Hey! It been a busy few weeks for Local Animality. We have ben tracking over the last few months of this year as you know. However the last few weeks have been really critical in the progression of this album. We have now tracked 9/10 bands and are getting into the mixing phase quite heavily.
I wanted to reflect on a few of the sessions what we have tracked over the last few weeks and talk through some mixing ideas I have.
One of my favourite sessions so far has been recording the horns section for Steele Syndicate. This was easily the biggest song on the album to track. We were working with a really high seclude as well which was exciting and scary. We did some pre production with the band leading up to the session to make sure that everything was going to run smoothly and we would get everything done in time. They pitched to us a recording schedule that we agreed would work. This was a different way of tracking compared to how we had tracked the other bands. We did the song in sections over three nights rather that mostly everything in one day then an extra vocal session. This worked really really well in my opinion. I feel as if I get more creative in the evenings as well. I get inspired so some and I think it works for me!
On the first day we tracked drums and bass. This went super smoothly as the vocalist and guitarist came along too to do scratch tracks. It was a super nice vibe and the kit they have sounded amazing. We had to work out a few timing things and make sure we left enough time for the horns section to record. I am very glad we took some time to work everything out and mark up our session in sections so that we were prepared for the rest of the tracking.
The next night we tracked guitars and some horns sections in the NEVE. My previous post was about tracking a horns section. I looked into a few different effective ways that you can track horns. I went in the studio prepared for two different scenarios. One in which that band would want to track as a section using a stereo pair and the other was to multi track. We didn't have much time really in this session on about threee hours for guitars and 2/4 horns players. So we went with the multi tracking as it would be easy to get a consistent performance from the player individually. I looked into a few different mixing techniques
but the one that we rolled with on the day was using a ribbon mic and the Distressor to add some warmth and roundness to the bitey trumpet.
Once this was all set up and we began sound checking I was so stoked with the choice we had made because the trumpet sounded wicked- something I wasn't confident about. We played around with the distance and axis of the mic and very quickly landed on a tone we liked.
Here is a little video of the horns session!
This was a really great learning session for me. I feel as though I had not done much research recently as we have been tracking pretty similar bands. It was super cool to learn some more recording techniques that I know I will use again.
We still have one more section to record for this horns part and one more vocal over dub then it will be done. I am super keen to track more bands like this I think that spending shorter periods in the studio over a few days works way better for everyone and it means we are not restricted to the weekends.
I'll be posting more photos and videos from this session as soon as they upload from my phone haha!
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