AUSA End Of Daze

Last Friday I did sound for the Auckland University Students Asocciation's End Of Daze event with Lydia Cole, Randa, The Wyld and Loui the Zu. When it stopped raining (see tarp hiding under the DJ booth below) it turned out to be a nice, fun day. More photos from the show here on the bFM facebook page.

Hula Hope and Avalanche City Tour.

I returned from a 6 day Australian tour with Avalanche City, late at night on Monday ready to start recording a couple of songs on the Tuesday with Hula Hope from Wellington. The Tour was great, so nice to spend some time with the Avalanche City guys and gals and interesting to do some shows in a different country.

The shows were pretty good, my low point was thinking I was going to have to mix a show stood on stage right behind the band with a particularly rowdy looking croud staring at me but my high point was discovering I could mix with the venues iPad from wherever I wanted! Hahahaha.

Back to recording with Hula Hope, the first day we recorded Acoustic Guitar and Vocals for the 2 songs and then I played a bit of Bass and the second day I added the rough outline of where drums would maybe go in one of the songs ready for me to redo later and some piano and Hula added a few harmonies and backing vocals. I have to finish adding some parts now while she's back in Wellington and send her the rough mixes!

Watercolours win VNZMA Critics Choice

Readers of this blog will know that for the past few years I have been playing guitar in and had been working with Watercolours towards some demos, as well as of course the first Watercolours single "Under"

The other week we played at the Kings Arms for the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards Critics Choice award, up against stiff competition for the award in the form of Beach Pigs and Loui the Zu. Any of the bands could've taken out the award, the other two bands were and are amazing but somehow the judges decreed Watercolours as the winner.

Its pretty special to have been involved in this project so far and hopefully I get to continue as a guitar player for as long as possible. Anyway, big congratulations to Chelsea on this award, its well deserved.

Josie Tuck - Drum recording

We spent a few days last week recording drums for Josie Tucks album with Stephen Thomas behind the kit. We got some really great sounds and tracked some really cool beats; a bit of afrobeat influence in a couple of songs, some cool percussion as part of the kit and a fair amount of jazz influences, even some free jazz moments! Lots of the parts are almost symphonic which should be a good base for the type of instrumentation and arrangements that Josie intends to have on top. 

Yasamin - Horns and Vibraphone

 A couple of weekends ago I recorded some horns, vibraphone, backing vocals and claps etc on Yasamins songs. Then a few days later my computers hard drive died. Its all back up and running now but there was a scary few days while I tried to reinstall OSX and had to take it to the doctors. Fortunately all of my recording projects are safe on an external drive and then backed up on to another! (if you're reading this back up everything you have NOW!)

Anyway back to recording, Finn brought with him his Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Saxaphone and Mellophone to track the horn parts on a couple of songs, I often end up trying to make a full brass sound with one trumpet but it really doesn't cut it, you need all the different horns and their tonal differences to build that full sound. Fortunately Finn can play them all and thus became our one man horn section!

Matt was also back, this time with the vibraphone to add in a couple of places and we recorded a couple of Matt and Cams BV's and some claps.

Yasamin Al-Tiay EP recording

Last weekend we started recording Yasamin Al-Tiays EP and all going to plan it should be all tracked this weekend!

You may notice some new gear in the photos, I am looking after it for my friend, excellent engineer and all round GC Tom Anderson of TA Audio. He's out of the country soon so I am keeping some of his stuff safe.

We started with some guide tracks and then some Cajon which I recorded with a close KM184 and then a pair of Mojave MA 200's as stereo room mics. Then Matt played some bass drum with a mallet (instead of using the Cajon's bass drum as the bass drum sounded much nicer) and we added a full drum kit to one of the songs and some snare to another and then a whole bunch of percussion... Lots of drum layers!

On Sunday we worked our way through Bass (DI'd with the Chandler TG2, I don't think I am going to be able to give that back sorry Tom) Acoustic guitar, Banjo and Ukulele. KM184's got a fair bit of use that day (I probably felt sorry for them having delegated their usual overhead/stereo duties to the Mojaves!)

Teacups - Choir

We really need to work out a system of having a choir that does all the choir parts on everyones songs. I love group vocals! We recorded some choir-y parts on the Teacups EP and some foot stomps and handclaps and now I think its 99% recorded... (we just forgot 1 vocal line that Chelsea needs to sing and maybe I'll end up adding more percussion or something when it comes to mix)

Talitas presence was with us today in the form of Liz's t-shirt. (that is Talitas face on her shirt)


To capture the little choir I had KM184s in a spaced pair and then the Kiwi set to omni, we double tracked most of them and I might use the stereo mics from one take and then the Kiwi from the other and then on top of that there's other layers of the group singing different harmonies.

Josie Tuck - Banjo & Ukelele recording

Bruce came to record some Banjo and Ukulele for Josies album. A really lovely sounding Banjo makes all the difference!

Ivory Coast - Drum Recording

We recorded some more drums for Ivory Coast's album over the past couple of days, we tracked a couple of new songs and then re-did some of the songs that had changed a bit since the initial drum recording and added some extra percussion here and there. Despite me having a nasty cold it was actually a fun couple of days of recording!

I tried out my Studio Projects C4's as some stereo room mics (they were ok, not sure if I'll bother again) and I had an MD421 as an extra kick mic on the floor just angled up to the front of the skin (which actually sounds really great). In total I had 14 mics on the kit, which is quite a few for me but I like to get a few options up so I can delete most of them. For one song we tracked yesterday I'll probably only be using the kick, snare and the ribbon mics. But its nice to have the others there in case maybe I wanted to have the stereo room mics for to give the drums some stereo interest or more depth or maybe I needed a little more hihat or a tom etc.

Mimsy - Guides & Keyboard

Mimsy recorded some guide tracks for a couple of new songs for her record the other day, while I had my new Casio XW-P1 plugged in we tracked a couple of little keyboard parts too. There was an organ part in one of the songs that I wanted to do with something that sounded like a little combo organ rather than the Hammond and this keyboard seemed to work well for that, we managed to coax a fairly convincing tone out of it.