Mother Superior.

[gummblefish]

I've been away from here for a while. This is mainly due to the fact that I'm working with a band (The 45's) and have been putting most of my free time into producing and engineering for them. It's been great fun and i am starting to get good results. They are really great bunch of musicians and have some great songs that i am looking forward to recording. They are from a different time and sound nothing like what is currently around Belfast. They are very 1960's inspired.
I prefer to record them live in a room, well to be honest at the minute my budget is so tight that i cant really afford to do it anywhere other than the room we are using. Its a fairly large room in a Belfast Mill. I bring Gobo's and Bass traps and the like to Dampen areas and allow for more separation.
This track is called Mother Superior, i recorded the band live whilst they were rehearsing. The Sticks and drums are fairly swamped in reverb from the PA because of spill from the drummers vocal mic (he is the backing vox) i thought it made for an interesting effect so i worked it in. There wasn't much head room for the vox because the main vocalist and the backing vox are together along with the sticks and reverb. I basically had to apply heavy Compression and eq on the mix to drag the singer out of the mud. The desk was set up for a rehearsal and as such separation was unavoidable.
I record them on to a Yamaha MD8.
This is just for fun...http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=725295&songID=5551513

 

[raven46]

cool band man very chillaxed

 

[gummblefish]

cool band man very chillaxed

Yeah this songs pretty chilled. Most of there other stuff is pretty upbeat, some of it sounds like 'The Kinks'
I was going for that 'Catch a fire' vibe to this. Singer kinda sounds like a cross between Lenny Kravitz and Elvis Costello.

 

[Jack Real]

Hi

Cool song. The recording is good for live stuff. The panning of the high hats during the solo is too far left (hard pan) IMHO. Something around 10h30 would be better.

Nice work,

/Jack Real

 

[gummblefish]

Hi

Cool song. The recording is good for live stuff. The panning of the high hats during the solo is too far left (hard pan) IMHO. Something around 10h30 would be better.

Nice work,

/Jack Real

Yeah i thought that the Hats may be a bit too far to the left, I kind of wanted to make a pronounced effect with them but i think i may have over did it.

 

[XLR]

Sounds good. Nice to hear tunes done live-all-at-once. I'm very much liking the bass guitar in sound and performance. Vocal maybe needs a bit of de-essing (listening on headphones). The gtr could be rhythmically tighter but sounds very good. Quite an operation, I imagine, tracking the band live but it gives realism & honesty to the sound.

 

[rayc]

Oliver's Army era El C vocals. There's a sneer very close to the surface.
Cool track & well done for within the circumstances you've created a nice record.
The verb on the sticks suits the reggaeness.
Cool song too.

 

[gummblefish]

Oliver's Army era El C vocals. There's a sneer very close to the surface.
Cool track & well done for within the circumstances you've created a nice record.
The verb on the sticks suits the reggaeness.
Cool song too.

Thanks Rayc. So you can here the Elvis Costello thing too. Cool, I've been trying to tell a few people but they don't hear it. Song kinda reminds me of 'Watching the detectives' By Costello. This track should track up pretty well.

 

[gummblefish]

Sounds good. Nice to hear tunes done live-all-at-once. I'm very much liking the bass guitar in sound and performance. Vocal maybe needs a bit of de-essing (listening on headphones). The gtr could be rhythmically tighter but sounds very good. Quite an operation, I imagine, tracking the band live but it gives realism & honesty to the sound.

I love the idea of tracking live, also it gives the players more of a buzz and they jam really well together. Since i have started working with the band i feel they are opening up more. They leave the tracking process and engineering to me and it gives me the freedom to try quirky things, like swinging a dynamic mic around the drum kit for a weird effect. It also makes me look a bit eccentric, a trait which producers seem to levitate towards I cant wait to put up some more recording from the sessions, some will make great out- takes.
The bass was tracked with a sm58 and i used a little bit of compression on tracking. I was very happy with the results under the circumstances. I used a gobo between the bass and guitar, theres probably quite a lot of spill on to the overheads of the drums.
Tracking live can be tedious especially when theres are really great take and something goes wrong, most of the time it's because of the Yamaha MD8 which is a very temperamental machine at the best of times. My only other option in is to use a Fostex machine that can only record two tracks at once so it would mean doing a live mix as well, which sometimes works out. Like i say the band are pretty keen to explore different avenues of recording and different processes. I like the idea of using 'old school' techniques to capture the band. We also have some Old equipment to play around with including Vintage amps and a Tape machine once used by 'Tangerine dream'

 

[ido1957]

Ok - you're the engineer and producer - shoulda opened this thread first
These guys are tight and smooth....You've done a great job capturing the whole band, bleed or no you can hear everything nice and clear....Great job.....