Cassowary's Session

Over the last few weeks Mike and I have finally begun the recording of our project Local Animality. After months ago planning studio sessions researching mic techniques and mixing techniques we have finally been able to put some of these things into practice. 

The first band we have had come in is local west end psychedelic rock band Cassowaries. As soon as the studio’s opened again we sent out an email asking who would be keen to come in to record a demo for a song of their own as well as a demo of their cover so that we could test out some of the mic combinations that we had planned but not procaticed. 

Cassowaries were very keen to come in and track a single of their own called ‘Between the Slice’ as well as their cover song of The Bee Gees ‘Cucumber Castle’. Going into the session they had not provided us with any reference tracks as it was planned rather quickly just so that we could get in there and practice our engineering skills after being away from the studio for almost 6 months. We listened to their EP that is on spotify as well as used the original to gauge what type of sound they were going for. We had a brief meeting with them prior to the recording day to suss out the best way to track this.

Mike and I had planned out a draft plan for how we thought it would be best to track given the list of gear they were bringing with them. As they had included in their tech specs lots of specific effect units they would be bringing we were a little unsure if that's how we would be tracking on the day- and to be honest the band did not know either. So we weren’t going in completely blind but we knew that there would be some creative decisions we would have to make on the day.

So our plan was to track all the beds just using DI for bass and guitar so that the drummer had a guide. Something that they stressed to us they wanted to do was have the amps up while we tracked the drums. This was of course well within scope however Mike and I knew that this would cause issues with bleed. So we convinced them that the best way would be to multi track - like we had planned. This still came with its own issues. The two vocalists insisted on using their vocal effects pedals when recording the drums so that the vocal sounded more true to how they were used to. Due to the signal they had created being mostly wet the drums were obviously spilling into the vocal mic and therefore being relayed in their headphones. This was causing them to all be put off due to the out of time delay that they had as a setting on the vocal effects units they were using. We learnt that this just won't work if in the future bands want to track scratch vocals with heavy effects as while tracking drums/ beds. 

We solved these situations with ease when we realised what the issue was by just sending the scratch vocal to a little delay and reverb in pro tools. We were able to tap time the delay while they were tracking to make sure that it wasn’t out of time because that is mostly what had been putting them off. 

By the first arvo we had tracked the drums. We decided to use a XY overhead set up with a mid/side room configuration for this particular recording as we were really keen to try it out. As i have mentioned in my previous blogs the reason for trialing a bunch of drum recording techniques is we hope to decide on one or two that we can use constantly throughout the whole album so that there is a consistency between the tracks. 

This particular set up we picked for Cassowaries because we wanted a pretty tight drum sound as the other instruments are really washy and effected. We knew we needed the drums to be punchy. There were definitely elements that worked well with this kit setup however we didn’t like the overhead set up or the room mics overly. The overhead were trickly to keep in place and the drummer bumped them a few times. The result of this meant that we couldn't as easily adjust them throughout the sound check to the width of the stereo image we desired. We just made sure that they were in phase and that the snare was balanced. If we had done a spaced pair it would have been much easier to adjust and sound check. We also tried a new placement of the drums in the room. This was an experiment to see if we could make better use of the space as well as try to avoid the reflections from the glass window to the control room. This was not an effective drum placement for a few reasons. Mostly because it was hard to adjust the overheads but we couldn’t really place the room mic set up far enough away from the drums to capture the room tone. Ideally a mid/side mic set up for room tone on drums should be as far away as possible to capture the widest stereo image. The mid mic was a little too direct where we had to place it and the sides were definitely not the nice wide bright image we were after. However, we are definitely able to work with the recording that we have as we were intending a mostly direct drum sound. 

So we decided that this was probably not going to be the drum set up we were going to use next time for the recordings. We were also able to really identify why it wasn’t working which was a great learning experience for me personally. I appreciated that pretty early on in the recording that the drums were not in the right place in the room and that we had made the overheads and room mics not work to our advantage in the space that we had. 

Moreover, something that I was really keen to try which ended up sounding great was using condensers on the toms. We used C414’s on all three toms and they sounded great nice and flat without the boomy resonance that I have found 421’s have in the past. This was also a risk as I had never used condensers on toms before but Mike and I have decided that that is a part of the mic list we will definitely keep working with for future recordings. 

So, after we had tracked the drums for the two songs we over dubbed the rhythm guitar and bass at the same time. We used baffolds to seperate the amps like we have done before when live tracking in the NEVE. This works out pretty well most of the time however, we didnt take a DI of the bass guitar as well for their cover. This was probably a mistake but the band assure us that they definitely wanted the amp recorded and not DI’d. It definitely would have been beneficial so that we could have re-amped it. This is something we will need to re re-record as it is not up to the standard that we need it to be for this record. This will organise to happen over the next few weeks as I don't think it will take long for their bassist to come in and soa  few takes with the DI but it will be definitely worth it. 

The mics we used on the rhythm guitar were pretty solid and the guitarist spent a good amount of time getting the right tone he wanted. This made a huge difference to the sound and the performance. I have never worked with musicians so determined to get the right guitar tone in the studio. I think that this was mostly because they themselves weren’t entirely sure. That was okay though as Mike and I reviewed the mics we had chosen and decided to roll with them as we had picked a pretty standard set up. We used a SM57 and MD421 on the cone of the amp, the MD421 a little closer to the center and 57 to capture the body. This was an experiment with mic placement rather than mic combinations. I definitely think that if we had have included a 

We used a different combination for the guitar solo as we tracked separately. We were able to try a different mic set up to try and capture some more of the room tone and the swelling, sweeping effects as they filled up the studio space. I researched this mic combination last trimester and thought that it would be appropriate for this particular situation as we wanted to capture the room tone for this guitar part in comparison to the rhythm guitars being close mic’d. 

This set up involved a C414, sm57 and a Royer 121. So a dynamic, condenser and ribbon. All these mics possess different attributes which this mic technique uses to its advantage. The C414 and 57 are close mic’d on the cone of the amp -making sure they are inphase of course. Then the royer is placed anywhere from 1m - the back of the room away from the amp depending on the desired effect. In all honesty being the first session back in 6 months I was feeling a little out of practice and felt as though Mike and I could have definitely communicated/ had set roles to help with the running of the day.

So, we have decided that from now on we will be in more set roles for each of the sessions. One person will always be the live room tech and one person will be on the desk. The person that does live room will also help with the operating protools and keeping the session tidy throughout the day.

Here are some videos/ photos from the day!

I am feeling super confident that this was a huge LEARNING session for us that was vital preparation for the tracking of the project. We will get Cassowaries back in the studio do re track in September.