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.  

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.

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. 

Christmas Album - Dear Times Waste

Recorded Dear Times Waste's christmas song today, ended up keeping it quite stripped back. We started recording with vocals and guitar live (no click) I had the guitar amp set up in the bathroom to avoid bleed. After that Claire added some drums.

Halfway through the first take of the Bass drum I was thinking how cool it would be if we tuned it to be a note that would work with the song. By complete fluke it turned out that I'd accidentally tuned it to an F# that works quite nicely with the D pedal note that most of the song is based around. 

Theres a bit of organ and some BV's but not much else. Really beautiful song though. 

I'm really pleased that so many of the artists/bands have taken care to write/arrange something to the usual standard of their output for this album rather than throwing together a weak/novelty christmas song. 

Chelsea Jade Recording

More Chelsea Jade recording, arranging, editing today. Tracked some vocals and some acoustic and James and I played some bass.

Christmas Album - Great North

Great North came over to record their Christmas song for the Album, we tracked Drums, Bass, Acoustic Guitar and Vocals live with a guide Keyboard track and then overdubbed Piano, Glockenspiels, Backing and Group Vocals, Percussion, Organ and Toy Piano.

I'm really pleased with how this song is sounding. Haydens coming back to record some trumpet in and Strahan (who was up north while we were recording) should be over soon to record his guitar.

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.

Mali Mali - Recording "The Ramp"

Today we recorded another song for the Mali Mali EP called "The Ramp" Ben and I thought it would suit this song to have the guitar and vocals recorded live. Because I had the luxury of having all my channels free I setup a few more mics than I've used in the past recording Guitar and Vocals live. I think when we were playing it back the Nady Ribbon and two KM184's in combination sounded the best.

The Beta57 was there incase we opt for a dirtier guitar sound and then Kiwi incase we want a cleaner vocal sound but for now I love how that Ribbon sounds with Bens voice, I will definitely have it up for later vocal recordings. I don't think we'll be using the room mic much.

Ruby Frost

The lovely Ruby Frost came round to record some demos today, it was pretty fun. I haven't really delved in to programming much in the past year or so so last night gave myself a quick refresher on logic and worked out how protools works these days. Oh man I <3 Protools 8 so much. The MIDI edit window is sooo great I didn't end up straying in to logic at all.

We recorded some vocals to a backing track that had been programmed by someone else and then programmed from scratch all the parts for 1 song, some of the parts for another and got Vocals done for both. Pretty productive day.

recordingrecordingrecording

More vocal tracking today. Dan and I were both a bit (very) tired, which made for interesting recording times. But we got lots done and are happy about their album being SO CLOSE to being all tracked.

Tomorrow I have some time to catch up on some mixing and then in the evening I start on some new stuff with Mali Mali.

Kingston Album

Woo. More Kingston Vocals today, this morning we did some gang vocals, my Kiwi set to wide Cardiod works really well for this. Then Shohan dominated her parts on "Miss You" before Dan Scott and I spent the rest of the day working on "I'm Gonna Be With The King" which we finished.

Now I am working on comping up the doubles and harmonies and doubles of harmonies and everything else we did today!

Everyone's voice seemed to be on form today, some really great singing, especially Shohan and Dan. The song is sounding HUGE, Brandons doing a great job on it.

Kingston Album Tracking

Kingston are so close to finishing their Album. They've been over in Canada and New York tracking Drums, Bass and Guitars. They came back to New Zealand a couple of months ago and their producer Brandon Friesen has been over for the past 3 or so weeks finishing off Vocals and adding more guitars and synths etc out at a batch they've been hiring at Piha.

Brandons headed of to Australia and New York before returning to Canada and I've been left to track 3 songs worth of vocals, plus some doubling of vocals and harmonies and some more guitars.

Today we finished the Vocals on "Miss You" and Scott put down a fair bit of guitar pieces here and there.

What I've heard of the album sounds HUGE. Can't wait for Brandon to give it his final touches so I can see how its all going to sit in the mix.

Glass Owls Day 4

Finished tracking for all 6 songs yesterday, got some more guitar, handclaps, tambourine, shaker, vocals, backing vocals and clarinet all done!

It was my first time tracking a Clarinet (well up close anyway, I have recorded them in orchestras before) and I think it was a success. I opted for a mic that I knew was very sensitive and not too coloured; the Blue Kiwi (it also happened to be already set up!) Sounded great, captured all the air and detail!

EP is sounding really good, now I have to get cracking on mixing it all!

Glass Owls Day 3

Day three of Glass Owls EP tracking, Tomas showed up first thing this morning with some rather impressive bandages (due to a small incident whilst longboarding at considerable speeds)(apparently) Fortunately he only had one song left on guitar! We almost finished all the guitar parts today, (we had an idea for one more just as they were leaving) and we finished vocals on a couple of tracks.

Tomorrows plan: finish vocals for 4 remaining songs, record some clarinet, handclaps tambourine and shaker.


I love spending days geeking out on guitars.

More Great North Album

I am feeling exhausted having spent the weekend recording a few more songs for the Great North Album. It took some time but we managed to get 3 songs tracked, 2 with live vocals. All the songs were pretty new and in the heat things got a bit stressful and grumpy but we made it through.

One song we ended up completely stripping back and re-arranging, going from more up beat poppy feel to very very mellow. So mellow that Hayden was able to sit in the same room to track his acoustic and vocals.

On one of the other songs we wanted to add a rattle on the ride cymbal and Olly hadn't got one so I carefully dismantled one of our taps! You can see the tap taped on below.



I spent alot of time on Friday messing around with our piano, carefully replacing felts and playing around with different adjustments so we could track some piano and vocals live with the album closer "All Eyes". After a while we ended up not tracking the vocals live for that song but put down a live acoustic piano anyway.

We intend on replacing all the other keys on the album but considering how piano focused this song is I thought it would be best not to replace it (considering we're not going to a click)

(yes that is a beta57a on the piano, sounded great too!)

Artisan Guns: Second EP

Sorry in advance for lots of photos but this post spans a week!



A little over a year ago Artisan Guns came round for a long weekend to track their first EP Bird and Bone, we did it mostly live in my bedroom and bathroom, the EP was released a few months ago with distribution through EMI and a great video for their single "Autumn" things are really starting to pick up for the band.

I spent almost every moment of the last week with the band recording their second EP in a private studio in town which came with the luxury of nicer tuned rooms, Protools HD, some more mics, more pres, seperate rooms and its considerably closer for the Howick boys than Oratia! Its located in a block of offices and thus we had to record loud stuff (such as drums and guitars) from after 5pm, so we ended up getting in to the studio around 2 or 3 tuning and setting up and recording through till 4am most nights. Fortunately we our good friend Rose's lovely family let us sleep at their house over the week while they were away.

Over the 5 evenings we managed to track 6 songs completely I've had a listen through at home now and am really happy with the result so far. I'm going to be mixing from here so hopefully should be done in a few weeks.

We opted for quite a stripped back mic up of the kit, using only the overhead, room, kick and floor mics for most songs. We had my Kiwi set up in the hall for a couple of songs that warranted a bigger drum sound and we stuck up the TLM170 as a second room mic for the few songs that needed a wider drum sound. I like keeping things pretty minimal but its good to have some backups like the snare and rack tom mics even if I don't end up using them.

Vocal Mic Shoot-out, from left to right; TLM170, Blue Kiwi, TLM103 and Shure KSM353
We went for the TLM 170 on Matts Vocals and then my Blue Kiwi on Reubens

My Princeton+Ac15HH, Dave Dobbyns Les Paul, My Gretsch, Jonos um creation and my Tele

Beatiful Gibson reissue, wish I had taken a picture but we ended up tracking a very expensive beautiful GIbson J200 with an SM57 through a cheapish valve pre for an old grimy sound

we recorded the intro Guitar on "Brand New Game" through this tiny practise amp, it sounds perfect!