Recording Dunning Kruger Band's EP in Lindau

Last week my band Dunning Kruger spent the entire weekend tucked away from distractions, in a grand old house in Lindau (Germany), recording our EP. It was truly a great experience especially due to the fact that we had/ have a fantastic engineer working with us on this project. Mike Senior, the man who is able to capture our live jams and turn them into something very special, without making it sterile or something it isn’t.

The intention behind recording was to capture the atmosphere and our best performance. The way Senior achieved this was to make us feel as comfortable as possible by turning the recording space into our practice room. The location couldn’t be more perfect. We recorded in the larger of the 2 living rooms and Senior took over the master bedroom to use as the control room.

Our live space, with its striking imperturbability was situated on the top floor. It’s original ceiling gutted, extending the total height another 3.5 meters and exposing the previous attics rather luxurious rafters. What a truly magnificent sound it was in there, embodied by the beautiful wooden flooring and the furniture.

Mike Senior, also a writer, experimented with micing techniques to confirm his philosophy and to help him aid his next book he is writing about the recording process. His techniques were somewhat very different to what is taught in colleges. He experimented with letting the room talk, by switching all microphones to Omni and stepping them back off the sound source a little. Although you see some close micing in the pictures below, these were just there for safety measures. 3 days of recording, and we are blown away by the results. 

Day 1 setting up.

Mike Senior adjusting the cathedral stand for the overheads

Peter getting comfy behind his drumkit

A shot looking at where I stood. Wedged between the two small sofas blanketed over to create a bass drum tunnel and the 3 seater that blocked a bit of my spill in the overheads. The AKG 414 was the live vocal microphone.

Chandeliers and the beautiful rafters.

Peter again, behing the drumkit. 

Blake's amp sitting quietly ( for now ) behind two chairs with plenty of rugs thrown over it. 

Paddy's bass amp.

Peter, organising his motions and where the toms should be placed.

My amp, completely closed in on on "Sascha", our last song we recorded that weekend.

Mike, adding markers.

Mike, going through the playlist and auditioning parts.

Drumkit closed in for our disco like sound on EnDance. We needed to tighten the room quite a lot on this track.

My amp, a lot more open on Japan Song and Endance. 

Drum set up for EnDance

Those clip ons are only for show. We didn't need them in the end. The toms sounded amazing in the overheads.

A picture of the enclosing over the drumkit to stop the rebound spill into the overheads.

A collection of snares. Here are two of the 3 snares we used on the recording. 

Drum mess

The first part to our DIY wall for blake's amp. 

Snare set up for EnDance. We wanted a beefy disco snare on this track, so plenty of paper and cloth got rid of the ring.