| |
Want To Know More
Technical Information On Our Recording Process:
Drums:
Pearl Custom Masters; Brass
is Paiste signature- performed by Gavin Smith
Bass guitar:
a Dean Sledgehammer
played by Brad Rice
Harley Hart played everything else and here’s a rundown
Acoustic guitars -old beat up Sharvell and an old beat
up Takamine
Electric guitars - Fender, Squire,
Keys - Pianoteq VST grand, B4 vst organ. Edirol
Orchestral HQ
Backing vocals - Performed by me and Tara Lea
Recorded using cubase sx 3 through an
Oram BEQ Series 24 console
The day before Gavin came in to record I had recorded a
basic compact track to a click so Gavin had a simple
guide to track to.
Gavin has a very cool clean sounding kit and what makes
it twice as cool is he plays the hats opposite side to
the snare which means you can get awesome isolation, we
miced the top and bottom of his snare using an SM57on
top and a
benson audio 30
on the bottom,I don’t separate the mics on different
tracks instead I prefer to get the sound I want and bus
both mics to a single mono source.
I use only light pre compression and my favourite use of
pre comp is a free plug in, the classic compressor
though not their own pre-sets which are a little heavy
for that.
The Oram BEQ Series desks have MWS Mic Pres attached to
every channel which means I have no need for outside mic
pre sources, and wouldn’t want to, I mean its ORAM for
gods sake!
The toms on this session were miced using 57`s except
the floor tom which was a BA30, the kick was an AKG D112
with a BA30 slightly behind and above it and then I
covered the whole kick drum in a thick blanket for
better isolation.
Overheads were very roomy and I wanted a real crisp
sound with a slight analogue crunchiness to them so I
used AKG C100s mics and placed a psp vintage warmer in
the chain, just enough to get a slight distortion.
Brasses were not miced except the hats which I used an
akg 414.
All together I had 10 channels of drums bussed to 8
tracks, which I then controlled as always by sending the
drum mix to a stereo sub master.
I always find it incredible when the best live drummers
in the world have no idea of how to play to a click and
why even its so important to studio recording esp.
today, I have no such problem with Gavin, I’ve never
done a session with Gavin where he comes in knowing the
song, I’m not fond of giving players songs before they
come in, they have too much time to think and then get
too complicated when it comes time to lay down the part,
Gavin really plays well when he’s fresh on a song, and
true to form we tracked him in an hour!
Apart from couple of single hits and a few hat overdubs,
he was done.
Brad is a great bass player because he understands that
the 4-6 strings he plays are there to support the rhythm
but he comes up with these great little runs and its
great for me as a producer and writer when someone
brings a new slant to my music. Recording bass to me is
all about how it sounds with the kick, and I like fat
kick drums so I prefer to record bass guitar rolling off
the bottom end, and will usually just have it DI`d
straight through the desk, but I do like to use an amp
sim like amplitube to get a bit of atmos going, though I
wont record the sim so I can choose the sound once the
whole song is tracked, its never the exact sound I want
straight away and I’m very picky about the bottom end in
a mix!
Brad recorded 3 different bass parts for this song so I
had plenty of takes to choose from to create a great
take, turns out in the edit, it was mostly the feel he
went for in take on, a real rolling line as I’m sure you
can hear.
With the rhythm sections done I wanted to move out of
the big studio and go to my home setup, I live on a farm
so its nice to look out at the country and go for walk
in between takes.
My home studio is not a lot different from my large
setup in that I have everything setup exactly the same
except the mixing desk is an old Oram Panoramic and the
addition of a separate MWS mic pre.
Time for guitars!
I have this beat up old Sharvelle I’ve had for years
that John Oram gave to me and its such a classy acoustic
guitar to mic, who says its has to be expensive to work!
The whole song is a rolling e chord with progressions
and the bottom e string really needed to stand out
acoustically so I used 2 mics, an akg c1000s at the fret
board and a Neumann u87 at the hole, like double micing
snares, I got the sound then bussed down to a stereo
track.
I record acoustic guitars bare of compression, effects,
preferring to get all that later on during the mix, but
I sat about 3 feet from the mics so I got a lot of
ambience, I much prefer the sound of an acoustic
instrument if its roomy...just my thing!
For this track I recorded 2 stereo guitars to get a nice
thick acoustic sound.
Once I have the initial track arrangement which is
usually where I was about now, I always look for the
piano (if needed) and organ sounds, and I adore the B4
vst software, I used to love the old Hammond sounds and
nearly always use em in songs.
For this track I found a cool soft-core kind of funeral
organy sound which I then recorded once as a midi track
and exported down(call me old fashioned but I have to
turn midi to wav!) then just changed the sound slightly
edgier and re exported just the choruses with a Leslie
sim.
I have a grand Piano in my front room but its so old and
screwed up It great to write on but sucks to record,
which is a shame cos great piano software is a pain in
the butt to find if you don’t want to buy a whole new
hard drive just to upload it all! so I chose pianoteq
and I think it sounds good enough to get away with!
the violins were from Edirol`s orchestral HQ, and I only
recorded 2 lines, sometimes I have this tendency to go
overboard with orchestration and I made myself stop!
For this record ..and I mean the whole album me and Al
experimented with alot of different sounds in demo
production for guitars and came up with the idea to use
alot of old folksy tricks, lots of picky high end stuff
with acoustics and mandolins to fill out the stereo
sound, and try and be as minimal as possible with big
electric guitars, with this track I recorded an acoustic
guitar playing pretty much the same riff all the way
through on just the B and E strings, then I panned it
left and did a slightly higher version in harmony and
slightly out of synch with the 1st guitar and spread it
right, if you solo those guitars out you get this real
mandoliny sound, I placed both guitars on stereo 8and
then shoved a delay at about 92 secs with a short feed
and a very heavy compression using nomad factory Blue
tubes, what came back was this very melodious large
stereo sound and I knew I’d found the crux of the
backing.
As you can hear in the mix I didn’t use any heavy rhythm
guitars, instead preferring to find some old sounding
picks and relying on alot of chorus on the chorus
and piano to tell the dynamic story but I did one stereo
track of rhythm using amplitube 2, and rolling back on
the guitars volume so it had more crackle than crunch, I
love using this old squire fender I bought for £100 back
in 95, its so shitty that it always works!
For the guitar solo I chose a fender strat I’ve had
knocking about for years, I’m no great guitar player but
I love simple guitar solo’s if your going to have them
and never get to fiddly, firstly because I’m no Uli Roth
but secondly because I feel guitar solo’s can be done to
death if you don’t have a disciplined producer on board
to stop a guitarist going overboard, and I always keep a
producer hat on when playing instruments so I don’t get
carried away which let me tell you I’ve done in the
past!
Harley's greatest vocal producer was Chris Sutton who
produced me for a few tracks under
Andy Whitmore’s
banner, and he learned early on that its no use showing
how good you are as a singer if is takes from the song.
something I think Maria Carey forgets sometimes( shit
how bold!)
So...I am and always will be my worst critique and for
the moment he am also the only one who knows my vocal
well enough to stamp on it when it goes ego crazy so I
sat there and produced it.
Harley love sthe AKG C4000B, he thinks it gives cool
****th to my voice and when I do go high it stays with
me while I tend to get shrill in other models, I always
like to record in the same room I monitor, even if I do
have another engineer on board, nothing worse than
looking through a sheet of glass and not knowing what
anyone is saying!
I always use 2 things on my voice, 1st is MWS mic
preamps, 2nd is Nomad factories Liquid comp, I love
nomad factory,
its tube emulation at its best as far as I’m concerned.
Harley was taught old school with recording, esp vocals,
if you’re a singer and you cant record full takes, then
dont sing at all! I think that goes with everything, its
nice to have the ability with D.A.W to get away with it
as it were, but they never did that in the old days, so
why should we now? I only record bits in demo production
so I can listen back and get ideas. but the real deal
has to be the real deal.
Harley have a wonderful partner called
Tara
she is a great session singer and I use her all the
time, her and me did the backing vocals together in the
chorus using the C4000b, but for her own vocal harmonies
I used a U87, with my own comp preset through the liquid
comp.
Harley mixed the track in 2 days and this is the result
|
|
The Song: "The Times Of Our
Lives"