Starting an album recording project tomorrow

[Cirrus]

Well... we've been doing pre production for the last couple of months.

It's an interesting project for me, because of the strengths and limitations of the band. I joined as guitarist a couple of years ago, and love the vibe of the group & the clear vision the singer/ main songwriter has. We went to a studio for a couple of days to record a track with a moderately successful producer at the end of last year and the result was surprisingly poor. I deliberately sat back because I wanted to enjoy the experience of just being a guitarist for a change, but he had a cookie cutter recording process and the mix was lame. Felt like a waste of several hundred £.

So I said, well, I know how to record and mix, so I'll do it. My daughter's 18 months old now so after covid and 2 years of basically being busy and tired all the time, feels like I've finally got some breathing space to tuck in to a decent project again.

The strengths:

The singer's voice. It's fantastic. It's kind of '50s crooner meets Nick Cave via David Bowie. So far I've established that it sounds great no matter what mic I put in front of him.

The focused and clear band aesthetic. Minor and modal keys. Spooky accidental notes. Beauty trying and often failing to escape the ugly reality of reverb drenched sounds.

Lack of egos. Nobody minds hanging back to leave space. Everyone's focussed on the end result as a whole, and there are lots of creative ideas for arrangement and production.

The weakness:

General lack of experience with recording - none of them were that great playing to a click, so for the last couple of months I've been making everyone play to one with headphones while we track demos and guide tracks, trying to increase general confidence and familiarity with playing naturally in unnatural situations.


I might abandon this thread through lack of time, But I was thinking of using it as a kind of diary of the recording. Tomorrow we're mostly tuning drums, and experimenting with sounds/ mic placement, then there'll be 3 days of drum tracking followed by another two long weekends in May.

The Gear:

I've spent the last couple of months building up a mic collection, so this is what I've got to play with;

Condensers:
2x U87 clones as detailed in this thread
2x Aston Starlight SDCs
1x AT4050
1x AT4033a
1x Oktava MK-012

Dynamics:
3x SM58s
1x MD409*
1x Sennheiser 425
1x EV PL80
3x EV ND767a
And a handful of those crazy harmonica/ 50's style vocal mics that the singer has in his collection

*actually a sennheiser e609 with an old 402/3 capsule in it, but for ease of description it's a 409

It'll all be going through Audient Pres - an iD44 interface, expanded with an ASP800 8-channel mic pre for 12 inputs total, recording into Studio One.

 

[la szum]

Sounds Fun!

 

[Stone]

Awesome !!

 

[JiveTurkey]

Very nice! Stick with the thread. It will be interesting to see how it goes. Being in an actual studio, even if it is more of a home studio environment is a blast \m/

 

[ᛗᛜᛜᚺDᛜᎶ Ꮤᛨᚳᚴ]

I am ready to start recording my next album as well. I vote that you continue the thread, it will be fun to follow the ups and downs, the gotchas and "next time I would do it like this" quips! I am thinking about setting up my GoPro and videotaping most of the process. Best of luck with your album!!

 

[Cirrus]

Well, it's been 3 really busy days so I've just not found the time or mental energy to write anything. But as a placeholder for now, here's a photo from Saturday as we were mid-set up.

 

[Cirrus]

Ok.

Saturday:

Set up day. We lifted the carpet from the room, to reveal the more reflective floor beneath as seen in the above picture - The room's not bad for a non-treated space, it's got some rattly, zingy fluttering echoes across the far walls if you make noise halfway along, and the windows/ patio doors along both long walls are quite clattery. So, we put felt up along the left hand windows, and drapes over the right hand ones to start to control that. I've had 8 rockwool panels that are now 14 years old, they've followed me from band to band, stored in garages between times of need. The rug went under the drums and the panels were arrayed around that end of the room, to dampen the area around the drums better. A big rack of clothes - suits, trousers, heavy stuff, was moved against the opposite wall, behind the camera. Between that and the two wall mounted blue panels, the slapback was brought under control.

That left us with a room that's still got nice bright early reflections and a short reverb, and after a couple of days of tracking in it I'd say it's the best non-studio room I've ever tracked in, and better than some of the studios I've been in.

It took us the whole day to set the recording rig up, arrange the room, and get the drums re-skinned and tuned.

Before we started tracking, I sent some clips to @Orvillain because let's be fair, he's been round the block a few times with drum recording so it was great to get his perspective, suggestions and be able to ask for some advice about close mic placement on the toms, which I've never been totally clear with regards to how different angles and distances affect things.

The big risk/ innovation: I'm recording the drums with one mono overhead. This record isn't drum focused, it's not meant to be small and intimate, so I want to go for a presentation of the drums that makes them sound further back in the mix, and grand/ cinematic. So the actual kit sound will be mono, but with stereo room mics to give ambience.

This is what we ended up with:

The Toms are SM58 high tom, and two EV mics - 736? I can't remember the number. Anyway, I like them. Nice bottom end and a more extended treble than the SM58. Per @Orvillain 's suggestion, I angled them more vertical towards the edge rather than the centre to get more tone/ bloom and less stick attack, which worked really well and has been added to my knowledge banks.

Room mics: Two Aston Starlights. I tried them on the opposite side of the room facing back towards the kit, as spaced pair and ORTF. The room tone was nice but I couldn't bring them up without also getting trashy, unfocussed tone from the kit as well. Putting them close to the kit but facing away works way better; they can be really high in the mix before they start interfering with the transient detail of the close mics, and honestly stereo ambience but mono drums makes sense to me; it's how most drumkits sound unless you're stood very close to them, and mono compatability is obviously pretty much assured.

You can also see the single overhead, up over the ride and pointing towards the snare.

Snare: Oktava 012 - it's a pretty thick sound, kinda indie, with a raspy top end. the Grey EV PL80 is more, erm, thonky - midrange knock, more 2k stick slap.

A "Front of kit" mic - it's out in front of the kick drum, on the snare side, about level with the bottom of the snare drum. I like whole kit mics around this position on kits, you get snare snap, rattle, and some midrange knock from the kick. There's also a mic just sat on the floor
under the hi hat, it's getting beater and snare wire sounds, mostly. Pretty terrible sound on its own but it does have some dirty attitude that... well it *might* feature, or I might never use it. Ah well.

And Finally, a few cushions and blanket draped over the front of the kit, to reduce cymbal spill in the AT4033 on outside kick duty. There's a Sennheiser mic inside just for beater click.

In the next instalment: Fuck Audient. Fuck Digital technology.

 

[ᛗᛜᛜᚺDᛜᎶ Ꮤᛨᚳᚴ]

Ok.

Saturday:

Set up day. We lifted the carpet from the room, to reveal the more reflective floor beneath as seen in the above picture - The room's not bad for a non-treated space, it's got some rattly, zingy fluttering echoes across the far walls if you make noise halfway along, and the windows/ patio doors along both long walls are quite clattery. So, we put felt up along the left hand windows, and drapes over the right hand ones to start to control that. I've had 8 rockwool panels that are now 14 years old, they've followed me from band to band, stored in garages between times of need. The rug went under the drums and the panels were arrayed around that end of the room, to dampen the area around the drums better. A big rack of clothes - suits, trousers, heavy stuff, was moved against the opposite wall, behind the camera. Between that and the two wall mounted blue panels, the slapback was brought under control.

That left us with a room that's still got nice bright early reflections and a short reverb, and after a couple of days of tracking in it I'd say it's the best non-studio room I've ever tracked in, and better than some of the studios I've been in.

It took us the whole day to set the recording rig up, arrange the room, and get the drums re-skinned and tuned.

Before we started tracking, I sent some clips to @Orvillain because let's be fair, he's been round the block a few times with drum recording so it was great to get his perspective, suggestions and be able to ask for some advice about close mic placement on the toms, which I've never been totally clear with regards to how different angles and distances affect things.

The big risk/ innovation: I'm recording the drums with one mono overhead. This record isn't drum focused, it's not meant to be small and intimate, so I want to go for a presentation of the drums that makes them sound further back in the mix, and grand/ cinematic. So the actual kit sound will be mono, but with stereo room mics to give ambience.

This is what we ended up with:


View attachment 7004

The Toms are SM58 high tom, and two EV mics - 736? I can't remember the number. Anyway, I like them. Nice bottom end and a more extended treble than the SM58. Per @Orvillain 's suggestion, I angled them more vertical towards the edge rather than the centre to get more tone/ bloom and less stick attack, which worked really well and has been added to my knowledge banks.


View attachment 7005

Room mics: Two Aston Starlights. I tried them on the opposite side of the room facing back towards the kit, as spaced pair and ORTF. The room tone was nice but I couldn't bring them up without also getting trashy, unfocussed tone from the kit as well. Putting them close to the kit but facing away works way better; they can be really high in the mix before they start interfering with the transient detail of the close mics, and honestly stereo ambience but mono drums makes sense to me; it's how most drumkits sound unless you're stood very close to them, and mono compatability is obviously pretty much assured.

You can also see the single overhead, up over the ride and pointing towards the snare.


View attachment 7006

Snare: Oktava 012 - it's a pretty thick sound, kinda indie, with a raspy top end. the Grey EV PL80 is more, erm, thonky - midrange knock, more 2k stick slap.


View attachment 7007


A "Front of kit" mic - it's out in front of the kick drum, on the snare side, about level with the bottom of the snare drum. I like whole kit mics around this position on kits, you get snare snap, rattle, and some midrange knock from the kick. There's also a mic just sat on the floor
under the hi hat, it's getting beater and snare wire sounds, mostly. Pretty terrible sound on its own but it does have some dirty attitude that... well it *might* feature, or I might never use it. Ah well.

View attachment 7008


And Finally, a few cushions and blanket draped over the front of the kit, to reduce cymbal spill in the AT4033 on outside kick duty. There's a Sennheiser mic inside just for beater click.

In the next instalment: f**k Audient. f**k Digital technology.

Great write up! Thanks for all the specs, may come in handy at some point!!

 

[la szum]

Kudos on micing up drums and the detailed breakdown. Man, super jealous of that kind of setup. May it never die.


Are you guys tracking live with some of that blessed bleed, or will you be tracking individually and stacking? Or some of
both??

 

[Cirrus]

Tracking individually. We recorded guide tracks live in the room over the last few months - 3 or 4 mics on drums, guitar amp miked, bass direct, and vocals, and just took basic steps to reduce spill. And those recordings, with the drums muted and click track, are what the drummer has been playing to, so he can get some sense of being able to vibe and groove with what we played.

It would be lovely to do it all live, the room would need to be about twice the size and I'd need a few more mics & inputs though. As it is, individual is the only way to capture the room tone the way I wanted to.

 

[Cirrus]

Sunday-Tuesday


I realise there's not much to say about what we spent most of our mental efforts on - the song arrangements, the sounds/ drum tuning, debates over fills and intros and dynamics etc etc. That's going to be too much dancing about architecture here. But what was really great to see was how the drummer got comfortable with the process.

My "production" style as far as I can work out is to build and maintain momentum and excitement and keep everyone thinking about the vibe of the song and in a creative, musical place. I try to make the technology and the "process" as invisible as possible. It's not easy when there's only one person doing it all - inevitably there's a few minutes editing together different takes/ punch ins, time spent getting a rough mix together so everyone in the room has something exciting to listen to etc. I like to get some basic processing - EQ and compression etc - on the track basically straight away because then I know if there's anything that's going to be a problem that a; is brought up in annoyance level by compression and b; can't be fixed with a little EQ.

So, when annoying technical problems crop up I get really mad.

On Sunday, we tracked one song successfully. As we were doing some practice run throughs of the second song, I noticed that there were little clicks occurring in the recording. Only on half the tracks coming from the ASP800; 1-4 were fine, 5-8 coming down the 2nd optical cable to the iD44 were the culprits. And I could not fix it. The computer went crazy - changing sample rate to try easing the burden on my 5 year old laptop led to an hour of tail chasing. The other guys were really good about it but eventually I had to call it; I drove the half hour home, and had dinner with my family to try to get some distance from the problem.

Strangely, bringing my newer desktop from home fixed it that evening and we got the 2nd track done. I say strangely because the problem came back the next morning, and I thanked god that @Orvillain had once again come through - when I'd talked through the issue with him the previous afternoon, he's suggested getting a cable to clock the ASP off the iD44 interface, rather than the other way round (with the ASP800 sending timecode down the optical ADAT cable to clock the iD44). I amazon primed one, and it had arrived Monday morning before I set off for the studio. That fixed the problem for good.

The next problem was absolutely baffling. On Monday evening, out of the blue, tracks 1-4 on the ASP800 started sounding comb filtered. I spent 20 minutes tearing my hair out looking for where I'd accidentally routed some channels back onto themselves but no, the raw signal coming from the ASP ADAT out on tracks 1-4 were somehow being sent twice, slightly out of time, to produce a comb filter sound that I could hear and see in Voxengo SPAN. It was insane. A power off and on fixed that but it was absolutely baffling, and I have no idea if the problem was happening in the ASP800 or the iD44 or the ASIO driver but fucking hell what a pain in the tits.

Luckily we were able to get round those issues and move on but the clocking issue really did nearly stop play; if I'd known slightly less or not got that cable, we'd have had to cancel the recording plans this weekend and go shopping for some new hardware. It has made me a bit down on the Audient gear; I think the sound is great, way above its price point, but to throw up problems in such strange and subtle ways meant that I was always slightly out of the zone, worrying about what the next issue would be, if anything would re occur, and trying to stop the other guys from thinking about it so they could stay in a music frame of mind.

 

[Orvillain]

Kill me, now my mum is asking for technical support.

 

[Orvillain]

Basically though, to my way of thinking:

1. Never rely purely on ADAT for audio + clocking. Always use BNC Wordclock, which means you need to ensure your equipment choices support it (stupid MOTU 8-Pre!)
2. Whichever interface is directly connected to the computer via whatever protocol (usb, thunderbirds are go, etc etc) make that the master interface.

Number 2 isn't exactly required, but I always run that way as a matter of course. Seems to work.

 

[Orvillain]

It has made me a bit down on the Audient gear; I think the sound is great, way above its price point, but to throw up problems in such strange and subtle ways meant that I was always slightly out of the zone, worrying about what the next issue would be, if anything would re occur, and trying to stop the other guys from thinking about it so they could stay in a music frame of mind.

As you may recall, many moons ago we discussed Audient gear, and there had been reliability concerns in the past from both of us, but sometimes you just don't know if what you're reading on the infowebs is actually good info or not. So you take your chances.

This has put me off the Audient Evo 16 tbh. Now you'll get the occasional poster who will scoff at all of this cheap gear in the first place, and they'll more or less say you shouldn't bother recording on anything less than a £15K Pro-Tools HD, but that really isn't the point.

Even if the gear is cheap, it should still be reliable. My M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 was SOLLLLLIIIIIIIDDDDD back in the day, so we know it can be done.

 

[Cirrus]

Yeah, it's funny - I think the preamps are perfectly good, I know a working producer who prefers the Audient pres to his Focusrite ISA828. I know I'd rather have the 828 personally, but it's 3 times the price 2nd hand. But... when you're in the middle of a recording you don't think about how much it costs, you just want it to do its one job without falling over and if it can't do that, it wouldn't matter if you'd paid nothing for it - it's a problem in your life.

As it stands, I think going forward it'll be a perfectly good setup for this project as long as the comb filtering madness doesn't happen again. But if I was doing this professionally, there's just no way I'd use this gear purely on the basis that paying clients wouldn't be as forgiving as band mates if something went tits up.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I don’t mind Audient pre’s but I genuinely rate the ISA stuff on par with my Chandler and Neve preamps. Just a different flavour but I think they’re so underrated considering they come up for around £200 a channel used. I always found the Mackie Onyx stuff to hold up surprisingly well considering the brand/cost

 

[Cirrus]

Yeah, I loved the 828. It's got punch and clarity but then also this nice sense of weight and sheen in the top end, I guess that's the transformer. I contemplated getting the ISA One, but then I also kinda like the idea of tracking everything with the same preamps, for cohesion. All my Studio One Sessions are set up with Plugin Alliance's API channel and bus plugins too, again for a sense of cohesion, and then sub busses set up to run Airwindows' Console system which does subtle summing trickery.

As a quick catch up...

We did 8 tracks of drums over that weekend, there was a good vibe in the room. Particularly on the last day the drummer really got into the zone - we blasted through the last two tracks really quickly, there was one take in particular where the three of us were just sat glancing at each other as the drummer properly blasted out a keeper take. I found that the floor mic down under the snare/ Hi hat gives a really cool gnarly punch if I put an 1176 style plugin on it set to all buttons in, I can see myself riding that up for attitude during mixing.

I've made a somewhat controversial decision: I was planning on editing the drums before tracking anything else, but I'm not going to, beyond fixing obvious clangers. This isn't highly technical music, it isn't supposed to be a really "modern" sounding production, and I actually really like the drummer's natural feel, warts and all. I'm thinking more in the BRMC, Arcade Fire, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Black Angels etc aesthetic and I think if I start pulling kicks and snares closer to the grid I'm going to lose as much as I gain. I might live to regret that but for now it's where my head is at.

I've started tracking some guitars. For most of the songs, I know what my main part is and what sound I want from practice, playing the songs live, and the pre production we did, so I don't need the bass on first. I think we're going to need to spend a bit of time working on the bass tone and the details of those bass lines, so I think getting the guitar, which is more certain, in place first will help point us in the right direction for the bass sessions.

So... step one: making a big pile of pedals I'll likely never use, purely for the Insta fodder.

Step two: Make a den for my AC30, just to take the edge off since we are recording in an extension of a house with people trying to enjoy their bank holiday weekend.

Step Three: Mics. A given is theMD409-a-like, right on the grill cloth at the edge of the dustcap. I love that thing. It's the body of a 609, and the capsule is an old sennheiser 402/3. It's smoother through the mids than any other dynamic I've used on guitar, and it really does give a good representation of how the amp sounds in the room in terms of overall balance. Then an SM58 for a bit of attitude and upper mid grit if I want it, and one of my U87 clones a bit back which may or may not be used for clean sounds. I tried a room mic, it didn't give me anything I felt I needed.

I'm really pleased with how the amp sounds: It started as a stock AC30cc2, so it's a Chinese model. Over the last year I've kept a look out for vintage parts, and done a bunch of mods that I like doing to modern Voxes. It's got an early "Woden" Output transformer from 1963, and two old Celestion Alnico Silvers. One is from 1974, which I got, incredibly, *unused* last September - the paper across the bolt holes was intact, and the solder terminals had to be sanded down to get rid of 50 years of oxidation before solder would stick - and a '67 which has had decades of use. The '74 has been nicely broken in now after more than 6 months of use, and I think it sounds better - punchier, more balanced. The '67 is warmer and softer, I guess I'd prefer it for certain sounds but as my main tone the '74 wins, so that's what I miked up. They both have Pulsonic cones, which are a little smoother and thicker sounding than the Kurt Mueller cones they started using in mid-74 and still use today. A better match with a bright amp like an AC30.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Everyone needs an AC30 den

 

[la szum]

The Grid is the enemy!!

Keeping that feel alive. I applaud that.

 

[Cirrus]

Had a play around with one of the tracks last night on my little desktop speakers. Obviously rough round the edges, no bass to fill out the ratty strat sound and there are things like overly loud verse hi hats that'd require automation to fix but kinda shows the mono drums, stereo room ambience etc and what some compression does to the space.