It's great to be in a studio where we can have access to so many different, good quality instruments and bits of equipment. Having everything together in one place makes recording simple, so we can focus on getting good takes and sorting out the arrangement. David's equipment has taken years to collect from second hand shops, eBay, friends of friends and other places, and a lot of it he has fixed and restored himself. A really noticeable thing about using some of the gear he has is that we get better results from it in less time; putting one of his valve Neumanns next to something and recording it through a Neve channel strip means you can skip a lot of the extra recording and processing that you need to make decent sounds with cheaper equipment. There's also an element of unpredictability and grittiness to antique analogue gear, but you can also push things like microphones harder without any nasty distortion. It's been interesting to use these things.
Showing posts with label Neumann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neumann. Show all posts
Tuesday, 19 August 2014
Madrid Day 5
We're in Madrid this week recording at Mr. Soul Estudio in the Barrio de la Concepcion.
We started the morning recording David's Hammond organ which he mended overnight. It was hooked up to a Leslie cabinet which gave it the magic oscillating sound. We recorded organ on two of the songs, and then I sat down at the piano and put a ridiculously jaunty piano part on another song.
It's great to be in a studio where we can have access to so many different, good quality instruments and bits of equipment. Having everything together in one place makes recording simple, so we can focus on getting good takes and sorting out the arrangement. David's equipment has taken years to collect from second hand shops, eBay, friends of friends and other places, and a lot of it he has fixed and restored himself. A really noticeable thing about using some of the gear he has is that we get better results from it in less time; putting one of his valve Neumanns next to something and recording it through a Neve channel strip means you can skip a lot of the extra recording and processing that you need to make decent sounds with cheaper equipment. There's also an element of unpredictability and grittiness to antique analogue gear, but you can also push things like microphones harder without any nasty distortion. It's been interesting to use these things.
It's great to be in a studio where we can have access to so many different, good quality instruments and bits of equipment. Having everything together in one place makes recording simple, so we can focus on getting good takes and sorting out the arrangement. David's equipment has taken years to collect from second hand shops, eBay, friends of friends and other places, and a lot of it he has fixed and restored himself. A really noticeable thing about using some of the gear he has is that we get better results from it in less time; putting one of his valve Neumanns next to something and recording it through a Neve channel strip means you can skip a lot of the extra recording and processing that you need to make decent sounds with cheaper equipment. There's also an element of unpredictability and grittiness to antique analogue gear, but you can also push things like microphones harder without any nasty distortion. It's been interesting to use these things.
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
Madrid Day 1
We're in Madrid recording this week at Mr. Soul studios in the Barrio de la Concepcion district. The studio has a lot of vintage gear from the 60s and 70s.
We had an early start at Joe's house, where we'd slept on sofas and floors, and piled in to the back of Joe's mini. It was a bit too early, and we'd had a bit too little sleep, to be excited yet. Last night we'd practised til late and then spent the best part of an hour working out the best way to pack a crash cymbal in a hold bag. It was around 6am and there was a damp chill in the air that condensed on car windows.
After the usual tedious check-in queues at the airport we sat in the Wetherspoons in departures, in the section that turned out to be reserved for the West Ham youth squad, and had an early morning pint just for the hell of it. It was probably the first pint I've had before 8am in the morning when I haven't just been up all night. Good for the nerves too. I've never really gotten used to flying.
The flight was uncomfortable on Ryanair; I read Hemingway's 'The Dangerous Summer' to get me in the mood. Mainly it made me hungry. That man can certainly write about food. I drifted off for a while but couldn't really sleep with my legs crushed together. Looking down the aisle to the window, I could see Spain, black, sand and white, spread out below us.
We landed and walked into the dry heat of Madrid, lugging our baggage through the Metro to the Barrio de la Concepcion. After a quick lunch of Ham, salad, calamari and chips we headed to meet David, Joe's cousin, at the studio.
The amount of great vintage gear David has is incredible. He has Neumann 67 mics, a Nagra tape deck, a Studer 24 Track tape console, a Fender Rhodes, a Hammond Organ with Leslie speaker, several other vintage keyboards, untold vintage amps, guitars and basses, and drumkits, as well as a good amount of outboard gear for processing things on the way in and out. All the tools are there for some great recordings, and now we just have to use them in the right way.
We sat with David and talked about the Spanish music scene. He told us that there are a lot of good musicians in Spain but they tend not to get together and work on projects, rather they play as session guys or go as sidemen on pop tours. He did show us one of his friends, a musician called Diego Garcia, playing on Spanish TV, which pretty much finished off four sleepy guys:
We're gonna spend the evening watching The Simpsons in Spanish.
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