Hula Hope - Drum Recording

A few weeks ago I recorded the bones of 3 more songs with Hula Hope from Wellington featuring guest vocals from Steve Abel. I'm in the process of adding a few extra parts to them (bass, keys etc) and asked Alex to play some drums/percussion. I'd added some of me playing individual marching drums on a song but needed more of a full drum kit sound for the others.

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!

Chelsea Jade

I love this piano wholeheartedly. We've had it since I can remember. The pedals squeak and clunk and the hammers make little noises, I find myself sometimes sticking bits of felt all over it and spaying it with WD40 and one of my brothers stuck note names all over the keys years ago but it sounds so rich and full of character.


Jonathan came and recorded some more piano for a new song in the morning and then the afternoon was spent tracking drums on "Mountain Song" from Chelseas one week ep. The drum+piano recording on the original were done live in one take apparently. But both have been so difficult to recreate for this recording. I've grown quite fond of the original and getting all the great spontaneous moments and then improving on the parts in the new takes has been a bit of a challenge but definitely worthwhile.


We tracked the drums on Mountain Song in two halves, using Alex's kick on the second louder half and then my marching band kick drum on the more ambient first half. Ever since I've had the marching drums I've wanted to try the bass drum as a kick in a drum kit, it worked so well!

Alex ended up moving the snare and bringing the rack tom in closer as seen below but this photo shows his kick pedal on the marching drum. Yum.