The AVersions

The AVersions

Following on from the roots of reason album, the drummers partner ami asked if i would be interested in recording her band. Sadly i ran out of time to start anything before the summer but was keen to sort something for September. Keen to get going, i booked up ASAP.

The Aversions where a cover band consisting of a 4 piece playing pop/rock numbers from the 80s/90s. Being female fronted the band did a good job choosing songs to suit. We recorded-

Call me - Blondie

Kids of america - Kim Wylde

  99 red ballons - nena

crash - The Primitives

walking on sunshine - Katrina & the Waves

In terms of the cover instrumentation, i was a live take of just drums, bass , a single guitar , backing vox and lead vocals.

Set up

Drums

The kit the drummer played was very expensive and very nice sounding ( also very well tuned) so was quite pleasent too work with.

kick : Audix d6 on front

Snare: sm57 on top, earthworks er30 on bottom

 Toms:Beyer M201

Floor tom: use a d112 but had to change it for a sm58 due to mic shortage.

Over Heads: A OFTR Stereo pair of Earthwork er30s above the drummers head

I spent a bit of time fiddling with positions here. I pointed the tom mics at the center of each tom to get the most attack. The er30 on the snare was pointed in the middle of the snare wires with the top mic pointed half way between middle and rim. The d6 was just inside the kick but gave quite a bit of waffle (really need to remove all kick front skins in future.)

Its easy to see where each of the tom and snare microphones are pointing here.

 

Though slightly hard to see, the overheads can be seen above the drum kit, there over the drummers head.

Bass

DI: again! :S

Guitar

sm57 and sm7b (both shure). One on the Cone, one on the rim. (panned left and right with differnt eqs on the mix)

Backing vocals

 Spaced pair of C414s, with better singer on one pair, other 2 singers on other pair. Arrange in a cardioid figure 8 but with both in phase, if that makes sense.

You can see one the c414 pair.

Main Vox

Neumman U87 & sm7b pair :)

(note main vox was a seperate session )

Band Recording

For the recording it was all tracked live, with a scratch vocal being fed through the headphones for the musicians. It was quite a quick process :) was quite happy with the drums as a raw sound.

Vocal Recording
For most of the vocals it was hard to get a perfect take for each verse/chorus etc. So instead i punched in line by line. It was a little long winded but meant for a better vocal take. The sm7b was used for some of the louder vocals with the u87 taking most of the work.


Mixing
for a basic cover band i didn't spend an awful amount of time mixing. As it was played in live i felt the mixing should sound live. A did a few thing which i had never really tried before however. For a start i put the tom mics through a bus. This was then gated with a fairly high threshold. Adding a suitable release time, the tom mics would only be audible when the tom toms where hit, tightening up the mix.

I did some crafty editing with the vocals, as one of the punched in takes had clipped (should have realised. I took the same line for a different chorus and pasted it in place. Sadly as the band was not in click track it was out of time. Slowing the tempo of the sample put it back in place and is the result is indistinguishable.

The results







The band where

Ami mitchell - vocals

Dave Ranner - Bass & vox

Gareth - Guitar & vox

Tim Porch - drums & vox

Personal Tastes Volume 1

Personal Tastes Volume 1

Most of my blog posts have been about some of the work i have done, but i would like to share some of others peoples work that i like not because of the music but because of the production.

New Frontier - Donald Faygen

My course leader last year introduced me to this last year. Its used by audio engineers all over to test speakers and front of house systems. Its now a personal favorite of mind but is sited by Many as the best sounding recording ever made.

  6:00 - Dream Theater

A friend of mine introduced to dream theater two years ago. I can remember so clearly hearing the sound of those octobans filling the room and descending into a technical master piece! Such a punchy tight drum sound really great in my opinion. The best thing about the album is the drums are live drums unlike the previous album where mike portnoy stated it was mostly triggered. Saying this turn it fairly loud on good monitors and you can hear how gated everything is :L. So here we have 6:00 and Pull me under (from the second album) make sure to listen for the differences. 

  Am I Evil - Metallica

I love the sound of the early metal how trashy and rough it sounds. In my opinion i prefer it to a lot of the post hardcore stuff that gets released. What i love the most is the guitars there is so many doubled tracked ryhtum parts here giving it such a thick sound, Adding in a bass player that makes his bass sound like a guitar. The drums sound a bit tinny in the cymbal departement, but the rest is just brutal. 

  Welcome to the jungle - Guns n roses

A Massive fan of this band and the album. But if a track stands out its this beut. Punchy drums, dirty guitars, a deep bass and hole lot of axl rose. I love the production from start to finish on this album it cuts away the crap of a lot of the 80s metal/glam rock and returns to the classic rock roots with some bang up to date studio work. top notch

  November - Guns n roses

Sadly guns n roses slipped from there early sound for the use your illusion albums. The production here has been polished within a inch of its life. Its worth mention for just how sonically good it sounds and the epic instrumentation. A few interesting points mind, the strings are actually from a keyboard :L.

  Slave to the rhythm - Grace jones

Worth pointing out because of the drums, really great sound to em. Check out the bridge for them on there own and just listen to how massive they sound!

Thriller - Micheal Jackson

Though it needs a better link this songs sounds surprising thin when listened to on good reference monitors. Not slating the guys who worked on the album its just intresting.

All Along the watch tower - Jimmi hendrix

Listening it may not seem special in terms of production. But what makes it special that all those overdubs and strange effects panned from left to right where done by hand live. no pro tools or automation this was the 60s. Whats even better is this was done on a 4 track :O. Many takes later we have all along the watch tower.

  Fallen Angles - Black Veil Brides

Sticking with the metal i recently discovered this while watching scuzz. For modern metal it doesn't seemed to have suffered much of the brutal production but still sounds meaty. I like the punchy drums though i believe there triggered/doubled. What i like the most is how the guitars just sound live and real and are left with that under produced kinda feel.

thats it folks! Please check out these on good speakers and use better sources if you can.

Some Of My Covers

Song Of My Covers

Ok So i was on you tube this morning and remembered some of the videos i had made doing covers and various things. So here they are two guitar cover videos. Both where recorded using guitar rig 4 through a behringer fca2002 interface.

The frist song is YYZ by Rush, note the black object on the top of the fretboard is a phone camera :L

And the second song is panama by Van Halen :L (few mistakes im afraid )

Becky Farr

Becky Farr

Its fair to say this was by far the biggest project i had undertaken so far, little did i realise this at the start. It took around 6 sessions in the mounts of may and june, with me ending up finishing the mixes on my birthday!

I met Becky on gumtree after finding an advert looking for a producer. It was a bold move but i asked if i could fit the bill and provide my services for free. She was more then interested to work with me. It was clear from the moment go that the music was not in my style of work and i would need to adapt my skills to fit. 

She arrived with handfull of ideas and pages of lyrics notated against the strangest form of sheet music i had ever seen. We recorded the basic demos in the first session with just a piano and vocal mic to capture the scratch track. It was clear that we were going to have to arrange the rest of the instrumentation from the basic piano chords. 

(2 x akg c414 spaced pair, + one on the bottom of the sound board, (ie buy her feet) sadly no recordings available for this )

The Arrangements

The One You Chose

The first song we worked on was a piece written for her brothers first dance at his wedding. So slow, drawn out, love song, ballad. (you get the idea). Being a big fan of strings (o yes the strings :) ) they where dotted around the the standard ballad song structure, with a bass guitar to reinforce the piano. Playing around with the midi keyboard i added some classical guitar to end of the song to tie it up. It was easily finished and scratched tracked in that session. 

One Half Of Me

The next song was more upbeat with a more alternative pop sound. The song was rather hard to arrange with many ideas being thrown around. Once again we used strings & bass, But added some basic drum loops and i played in some guitar parts. The song was not fully arranged to the recording sessions where the guitar parts switched from electric to acoustic.

Canvas

This was the second song to be arranged completely, and we spent much time trying out different instruments and sounds. There was a great deal of experimentation with synthesisers and other ambient sounds which didn't really fit. At the time i remember listening to Michael Jackson's earth song  and hearing how the clean guitar and horn arrangements benefited such a epic song.  I tried adding some basic horn arrangements which worked wonders and made the song really stand out. 

Free

This song is rather odd. It was left to the last minute and wasent really worked on til we had recorded the other 3 songs. Never the less it was a clear creative process to add the instrumentation. The Tremolo guitar heard on the track was actually an accident but sounded so creepy it was left in the mix. The massive reverb used on the drums just added to the ambient feel on the song.

The Recording

The main element to recoding was the piano and it was 1 of only 3 acoustic instruments on the Ep. A baby grand Yamaha piano was used for the recordings in the universities center of performing arts. For the recording i used a pair of Akg c414s in a spaced arrangement 2 feet from the piano. (Note i do have a picture of this but need to locate it :S ) Being an old squash court the room was quite lively. Sadly there was quite a lot of pedal noise located in the recording. In the future im going to try using pencil condensors very close to the sound board. The piano recording was rather quite due to the interfaces i had to use (some lambada one) It seemed to have very little pre amp gain and could not boost the signal to even -20db. (nothing compression cant sort ;) 

The vocals gave me a fair bit of trouble due to tonal nature of the singers voice. I tried using a total of 4 microphones in various postions to experiment. On the recording the mic used was a Neumman U87 with some reinforcement from a Shure SM7B. I adopted a mic technique i use all the time now. I stick the u87 in Omni and turn the capsule to 60 degrees. So that the mic is just as sensitive but the blast from the singer is spread along the diaphragm. I also tried using a earthworks Er30 placed head on and a c414 over the shoulder of the singer. The earthworks worked surprisingly well but lacked tonal character being flat response microphones and also where fairly sibilance free. The c414 over the shoulder dident have enough direct sound in the mix and would probably  have worked better in a lively room.

(picture to follow)

Nothing too special on the acoustic guitar, pointed a akg c414 in figure of 8 at the 12th fret and hoped for the best. It worked but sounded quite trebly. The reason for the figure of 8 was my breathing would be directed at the microphones dead spot.

Mixing

Being vastly logic instruments and samples there was very little nasty`s too sort out. The vocals took a fair while to prefect and needed an fair amount of compression and EQ. Theres is some automated reverb in Free between pre chorus and chorus.

Conclusion

Overall working with Becky was a great experience. Being a classically trained grade 8 pianist i felt her arrangements added that special element to the songs that many pop singer songwriters miss. I also wish i had used more of beckys voice as she could pull of harmonies well and i always like the sound of vocal polyphony.

Guitar Sampler Instrument.

Guitar Sampler Instrument.

Aside from the scheduled posts i have spent the day recording a guitar note by note to create a sampler instrument for use in the EXS24 sampler. It was done as an uni assignment with fellow pupils David Gudge &  Luke Boast. 

We used a collection of 3 microphones a SM57 beta A, a Akg d112 and a Rhode nt1a. I have pictures for now but no sound samples im afraid :(

Anyway the pictures

Sounds to follow and possibly the instrument available as a download :)

Roots Of Reason

Roots Of Reason

After advertising my service on join my band i was soon to be greeted by a grunge band. These guys were keen to get some stuff laid down on record. Once again being on my own but not knowing any of the members i was slightly daunted about the processes. With Some thoughts of doubt about how good the band was i agreed to meet them. It turned out that the band members where at least 8 years older then me but still acted like a band in there youth. The dates where arranged, and the plan was to lay down a  albums worth of material in a single session.

From hearing the demos and being a fan of nirvina it was clear that this would be as a live an album as possible, with the band in the same room. Luckily for me this was there plan all along :D

Starting at 8am on a sunday should be a crime, but trust me i needed all the time i could get. Greeting the band at little after 9 i was given 20 quid for my days expensises and met the last member of the band, Alex the bass player. 

In terms of set up i had researched the methods of glyn johns the famous engineer who worked with the beatles and led zepplin. I used his overhead technique.

(note i dont own this picture it is from http://rosswilsondrmetal.wordpress.com/studio-project/)

It worked suprisingly well for picking up an even picture of the drum kit.

Drums

Kick: Akg d112 between center and rim, & sm57 on beater skin

Snare: Beyer m201 on top & sm57 on bottom

Toms: Akg clip on drum microphones (was mic short :(  )

Ride: Small akg pencil from the akg drum mic pack. 

Overheads: Akg c451b

The ride mic was not used in the final mix. The overhead tecnique works wonders highly recomended. Using the front skin kick microphone didn't work as inteneded it has too much click for a rock kick drum.

Guitars

Amp 1 : Sm57 on cone, Rode nt1a 8 inches away.
Amp 2 : Sm57 on cone & rode nt1a on the rear of the amp.

I allways like mic'in guitar amps from the back, Especially if there opened back. You get more of airy  less harsh sound.

Bass

Simple di box :)

Stick with the di, allways works. (At least i thought ;) )

Vocals

Sm7b and Neumann u87 mixed together in 10:3 ratio. Was dubbed later in the dead room.

Theres something about the Shure sm7b that i like for dirty vocals. It takes away a little bit of the harshness.  

Set up Video

Recording

Tracking takes its time even more so when the singer isint looking at the band. However if you turn him round you can track twice as fast (FACT!). The band tracked the album in what was going to be the order on the cd (thats one way of doing it i guess :L). We recorded the first 6 songs in around 8 hours but where later mostly re recorded as the band really got into the recording once they could see each other. I aslo realised that the speaker in one amp had blown resulting a slightly nasty sound. This was later overdubbed with the original take on a sepearte amp and added more thickness. NOTE this can still be heard in stress free.

The later songs where tracked very quickly around 3 per take and all the main takes where done by around 6. Leaving the singer in what is a nasty, white, completely dead room allowed him to somehow lay down all the vocals in around 2 hours with no over dubs, not bad on his part. The rhythum guitar was all doubled up on the other amp as stated before in around 50 minutes.

Taking a full break for the first time since i started allowed to me clear my ears slightly of all that noise. I swear in no other job can you work for 11 hours with no break lasting more then 5 minutes.

With the remaining time there was a quite number that the guitarist wanted to lay down with just him and his guitar. Lacking an acoustic guitar. i used the neuman u87 to pick up both him and the electric guitar un plugged, with a di box for volume reinforcement.

Having a brain wave i sujested turning the little number into a full song. Showing the initive i got mark to show them the parts and in little under an hour the song was completed to the version heard on the cd. Intrestingly in there live video found here there is a differnet version of the song again.

Mixing 

For some reason i had very little kick to work with. It lacked something. After a hell of a lot of fiddling, i finally cracked an goggled "mixing bass drum". All it needed was a gate and some more volume. Sadly the end result never contained an adequate amount of kick. (my bad!) Given the lack of time spent on sound checking the guitars suffered for it. They sounded very harsh and rough, however given the style it did allow some complementation. Bass was easy a pie: Compression, Eq, Gain. For vocals i used a short delay, a medium delay, compression and a slight bit of chorus.

I should have realised that trying to complete an album in such a short time space with my lack of expernince was never going to end that well. Looking back i cut a fair amount of corners. But i made the contacts and the band where happy. Further more i received some more money for my effort and gained dibs for the second album. I also got another band that where happy with my work enough for them to want me to record them .

There are 2 versions of the album. The one i own and the one the band own and distributed. The one i own was mastered differently as the first when slightly wrong on being burnt to cd. The band for some reason preferred the original over mine :L. The samples you can hear are from my master. 

Theres something about listening to something you have recorded and falling in love with it. I listened to that cd on repeat for a week, i couldn't stop listening. I knew all the words, the guitar riffs and the drum fills. I still stick it on every now and then and listen to it from start to finish. :D

Caption: I can hear the faders crying!

Roots Of Reason

Please Check back again at a later date, as there will be more samples of the band uploaded!

Back Dating

Back Dating

Its taking me a lot longer then i had exepcted to back date and remeber all of the material i have recorded.  Any way this will be the posts coming up in the near future with some possible odds and sods thrown in.

Roots Of Reason

My first Album, was recorded in 17 hours on a single session :)

Becky Far

My first real role as a producer and arranger. Very happy with the results

Eye Scream Records

The record company i now own 20% of.

The Summer

The long and boring summer holidays :(

Im Back with the A Versions

Recording a cover band

Slow Down World

Producing a recording a ep for a local metal band !..!

And that ladys and gents brings us up to date!

Lost Drum Recording

Any way after rummaging through my itunes i found some strange drum recording  I believe this was recorded around march 2012 with my friend gary. Apart from a fairly standard set up, we actually used no overheads at all. Instead i used a pair of earthwork er30s around 8 feet from the bass drum pointing at the kit just above the bass drum. 

Heres The result.

Hayley Is A Hitman Part 2

Hayley Is A Hitman Part 2

So after all the recording it was time to mix, a process that would last almost 6 weeks and ended up badly. In hein sight i should have realised the challenge required to mix such a record in the style and sound they wanted. My reluctance to apply drum triggering and auto tuning dident help the situation.

Many Hours were spent mixing hopelessly googling "How to mix metal Drums" etc etc/. It never got me anywhere. Cheap kits can never be polished up :(. I got the vocals, bass and drums to an ok standard but never got those drums right. bouncing countless demos back and forth with the band only resulted in more annoyance my end. Further more i hadent even realized , There supposed to be synths here??

Putting in over 30 hours just on one songs seemed a lot for nothing , but i was determined to sort it out. Going between pro tools and logic on more then one occasion did no justice. After Some back and forth bouncing and some criticism my end i left the mixing processes to the singer who wanted to mix it. I felt this best given the time energy i no longer had to please people. Little did i realism how much people dont appreciate the things you do. 

Around mid april i asked how the mixing was going only to receive a reply stating the drums sounded so crap that they no longer wanted the recordings. :@ :@. The talk about me recording the album was dropped and little more was heard from them about the music. Adding salt to the wounds i found some more rather rude and just general assholish comments on the bands Wikipedia page. Sadly i cant find the page ( im guessing it was deleted) but i was least impressed. 

It would not be the last time i crossed paths with the band strangely enough :S

 

Things i learnt 

As a learning curve i learn a lot. If you offer people something free dont take the shit, in fact dont even offer it for free. People will find you given time and the contacts. If you think a professional product is going to cost you nothing or expect that from a free offer then your mistaken. I wont lie i enjoyed the recording processes, i enjoyed there music. I still like there music but i wont give them any respect. You couldn't pay me to work with them again.

I guess as a producer your going to work with people who your never going to get on with, its in the job title. Still theres line which i feel was crossed.

 

I guess its time to listen to how far i got with this mix. Its not mastered and i think it may not be the latest or last version but i still feel it deserves a listen.

Enjoy !..!