Howdy Folks.
After recovering from our marathon Tamworth trip, what better way to relax than by...running around like a headless chook getting the next album recording sorted out.
Haven't I already sung 'Nobody's Fault But Mine?' on the blog. Oh well. 11 days between the tour date and recording date seemed like a much longer distance on paper.
So what's Happening?
Ok. In 6 days or so, we are packing up the troops, gear, leads, cables and mikes and once more heading off to a remote location...remote? Its not really that far. 4 hours down South from Sydney on on the beautiful Sapphire coast, where we have arranged a location to eat, sleep and work for a week whilst we record the next album, in between the Bald Rock and Oberon RSL gigs. No worries?
This last week has seen me spending time on spreadsheets, lists and diagrams, some of which I will start posting shortly, for the (dubious) benefit of other like minded DIY recording enthusiasts.
My advice? FLEE!!! Run for the hills! Hire that Big Name Producer! Accept the dodgy contract! Go into that shiny studio, with perfect reflection management, great sound absorption, air conditioning and a Foozeball table.
Or, if you are as barking, bat guano bonkers as I fear we might be, read on for what you can glean.
Recording Hired Guns & Borrowed Glory On Location
Our last series of recording adventures are detailed in the Album Blogs, go ahead and click on'em to see how we've made the other albums.
In particular, we had great success (and luck, outrageous, no-way-you'll-get-it-twice luck) with our recordings on the lawn in front of Burgoon for Carl's Chair.
On the Spacejunk EP, my favourite takes were the stuff done live to multitrack tape, on location at the Mangrove Mountain community hall. The atmospheric sound in the recordings is fantastic.
Ditto the stuff from Carl's Chair. If you listen to the album on headphones you can hear birds tweeting, the sound of the wind, the rain and all sorts of stuff thats woven into the fabric of the recording.
From my most recent blog on the subject, here are the objectives I listed:
1. Large room
2. Limited reflective surfaces (drum sound issue)
3. Nice environment (head space issue)
4. Location where the five of us, engineer, roadie and guitar tech (guitar tech??) can sleep
To that, we should add:
5. Acoustic Separation of instruments
6. Ability to play together (where possible)
Some of these objectives are mutually exclusive (?) or are best acheived using well designed, cleverly built studios. That's why they make'em.
However, there's something you can't quite get in a Studio. I dont know what to call it other than maybe, 'being there'.
The sound of Carl's Chair is of a band having a good week. Cold, hard, busy and hectic, but still a good week.
Putting the guys in the right head-space to get the performance is a more subtle and potentially dangerous art. This Is Not For The Faint Hearted.
So we chose to press our luck once more and try an on location recording.
After much chasing around, we found a location.
Here's what it looks like:
This space is around 100SQM.
Here's the proposed recording layout:
You can see that we've got the boys in the main room, with the amps in another room and me out on the porch.
In a way, this recording setup is a combination of the best ideas from Spacejunk and Carl's Chair.
Pete Doherty from Goose Studios will be engineering the session and he's keen on getting Acoustic Separation.
Theo (Drums) is keen on getting a good vibe by playing in the same space.
Geoff C (engineer of Carl's Chair and Patron Saint of the band) says we are a live act and we should try to keep that vibe in the recordings.
Carl's Chair was pretty much a live recording, with a few vocal exceptions (I fixed my stuff ups, I happily admit it), some re-tracking of the Bass, some guitar overdubs for the additional embellishments (slide on Company of a Friend for example) and some backing vocal additions. The rest is pretty much as you had it, there on the porch (or the lawn)
The principal recording for Carl's Chair was done in 4.5 elapsed days, with probably only 5 hours usable on any given day due to light and the winter weather (outside is chilly).
This time we're inside, but we're not as focused on this as a 'Live' album, so we're multitracking and want enough separation between the instruments to allow them to be messed with. On Carl's chair we couldn't alter the individual channels too much because there was spill - that's ok, that what we wanted, but it reduces your ability to treat the sound, as changing the sound of a guitar track starts to effect the sound of the drums, as you have a little of the drums in each instrument channel (those noisy things) due to the proximity of the open instrument mikes.
For this session, we're looking at moving the guitar amps outside the room and running a monitoring source back to the band, as well as shielding the vocals either by doing a Guide take and then repeating the vocal without the band, or by moving it outside.
One of the tricks we're looking at is worth sharing for anyone else considering the same craziness.
I googled sound isolation for guitars and came across a few great threads on Gearsluts about other people have done it. I googled a little further and found DIY'er building small, portable sound isolation booths for guitars, here's a sample.
This is a fantastic looking effort put together by Mike Ralph.
http://www.amptone.com/diyisobox.htm
Props to Mike and also to all the folk that take the time and effort to blog this stuff.
Building our version of a Sound Isolation Box for the Guitar Amps
As we've just come off tour, our finances are pretty tight so we cant go for the cool acoustic foam stuff etc (sigh), but I still need to try and get what I can done.
I started looking around for the materials and found out that to make a single 1m3 cabinet it would cost me $300 in parts (MDF/chipboard, sealant, glue, fabric, staples, soundproofing foam etc), so I started looking for an alternative that fit my (low) budget.
Aha! Shipping crates used for transporting computer server racks! The Ute cost me more to hire than these three boxes. Jeez they were heavy (70Kg), Mr Wizard and I struggled under the dang things.
Unfortunately, they differed a little from the Ebay description, but with a trusty friend (Vicki) wielding a router, I think we can whip something into shape.
Once again, this could be good, or bad. I wont be using Foam as it costs too much, as I need 1 per guitar + a vocal booth, and my rough calcs put it at 15-17 Square Metres of building materials, so I am opting for Earthwool, a woolen fibre insulation that's rated for acoustic dampening.
I have three days left to get these built, with no guarantee that it'll work.
However, good, bad or indifferent, I'll post the results.
meanwhile, it's time to go measure'em up and call Vicki.
More soon!
MJEB