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.

Living room jam and recording session

A very productive Recording/ Jam session took place in my living room last Monday. Blake and myself have begun mashing ideas up to produce an upbeat folky song. We laid down a basic midi drum track and recorded acoustic, electric guitar, and xylophone. Recording was done through a SE2200a microphone using an ART StudioV3 tube preamp and into Pro Tools with an Mbox Mini. A very creative recording booth environment was created using two of my unfinished absorber panels I built in the summer of 2010 (link to this post) with a room divider/ shelf as the walls. The rear wall and roof were blankets found around the house.

We feel very excited about the songs direction and hopefully have something ready to post in the very near future. We will have another jam session tomorrow and work on the structure. But for now, here are some pictures.

Recording Jon Bothams EP Pictures 1 (London)

Recording Jon Bothams EP (London)

So its been a little while and a lot has happened since I last posted. I have been back home and then back to London to record a 4 track EP for Jon Botham. What was first supposed to be a pre-production setup for the first few days before we booked studio time, ended up in being where we stayed for the rest of the tracking. We got such a great sound and atmosphere from hijacking his house near Stratford (Hackney Wick) from Wednesday to Saturday ( 08/09/2010 - 11/09/2010 ) Also with the help of my two favorite engineers Vera and Lil they made the experience so much more enjoyable and smooth running.

Everything was tracked through Jons Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 and into Logic Pro 9 on his i7 27inch iMac. We set up in the gallery while positioning the the listening point so we could all comfortably sit on a sofa and chill while Jon was tracking in his studio room. Pretty much all guitars were recorded with a stereo pair of Shure KSM 141 pencil mics going straight into the built in Focusrite pre's on the Saffire Pro 40. Vocals where recorded through one of my favorites; the original AKG C414 on cardioid pattern and going through what I now believe is a fantastic little tube preamp for the money, the ART Studio V3.

Now I am back in Germany and the real work starts. I have started piling through the tracks to find the right comp.

SOUND BLASTER

Its been a few weeks and I have 3 new tracks in the making. I am pretty excited about these as I am finally using a bit more guitar in my mix.

I have got hold of some old "Soundblaster" type multimedia speakers and plan to re-mic a series of licks using my Korg M3 through them. I got this idea from a group called Noisia. They run their baselines through a similar computer speaker and create some of the dirtiest baselines I have ever heard. Because these are so small, boxed in plastic and ported for extra bass, it resonates like crazy between a 500 and 100Hz. When I drive it hard, below this I get major rattle as the box wants to crumble and it just spits back at me. Fantastic distortion!

I bounced some pads this morning for track number two.

Some Rambles by Kevin: Clever Girl - No Drum and Bass in the Jazz Room

Some Rambles by Kevin: Clever Girl - No Drum and Bass in the Jazz Room

Clever Girl - No Drum and Bass in the Jazz Room

Here is some old friends of mine that I have worked with in the studio over 4 years ago. They are now back together under a new name and recently released a new EP called NO Drum and Bass in the Jazz Room. There is also a free download (Donations are welcomed.)
These guys bring some great happens to my life, just listen.

http://www.myspace.com/clevergirllovesyou