Hounds like Beechpark

A long day, but a good day with my band Hounds out at Beechpark yesterday.
A pretty similar setup to the Stoat one from Sunday, and we're pretty pleased with what we got done.
I've got a pretty sizeable to-do list now, though -

• Rough mixes for Hounds
• Rough mix for Stoat to overdub a vocal on
• Keep working on mixes for Padraig (the damn bass just won't sit right!)
• Get a rough drum mix out to Nick from Rifle Fire Rifle so that we can overdub to it on Sunday.

We're going to play one of the new songs from yesterday at the Hounds gig on Friday.
It's fantastically relentless.

Meters are Overrated

Good day out at Beechpark yesterday - Got setup and doing takes by about 2.30
The Stoat boys ended up doing 3 to 5 takes of each of the three songs.
We'd talked about our options for approaching this recording. The boys had used the 'Lego method' on their last album (as in overdubbing things bit by bit), so they wanted to go a different direction this time around. Through recording themselves in their rehearsal room, they've ended up most comfortable with that scenario, so we set them all up in the main room at Beechpark with low gobos between the amps and the kit.
The resulting bleed is grand and manageable, and we got the live takes done pretty quick with that setup - I think we were overdubbing before 5.30.
Pretty decent drum sound, I think. A bit of a ringy snare situation, which we damped right down for one song where it suited. I'd done a snare preamp shootout the day before, which the Daking had come out of quite well. I think the higher apparent loudness I was hearing was from some nice saturation that you can get into with this pre - a little gets you some nice snappy bite , and winding it up some more gets into fun full on distortion.

Drum setup :

Snare - Beta57 >> Daking pre >> Daking compressor
Snare - B&K 4006 >> GML
Kick in - RE20 >> Vintech
Kick Out E49 >> Vintech
OHs - Coles >> Neve 1084 (little bit of high shelf at 10khz)
Room - M160s >> ISA115 >> Chandler limiter
421/441 on toms, 414s on hat/ride (which I still don't think I'll use).

RE20 on bass and a mix or 122s and M88/Beta 57 on guitars.

Moved on then to some guitar dubs, doubling some parts and adding others.
Cormac did some piano, then we did vocals.
Tried them in the control room with John listening back over the monitors. Not bad.
Those were done with an SM7 into an LA2a, which suited his voice pretty well. Compared it to the Elux 251, which was a bit too clean and beefy. Both were into the 1084s.
We got a few takes done of two songs, but around 11.30 John's voice gave up on him, so we're going to finish vocals later on in the week.

Next up is Hounds on Tuesday in Beechpark, which is gonna rock.

I love rehearsal tapes

I moved 'Modern Romance' on a good bit for Padraig.
Should get that finished tonight.
I'm really enjoying the Sonnox EQ so far, it's very easy to sweep around and find problem frequencies with.
I especially like the way it defaults to hiding the figure each knob is set to - way too often I find myself deciding eq based on the numbers on the screen and not my ears.. in fact, the whole time I'm mixing 'in the box' I'm battling against the natural tendency to read rather than listen to a mix.

The best trick I've come up with so far is to set the readout below each pro tools fader to read the sample delay on each channel rather than the fader's db value.
That way, I can move faders without getting the urge to round them up or down to the nearest db.
I've thought about getting a hold of a control surface for a good while now - the Command 8, CM Motormix and those new Euphonix controllers all look pretty good.
Unfortunately, the Euphonix are Mac only. And they're all pretty pricey for a way to kid yourself that you're using an analog desk again.

Speaking of which, analog summing is another dark chapter in my wishlist. Financially, that is.
Those evil bastards at Dangerous keep coming out with tempting ways to lassoo my cash.. The Dangerous D-Box being the latest.
Summing, nice converters, two seperate headphone outs and being able to hang two sets of speakers off the one box. Damn you!

Spoke with Cormac from Stoat on the phone about Sunday's session in Beechpark. He sent me over a recording of their rehearsals at the weekend - I LOVE it when bands do this. It gives you such a headstart in terms of planning the kind of sounds you want for each song.
Already I've learned a couple of things that'll help me out down the line..

1. I'm gonna mic the hihat and ride on this sucka. I should mention that this is something I never do. I find there's very rarely any need. The hihat in particularhas no trouble making itself known in every other mic on the kit. One or two of the tunes have quite prominent hat/ride parts though, so I'm going to cover my ass by micing them up. Probably with ribbons, if I can spare them.
2. Song A is gonna sound great with big, roomy drums. Song B on the other hand is dying for some really close, dry drum sounds. I'm thinking it'll be wallet/tshirt on the snare time. Thank fuck for rehearsal tapes - it's pretty hard to recreate that sound in mix.
3. I'm really looking forward to recording the piano in Beechpark (on Song C). It sounds so good, it even makes you feel like you're a piano player.

Wednesday, Wednesday

So, tonight will be moving on two mixes for Padraig (myspace and band name undefined at this point) from last night. Both are at about the halfway stage, just in time to start throwing some tracks into my new reverb..
I spent the last few weeks demoing a few reverb plugins - Breverb, IK Classic Studio Reverb and Sonnox Reverb. I was looking for a solid plate verb, mostly. It came down to CSR vs. the Sonnox - comparing the CSR Plate to the Sonnox's plate preset gave pretty much the same results, so the Sonnox won out on being a lot more versatile. Their spring verb preset was pretty handy on a guitar track too, funnily enough.
Thanks to the 20% discount for buying a pair, I gave High Profile Audio a shout.. and grabbed the Sonnox EQ too, which is a lovelynice EQ if you're looking.
I've gotten a couple of plugins off these guys recently, and their prices are always good.

Padraig had noticed a change in the vocal sound when I was demoing the Sonnox verb - on a lot of his stuff (kinda 80's tinged) I was using Echoboy on short, reverby settings and that worked great (for drums too), but for some of the tunes a longer plate sound sat the vocal into the mix much better.
I'm hoping to get at least one of the tunes to the show-and-tell stage of mix (as in, the point where I give Padraig a shout for input) before the Milan-Arsenal game tonight.

I'll also be checking the files Nick from Rifle Fire Rifle sent over.. we recorded a bunch of guitars, melodica and vocals on Sunday, but his hard drive had a shit fit, so it remains to be seen wether the files retained their timestamps or track names.
If they didn't, it'll be a long process of trying to find the right takes and manually slipping them in to the right spot on the timeline. Argh. Pass the beer.

Speaking of which, it'll be Flensburger Gold tonight for the match..