The New year is on us and we're starting it in style with our first taste of GA's vintage EQ module the EQ73. Also a great new session for you to mix from The Nick Rooke Band
Circus
Envy are a 5 piece pop/rock outfit from our home town of Hull
and are pretty typical of the bands that come through Fairview.
Not young kids, they can all play pretty well and were looking
to record 3 or 4 songs as a good quality demo to get gigs and
even send out to the smaller record companies, though like most
bands now they are switched on to the internet and sell their
music over their own website and My Space. As with all these sessions
the guys are paying for the studio time themselves and so I need
to get them a good solid sound which I know I can work with as
quickly as I can. We've got some great mics at Fairview but you
can't spend all day trying out 10 different kick drum mics through
a range of preamps, you just get on with the job and put up what
you know will work. As with all my sessions its really about capturing
a performance and to that end I always try and set up everyone
in the studio so that they can play along together and get that
vibe of a good take.
For
more info on the band visit www.circusenvyband.com
Fairview
is an old style studio with 2 small acoustically pretty dead rooms
and a small live room with wooden floor and stone walls. The control
room is about the biggest room and everything goes through the
Soundcraft 2400 desk onto either 2 inch, Pro Tools or Radar. The
trick is to set everyone up so that even though they are in separate
rooms they can see each other and I try to get a good individual
headphone mix for each player. Everyone has to be happy and if
you are spending hours messing with stuff that the guys can't
understand you can easily loose the vibe of the session. An engineers
job is to make the whole process seem transparent and easy. I
always try to remember that the band is paying me to make them
a demo not try out the latest bit of kit.JS.
The
session
First
up as always are the drums and I get the drummer to arrive
an hour before the rest of the band so that we can check
for any loose bits, tweak the tuning and get it miked up.
The whole kit sounded really nice as he had just re- skinned
it and it had only done one gig so it was nicely tuned and
bedded in. As always I took the front skin off and put an
AKG D112 about 6 inches inside the shell and just off centre.I
always compress the kick to tape with the Focusrite Red.
Not a lot, but just taking a couple of db off the loud kicks.The
snare was an SM57 with a little top added and compressed
slightly through the Urei 1176 on a slow attack so it lets
the crack through. The hats, a Calrec 1050 a few inches
above. Overheads a pair of Rode NT5s about 2 foot above
the drummers head. (We have a pair of KM84s but one took
a hit recently and is at the doctors. The NT5s are pretty
good but not as good as the Neumanns.) They sound OK as
he had good cymbals which are the crucial bit to the O/H
sound. Crap cymbals, crap sound, doesn't matter what mics
you use. Toms were Sennheiser 421s with the roll offs set
in the mid position as they were pretty big drums. If I
don't know the song or music style I usually put up a couple
of cymbal mics just in case and I miked the ride with a
Calrec CM 1050. I like to try room mics now and again and
recently I have taken to putting a AKG 414 set to omni in
the next room (the live room) and leaving the door open
a bit to catch the ambience. I usually compress it and add
it to the track later just to create a sense of space without
using reverbs.The tracks below are as they went down onto
the Radar..
To
hear the audio files above simply double click on
them and they will play in the media player you have
set on your computer. To download the files, create
a new folder on your hard drive and then right click
on the files above and choose "Save as Target"
to your new folder. When you have downloaded all the
files open up Cubase or a similar audio programme
and create a new project. In Cubase go to Import<audio
files and select all the MP3s in the folder. Cubase
will ask you if you want them on the same track or
separate tracks. Choose separate tracks and it will
paste them into a new project for you.SEE VIDEO
For
the bass I do what I always do and get out the Neumann U47
fet. He had a very nice Warwick bass and I plugged him into
the studio bass set up (Trace Elliot head into a 4x 10 cab)
and put the mic right up to the grill slightly off centre
of the cone. I very rarely eq the bass in the control room
because the Trace Elliot has a really useful graphic on
it which I will tweek in the room and I always use the amp
compression which is really versatile and you can get a
whole range of sounds. All the guitars were recorded with
Neumann u87s. They sounded nice in the room and they weren't
peaky and distorted so I just set up the U87 and they sounded
fine. The Bazouki was recorded with a KM84 about a foot
away and I had him in the live end of the room just to put
a bit of life or character around it. I compressed it a
bit with the Focusrite Red which I tend to do with all the
guitars. I get them to play along with the track and if
some bits are uneven I just take off a couple of db with
the Red... It was Bill Nelson who first pointed it out to
me that the Red has a pleasant sort of rounding off on guitars
making them sound just a bit smoother. The thing about the
Focusrite is that if you do work it hard you can really
hear it which annoys me a bit for the price but the limiter
on it is really nice. The acoustic was done with a U87.
It just plays a couple of lines and it sounded fine. All
the vocals were recorded with a U87 going through my TL
audio preamp. I really like the unit and when we start overdubbing
I use it a lot. I think its a really good idea to get at
least one mic pre that you like and I've got an old Focusrite
Green pre as well but its not as good as the TL. The mic
pres on the Soundcraft desk are OK they're quiet and clean
but it cost £30k and with 28 mic preamps everything
is built to a price. I bounced the vocals onto Cubase to
comp them and compressed them with the PSP vintage warmer
plug in which I really like. There is really only the PSP
and Autotune which I use partly because we don't have that
much time at Fairview to spend on massive complex mixes.
The secret is to get the stuff down as well as you can and
it pretty well mixes itself.
