What I have learnt throughout this process from a business point of view is pretty crazy. Mike got in contact with a Brisbane Marketing and Distribution company called SGC. They release a few projects each year and were keen to have a meeting with us about Local Animality. We had a meeting with them and explained our idea (before we had even begun tracking). They were super stoked with our idea and then asked us some probing questions about things we hadn’t even considered.
We were feeling a little in the dark about how we should go about contracting the bands as part of the album. We met up with Steve and Cara a few weeks ago to get a bit more insight into the distribution and marketing side to the project. Steve stated that we definitely needed to have a contract for the band to sign if we are planning on releasing this album. He said that the best way to write up a contract is to get a lawyer. However he was happy to help us source a template for a contract that he would revise with us to suit the project. He told us about a website we could use called ‘ARTSLAW’. Mike found a compilation album contract which we brought to make our own revisions on.
Going through the contract was really time consuming and a bit confusing. There were a lot of things that Mike and I didn’t understand or were too clear on if we needed to change them or not. There were alot of things that aren't relevant to us we didn’t think about and so we just left them in the contract with question marks next to them. We sent off our revised copy of the contract for Steven to have a look at and make the final changes. He sent back a copy of the new contract within a day with revisions. We are still in the process of finalising the contract however it is pretty much completed and we will be able to send it out to bands to sign before they come into the studio next. Some major changes that we made to the contract have to do with royalties. As we will be paying to have the album printed on vinyl we want to take all the profits from that so that we can cover the costs and aren't out of pocket. Steven suggested that we take half the Spotify revenue as well in case one of the songs gets picked up.
In other areas of this project we have been collaborating with some people. We have been working with Jackson, a film student, for a few of our sessions. The content he has taken for us has been super professional and he has been super quick at getting photo’s back to us. Unfortunately he is unreliable at turning up to sessions. There have been times when he has cancelled when he is supposed to arrive which has meant we have had hardly any photos from some sessions. We ideally were expecting Jackson to be a big part of the team as he seemed super interested at the beginning of the project and his work is honestly amazing. It is disappointing when people don't show up but there is not much we can do to control this. We had been in constant contact with him via facebook messenger trying to organise these sessions with him and have had no luck. In saying this it was such a great experience to work alongside Jackson in the studio he is a very creative and professional guy. I feel as if we had kept working with Jackson we could have had many more amazing moments captured by him and gotten a lot closer with him and even could have had him be a huge part of this project.
We have been taking our own photos and videos in the sessions where jackson hasn’t been around but it has been a lot harder to get nice footage and photos as the lighting in the studios is pretty bad. Our little phone cameras don’t quite do the vibe justice but at least we still have some.
Mike and I were approached by Jenny from SAE marketing a few weeks ago. She stated that there was an opportunity to have a little piece written about our project for Scenester Magazine. This piece was from SAE open day so Mike and I were super stoked to be a part of it! We only had a few days to get photos, do the interview and review the article before it was posted. I tried to organise jackson to come and take some photos in a session that we had over a weekend. He bailed the day before so I organised Cameron from Tech to come and take some photos. I sent him through some of the photos that Jackson had taken for reference. Cameron was super helpful and was very efficient when he came into the studio. We had to be a little careful when he came to take the photos as we needed to pose for a few but we were also tracking. It was quite distracting when Cameron was taking the ‘candid’ shots but they turned out really well. Just trying to focus on recording but also having someone taking photos in a small room was difficult.
I think these pics turned out super well what do you think?
So, what did we do on open day exactly. Well… We had a session planned with a band that we were super keen to record as we are both fans of their music called FeelsClub. We Sent them out an email at the beginning of COVID to see if they would be keen when studios opened up to come and do a cover. They were really keen to be a part of the project which was a very humbling feeling for us. We anxiously waited for their demo. A few weeks later we received a cover of a GREAT Brissy song ‘To the Moon and Back’ by Savage Garden - what a banger.
We really liked the cover but thought that it didn’t really match the vibe of the rest of the tracks as it was all digital aside from the vocals- that were heavily processed. Mike and I brainstormed that by having acoustic drums it would give the track the ‘life’ we wanted it to. The band were not as keen on the idea of recording a kit for the track but we managed to convince them. A week out from the recording day Mel approached us and said “you aren’t recording drums on open day are you”. We are like “Um… Yeeeeeah”. Okay so now we can’t record the drum kit anyway. We decided to just go with a sample drum machine then run it through the NEVE preamps to get some analog organic kinda sound to it.
We really wanted a guitar part in the song we thought that would also add some life to the song and make it not as processed. The band has taken a new direction this year and really wanted to keep it super synthetic sounding. We still thought that there was something missing from the track to give it dynamics and make the chorus pop. The band were happy with it though so we are going to work with what we have.
On open day the band came in nice and early and we had already organised the DI’s in the control room for the drum pad and the bass. This was a super easy set up compared to what we are used to doing. It was nice to play more of a producer role and be able to work on the composition of the song with the band. We tried a few different drum beats along with the scratch track they had sent us to work out how we wanted the grove to be. This didn’t take very long at all and was a super smooth process as the drummer was well rehearsed.
We took a clean DI of the bass as well as a DI of the affected signal out of the bassists pedal board. His affected signal was super distorted with a fair bit of high end more like an electric guitar sound. This added heaps of colour to the track but he only played the bass riff a few times. It would have been better if he played the whole time. However the rest off the bass was made up with a synth which sounds great but would have been cool to have the option to pick/ blend them together.
We were tracking for a few hours on open day before anyone even came to chat to us and to be honest there really wasn't many people over the entire weekend mike and I chatted to maybe 5 groups. This was good for us though because it meant that was had all the time we needed with out any interruptions.
After we worked on the bass and drums we did some synth sweeps and effects. we did all this in the control room to which was super cool to watch. I liked the idea of doing the sweet synths live with the filters in the analogue synth rather than doing it after. I think that adding these smaller elements have really brought the track together. We have a fair few of these takes to pick from which was also a really fun process. Most of them were pretty similar but it was really cool to listen back to the small difference in filters and pick the ones that fitted the vibe best.
We did some vocal takes on Saturday as well. It took their vocalist a while to warm up and he was pretty keen to get the takes done fast. By the time we have finished doing parts of the song in takes the second half of the song was sounding way tighter than the first half. It was a pretty difficult conversation to ask them to come back and re do the vocals the next day but it was so worth it. We kept the second half of the takes from the day before then just did the intro and backing vocals on Sunday. Personally I think that we could have gotten better takes from their lead singer. He only wanted to do two or three takes of each section and was getting really frustrated when we asked him to do more. It was hard to produce as I knew that as he was getting warmed up his takes were just getting so much better but he didn't really want to hear that he had done 'bad' takes.
I think that we have gotten what we need but we we defiantly be using some Melodyne. It would have been great to really be able to work shop this vocal more as it was the only thing that we actually got to record because everything else was DI'd. I also think that the vocal is a very prominent part of this song and is what makes it such a classic to begin with. I'm hoping that we can really get it nice and tight with Melodyne its just a different situation to be in compared to the other bands we have worked with who have been very patient with getting amazing vocal takes. I am learning about how bands work differently through out the course of this project it has been super interested to work out my approach for the day depending on the vibe of the band.
Over all the open day recording weekend was a success. We got everything that we needed and worked in a way that we hadn't before. It was really great to work so closely with a band in the control room it was so much easier to communicate and get a feel for the track all together. I defiantly would be keen to work more in electronic music doing a simile thing to what we did with this track and finding ways to make it sound more authentic and less like Logic Pro presets. haha.
Comments