Album Diary. Added isolated sound clips

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SimonHirst
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Album Diary. Added isolated sound clips

Post by SimonHirst »

Earlier this week we went into the studio to start recording my album, and I thought I would keep a diary of the process to document everything that goes in to making this album in case anyone is interested. So I'll try and keep semi-regular updates and photos happening throughout the process, from start to finish, with all the boring parts as well.
So, here goes.....

STAGE #1

Around half of the album had been pre-production-ed as early as around this time last year, at which point I put it on hold to record and release an EP named 'Shining In Silver'. I won't go into the EP because there was a short thread about it somewhere already. Essentially, after having done the pre-productions demos I felt that the four tracks that ended up making the EP didn't really fit with the 'album' songs, so decided to make it something separate, release that, and then get back to the album, whilst trying to keep pushing the EP in the background.

About a month ago I had six songs complete, two pretty solid 'verse and chorus' ideas I liked, a song with all the music written but no melody/lyrics (Although strangely I had already named it.....) and a lack of a tenth song. There was a pretty even mix of upbeat, MOR, and a couple of more soft songs in there, so I had my mind on trying to write what I was calling in my head a 'sign-off' song. Something to end the album on, less of a 'complete' song (i.e verse, chorus, bridge etc), but just something with a couple of parts. Unfortunately, as I'm sure with many more qualified songwriters than I will say, it's not always easy to make a plan and then write that exact song. I kept telling myself I would find it, or indeed it would find me, before the studio booking.
In the last few weeks I was writing pretty intensely for a few hours on my (about) four-five 'days off' a week, whilst still keeping up the 4-5 gigs a week to pay the bills, and work around when my family was at home, or at their respective places (School, Pre-school, work etc). I finished the two solid ideas off, couldn't quite find a complete melody/lyrics for the other idea, although I had some good startings, and was starting to slightly stress when it was two days from the studio booking that I hadn't written the last song.
And then, as sometimes is the case, I played two chords which I've played a thousand times, heard it differently somehow, and the last 'sign-off' song was written in about 10 minutes. Songs are a strange business at times! The lyrics came out in almost the first go.
So it was out to The Porch studio, located just out of Hamilton, for three days, to complete all the drums, and see if we would still have time to record a few of the more major piano parts on the mini-grand, and all the acoustic guitars.
Last edited by SimonHirst on Thu Mar 10, 2016 1:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Album Diary

Post by SimonHirst »

STAGE #2

Drums. As I've learnt in the past, how well/badly the drums are recorded has a pretty big bearing on the end result. Unless you go down the replacing/sample road which works very well for some, especially in some genres, but personally I'm a bit more of a traditionalist when it comes to recording, and with the music I write I'm after a pretty 'live'ish feel. Engineering is not really my specialty, so I had a good friend, and clever guy, Matt Reid come out to do that side of things. We booked The Porch for a few reasons. Firstly, it's not too far away which is helpful when you're working it around family and work. Secondly, the guys who run it are friends and have always been really great to me which is always appreciated! And thirdly, the room is quite live sounding which is really what I was after sound-wise.

Matt had a few ideas he wanted to try, and we hit a snare around the room a bit, because there are a couple of areas that are more live/deadened and we wanted to make sure we had the area we preferred. We ended up at the more 'lively' sounding end, as opposed to the lower ceiling part. Knowing it was a very live sounding room I took out some nova-hush panels I got my hands on so we could use them in case we got into problems with too many bright surfaces.
One of the ideas Matt wanted to try was an overhead technique he had seen, shown me, and we were both interested in trying. I can't remember the name for it, but it was a technique in which there were the two usual overheads, but then an added extra mic which are setup in a perfect triangle type shape. Ideally, they used a nice ribbon mic. Unfortunately we didn't have a ribbon mic so we tried it with an Avantone CV12 (Condenser) on figure 8 pattern, but due to it being a fairly 'bright' mic it didn't seem to work that well, so we ended up using that as the Ride spot mic which sounded great.
We had planned on trying a Shure Beta52 on the Kick, as opposed to the AKG D112, however the room ended up sounding quite bass heavy where we were so we went back to the D112 which produced a great result. The D112 was just inside the Kick's sound hole, and we also mic'd the outside of the kick about a foot away with a Bluebird condenser which captured a lot of attack, and blended they sound very nice together. We also used a baffle in front of the kick which helped!
Here is the Mic setup we used, and a few photos:

Kick (In) - AKG D112
Kick (Out) - Bluebird
Snare (Top) - Shure sm57
Snare (Bottom) - Shure m57
Tom 1 - Shure sm57
Tom 2- Shure sm7
Hi Hats - Shure 86
Ride - Avantone CV12
Overheads - DPAs
Room Mics - A Neumann TLM and an Audio Technica (Can't remember which model. Unfortunate we didn't have a matching pair but that's what we had to work with, and we spent quite a while getting them to compliment each other, and are pretty happy with the result really).

Image

Image

Image

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Re: Album Diary

Post by GrantB »

Only one empty beer bottle? Sorry, not RnR enough.
"Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible god and destroys a visible nature. Unaware that this nature he's destroying is this god he's worshipping." - Hubert Reeves

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Re: Album Diary

Post by SimonHirst »

GrantB wrote:Only one empty beer bottle? Sorry, not RnR enough.
I could have sworn there were more too....

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Re: Album Diary

Post by Molly »

GrantB wrote:Only one empty beer bottle? Sorry, not RnR enough.
First thing I noticed. And where are the groupies?

Good luck with the recording. :thumbup:

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Re: Album Diary

Post by SimonHirst »

STAGE #3

Once we had finished the drums, or were working a bit later at night when they don't like drums recorded so much, we moved on to the acoustic guitar for each song. Most of the songs have acoustic thoughout, although a couple of them just have it in a few specific parts. Generally, we've tracked acoustic guitars with about two mics in the past and then blended them, but this time we decided to see if we could get a great sound using just one. It took some experimenting around different places in the room, but we came up with a sound we really liked, and which really just captured the guitars sound in the room.
Guitar is a Martin D-35, and we mic'd it using a Neumann 49(I think it was).
Here are a couple of photos.

Image

Image

Cheers Molly, we're off to a pretty good start so hopefully it continues... I'll get to work on those beers.

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Re: Album Diary

Post by GrantB »

You know where I am if you need help.....with the beers that is.
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Re: Album Diary

Post by Olderama »

Where's the toilet?
:mental:

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Re: Album Diary

Post by JHorner »

Image

Not the first place I'd choose to do a line off!

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Re: Album Diary

Post by rickenbackerkid »

soo jealous. I love recording

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Re: Album Diary

Post by null_pointer »

Looking forward to it Si

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Re: Album Diary

Post by crowbgood1 »

Nice pics.
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Re: Album Diary

Post by MrDINO »

Hey Simon have you still got the Top Hat...hope it all goes well for you.

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Re: Album Diary

Post by SimonHirst »

JHorner wrote:Image

Not the first place I'd choose to do a line off!
Yes, I'd have to agree!

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Re: Album Diary

Post by SimonHirst »

MrDINO wrote:Hey Simon have you still got the Top Hat...hope it all goes well for you.
No, the Tophat has been long since gone. Would have loved to have kept it and the ac30, but it wasn't to be! Cheers man!

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