Mimsy - Guitar Recording

Hayden came over with Mimsy to record some guitar for her album. He borrowed a cool old Firebird that we plugged in to my Princeton Reverb, it sounded so good!

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)

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.

Longtime Love

Mimsy came over to record a quiet song "Longtime Love". We're currently waiting for her band/chosen musicians to be in the country and available so we can get on with the rest of the record. But this one we're going to leave really sparse Vocals, Piano and maybe a guitar. Because of that I thought it'd be nice to make it a point of difference on the album and record Vocals and Piano live in one take, not to a click, not even with headphones on. The idea being that it'd sound like Mimsy just at home singing her song. I put up a couple of room mics to try and to capture that sensation of being in the same room as her.

I left the front on the piano to isolate the Vocal mics from the piano and the piano mics from the vocal as both were going to be quite quiet and then mic'd the piano from the back for a really warm rich piano tone. Mimsy also played with the damper pedal on to keep the tone really warm. 

Mimsy Cable and the Nocturne Bell

We recorded all the vocals, the horns and some Hammond Organ today. The horns sounded beautiful through the ribbon. 

I wanted to track vocals through the ribbon too but it was a bit too dark for the song, so we tracked them all through the Blue Kiwi. Lovely. 

Foothills.

 Photos from The Foothills. All photos taken by Esther Parker.