Hello all,
I've been getting quite a few requests by the various species of geeks out there asking how The Fierce & The Dead e.p. was recorded. Well i'm not one for secrets so i'll tell all. By the way - if you don't know what The Fierce & The Dead is, it's a new band project i'm involved in along with Matt Stevens and Stuart Marshall. You can see our website at www.fierceandthedead.com.
So i'll start with where it was recorded. It was in the live room of Pinna Studios in an evening session last November (2009). Pinna Studios was the room based at the Fortress studio complex in Old Street, London and I ran it as a commercial facility for 4 years with the one the only Sonny. We moved out of there in December and TFATD was one of the last band projects we did there. The room was always strangely great sounding considering that it had fairly low ceilings and was a bit of a box. We never questioned it though as we adhered to my Audio Engineer Rule#2 - If it isn't broken don't try to fix it. It's something that many people fall foul of. Rather than listening first and then deciding what to do, they fall in comfortable habits or just follow what someone else in a book/magazine/website has told them they should do. My Audio Engineering Rule#1 is - Listen!!! If you want to hear more of that particular rooms sound then you should get Polar Bears new album Peepers, which was recorded live in the room. Viva la spill!!
Anyways, I digress.
So we had Stuart with his back facing a corner and the kit facing the opposite corner off the room. Baffles behind him and to his left and right, but not closed in. They were to focus the sound going forward from the kit and elimante reflections from the corner and the window to his left. The kit was our standard house kit - a 4 piece Pearl Export, with Stuarts patented cheap shitty no name snare that sounds like a biscuit tin in the room but sounds great through a mic. Cymbal wise he only ever uses one crash and a ride. Simplicity breeds invention in his case I think. The kit was miked in fairly standard minimal set up - nothing too fancy. Can't remember all the mics but there would have been a Sennheiser E602 on the kick front, a Shure Beta 57 on the snare, and probably straight 57s or some cheap Superlux mics on the toms. Can't be sure on that as it was a while ago. Overheads were SE Electronics SE1s. There was a 57 on the hi hats and a trashy £20 Shure mic i've had for years on the ride. I think we had a vintage RCA ribbon mic up as a front of kit mic about 4 or 5 feet away. So a nice cheap 'n' nasty set up.
The bass was a 70's Fender Precision borrowed from Mr. Dan Wilson going through an old Torque amp that belongs to Sonny. That was close miked with a Beyer Dynamic Opus I think. We also took a di from the bass as well. The amp was set up just behind the baffle to Stuarts left.
Matt was playing his Mexican Fender Tele through the Line 6 DL4 delay and then into a Fender Princeton set on clean. We also took a di post delay from his guitar. The reason for taking it post delay was that we agreed his use of delay would be part of his performance and so shouldn't be edited in the mix. Miked the amp with a straight 57. That amp was set up on a chair facing 90 degrees to the drums just behind the baffles to Stuarts right.
We decided to not to use headphones and set the amp volumes in the room for our needs and then dealt with the recording levels afterwards. It was all going straight into our Soundcraft Ghost desk, with a bit of eq here. I allowed the kick and snare channels to drive the desk a little as well. I have to say that for a lo/mid range desk the Soundcraft is a great workhorse. Clean preamps, usable eq, what more do you want! It's better than a Mackie that's for sure!
No compression was used at the record stage, which is something I tend to do most of the time. I find that unless you are very familiar with a track then compression can take away some of the natural dynamics if not set correctly. So, especially in the case TFATD, I thought it would be better to leave it off.
And all of that came out of the Ghost into Apogee convertors and then into our Pro Tools HD2 rig. Lovely.
So that's the recording side of things. If you're still interested i'll write next week about the mixing.
Ta ra,
Kev.
I've been getting quite a few requests by the various species of geeks out there asking how The Fierce & The Dead e.p. was recorded. Well i'm not one for secrets so i'll tell all. By the way - if you don't know what The Fierce & The Dead is, it's a new band project i'm involved in along with Matt Stevens and Stuart Marshall. You can see our website at www.fierceandthedead.com.
So i'll start with where it was recorded. It was in the live room of Pinna Studios in an evening session last November (2009). Pinna Studios was the room based at the Fortress studio complex in Old Street, London and I ran it as a commercial facility for 4 years with the one the only Sonny. We moved out of there in December and TFATD was one of the last band projects we did there. The room was always strangely great sounding considering that it had fairly low ceilings and was a bit of a box. We never questioned it though as we adhered to my Audio Engineer Rule#2 - If it isn't broken don't try to fix it. It's something that many people fall foul of. Rather than listening first and then deciding what to do, they fall in comfortable habits or just follow what someone else in a book/magazine/website has told them they should do. My Audio Engineering Rule#1 is - Listen!!! If you want to hear more of that particular rooms sound then you should get Polar Bears new album Peepers, which was recorded live in the room. Viva la spill!!
Anyways, I digress.
So we had Stuart with his back facing a corner and the kit facing the opposite corner off the room. Baffles behind him and to his left and right, but not closed in. They were to focus the sound going forward from the kit and elimante reflections from the corner and the window to his left. The kit was our standard house kit - a 4 piece Pearl Export, with Stuarts patented cheap shitty no name snare that sounds like a biscuit tin in the room but sounds great through a mic. Cymbal wise he only ever uses one crash and a ride. Simplicity breeds invention in his case I think. The kit was miked in fairly standard minimal set up - nothing too fancy. Can't remember all the mics but there would have been a Sennheiser E602 on the kick front, a Shure Beta 57 on the snare, and probably straight 57s or some cheap Superlux mics on the toms. Can't be sure on that as it was a while ago. Overheads were SE Electronics SE1s. There was a 57 on the hi hats and a trashy £20 Shure mic i've had for years on the ride. I think we had a vintage RCA ribbon mic up as a front of kit mic about 4 or 5 feet away. So a nice cheap 'n' nasty set up.
The bass was a 70's Fender Precision borrowed from Mr. Dan Wilson going through an old Torque amp that belongs to Sonny. That was close miked with a Beyer Dynamic Opus I think. We also took a di from the bass as well. The amp was set up just behind the baffle to Stuarts left.
Matt was playing his Mexican Fender Tele through the Line 6 DL4 delay and then into a Fender Princeton set on clean. We also took a di post delay from his guitar. The reason for taking it post delay was that we agreed his use of delay would be part of his performance and so shouldn't be edited in the mix. Miked the amp with a straight 57. That amp was set up on a chair facing 90 degrees to the drums just behind the baffles to Stuarts right.
We decided to not to use headphones and set the amp volumes in the room for our needs and then dealt with the recording levels afterwards. It was all going straight into our Soundcraft Ghost desk, with a bit of eq here. I allowed the kick and snare channels to drive the desk a little as well. I have to say that for a lo/mid range desk the Soundcraft is a great workhorse. Clean preamps, usable eq, what more do you want! It's better than a Mackie that's for sure!
No compression was used at the record stage, which is something I tend to do most of the time. I find that unless you are very familiar with a track then compression can take away some of the natural dynamics if not set correctly. So, especially in the case TFATD, I thought it would be better to leave it off.
And all of that came out of the Ghost into Apogee convertors and then into our Pro Tools HD2 rig. Lovely.
So that's the recording side of things. If you're still interested i'll write next week about the mixing.
Ta ra,
Kev.
I didn't know a lot of that!
ReplyDeleteBut what kind of picks do you use?
ReplyDeleteYellow ones from Asda
ReplyDeleteare there any impulse responses available of the room? ;)
ReplyDeleteSorry moinsound, that's one thing we never got round to.
ReplyDelete