So I had chance to stuff the PSU the other day:

Photographs do not get any more exciting than that.  Phhheeewwwweeee!  She’s a looker.  The voltages all seem to make sense, at the mo they are a little on the low side but this may be because I was measuring under no-load.   I dunno.

Anyway, I needed a few things to continue: new wire strippers; a new multimeter (I HAVE mentioned those before) as it’s lost in the house move and Blue-Tack. Every Solder-jockey should have Blue-Tack.

Having purchased those and had a day driving (therefore time to think the best approach over) I decided to etch the main board of one channel, it turns out that my usual method (i.e. using a laminator) to transfer the toner mask isn’t suited to bigger PCBs so I broke out the iron.  Turns out I’m pretty poor at that method - so a fair bit of tweaking was required before I was happy that the etch would be accurate.

Eventually I ended up with:

That’s gonna be a swine to drill.  I couldn’t resist a quick faff so here’s a couple of pots jammed in for reference.

Obvs they’ll eventually line up and actually be connected/work.  But it’s good to see a project outside of guitar-pedals.  Not that I don’t like those - quality starts at the source.  Also please notice that large area of copper that did not get etched.  I simply masked it off with tape to save time and etchant.

I’m hoping to get a few hours over the next week or so (I need to put a computer together in that time as my old one died.  Just for refs, Ubuntu is pretty cool - just a shame Protools wont run on it.

Oh and one last photo: late night at the studio mixing Some Skeletons.

So I’ve embarked upon a new DIY journey.  It’ll eventually be a pair like these. Kinda.

Hurrah.  It’s really just an excuse to make something DIY again, but also be useful, and a little different from guitar pedals.

So to start with I need to make the PSU, without the PSU working properly there is little point in making anything else.  Rather than reinvent the wheel I decided to build a PSU based on PeterC’s GreenPSU V6.  It’s a simple build that will supply all I need. Plus, when I get into making pre-amps, and the like, it happens to have a handy little +48v phantom supply as part of the design.

So the first thing is to etch the board, I use the toner-transfer method.  To reduce wastage I trim the PCB first (wastes less board, depletes the etchant less and takes less time to etch):

In my time (LOL) I have found that a wet-tile cutter is the best way of cutting PCBs.  It’s a straight cut, the water keeps the dust from flying everywhere and I can now cut tiles if I ever feel the need.  Oh, BTW the PCB is usually a laminate of copper on glass fibre, it’s a swine to cut and the dust is pretty rank stuff.  Shears, a guillotine or good-old-scratch-and-snap are alternatives, but I find this works the best.

Once the layout has been transfered, I didn’t get any photos of this cos I’m a geek-on-a-mission when I get going (soz), it needs to be etched.

Notice the subtle labeling, I’m the only one who drinks coffee here and I DO NOT want to drink Ferric Chloride.  Please note that the coffee hotplate is fully functional and serves (unsurprisingly) to keep the devilish stuff warm, that way it acts faster and as such you get a better etch.  The key is to keep the etchant both warm and moving though so get sommat to move it about, or rock it with the handle ‘like wot I do’.

Next up clean off the mask, normally I’d use nail varnish remover (the acetone will melt the toner) however it didn’t want to play ball today so I simply GENTLY sanded it off with high-grit paper.  It then needed to be drilled.  I use a Dremel on a mini drill-stand:

Eventually you end up with one of these, please note my sloppy board cutting, I’m a little out of pracco with that thing.

So there we are, I’m about to start loading up the board so hopefully it’ll fire up and spit out the desired voltages.  In this case I’m not bothering with the +48v section though.

Please note, even though I am a bit of a geek I refuse to work indoors on a day like today, there are limits.

x

OK. OK.

So here are the excuses.

I’ve moved house.

I know that’s only an excuse, but it is no less true.

So what have I been doing with my time?  Well, I’ve been practising what I preach.  

I’ve been working when I get time at a studio which is an unbelievable learning curve.  Genuinely - Every time I go there I learn something or find i need to learn something.  It’s ACE!

I’ve made the DAW move to ProTools.  At first it was weird, but now I can’t imagine tracking/editing/mixing in anything else.  I’ve not had chance to use the synths/VIs yet from within PT10 so I can’t really comment on that yet.

The Some Skeletons stuff is now finally coming together (there are couple of vocals still to be webbed over) and the initial editing sessions are sounding really sweet.

Oh, and I finally sorted a FB account out.  I guess it had to happen eventually.

So what lays in wait now?  More SS stuff, we’ve got a deadline now (which is good news for progress-sake) and all the tracking is done.  Mixing to be done.

I also appear to be on the slippery DIY slope again, I’ve got a couple of rack-mount EQs bubbling away and am seriously considering a compressor (or two)… Time will tell.

I don’t seem to have a lot of time recently, including tonight, hopefully though I can at least do something with this blog on the regular (i.e. not 3 months!).

I’ll end with some pics:

Whenever possible.  End with a greenhouse.

x

So there I was, 1am and no place to go… Luckily Andy was kind enough to forward through a bouncedown of the drums we did earlier so I could track bass at my leisure.

So I did.

First things first, my weapon of choice:

It was a bass made by Shine that was totally unplayable but had a nice acoustic tone. Neck needed adjustment, frets levelling and re-finishing, tuners needed freeing up, saddles were barbed, neck angle was off and the pickups were guff. With a boat-load of work - I’ve fixed all that and now I’m happy with how it sounds and how it plays. The pickups BTW are from Wizard Pickups and, IMO, sound really good. Defo recommended.

I also found this old thing, it sounds like $hit but it’s cool to have laying around.  Might try and wind a new pickup for it.

The intention is to reamp (see earlier posts) through the Ampeg SVT and 8x10 that’s at the studio so I just did a clean DI that I can DropBox over when all has been OK’d.

The guides provided by Crabb (guitar & vox) and Andy (Billz’ drums) were unceremoniously dumped into Sonar, the bass plugged directly into the Saffire (it has a built in DI for instruments) and off we go. When I’m tracking the bass I need a tracking mix that I’m comfortable with, and is useful, so (for me) it’s built by balancing the bass input against the drums, then bringing the other guide underneath that for positional reference only. I want to play to the drums, not the guide.

I tuned between each take to make sure the bass was ‘in’ as much as it could be and worked through.

A quick bounce down of each track was emailed about for QC. The problem I’d been having with one song was still persisting, I guess this is one of the joys of not playing straightforward stuff, which I have subsequently tried to remedy. Time will tell.

Expect pics of the reamp session, and hopefully confirmation of the suitability of the bass parts.

Oh, and thanks for reading this - you know who you are.

X

Wow - time for a missive.

In spite of my best efforts to avoid actually doing these I have finally crumbled and decided to get on with it.

With my upcoming session it seems to make sense to start with bass.

So what have I done already? Well there are three totally separate elements you need to be in control of before the session: the equipment; your part and your technique.

Let’s go through them in that order.

The equipment:

Think about it from someone else’s perspective, on the record they can’t see what bass you used, most people can’t hear what kind of bass you use so ignore what you think your bass stands for, choose it because of its sound.

Now you’ve chosen your bass you need to make sure it sounds its best.  How to do this?  Well.  It needs to be setup.  You may, and probably should, have already done this and you can ignore the next bit.  If you haven’t then you can either try this yourself (risky before a session as you could make it worse) or you can send it to a luthier.  I say a luthier because 9 times out of 10 you will get a better result than taking it to a high-street music retailer.  

I’m not sticking it to the man by saying avoid them, in fact I think that they need more support, it’s just that there are some retailers that will happily give a staff member an allen-key and charge you the privilege for training them up.

Find a luthier and you’re set.  Find a GREAT luthier and you’ll be set for life.  Honestly, if your bass isn’t setup well and you then have it done by a GREAT luthier you will hardly believe it is the same instrument.

There are ways to setup guitars/basses yourself and you should be able to find all the relevant info online.  You may have difficulty adjusting nut-action and you may feel uneasy about truss-rod adjustments. Just a heads up.

So what does having your bass setup do to your sound? Well.  Loads. If it is setup well it will play in tune better, and by that I mean the intonation, and by that I mean as you move around on the neck it’ll stay in tune better.  It’ll therefore sound better - I don’t think that is too much of a leap of faith?

It will probably sound better too, as in the tone.  And I don’t mean how bright it is (why are treble knobs on guitars labelled Tone?). If it is setup by a decent luthier/tech they will/should check the pickup heights.  Getting those at an optimum height should in theory find the best balance between efficiency, strength and sustain.

It will be less likely to stop working. They check it over, fix anything that is ropey, and give it back as good as new.

It will, and this is as subjective and touchy-feely as they come, feel better to play. If the intonation is sorted, lovely.  If the action is sorted, lovely. If the neck is levelled/cleaned/oiled, lovely. Hell if it has been cleaned… Lovely.

There is also the benefit of it likely having been restrung during setup. New strings just sound better.  OK not 100% true, but they can sound better and 99% of the time do.  

If you don’t have it setup - at least put new strings on it check to see if your strings are good/new enough to still have that tone we all know and love (and WANT to share).

If you gig regularly you probably have a ‘live’ sound you like.  That’s cool and all engineers should take that into account (after all that’s where the songs have developed) so take along your gear (amps, leads, pedals etc…).  Don’t be annoyed if the engineer wants to change some of it though.  I digress.

OH AND TAKE A TUNER.  Or at least know that a tuner is available.

The part:

I’m not going in to the song-writing thing.  Just be aware of what your bass part is for, the role it plays within the song and try to think about how you can deliver that.

Know your part or know your part and it’s alternatives.  Don’t waste your time and money by having not written it.  Practice, familiarise and practice again.  I spend at least a few hours, for a couple of days, going over my parts before I record them.  You can hear confidence. If possible I also check with the other members of the band to see if there are bits I need to be careful of or change.  I then practice again.

The technique:

Hopefully you have practised your parts over and over, in which case you will have already honed your technique. If you don’t get chance to practice very often then this may be an issue.  There is not much you can do to prepare for it apart from practice, but by simply considering as something you need to be aware of you have already started down a road to improve it.

With regard to playing techniques - you need to choose what is the most appropriate.  I’m a pick-bass guy generally but where required I’ll play finger style, mid song is not unusual. There is no right or wrong technique, only those that serve the song and those that do not.  It’s simple really.  Just do what sounds best IN CONTEXT.

So.  What have I done then?

1. Shoot out to choose which bass will work best in the songs we’re recording;
2. Got roughs to play along to (thanks TC);
3. Plenty-o-Practice;
4. Queried with band members the what’s, where’s and whoops’;
5. More practice
6. Checked the state of the strings (only about 3 weeks old so should be fine)
7. Setup the bass (action, pickup heights, truss rod, nut, intonation. NOT IN THAT ORDER!)
8. Not many people get to leave their instrument at the studio but I’ve been been lucky.  This step is irrelevant, but true.

A few passing comments.  When you get to the session don’t stress. If you do you’ll play like cr@p.  Don’t be late, it’s a waste of time and money, puts everyone under stress and can… make you sound like cr@p… as a result.  Trust in your engineer/producer, if they say they think it’ll sound better in the song if you back-off-a-bit, try it.  You can always go back to the familiar way you know.  Don’t be all protective over ‘your sound’, it could very well be the best TONEZ EVAR, but it could simply be wrong in the context of the song.  EVERYONE is trying to get your song to sound the best it can.

Cliche alert - enjoy it.  If you’re not enjoying it you’re in the wrong place, wrong band, on the wrong instrument or need to be somewhere else.

Oh and a final thing.  Check with the studio - they may have a lovely old beater-bass kicking about that will sound just right.  They may not, but they might.  Right?

x

Phase?  Fuerk off French.

Nah - serious.  Phase.

First things first.  What is phase?  Well, it gets REALLY REALLY complicated with sound - but if I were to simplify it to its most basic it would be:

Maths.  Right.  

Think of a perfect snare hit as a +1. Now assume that some mischievous scally wag can play a perfect snare hit in exact opposition to yours, i.e. a  -1.

What happens when you add them together:  1 + (-1) = 0.

You’d end up with nothing.  This is because of total phase cancellation.  Or more correctly; the phase relation between the two is such that they cancel each other out completely.

“OK” I hear you cry “but who can play a perfect snare hit, let alone the perfect opposite!?”  

That isn’t really the point though, that was just an example.  Again things get REALLY REALLY complicated if you consider audio, so in the interests of not wanting to kill myself over this I’ll only consider one wavelength (frequency if you will).

Lets take our perfect snare hit. A +1.  Say we have 2 mics on the kit, the second being the kick.  The kick mic will (for the sake of this argument) pick up some of that snare too.  Now unhelpfully the kick mic is picking up a -0.2 of the snare.  We therefore end up with a 0.8 snare… Simple…ish.

When you have more than one mic on a take, think about phase.  It WILL help.

Another example is drum overheads.  Two mics on a drum kit.  Now some people may not like this, but for me the most critical instruments on a kit are the kick and snare.  If these are in phase the kit can/will sound punchy, lively and REAL.  If they are not then things can sound weak, hollow, weird, $hit… So check and double check the phase (of at least the snare) when placing overheads.

So how do I do it?  Well the most rudimentary trick is to change the polarity of ONE of the channels of the OH’s.  The polarity switch is basically a phase inverter (or 180 degree change).  The key here is to LISTEN.

With just the snare (at first) playing, flip the polarity.   Listen to what you hear:

1. If the snare suddenly sounds rank with no bottome-end or punch then your phase was pretty good.  You should flip the polarity back.  hopefully now you’ll have your punchy snare sound back.
2. If the snare suddenly became punchy  with the polarity switch in, leave it!
3. If nothing happened you have some options…

… this may have occured because your OH’s were not REALLY IN phase or REALLY OUT of phase. They could for example be 90 degrees out of phase, so when you flip the polarity they are still 90 degrees out (-90o or +270o).  You can try and adjust them using a plugin (e.g.  Sonitus: Phase, Betabugs (free one!), or something like UAD’s IBP) which allows a continuous sweep to be made of the signal phase.  I’d probably go at it from the cancellation direction, I’ll elaborate.

Flip the polarity on ONE channel.  Place the phase plugin on this channel, while the snare is playing ON LOOP OF ONE HIT sweep the phase using the plugin until the snare sounds its WORST.  Don’t you dare touch that phase plugin again.  Then, un-flip the polarity of that channel and you should (providing your glorious ears aren’t deceiving you) be the proud controller of a pair of snare-phase-coherent-overheads.  Horrrrrraaaiiiii!

As a helpful caveat, this does not guarantee that your snare will sound great.  It’ll just be in phase.  It will also not guarantee that the rest of the kit is in in phase.  Life’s not that kind.

So where can I use phase-thinking?  Well.  Everywhere.  In theory and practice EVERY instrument you add to a mix will start affecting other instruments in the mix. Flip the polarity/phase see if it makes a difference.  You never know, it could just make your day.

x

No, it’s not about being dead.

It’s about getting in at 2am and having so much coffee in your system that a snooze is about as relaxed as you get.  Needless to say I am tired and yawning, but I can’t complain, apparently T.Crabb was given the delightful message “alarm will go off in 3 hours 30 minutes” before bowing out.

Good times.

The session went really, really well.  As with all things, it started with a good meal - I am happy to recommend The Woodpecker in Northwich for both grub and coffee.  

We joined (were joined by?) Andy and Becky, always a good sign when the studio peeps are happy to socialise.  FYI -The burgers were GOOD.

We knew we couldn’t start ‘til 1900hrs, so we dropped off the stuff and headed to the cafe next door.

Post-pay Crunchies.

Billson gettin’ in da zone’n’ting.

Set the drums up. Tuning to get things in shape.  

MISTAKE - I left the DIY DrumDial at home.  

LESSON - Buy a Torque Key (Evans is the brand we used) and use it get the drum tension pretty much even, play and listen if you need to tweak/tune further.

Pic - cos it DID happen.

Dunno if you wanna know but we ended up using:

• Kick (inside at beater) - Audix D6
• Kick (out) - DIY Subkick through Radial DI
• Snare Top - Shure SM57
• Snare Shell - Audix i5
• HH - AKG 414
• Rack Tom - CAD M179
• Floor Tom - CAD M179
• Ride - Heil PR30
• OH L & R - AKG 451
• Room Mono1 - Se Electronics RNR1
• Room Mono2 - Se Electronics z5600a

But then it was all down to Billson, and his now-emptied cans of RedBull.

A few hours later… The boy-dun-good.

Easily comped drum parts, things sounding sweet and a load of tired patrons.

Next it’s me stepping up to the plate - bringing the down-low.  

Now watch/hear it fall apart.

x

Da-da da da da.  I’m Loving It.

So a quick visit to Project9 to drop off some work-related panels found Andy knee deep in reamping. A very pleasant surprise for me as I was unsure how it would all pan out.

“GOOD NEWS EVERYONE” - It appears that the reamp is a total success, and my thoughts about the impedance control were true.  i.e. I couldn’t really hear the difference it was making at home, but felt like it was doing something.  At Project9 I CAN hear the difference and it is MORE than worth having.  For want of a better term - it opens up the sound.  Or conversely squeezes it in.  Helpful?

I can’t really describe what advantages reamping gives as it really is up to the user how it works.  e.g. Upon my arrival Andy was mid-reamping a synth part through a Fender Twin close mic’d with a ribbon.  It immediately gave it the feel of being ‘real’, dumba$$ comment, OK I’d describe it as you can hear that it has at some point existed in a real space and has tasted the freedom of real air.

That kinda worked as a description, and that is how it sounds.  But less touchy-feely.

Don’t forget with the ribbon Andy used there’s a fair bit of room happening too because the rear-face is also picking up.  Win-win.

I should have taken photos, but it would have looked like a mic’d up Fender Twin.  If I’d taken a photo of the reamp unit, it would have looked like the reamp unit with some stuff plugged in.  Not exactly enthralling to look at.

This may well be the last DIY reamp post as there is little more to say about it, unless Andy (if you’re reading this, lemme know) is happy to give an example pre-reamp, and then reamped with a swept impedance.

Then again.  It’s all about context.  The sound of something being different doesn’t necessarily mean it will be right.  Then again, a reamp allows you recreate a sound in a real world environment according to your taste.

YOUR taste.

Oh, and a couple of parting facts that blind-sided me over the SS session:

• The plural of antenna is antennas, unless they are biological in which case they are antennae.
• A Tilde is a ~ not a `

True. Facts. The former of which seems a really ugly truth.  What next ‘sheeps’?

x

See what I did there?  Huh?  Three tracks, EP, ThreEP.  Aren’t I quite literally the most talented schmuck this universe has ever spawned.

No?  No, but I am a schmuck?  

You, of course, are right.

So, Minoans are heading back into the studio.  Three tracks:  Horse (2012 edit), Beebe and Canyon.  They’ll sound freakin’ ace when they’re done, they’ve been gigged numerous times, we know what we’re doing with them and we should have plenty of time to track what we need.

The plan:

Engineer and track the drums at Project9. One day - three drum tracks.  

Then I’ll take the tracks home, comp them, and add bass as required.

Back to Project9 for the glorious Wall-of-Crabb guitars, which I would imagine to be a day again.

I haven’t thought as far as vocals yet, I’d quite like to do them at Project9 because of the control room setup (acoustics, monitoring, etc) and mic options.  But (because of my line of work) I can usually create a decent/good environment for tracking vocals where needed.  In addition, since getting the z5600a, I only seem to go to one mic for vocals now.

Options iz options tho init.

Anyway, in order to facilitate a smooth and pleasant session T-Crabb has made guides for each song, Billson has cast his critical ear over them and conducted test runs to make sure he’s hearing what he needs.  Bonza.

The big thing between now and then though is…  Drum Tuning. Those things need tuning, and tuning WELL.  I know that there is a great sounding snare at Project9, and with any luck Andy will kindly let us use it if ours sounds unsuitable.  The toms though will need work.  Here is where I’m at my most ignorant, just to prove it here’s a list of my thoughts about tuning drums:

• New skins if possible;
• Reseat if you can be bothered;
• Tune the reso-head first, evenly around the lugs until the shell and skin resonate together.  Repeat on batter head;
• Check skin tension at each lug (DrumDial maybe?) and make sure the skin is in tune with itself;
• Set up the kit and check perceived pitch between toms, the tom size should help keep the most resonant pitch around a specific interval, whether this is ‘right’ or not will depend on the kit and song/style;
• Retune within the room to help the kit bloom.

Now this is all very well and good, as misguided as it may be, but actually doing it is something I don’t have much/any experience with.  In general though, I’m thinking that the toms will probably be right when they are naturally LOUD.  Any ideas?

Oh and one final thing, Kick Drum.  About the only tips I can give about Kick recording are: use an aggressive sounding beater, the top-end it gives is reet useful; if the reso head has a hole, try to make it on the upper-half of the skin (away from the floor).  Rotate it if necessary.  That way if the mic within the kick is solely for the beater attack you can have the mic facing down - i.e. away from the snare, hi-hats, cymbals… Less bleed y’all.  Oh and if you’ve got space move the kick mic away from the reso head.  While the drummer is giving a regular kick pattern, lick the back of your hand and slowly move it away from the drum, where the air is moving most there is least pressure so you DONT want a dynamic there, keep moving your hand until the air calms a bit.  Whack your mic there and you have a good place to start.  BE CAREFUL OF BLEED FROM THE REST OF THE KIT ESPECIALLY CYMBALS!

‘Til next time.

x

Oh and I’ll try to get some decent photos.  Which will not be from my phone.

And here we are.

Blammo:

I eventually plumped for an Audio-Spec transformer from ESR and those of you with eagle-eyes/a natural disposition for pedantry will have noticed that the ‘wiring layout’ is actually incorrect.  Dunnne-worrreeeee lad, I done gone made it proper before I buildified it.

“That’ll do Pig. That’ll do.”

All tested and running nicely.  Although TBH I cannot really hear a difference when rotating the impedance pot.  It’s more of a feel thing, which leads me to thinking that I’m probably wanting to hear it.  

There are some things that are a ‘feel’ thing that I am not making up.

I’m not yet convinced that this is case here though.

Anyway.  I’ve got two episodes of Pensado’s Place to catch up on.  And and pint of Ribena that needs to be taught who’s Boss.

x

Oh, soz about the photos. I only had my phone with me,and the only way I don’t HATEHATEHATE the image quality is by making it worse and pastiche.  LOL?  Maybe.

Right, so i’ve had a think about how to put some of my thoughts across. Essentially they are specifically about things at the SS sessions, hence the post title, but really they are not specific to one situation. I can’t think of a better way to put them across so, here we are.

Now I know in the previous posts it’s turned into a bit of love-in with SS. But the point cannort be stressed enough. IF THE INTENTION IS TO MAKE A ‘RECORD-LIKE’ SOUNDING RECORDING, THE SONG MUST SOUND LIKE A RECORD TO BEGIN WITH.

This is not a helpful thing to say to someone who has no control over it.

In fact, i’ll say this now while I remember. The industry of record making is a messed up model. Properly messed up. There are very few industries that involve a created object that have little/no control over their raw material. And yet recording, with maybe the exception of cooking, is odd in it’s absolute reliance on the quality of raw material.  Say I’m making something, I dunno, a hammer.  If the handle keeps snapping (and the design is proven) I can simply change the handle material/supplier.

Not so with recording.  Now obviously you cannot (or arguably should not) change the source material because that is what makes the product unique.  As an engineer your job is to make the recording sound as ‘good’ as possible, and as a producer it is to make them sound as good as possible.  When push comes to shove there is of course very little difference between the two.

Before you embark on a recording session, think about the material you want to record.  Be honest, does it sound good?  If it does, think about what parts are the critical elements within the arrangement and prioritise them.  If there are bits that sound wrong, or disinteresting, think carefully about how necessary they are.  Do you really need that ‘wild’ acoustic guitar solo!?

If you are not able to judge these things by yourself, you need someone you can trust.  If you are taking your music seriously or regard it’s rendering as important you must at least consider this - even if you discover that your ideas are right.

So really you need to be either VERY good musicians, with a good ear for creating recordable arrangements. OR, you need someone who you can rely on for advice.  Here a good choice in engineer/producer will reap its rewards.

And it’s at this point I hope I have done my job well enough.

Night.x

What a way to spend a weekend.

So, so fuerking chuffed with being involved - hopefully in a positive way - with something as ace and enjoyable as ‘The SS Sessions’.

Apart from boasting, the reason I say that is to draw attention to quite an important thing.

Lulz, lolz, goating - whatever.

It may not seem like it, but engineering is fuerkin difficult, and recording a band that are a pleasure to record makes a difficult task both easier and more productive.

Right - a bit of perspective - think about what an engineer has to do. Assuming there is no producer involved the following is true. If one IS involved, the task is the same but requires less translation and a hint less mediation. If the producer is (and i use the following term carefully) crap, the task becomes MUCH more difficult and, in some cases, impossible. I digress…

So, why is engineering difficult/stressful, and so much so that it needs to be made fun? Well, think about what an engineer knows about the ensuing session.

Essentially nothing.  A good place to start when a client(artist) wants something so personal and complicated at the end of a session. 

The band turn up with an idea, they need the engineer to translate that into a physical thing. So in a matter of hours the engineer has to understand what the band have (hopefully) spent days or even months developing. Structure, dynamics, emotion… The list goes on… On top of all that, the engineer must get the best example of everything that the song needs in order to convey what the band hope it will. This could be as simple a employing mic techniques, instrument choice, equipment choice, performance location and performance choice.

Or it could also involve mediation, encouragement, time management… You know what I’m getting at.

This doesn’t even begin to cover the full remit of an engineer, or even look at the potential minefield of mixing. What I’m trying to say is make the session enjoyable, whether you’re the band or the engineer, it’ll be a better recording process and therefore - recording.

Luckily, the SS sessions definitely fall into the better-than-good category and as such record really well.

I’ll try to summarise my thoughts on the sessions for the next post, there are defo some things that are worth noting and sharing, but i’ll need to make them intelligible.

Anyway. Coffee-come-downs are tough and i’m suffering bad.

More stuff to follow. Some of it may even be worth reading.

X

Wow. I really can’t play football.

So yesterday? All good. Thanks for asking - in no particular order, I’ll summarise:

Bass, Macs Breakfast, SE z5600, Freddie M, Fresh Pots, Maplin, vocals, 3 part harmonies, GangVox, non-womb, ‘the pepper-offset’, eat yourself to success, football, rolled up trousers, ginger beer, beer, MOTD, 80’s rap/hiphop, bass comping.

As expected the vocals are ace and tying all the parts together nicely. When the material is good, it’s a piece of cake to record. Having said that - space is at a premium this weekend as it seems we’ve been taking over peoples houses more and more regularly recently. As such, vocals are being tracked in with the rest of us sans-womb. As many precautions have been taken as practicable, but it’s not PERFECT. Not that it’ll stop it sounding great though. We’ve checked that.

Bass is nearly done, and it’s a nice change to work with a bassist that wants it to be right. We probably could have done with new strings on the Jazz but having run a few checks it sounds fine IN CONTEXT. A couple more comps to finish this morning and we’re on the last lap.

Vocals and maybe some G’s to go.

All of this achieved, but we’re in goating deficit. Soz.

X

8:13

‘Recorders Mouth’ - That feeling in your mouth when you wake up for a McBreakfast after having only 2hrs sleep due to extreme coffee intake.

Curd did some Stirling work last night (lol[?] I’m struggling to type cos my hands are shaking so much) sorting bass parts.  One more song to sort on that front, some guitar redos/dos and then we’ll plough on to the main event - vocals.

Am looking forward to it, and a Sausage & Egg McMuffin meal, with Orange Juice.

As always - photos to follow.

x

So in preparation for the SS session next week Crabb & I decided to do a bit of prep work: tidying tracks, removing unwanted bits, getting ideas for things that may need redoing etc…

Fun was had by all, mainly because I now have double-glazing, and it’s always good to have a second pair of ears casting their thoughts on things.

It was also an opportunity to go over reference tracks and find material that is an education.  One of the GREAT things about recording (at least for me) is that I don’t think it is ever possible to know everything.  The amount of things that people pass on to you through flippant remarks is ridiculous.  And, if there really was any reason to post this entry, it would be THAT.  Always listen to others advice, even if you think there is a better way of doing it. Listen and then share YOUR way, one day they’ll return the favour and give you something you’d never have thought of.

Anyways, there will be some DECENT info and photos to follow.  I hope.

x