Where I've been the past few days

[Aussie Mark]

I just got back today from 3 days at an improvised recording studio in a country farmhouse with a really cool engineer who really digs vintage gear.  He's got some microphones that are 80 years old from radio stations and all kinds of nice old school toys to counterbalance his Pro Tools rig.

We got drum and bass bed tracks down for 10 songs, as well as percussion, some backing vox, hand claps, acoustic guitar and some rhythm guitar.  Richard, the guitarist, is still at the farmhouse tonight with the engineer and he's aiming to get most of the guitar bits finished tonight.

It's the middle of winter here, with the temperature at the farmhouse down to just under 30F at night, so we had the fireplace going non stop.

I took a Nash P, the Dark Star P and the Big Al, and as expected, when I mentioned I'd brought 3 basses along, the engineer asked "I hope one of them is a P bass?"  I used the Nash on the first four tunes, and then used the Dark Star for two bluesy power trio songs, and by that stage I was feeling comfortable enough with the engineer (and he with me) that I brought out the Big Al for the next song, and ended up using it for the rest of the session.  It recorded really nicely - I used my favourite neck + middle + active setting for 3 of the tunes, and the "all buttons off" secret setting for the other.

He recorded me clean direct into an Avalon tube preamp, and after we had a bass track that we were happy with, he would run the clean bass track recording straight into my Ampeg SB-12 absolutely f***ing cranked and record that, so he then had a clean track and a dirty tubey track that he can blend in teh mix.  It sounded really sweet.  Although, it's kind of weird to be standing around in the kitchen with the rest of the band having a beer while your isolated, warts and all clean bass track is blaring away in the next room through a distorted tube amp being recorded with a mic.

There are vocals to go down next, plus some horns, strings on one song and keyboards, and hopefully the final product will be available in a few weeks.  This really was a shitload of fun for a weekend warrior like me.

Here's some pics ...

No noise problems here:



How cool is this place?



The view out the main room window:



Now THIS is a cooker:



The main room:



The SB-12 cranked:



Axes:



One more:



Big Al resting on his laurels:



Drummer at the base of the stairs:



Richard in action:



Syd the very cool engineer:



A productive session:

[Aussie Mark]

And here's a couple of very rough mixes of bed tracks (mostly drums and clean bass)

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/2854659

[TBird1958]

Mark,

That looks like a fantastic place - what a great oppourtunity, I'm properly jealous!

[Freuds_Cat]

Sounds like the best way to spend a weekend Mark. I couldn't agree more about that method for blending a clean and tubed bass sound. Best of both worlds and gives the engineer plenty of control to blend. I like the trio stuff that you posted previously so I'm looking forward to hearing how your session comes out. We record at a place that is quite similar in the Adelaide hills. Whats with the (snare?) drum in front of the kick?

Bret

[Aussie Mark]

Whats with the (snare?) drum in front of the kick?

It's a "subkick" mic - according to the engineer it's basically a speaker that is reversed and used as a mic, to accurately capture the extra low frequencies of the kick drum.

[Freuds_Cat]

Interesting, I haven't seen one before.

[Aussie Mark]

http://www.yamaha.com/drums/drumproductdetail.html?cntid=544671

[Freuds_Cat]

Thx, so effectively an extra large diaphram mic.

[Dave W]

I can tell by the smiles that it was a lot of fun.

Love that Big Al.

[Hornisse]

Very nice Mark!  Looks like you guys have been a bit thirsty as well!

[Aussie Mark]

Very nice Mark!  Looks like you guys have been a bit thirsty as well!

The open fire can be quite dehydrating ;-)

[ilan]

Looks like heaven.

[Highlander]

Yep, I appreciated that fireside shot, too...

Nice one...!

That's an exceptionally nice way to do it... have fun with the rest of the work...