Vamika - Session 5 - 3rd October

Session times: 8:00pm - 10:30pm

Dave (Guitar) and Damien (Bass) came for this session.

Long Way To Venus

We had recorded the drums and bass on previous sessions, so it was time for Dave to put down some guitar.  He had brought his Line6 amp as well as Damien's Peavey.

We spent a few minutes getting the mic position right for the amp.  The amp sounded very boomy, so we raised the front edge to lift it off the floor a bit.  Dave fiddled around with the amp settings until he got a sound he was happy with and we recorded the intro, chorus and solo backing.

By the time we had got that lot sorted, it was time to pack up.

North - Session 1 - 23rd September 2012

Session times: 11:00am - 4:30pm.

Today is the first day in the studio for North, who are recording a new album over the next few months.

George (drums) had arranged to come to the studio early so we could set up and soundcheck his drums before the rest of the band arrived around 12:30pm.  By the time Rebecca (vocals), Wayne (guitar) and Jack (bass) turned up, we had most of the drum levels set and we managed to fairly quickly get everyone else plugged in and warmed up.

New Toy

This track is a mid-tempo pop song with a haunting chorus melody, which I think is about seducing someone (that's my take on the lyric anyway).  There were a couple of fills where a cymbal was missed off a the end, so we recorded a couple of hits of the cymbals on their own, which I will be able to line up in the correct place of an otherwise good take.   It is possible in the studio to make a not-quite correct take into something that sounds really good, it just takes a bit of digital magic and enough parts to re-arrange into the correct order.  It doesn't have to be perfect every time.

In His Way

A fairly up-tempo pop song.  Jack plays some great bass lines on his Fender Precision.  This song has a one bar stop after each chorus, I suggested a 'false ending' where the stop was two bars.  We tried it a couple of times and it sounded great, so we left that in.

Hmmm.  What is the next chord?

Gravity

Another track that runs along at a fair lick.  We had a little trouble with this song, getting the tempo right and keeping to it.  We kept two takes, and the band will decide which one to keep during the week.

Cuppa time for George

Your Hand

This song was a complete change in style.  A slowish song; George playing his drums with soft beaters which gave a more subtle beat.  We tried several different approaches with this one, trying to get the right drum sound.  As this song is so different to the others, we decided to re-visit this on another session as it will need a different drum setup and mic placement.

George greasing his pole!

It's easy to tell the band play these songs a lot as Rebecca didn't need a vocal crib sheet for any song we did today and everyone was very together and there were very few obvious mistakes.

Rebecca 

We finished the session about 4:30 with a quick mix to take away.  George left his drums set up to make it quicker to get up and running at the next session in a week's time.

Face It - 27th September 2012

Face It finished recording around May this year and have been busy since then doing the CD artwork, taking holidays and getting married, so it's been a while since they last came to the studio.  The idea for the session was to work out what else needed to be done to finish the project.   The band have previously been a 60s covers band but are keen now to showcase their own material and will be playing their first originals gig in a few weeks time.

Jack had emailed me the CD layouts earlier in the day, so I printed them out so we could discuss them during the session.  The guys arrived about 8pm, with a few beers.  The CD artwork is really good and shows off their mod roots with lots of interesting items to spot if you look closely.  We talked about what credits to put on the cover (I'd like a mention!), what copyright markings are required and if they want to list who wrote each song and what instruments they played, or put "Tracks 1,3,7 by XXX, Tracks 2,4,6,8 by YYY etc".

I suggested they use MaxDuplication to duplicate and print the CDs.  They do a very good package of 50 duplicated CDs with a 2-page insert, back panel and CD label all in cellophane for around £100.  I've used them in the past and the quality was very good.  One time, the CD label hadn't dried properly before putting in the case, so when the case was opened, the CD had stuck to the insert.  I sent them an email and they replaced the faulty parts the next day.  That's good service.

We also discussed online options.  I've previously used TuneCore for digital distribution.  For around £35 they will send your tracks to approximately 30 of the major downloading sites (iTunes, Amazon, Tesco, Spotify etc etc) and a few obscure ones too.  The artists gets around £5 per downloaded album and about 50p per track.  With Spotify you get about 0.3p per play (so you need 3 plays to get a penny!), which isn't much, but if you get a lot of streams it all adds up.

The guys left around 10:30 with the job of finishing off the CD labels and OK-ing the final mixes.  They should be back in a couple of weeks with hopefully the finished article ready to send off to the printers.

Billy McBolan - Session 6 - 18th September 2012

Session times: 7:30pm-10:30pm

Love Was Born (On Xmas Day)

Billy brought along a Christmas song he wants to record in time for the Christmas rush.  It's quite a soft tune with a Christmassy feel.  We added a few seasonal instruments just to make sure.

Part of the lyrics are a list of the 12 disciples (it is Christmas after all!) and it's amazing how many I didn't know (Nathaniel and Thaddeus for starters!).

He played through the song a couple of times so I could get the feel and tempo.  The 12-string acoustic part is very picky and Billy had quite a few problems keeping in time with a click track. Eventually, we decided to record it without a click.  It means we can't do any copy and pasting between parts of the song (because they wouldn't line up properly), but as it's a fairly simple song, it shouldn't be too difficult.

Billy then did a quick guide vocal part so we knew where we were in the song.  He then decided the ending should be more of a Christmas chant, so I copied and pasted the ending a couple of times (fortunately, this bit did line up), which we can use as a fade out.

We then added some strings and the Theramin sound we created for the previous song over the intro and the choruses.

While we were doing these parts, Billy kept mentioning things he could hear in the song, one of which was bells.  I tried a few of the bell instruments I've got but none really sounded the part.  We ended up with tubular bells with lots of eq to cut through properly.  Initially, Billy had put down quite complicated bell parts, but I reminded him that most church towers only have 4 bells, so we cut it down to a simple 4 note motif which is really quite nice.

Billy's daughter (Dael) will sing the main vocal part with at least one child on the choruses, but we'll do that on another session. I made a quick mix for Billy to take away so the vocalists can start to learn the song.