Just wanted to thank you lot for the suggestions and offers. Fest, I'll give you shout when I'm away from work.. although I’m recording again tonight so it might have to be tomorrow.
Had a really productive weekend at Lewisham Heights despite a scare after picking up my new monitors on Saturday when they started crackling and then the driver cut out. Turning off and back on seems to re-set them with no damage though so I assume there is some safety feature that’s protecting the speaker. A new power lead seems to have fixed that but I'm still pretty nervy about the issue returning. Anyway, when they're working they sound great. Treble is fabulously detailed. Am just purchasing some stands for them now to get them up at ear level.
Dug out the cheapo Behringer desk from it’s flight case under a sofa. It seems to have 4 x phantom powered XLR ins, 2 line outs and 2 "alternative outputs" which are sub-labelled 3-4 which make me think I may be able to get 4 distinct line outs from it. I think what I'll do then is look at some of the interfaces suggested up-thread, none of which are prohibitively expensive and have a go at using the desk for recording. If that works well enough I can keep an eye out for nicer desks on the bay without it being an urgency.
The weekend session was actually great. Had the singer and the accordion/trumpet player over and got a fair bit done. Recorded two (doubled) tracks of vocal harmonies on the Tom Waits cover I've been working on and the same on another original tune. Recorded accordion in my hallway which is a very resonant long narrow space with a slate-tiled floor and 5 doors off it. Used a condenser on the bass side of the accordion backed off a bit to pick up plenty of room round. Possibly a tad overkill with the natural reverb to be honest but it was fun nevertheless.
Trumpet we tried in there too but it was just too loud and reverberant. Set up in the main (dry) room but in the doorway facing towards the hall with only one door open. Managed to get a fantastic mariachi style double-tracked trumpet sound with a couple of lines picked out in minor thirds.
Had my friend and neighbour come down later with his bodhran which has a nice shure dynamic mic attached to the rim. That recorded fairly well although we failed to find a part that fit the song. Finished off the day with a quick 2 mic live recording of him singing an old Irish ballad that he wanted to capture "for posterity". He sounded great in the room so I just set up a small diaphragm condenser at the 12th fret and set up a large diaphragm a couple of feet back to get a bit of air round his high tenor voice.
I then sat up from 10pm till 2am editing and mixing another track. Had a total day off yesterday and didn’t even turn the computer on so I can’t say quite how that went as yet. I did go to bed happy though. Feel like I’m really to get a feel for what works on these songs.
Last word on mixing is that I’ve been using the space designer in Logic 9 on these most recent sessions. I’d previously eschewed it as the interface is so ugly and confusing but trying a few factory presets I was immediately struck at how they sat embedded in the mix in a way that the silver, gold and platinum verbs don’t. I’m already a bit in smit with the “vocal plate” and “really nice room” presets (tweaked to taste of course). Been using them in aux sends (one of each) and have been having warm fuzzy feelings about how they seem to pull the mix together. Impressed.
@dooks
Just wanted to thank you lot for the suggestions and offers. Fest, I'll give you shout when I'm away from work.. although I’m recording again tonight so it might have to be tomorrow.
Had a really productive weekend at Lewisham Heights despite a scare after picking up my new monitors on Saturday when they started crackling and then the driver cut out. Turning off and back on seems to re-set them with no damage though so I assume there is some safety feature that’s protecting the speaker. A new power lead seems to have fixed that but I'm still pretty nervy about the issue returning. Anyway, when they're working they sound great. Treble is fabulously detailed. Am just purchasing some stands for them now to get them up at ear level.
Dug out the cheapo Behringer desk from it’s flight case under a sofa. It seems to have 4 x phantom powered XLR ins, 2 line outs and 2 "alternative outputs" which are sub-labelled 3-4 which make me think I may be able to get 4 distinct line outs from it. I think what I'll do then is look at some of the interfaces suggested up-thread, none of which are prohibitively expensive and have a go at using the desk for recording. If that works well enough I can keep an eye out for nicer desks on the bay without it being an urgency.
The weekend session was actually great. Had the singer and the accordion/trumpet player over and got a fair bit done. Recorded two (doubled) tracks of vocal harmonies on the Tom Waits cover I've been working on and the same on another original tune. Recorded accordion in my hallway which is a very resonant long narrow space with a slate-tiled floor and 5 doors off it. Used a condenser on the bass side of the accordion backed off a bit to pick up plenty of room round. Possibly a tad overkill with the natural reverb to be honest but it was fun nevertheless.
Trumpet we tried in there too but it was just too loud and reverberant. Set up in the main (dry) room but in the doorway facing towards the hall with only one door open. Managed to get a fantastic mariachi style double-tracked trumpet sound with a couple of lines picked out in minor thirds.
Had my friend and neighbour come down later with his bodhran which has a nice shure dynamic mic attached to the rim. That recorded fairly well although we failed to find a part that fit the song. Finished off the day with a quick 2 mic live recording of him singing an old Irish ballad that he wanted to capture "for posterity". He sounded great in the room so I just set up a small diaphragm condenser at the 12th fret and set up a large diaphragm a couple of feet back to get a bit of air round his high tenor voice.
I then sat up from 10pm till 2am editing and mixing another track. Had a total day off yesterday and didn’t even turn the computer on so I can’t say quite how that went as yet. I did go to bed happy though. Feel like I’m really to get a feel for what works on these songs.
Last word on mixing is that I’ve been using the space designer in Logic 9 on these most recent sessions. I’d previously eschewed it as the interface is so ugly and confusing but trying a few factory presets I was immediately struck at how they sat embedded in the mix in a way that the silver, gold and platinum verbs don’t. I’m already a bit in smit with the “vocal plate” and “really nice room” presets (tweaked to taste of course). Been using them in aux sends (one of each) and have been having warm fuzzy feelings about how they seem to pull the mix together. Impressed.
Some pics of Saturday’s shenanigans attached.
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