Electric Korma recording session

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On the 14th of July I had the pleasure of tracking a rather curious band by the title of Electric Korma at Stranded Recording Studios.

Effectively they are a red hot trio that do abstracted, rocked-out Hindi Hits / Bollywood covers. A bizarre niche, as admittedly by the front man George, but profitable, and popular amongst the affluent Australian Indian community.

The emphasis of the session was to get great drum takes, and possibly some keeper bass takes and guitar takes. But band leader George and Bass player Joey, stated at the onset that they might do overdubs after the fact at their home studios. The Input list below confirms such, the emphasis being on the drums with minimal mic’ing of other elements.

ELECTRIC KORMA – 14/7/22 INPUT LIST

  1. Kick In – AKG D112
  2. Kick Out – AKG D25
  3. Snare up – Shure SM57
  4. Snare Down – Shure SM57
  5. Hat – Rode TF5
  6. Rack –
  7. Floor – Sennheiser MD – 421
  8. OH L – Coles 4038
  9. OH R – Coles 4038
  10. Room – Gefel – Um-70
  11. Bass DI
  12. Bass Amp – M88
  13. GTR Amp – Shure SM57 – LP 3
  14. Scratch Vox 1 – Shure SM58 – LP 4
  15. Scratch Vox 2 – Shure SM58 – LP 5
  16. Scratch Vox 3 – Shure SM58 – LP 6

The band wanted to play live, and this has informed and directed the mic choice to focus on dynamic and ribbon microphones to minimise bleed between instruments.

The mic choices are fairly standard, but a few things excelled or impressed me during the session.

Firstly, I’m loving the Beyerdynamic M160 double ribbon mic on toms. They have that ribbon warmth and have great rejection past 110 degrees (according to the manufacturers) which keeps down too much cymbals or other drums getting into the mic.

Secondly, The Coles 4038 ribbon mics are such a warm lovely choice for rock drum overheads, and in this particular application, really minimise bleed from bass and guitar amps compared to condenser mic options. They also respond so nicely to a bit of a high shelf lifting those higher frequencies that aren’t so pronounced in ribbons generally.

Lastly, a bit of an AKG overkill, but the D112 and D25 made for a solid, warm thumping kick drum sound.

Below are a few pics from the session.

 

Solfeggio Sculpture in 360 audio

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During 2021 I wound back most of my freelance work in order to finish my masters. For my final masters project I focused on creative research into the emerging technology of 360 audio spatialisation. In particular 360 spatialisation that can be encoded to binaural format for headphone listening.

I reviewed the literature on human spatial perception and looked at what is and isn’t possible within the 360 compositional space.  

This creative experimentation within the 360 space explored concepts brought forward from the literature review, and resulted in 4 EPs of spatialise compositions for headphone listening. Some of the compositions have become quite minimal in order to leave space for perception of the 360 space, in particular 360 parameters such as azimuth, elevation and radius. Further, the academic atmosphere of the research has put me in the mood to return to my on going interest in the esoteric side of audio, ie binaural beats, solfeggio frequencies and the like.

The first of these works has recently been released through lo fi spiritual and can be heard below. The title of this first release is Solfeggio Sculptures and is released under my own name rather than any of my previous aliases.

Mixing Scott Ferrier EP

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Earlier this year I was sent a bunch of Pro Tools sessions to mix for the singer songwriter called Scott Ferrier. The sessions as per usual were a bit of a brain dump of a whole bunch of ideas, but buried within all the tracks was a beautiful heartfelt simplicity and vocal tone that was honest and charming.

The record was a good learning curve as to the benefits of the mix engineer, myself in this case, taking on a more produce type role. The tracks were bubbling with possibility, but often the verse and chorus were hidden within the session and the tracks and instrumentation weren’t fully formed to compliment the verse chorus structure.

I’m thankful for the confidence that both Scott and recording engineer Joel King put in myself, allowing me to strip back the recordings and structure them to best compliment the timeless verse chorus format.

Scott’s release Garageband is not out at Spotify and beyond, and the title track also has had a video clip made for it as well. Check it all out below.

Enjoy!

Organica Compila 3 – Remix Collection

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Out now is a remix I did for the Italian label Organica Sounds on Organica Compila Vol 3, listen at the below Spotify link.

I was asked to remix a track from Kurl‘s recent release Visions of an old man and decided on remixing the track Dub Trip, listen at the below Spotify link

The track is released under my more Dub Techno orientated alias TEChSLo and is featured as the second release on Organica Compila Vol 3.

It was an interesting journey, label head Pascal had initially asked for a clubby remix, which under the influence of some of my students at the time resulted in a more Tech House remix. After providing a sketch of the direction the remix was taking, Pascal kindly replied, “you’re professional as usual! So, to be honest this is not my favourite kind of music, but if this is your interpretation, it is! I would prefer something more housy and groovy….but, as I said, you are the remixer, so you can do what u want!”

Wanting to execute the brief and satisfy the label I asked for a reference track to avoid any further misunderstandings. Pascal provided some great mellow groovy house references and I used that as an opportunity to map out some of the “grooves” / quantisation patterns in the references. In particular I was trying to capture the shuffle or groove in the hats of reference tracks such as the below track.

For my students I created a Youtube video on how to map out such groove templates within Ableton, that can be found below.


The second version with a more funky groove and less hard hitting drop met with the following response from Pascal, “This is fantastic! Huge work on it! Perfect!”

In reflection I feel that I satisfied the brief, but on listening to the whole record I feel that my track could have been a bit more dubbed out and ambient. That would have fitted better with the overall sound of the compilation and also been more inline with the TEChSLo sound.

I feel that this has been a good lesson in asking for exact reference tracks and the importance of groove templates. Further, I feel it is also a good lesson in not always following the stereotype of a remix being a more banging version of the original track.

Ambient music mastering

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Last week a new release which I mastered came out by Broken Chip called Winter Rain on the lo fi spiritual imprint.

I mastered both this record by Broken Chip as well as his 2020 release Small Shrine, and in reflection I feel the mastering of both of these records was a significant learning curve.

Firstly, when mastering ambient music one has a different set of concerns to when mastering more beat-based music. I have found that ambient music without transient heavy instrumentation such as kicks and snares, enables one in the mastering process to get uniquely high volumes whether one be metering via RMS or LUFS.

As streaming is setting new standards of LUFS, and arguably undermining the previous era of loudness wars, the ability to get such high volumes is actually a concern that I’ve found I have to be aware of.

Such issues I am familiar with from previous ambient music mastering sessions. However, these last two records by Broken Chip provided a new challenge. Both records were both created from a live improvised performance and contained overly resonant filter sweeps, cut offs and EQs. The files I had to work with couldn’t be remixed as the performance was only captured in a summed stereo recording. The resonances I speak of were creating all types of distortion when played back on smaller systems such as laptop speakers.

In practice EQ, compression and even dynamic EQ was not getting the tonal results that I wanted. Distortion was still occurring on smaller systems. The solution that I ended up going for was the relatively new era of what I’ll call spectrum wide dynamic EQ, in other words smart new plugins such as Soothe 2 by oeksound that enable frequency specific compression across the whole audible spectrum. See the Soothe 2 plugin pictured below.

I found this plugin to be essential in taming the spectrum wide resonances that were present in the original recording. I had only used Soothe sparingly before and this particular mastering session has really cemented it as one of my go to plugins for such situations.

Finally, it is indeed fun to be an engineer in an era of new gear and technological revolutions. The past 2-3 years has seen some very unique new digital plugins hitting the market.

 

The Reckoning live session

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Last weekend, The Reckoning asked to do a live session where the focus was a live vibe, hopefully good drum takes, and if we got any good bass, guitar or vocals, well that would be a bonus.

It was a reasonably busy session with the mic input list being as follows (note I was on a Neve Custom 75 so used the console pres).

1: KICK IN – Audix D6 – JLM FC500

2: KICK OUT – Electro Voice RE20 – JLM FC500

3: SNARE UP – SM57 – JLM FC500

4: SNARE DWN – SM57

5: HAT – AKG 451

6: RAK – Sennheiser 421

7: FLR – Sennheiser 421

8: OH L – 414 B—ULS –  AMS Neve 33609 Limiter / Compressor

9: OH R – 414 B—ULS – AMS Neve 33609 Limiter / Compressor

10: Crotch – 441 – JLM FC500

11. BASS DI – Radial – JLM – LA500

12: BASS AMP Shure Beta 52a- JLM – LA500

13: GTR 1 A – Shure SM57

14: GTR 1 B – Royers 121

15: GTR 2 A – SM57

16: GTR 2 B – Royers 121

17: VOX – SM7B – Distressor

18: Room – Neumann U87 – JLM MAC stereo Opto compressor

19: Room – Beyerdynamic M58 – Distressor

 

The session went very well, and multiple great performances were captured. I think the band was of the general consensus that at least 5 great drum and bass tracks were captured, and that some of the guitar and vocals were perfect to.

Here are a few pictures from the session

Cassette & digital release Opening Spaces on Constellation Tatsu

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Hooray! I have a new ambient release, this time on the Californian label Constellation Tatsu.

The lovely folks at the label have just released my EP as part of their Winter Batch of cassette releases. It can also be found at all the usual stream sites, such as Spotify below.

I have put this new EP out under a new alias, Open Spaces. Both this work and future works under this alias will be used to explore the realms of 360 audio. This EP was largely written as part of my Masters research into 360 audio techniques such as binaural recording and ambisonic spatialisation software, such as the open source freeware from Envelop.

A big thanks to Steven Ramsey and the rest of the Constellation Tatsu folks for believing in this record.

M. McCosker Fith Studio Session

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A graduate of SAE has set up a studio down the road from my newish residency in Thirroul, namely, Fith Studios.

I’d been looking forward to taking a session down there, and some vocals and guitars for Michelle McCosker’s debut album seemed the perfect combination.

Fith Studio is a small, one live room, one control room set up, featuring a TLA Audio console, a small selection of outboard, and owned and run by some lovely crew.

How did it sound? The room was small enough, and live enough that when the vocalist hit their louder notes, the room sound became quite present in the recording when using condenser mics. Fortunately, the room reflections suited the tracks, sounded pleasant, and therefore the recording became a recording in the old fashion sense of the term; a record of a particular performance in a particular room / acoustic environment.

The stand out signal chains from the session included Fith’s in-house Neumann TLM 49 combined with their Neve 1073. The TLM 49 shares the same capsule as the famous U47 & M49, and approaches the warm sonic signature of the tube-based U47, but from a transformer solid-state technology. This into the legendary 1073, was a lovely coupling for a classy vintage vocal tone.

Also sounding great was a combination of gear that I brought down to the session, that being a pair of Sennheiser 8040s, coupled with a pair of Telefunken V672 preamps. The warm, classy definition of the 8040s combined with the vintage quality and character of the V672s was a great stereo A/ B micing combo on acoustic guitars.

Reflections; the studio is cool, but suits louder music generally. Those TLA preamps in the console need a bit of volume to get them going as they have a max of 60 dB of gain. Further, the slight sound bleed from outside noises and weather means that again, loud sources are the safest best for recording in this space.

Nevertheless, stoked to have such a studio within walking distance from home, and stoked to be recording the great vocals and songs of M. McCosker.

Below are a few shots from the session.

 

Saad album finished + glowing Amnplify review

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I recently finished mixing a contemporary Pop project for Sydney singer-songwriter, SaaD, aka Dylan Regtop.

The influences and brief for the overall album sound contained references such as Bon Iver, S.Carey and the like.

Challenges with the record included the artist’s desire to have drums and bass that could hardly be heard, yet still desiring a balanced mix, ie not too top heavy. As a result, I used a lot of very processed lo fi drums, and bass content, often stemming out to a cassette player and back into the DAW to achieve murkier sounds that whilst having more harmonics, had less attack and audibility within the mix.

The album was a pleasure to work on, and the brief precise. However, the vocals were by no means an easy mix. The takes were great, but the vocalist is quite sibilant, which when combined with the harsh top end of their mic, Rhodes NT2A, was hard to control in the mix. Sibilance had to therefore be dealt with in multiple stages, those including tape to mellow the high frequencies, standard de-essers, Pro Q3 dynamic EQ and F6’s dynamic EQ.

Another production journey that further related to the vocal, was the presence of mouth clicks, through out each track. The Rhodes’ brittle top end once again had any mouth noise unpleasantly emphasised, but through treatment by Izotope’s RX, we were able to de-click the vocals with a great outcome. Note a forth coming YouTube tutorial will be coming on RX and de-click vocals.

Finally, post the production journey, some positive reviews are starting to come in.

Amnplify comment;

“musically, the album is a pastiche of atmospheric genre pieces given depth by Regtop’s extraordinary ability to create sparse, but haunting soundscapes.”

Further, it seems we achieved the production brief, Amnplify comment,

“it’s tempting to draw comparisons to something like Bon Iver or Sigur Ros, though even those records are more akin to conventional structure than the individual pieces on SaaD. Sonically there are similarities to some sod ven stuff, perhaps even Beta Radio, but even then the sparsity of this album is probably beyond the reach of both of those acts.”

Youtube Channel – Audio Adventures

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I’ve decide to start a nerdy Youtube Channel, Audio Adventures.

The content will vary from specific questions from my students, to techniques that I’m enjoying while producing records for both myself and others.

Thus far there is a tutorial on

How to set up sidechain with 3rd party plugins in Ableton

How to use dynamic EQ in Fab Filter’s Pro Q3

How to use Max for Live’s LFO Audio Effect