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!

recordingrecordingrecordingrecordingrecording

More Great North vocals yesterday, we now have vocals for the first six songs. Hooray!



Next week: Artisan Funs.

Sometimes its good to take a break and look at some birds.

What happens when we have nothing left that we can do today.

Great Northing.

Recently I have had the pleasure of beginning work on Great Norths album, we currently have 6 songs with Drums Bass and acoustic guitar tracked (along with some guide keys and a few other things here and there) we should be doing some more drums bass etc in the next couple of weeks.

This past week Hayden and Strahan came for a visit each to put down some vocals and electric guitar respectively. We tracked vocals live with one of the songs called "I Feel Alive" and I think its turned out really great Strahan and I sat down today and worked through his guitar part on it and its really coming together, I cant wait to get a real acoustic piano in there instead of the keyboard that's currently on.


I really enjoy messing around with a bunch of guitars and amps trying to find "that tone" but Strahan has recently made some adjustments to his rig. Hes gone from skateboard pedalboard(s) to a pedal train with some nice new toys and from whatever amp we could borrow to a beautiful new Fender Bassman, which sounds great. No messing about just plug in and play.

I'd be upset if it didn't sound so good.

Farmstock

For the past few months I (plus a few helpful friends) have been organising Farmstock, a concert/mini-festival at my house (which is almost a farm) in Oratia.


Last night it happened and went great! Avalanche city had to pull out due to vomiting+187 Gangsters (a comedy hip-hop act who may or may not also be a popular local band) plane from Sydney got delayed and cancelled but it worked out well as it made for a more relaxed running order.

Right now I am exhausted. I was out the door at 8 on Saturday to pick up the PA from Musicworks (who kindly sponsored the event) and almost didn't stop (excpet for a lunch break) till 5 when I had a quick shower and was back out ready to do sound for the whole evening.

When the "stage" was delivered at about 11am I discovered that the lady on the phone hadn't looked at the stage and just read from her computer screen the dimensions and it was considerably smaller than she had said... We ended up sending the stage back and getting it refunded. Dad and I collected pallets from neighbours and used the massive super heavy pallet thing from behind our packing shed to put together a stage at least 3 times the size of the one I had booked!

That was the only major hitch, otherwise everything ran smoothly, no noise complaints, no rain, enough people showed up. Overall I think a good time was had by everyone!

Here are some photos of my hard work+bands and some videos too (slightly poor quality on my cheap camera, but its the thought that counts right?)

Chelsea Jade

John Bristow

Mali Mali
The Wicks


Phil Austen and the Bayonets

Subterranes

Lisa Crawley



The Gladeyes

Great North

Jocee Tuck

Jocee Tuck - Seven Years

Recorded this on my camera at the Womens Refuge show yesterday, enjoy!

Womens Refuge Fundraiser

Spent a fun afternoon at St Kevins Aracade doing sound for a Women's Refuge fundraiser run by my good friend Grace. Went and picked up the PA with Chis from Zeal and had a fun afternoon with good music! Heres some pics, I think I only missed photos of Chelsea Jade who played with James Duncan and was INCREDIBLE! I am looking forward to her playing at Farmstock this Saturday (which is a concert at my house) I have some video of Jocee to upload on to youtube so will put that up here soon too!

Great North Album

I was very happy to start work on Great Norths album this weekend, Hayden popped over a few weeks ago and we made a quick recording of him singing through the songs with an acoustic guitar, they're really good. I am quite excited to get on and hear them fully formed!

This weekend we tracked drums, bass, acoustic guitar, guide keys for 6 of the proposed 9 songs and on one of the slower numbers "I Feel Alive" Hayden pulled a touching vocal take out of the bag which was tracked live with the rest of the band!

We're going for a much more natural sound this time around, no click tracks, less mics (despite the amount I put out I think I will probably only go for one or two on the drums). We're going to be re-tracking the piano parts on a real acoustic piano (thank goodness! I hate fake piano). We're even going to be attempting tracking another of the quieter songs all live in my lounge with the piano we have in there and everyone in the same room (except maybe Strahan, hes a noisy boy!)

I can't wait! Will keep you informed as to how its all going in the new year

Pink Pound Experience back!

Pink Pound Experience came back last Tuesday for another song, should be done and on their myspace soon. We got stuck for a synth bass part, the synth lines were sounding too busy, I ended up suggesting real bass through a big muff which we used and then synth over the instrumental. Was a pretty fun day of experimenting though and I'm happy with how its sounding now.