ideas to record cello and violin etc... By the time they left it was sounding more Smiths/Cure/Joy Division-y.



I played drums and listening back to them now I'm actually really surprised at how well that worked out. I used a cymbal and hi hat sample from another song I'd recorded recently. Then the drums are just a floor tom and snare with the Beatles trick on the snare drum (top skin almost fully loose with a teatowl half covering it). We also made a sample of a snare hit with tambourine on top of it which I doubled the end snares with. No photos or video of me playing drums fortunately (I probably looked ridiculous)


Michael came to and played some casiotone organ DI'd through my sansamp to get it a bit dirtier sounding. He also features in the gang vocal...

Pink Pound Experiences

Had another session with the Pink Pound Experience yesterday, got another track in the bag. I'm actually quite pleased with how it turned out so far, I think they were too. Before we stopped for lunch I think everyone was a bit concerned it wasn't sounding that good but once we got both guitars down and started tracking vocals everything tied together really nicely, its funny how these things happen.

Vocals and Drums were a bit of a challenge to get nailed right on this song but when we got them it was definitely worth it. We tracked a few of the Backing Vocals live in to one mic for a change, almost like a gang vocal but not really at all. Turned out quite nice actually, I was worried that it was going to be difficult to get everyone's voice sitting right etc but the sound of 2 or 3 people singing at once stood next to each other is great, so why not record it like that rather than recording them separately and then mixing them in Protoools.

More Chelsea!

We recorded lots of Tom today, with so many layers I didn't want the satisfyingly warm and full sound that the MD421 was giving so I opted for a good old beta58a instead to give me more attack and punch and then the Kiwi as a room mic.

Chelsea also "dropped some phat casio tone beats" and played some drone-y keys on Under. Plus various other vocal experiments, I played some jingle bells too.

We're recording in an almost modular way, everything is very flexible. We're tracking parts and then cutting them up, making loops, moving the songs around to be what they need. Its a really interesting process to see a song evolve and fun too.


I want to finish this asap so you can hear it all. (so I can listen to it on the train)