We went to the countryside...

[NJW]

Well, my apoligies to people who aren't interested in this kind of thing - but because I use this forum most I thought I would post it here. I am back in the Fife countryside to record album #2 with a fantastic artist called Jacobs Stories. He is from Brighton and plays fantastic electronica/indie music. I played bass and was assistant engineer on his first album, which we also recorded here in Fife, and I will be doing the same duties this time round.

I felt that, rather than keeping notes on the process in a little book, I would write them down in diary form here day by day... because I personally quite enjoy reading recording diaries and reading about the problems other people face and how they tackle them, etc. etc.

So. Yes.

I will try and take some photos every day (starting tomorrow).

[NJW]

[u][b]Day 1[/b][/u] - Tuesday 28th August.

So today has been 'setup' day. I woke up in my flat in Dundee at about 10 and thought 'hmmm... we'd better get on with it'. I met Robin (the remarkable young man responsible for engineering the session) at his place and we made sure everything we needed was packed up and ready for the 'studio' move down to the farm in Fife where we'd be based for the next week.

Then we packed everything into the back of the van and headed down the road, over the Tay river and into Fife. We finally arrived and got loaded in by about 3, and set up our control room in the 'apartment' area on the 2nd floor of the house, with the live room on the ground floor. We ran the multi between these two rooms and after setting up the control room checked all the multi channels and preamps. We then treated the area around the monitors/desk with acoustic foam mounted on MDF panels. This is very much a temporary solution to a problem we usually live with, but we thought we'd try it anyway and it seems to have cleared up the clarity of the stereo image significantly.

Because of the stripped down style (and the fact that it is only one musician) we are only actually going to be using 9 or so different preamps for this record, rather than hooking up all 32 available pre's. We will be using 4 channels of Neve designed preamps/eq from the Amek BC-3 desk we have taken with us. Alongside this, we will be using 2 channels of FMR Audio RNP preamps, 1 channel of Universal Audio LA610 and 2 channels of Oram Octasonic preamps.

After checking everything was functioning properly (and discovering that we had a faulty headphone cable, which I then attempted to fix and solder in the dark, resulting in me swapping over pins 1 + 3 - thus causing even more confusion as to why we could pan left, but couldnt pan right... argh.... but it's sorted now (note - don't try to solder in the dark)) I then headed back upstairs and we sat and listened to the album in demo form, taking notes and drawing up a progress chart for the record. The progress chart is probably one of my 'top 10 essential album recording tools' - which I first encountered when recording with an incredible engineer called J. Robbins. For those of you unfamiliar with the chart, it really is as simple as drawing a series of rows and columns, writing the song names in the rows, and the instruments over the columns, and checked off the boxes as you go. It's a fantastic way of keeping organised, and giving people a visual representation of what they have accomplished.

Next, we recorded all the 'beats' for the songs into Nuendo from MiniDisc (this is how all the beats are provided) using the FMR Audio RNP for both L + R sides. They sound pretty huge!

So. Gear is set up. Chart is drawn. Column 1 of said chart (beatz) has been ticked off!

Tomorrow, the recording begins. Sorry entry 1 was quite so boring, but it'll get better, I promise.

Here are some pictures of the house, and the view from the control room.

Edited August 29, 2007 by NJW

[paul, the]

Cool, will continue reading with interest.

[pauljdcooper]

I do like this kind of thing.
Top stuff

Edited August 29, 2007 by pauljdcooper

[NJW]

DAY 1 PHOTOS - GEEK STUFF




Photos of: Rack, Amek, Stuart at his keyboard and the patchrack in the live room.

Edited August 29, 2007 by NJW

[carlosfandango]

Wicked thread! Sticky?

[NJW]

[u][b]Day 2[/b][/u] - Wednesday 29th August

So today we woke up at around quarter to ten with the aim of starting at 10.

We decided last night that we would try to approach this record in a different way to the last. Rather than recording all the instruments in one go for each song one by one, we thought we'd try and take each track seperately and work on it from start to (almost) finished, in an attempt to prevent the same percussion/drum/bass sounds reoccuring throughout. Because its not a straight up rock/pop record it's gonna be nice to try new things on every song!

First thing in the morning, Robin and Stuart recorded the basic keyboard parts over the first song. It went ridiculously smoothly, and has been the case all day (except for one song). After this, and a few keyboard overdub ideas, we worked on percussion for the song. This is one of the ones that works around a really glitchy beat and so we added lots of tambourine and various other shakey things over the top to pad the beat out a bit. The percussion was recorded in the big live room with a Royer 121 ribbon mic, through the Amek BC-3. The preamps on this desk sound great! After all the percussion, Stuart laid down a scratch vocal (which sounds almost good enough to be a final take!) in one take. Then we set up the SVT and 6x10. Plugged in, set up a sound and wrote/recorded some bass for the song. This is the first time I've recorded with the SVT and it's such a HUGE amp. We mic'd up the cab with a Neumann TLM103 and sent a DI signal up also. After an hour and a half or so of writing the parts and recording the take, we had a listen and it sounds pretty awesome! Good, deep and warm.

After this, we listened to the song all the way through and ticked off some boxes on the chart. We then spent the rest of the late afternoon, early evening recording keyboard parts. By the time we stopped for dinner, we'd finished all the beats/rhythm tracks and keyboard parts for 5 songs (half the album). We then ate dinner and headed back up't stairs.

The rest of the evening was spent recording guide vocals for all the songs, using a different mic for each one to find some which particularly compliment Stuarts voice. The different mic's tried were - Neumann TLM103, Royer R121, Royer R121 (reversed), Shure SM7, Shure Beta57. The Royer, coupled with the Amek pre's sounds phenomenal, and this guy can really sing so vocals are always an enjoyable experience.

Tomorrow morning, we shall persist with much bass!

Pictures:

[paul, the]

[quote name='NJW' post='52554' date='Aug 29 2007, 11:00 PM'][/quote]

That's an awesome sweater. Awesome thread.

[mr pablo]

NJW where abouts in fife are you doing the recording?

[NJW]

[quote name='mr pablo' post='52806' date='Aug 30 2007, 02:31 PM']NJW where abouts in fife are you doing the recording?[/quote]


We have set up our temp. studio on a farm about a mile outside of Leven. A horrible place, but luckily we're just far enough out to be safe.

[NJW]

[u][b]Day 3 - Friday 31st August[/b][/u]

We didn't do any recording yesterday, as we left early to head up to Dundee to set up for a show we played last night (which was fantastic, might stick some photos up when I get them). So today, we started at 11 and decided to try and work through a load of acoustic piano parts as the piano tuner had given us a visit the day before. We started by taking the front board off the piano to open up the sound a little, and began by trying a spaced pair of Beyer M260 ribbon mics about 40cm from the strings, and a Neumann TLM103 about 6ft behind Stuart whilst he played. After a trial of this we decided we needed to try something else, so switched to 2 beyer M260's on the far sides of the piano (bass and treble side) about 35cm from the strings, and a Royer R121 ribbon mic in the centre position, at the same distance. This sounded pretty fantastic, and turned out especially great because we placed a pop shield on the rear of the mic (the royer has a figure-8 pattern) and Stuart could track live vocals over some of the quiet piano songs - which sounded really amazing. I wish I could play and sing like this!!! Robin and Stuart tracked piano parts for most of the afternoon, although at times progress was slow due to excessive background noise (something we should expect when recording on a working farm). I slacked off for a few hours and dissapeared to catch up on some sleep from last nights festivities. Eventually, we concluded that we had put in most of the acoustic piano parts and carried on by adding a few keyboard parts here and there. We listened through progress so far, and thought it'd be nice to have a break from piano/keys etc. so we thought we'd move on to something else.

Instead of a programmed beat, or drum kit, we decided to record some low tuned floor tom as a percussive slow beat in the climax of a song, so set up a Mapex Orion floor tom in the large room, and set up the Royer R121 and Neumann TLM103 as a middle/side pair running through the preamps on the Amek desk (we've been using these pre's a lot, because theyre great!). We also placed a Sennheiser MD421 up close on the tom, which ran into the Universal Audio LA610 preamp.

After stopping for dinner, we thought we'd have a more relaxing evening and just decided to do some hand claps as an extra percussive layer on the same song as we played the floor tom part on. We used the same Neumann/Royer m/s pair and myself, Stuart and my dear Mother, Father, Brother and Sister in law clapped away for a good 15 minutes. Family bonding? Yes indeed.

Pictures:



Piano with Royer R121 in centre position + Beyer M260s.



Floor tom with MD421 and Middle/Side pair in distance.



Stuart and Robin in control room.



Me in control room.



Middle and Side pair of Royer R121 + Neumann TLM103.

[NJW]

tracking vocals today. Will update at some point in the day with the notes on day 4 + 5 which I have been too lazy to do, and todays.

[NJW]

[u][b]DAY 4 - errrr...... Saturday[/b][/u]

Today we did loads of different things. Most notably loads of piano, loads of bass and loads of percussion... but most of these things are already discussed so i'm not going to talk about it much. However, we did have amazing fun making a beat for one of the songs - which consisted of the 3 of us playing a beat on floor tom, rimshot, tambourine and hitting the hardcase of the floor tom. We then picked a good bar of 4 and looped it and recorded keyboard over it. Fun times. Mics used were a Neumann TLM103 for the floor tom/hard case side and AKG c451 for tamb. side.

Lots done today.

Photos.



Stuart writing a melodihorn part.



Me trying to learn accordion.



The 'beats'. Floor tom, tambourine and hardcase.



Tom and Snare as used for a thunderous beat in the intro of a song.

Edited September 3, 2007 by NJW

[99ster]

This is a great thread - are you planning to add to it...?
I would love to read some more - especially as we're planning to do something very similar next year.
Cheers