On experiments with social media...

 Anyone who normally follows me on twitter may have noticed that I'm no longer using the platform. 

Sometimes you just have to say enough is enough.

I have, in consequence, joined the exodus to Mastodon. So far I'm enjoying it and I'd recommend it, my handle is @DrewStephenson@Mastodon.social should you want to reconnect there.

And if you do, well you might enjoy something I'm going to experiment with, which will be microblogging about the production process of my new album.

There'll be stuff about the writing process, the collaboration process (which is new to me), the recording, mixing and production side and probably a few sneak peaks of the tracks along the way.

Join usssss...

Oh yes, and the new EP is out on all your favourite streaming and download platforms, and available to buy here: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/album/a-god-for-the-lost-and-losing

New album out 2 July 2021

 Well, enough of that Hawaiian Shirt nonsense, well, enough until next year anyway...

But the news this week is, of course, that the new album is out on Friday.

Yes indeedy, A Most Imperfect Machine will be available on all the usual streaming and download sites from Friday.

We're having a listening party on Facebook at 8pm UK time, here's the event link:

https://fb.me/e/15b2D6AKL

And if you want a sneak preview, it's already available on bandcamp: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/album/a-most-imperfect-machine

The Dead Detectives Club

I can't remember when I first started working on the first of these. Years ago for sure, maybe a decade? Maybe not quite that long.
It's been a long road at any rate, but without further ado, here's the new EP: https://soundcloud.com/blinddrew/sets/the-dead-detectives-club

The thing about working on a project over this timescale is that things change. I've changed computers twice, changed interface once, changed guitars, microphones, DAWs, rooms...
Trying to then pull it all together into some kind of homogenous mass adds a new set of challenges compared to the band EP from last year.
But I'm happy with how this came out. Sometimes you just need to say that something is done, and then move on.
This is done and I am content.

All quiet on the southern front...

It's been quiet on here, sorry about that. But stuff is happening. Slowly.
Things have been a bit difficult on the non-music front recently but hopefully they'll be settling down over the next couple of months.
But we've still been practising, sporadically, as a band, and we've got a cracking gig on Friday night (tickets here: https://www.seetickets.com/event/dan-webster-band/the-crescent/1291379?fbclid=IwAR0IoqXk3Q3ICWBY5fE2MAsm74ex1r9Sp_wohyUI2-DgRrKdWJefWEhHgys) and I'm about 90% there on the next solo EP.

Shall I give you a spoiler? Why not, it's going to be called, "The Dead Detectives Club."

Band on a budget - the recording process part 21

Been quiet from me again recently, mostly because there's not been a great deal to say. Lots of listening and tweaking for the most part but we have added some additional percussion parts to the tracks and also had a listen through to see where there were things we could strip out.
I'm pretty certain a decent producer would do more of the latter but having been so close to this stuff for so long it's hard to have any kind of objectivity.
Anyway, last weekend I spent a few hours mastering the tracks. Mixing and mastering the material isn't a recommended approach but we're a bunch of cheapskates and couldn't afford a proper mastering engineer. So I fired up some reference tracks, massaged some levels, and lo I was happy with the sounds.
Then I listened to them over the week, compared them to some more modern stuff, and lo I was not happy.
Fundamentally the low end wasn't there compared to the reference material (it would have been fine in the 80s!), I'd overdone the brightness slightly, and I also identified some issues in the individual mixes that somehow I'd missed over the last year.
So today I am mastering again. Multi-band compressor acting below 100Hz to give a bit of that modern bass response, reduced the high-shelf EQ by half a dB, and then some mix fixes on specific issues within the tracks.
I'm not going to be sharing any links this time I'm afraid, because hopefully the next time you'll hear these will be as the finished article.

This week I have been mostly...

Working on building a new guitar:

And starting on the next solo EP - this one will be called The Dead Detectives Club:

As you can probably guess, this one's going to be a right barrel of frolics...

Band on a budget - the recording process part 20

Hello strangers...
A quick note to say that tonight, just 10 months after we started, we have recorded the final guitar parts for the EP.
fanfare.mp3
We laid down the electric guitar parts for Building for the Flood tonight so all that's left to do is edit and mix them in and then we're ready to have a bit of a listening party. We'll listen to all the tracks on a variety of different devices and decide if there's anything missing, anything that can be cut or anything that needs tweaking.
Then we'll agree on what we're going to do about mastering and distribution.
Then we'll get drunk.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 19

Ok, this is well overdue. Stuff has happened, like Christmas, and other things, that have delayed progress, but there has been some progress.
Here's an early listen to the third track I've been working on, Northshoremen:
https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/northshoremen-20180121/s-kN8Re
It still needs the lead guitar parts adding and the backing vocals. There may yet be space for some banjo and or mandolin. If these do go in we'll make space for them by cutting bits from the accordion and existing guitar parts.

I've also made a bit of progress with a solo thing I've been working on for a while:
https://soundcloud.com/blinddrew/road-song-20180121/s-GVItz
This isn't the latest version, but it's the last one I've got downloaded.

Today though I went back to the band stuff and had a look at Denmark Street. The bass part is full of glitches and needs completely re-recording, but this should be straightforward. In the meantime I've been fixing all the glitches in the drum track and sorting out the odd timing issue with my guitar part. Sadly the other guitar part is also going to need rerecording. Add it to the list...
On the positive side, this should be a simpler mix as we're going for a much more stripped back vibe on this track - I think.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 18

Righty ho, well, our guitarist came over a couple of weeks ago and we completely re-did the guitar part(s) for Words.
Took about two hours to get the sound we were after, the core part done, and then the more complex bit of recording the solo whilst he came up with the parts - but that doesn't seem unreasonable.
I must fess up at this point and say I made a mistake with one of the recorded parts whereby I duplicated the two channels I'd set up but didn't notice that in doing so Reaper doesn't automatically set the inputs the same as the duplicated channels. So instead of my two new channels recording mics 1 and 2, I had two copies of mic 1. Because both channels were recording fine, and the bit we were recording was tonally different to the stuff we'd already tracked, I didn't notice until later.
Fortunately the mic that was recorded was the main one for that particular part.
Anyway, I mixed it all up and came up with this: https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/words-20171105/s-Kh5N7
That I was reasonably happy with until I posted it to be reviewed on the Sound on Sound forum.
I am no longer happy with it.

Feedback I need to work on:
There's a harshness around 2kHz, especially at the end section.
The electric guitar is a bit too loud (I'd thought this myself on a re-listen).
The acoustic is too thin, lacks lower mids (I had thought about this as well but was willing to trade it off against things going too muddy).
The distortion on the vocals at the end is too much.
Needs a bit more reverb to make the whole thing sit together.
With the exception of the bass and vox, everything is too compressed. It's a mush.
The guitar solo disappears too much in mono. Might be worth separating that out of the rest of the guitar work and bringing it a bit more central.
Vocal levels need to vary more, to breath with the song a bit.
Low mids are bit empty (see comment about avoiding mud above).
Vocals are a bit dry.
Vocals are a bit thin and, linked to that, a bit too loud. Could probably do with a bit more de-essing as well.
Are the backing vocals in or out? Need a decision on that.

The frustrating thing is that, with the exception of the reverb and vocal thinness comments, I think that deep down i knew most of that anyway. I'd just convinced myself that was good enough - or at least, as good as I could get it.

So now the question is whether to try and rescue it from there or start again.
Decisions, decisions...

Band on a budget - the recording process part 17

Ok, not been a lot of progress recently for various reasons but I shall be doing a little more recording this afternoon and our guitarist is coming over in a couple of weeks to put down some more of his tracks. This will hopefully allow me to finish Words and get on with the rest of the stuff.

In the meantime, have a shufti at some more photos from the session that our drummer has just passed across.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 16

Just a quick update from me this time. I've done more work on Words (despite saying I was parking it for a bit, meh) and it's shaping up reasonably well. The latest version is here: https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/words-20170930/s-XUZsU
I've had some feedback from my listening group that I'll need to factor in:
Vocals too loud.
Drums a bit boomy in the 100 - 150Hz zone and a bit dull overall.
Bit of a glitch in the bass part at the opening of the bridge.
Oomph drops off a bit too early after the peak when it comes out of the bridge.
All of these are workable.

The challenge now is how long it's taken me to get to this point.

So this afternoon I'm going to try and blitz Shadowbones and see how quickly I can work it up to a first cut.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 15

Needed to give my ears a rest for a bit so I pulled this little teaser video together just for a change.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 14

Well I have been doing quite a bit more work on Words and it now sounds like this:
https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/words-20170826/s-lsaXF
Still needs plenty doing to it, e.g. all the main stems will need some volume automation to bring out (and down) different bits throughout the song, the piano bits will probably need some decluttering, it still needs a couple more bits of ear candy - some kind of back vocals bits and some rhythmic bits.
Aside from all that there's a bit of in-band debate about the synth part and whether it is required or not, and this comes down to what we want the end product to sound like.
I shall be parking this one for a bit now though as I've got a bit too close to it for any objective analysis. I think it's shaping up the right way but a bit of distance is required before any next steps.

So now I just have to choose what to work on next...

Band on a budget - the recording process part 13

I managed to pull a muscle in my back yesterday so instead of being out and about making the most of the good weather I have been sitting here fiddling with knobs- Finbar Saunders eat your heart out.

I've been working on Words still to try and get a bit more separation in the instruments, a bit more lift to the drums and get the vocals a bit more consistent.

Here's where I've got to so far: https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/words-20170813/s-KubY3

Next step will be to work on the bass sound a bit to help it cut through (add a bit of amp simulation to start with I think) and then look at compressing the drums a bit to get a bit more control on them.

Then it's probably going to be a case of parking this one whilst we consider production and other instruments.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 12

Well that was a pain in the arse but it's now done.
Sorted out the guitar parts for Words over the last days or so. Took the 23 takes of the main rhythm guitar part and comped them down to a best section then did some tweaking to line everything up nicely to the drums.
When I was doing the recording I also recorded some supplementary chord work that I've also been sorting the timing out for so dull job done but I think it's shaping up quite well.
Fixed a little error on the main vocal as well by substituting a previous take.
Next job is to lob a High Pass Filter (HPF) across all the channels apart from the kick and bass and do a little EQ and light compression on the acoustic guitars.
After that we're waiting on the other guitar parts and then I need to get everyone over to have a listen and agree a production approach - personally I think a bit of piano would work very nicely so I'll have to see if someone fancies giving it a go.

In the meantime I'll start having a look at the guitars for Northshoremen.

Here's a little screen shot of what I've been working on the recently:

[EDIT] and here's quick render of how it's sounding so far: https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/words-20170806/s-jaBeu

Band on a budget - the recording process part 11

Thank you to everyone who's been reading along, especially if you've been emphathising with the guitar tracking issues, so far it has been every bit as challenging as I was expecting.

Sadly however now it all slows down...

I'm back at work tomorrow, so from now on we'll be looking at occasional weekend time and snatched evenings here and there.
We are in a bit of a pause period anyway though, I have one more bit of recording to do (some organ sounds via my guitar pedal) and then it's tidying up the guitar parts and sending all the stems over to the guitarist for him to record his parts. All of which is pretty dull and mechanical really.
The interesting bit really starts again when we've pulled all that lot together, got some basic 'faders-up' mixes for everyone to listen to, and start thinking about how we want to produce the songs.

All of which will have to wait to for a bit, as, dear reader, will you.

Thanks for staying with me this far, I'll be updating again with each bit of progress along the way but it will be far more intermittent.

Because this is the internet, here's a picture of a cat:

Band on a budget - the recording process part 10

Today was every bit as frustrating as I expected it to be.

It actually started out quite well, I fished the Tascam interface out of the garage along with some more mic stands and cables and set up a rig to try some alternative guitar mic positions.
This was messy...

but if it got me a decent guitar sound then I'd consider it worthwhile.

After further experimentation I ended up with a set up like this:

Two small diaphragm capacitor mics, one pointed around the 12th fret (but low down and pointing slightly up and in) and one pointing at the bottom half of the body behind the bridge (this one about horizontal).
Nothing really surprising there but I have made a couple of tweaks from previous occasions trying this, firstly I've brought the mics in a bit from 12" to about 8", and secondly I've used Omni capsules. This has given me the extra presence of close miking but using the omnis means that they're still capturing a broad swathe of the guitar sound.
Plus a DI from the pick up just in case.
Having tried it with strumming, picking, slappy type stuff and a bit of blues, this will now be my starting set-up for this guitar in this room in future.

And that's where the positive part of the day stopped.

Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent trying to nail the part for Northshoremen. This is quite a tricky part for me and, unlike vocals or some lead parts, it needs to flow all the way through the track. I tried recording the whole thing in one pass but after 7 or 8 tries decided a new strategy was required. So I worked through each section of the song in turn (overlapping the previous sections) until I had a reasonable take of the whole thing.
I have, however, ended up with 29 bloody takes! I'm going to need a spreadsheet to work out the best bits for sticking together.
Bloody horrible and sorting it out will be no more fun.

I rounded off the day trying to rerecord the acoustic parts for Building for the Flood - having listened to the existing parts again I decided I wasn't happy with them.
This went slightly better but as these two songs share very similar chords my fingertips were mush from the first half of the afternoon and I was struggling to fret things properly later on.
I think I have some workable takes though.

Tonight I'm going to head to the pub-quiz and then tomorrow I'll try and tackle Words - this promises to be just as much fun as Northshoremen...
Arsebiscuits.
I should really just write some songs I can actually play...

Band on budget - the recording process part 9

Well, that's the vocals done. Pretty happy with what I've got over the last couple of days even if it has taken longer than I'd have liked. Not for technical reasons this time, just because I was knackered this morning and didn't get going 'til lunch time and because of the competition recording yesterday afternoon (which went quite well I think, and I now own a shiny new mic, see below:

We'll give that a spin at the next band practice methinks).


As for the actual vocal recording, that's largely been hassle free. Just a case of setting up to try and minimise room noise, getting the mics aligned to minimise phase issues and then setting levels. Very much stuff I've done before lots of times, the only difference being using the Art pre-amp to try and add a bit of colour - to be frank, I'm not sure it's made a great deal of difference but I'll have a more analytical listen later. There's certainly nothing I'm unhappy with there.


Next up is recording my acoustic guitar parts.
Arguably this should be pretty straightforward as well but there are a couple of complications:
1) a couple of the parts are quite complex, particularly Northshoremen, and
2) I've never really been happy with the recorded sound I've got to date.


So for the rest of this afternoon I'm going to experiment with some different mics and placements to see if I can get something better. I'm pretty certain I should be able to. I can't believe that it's an issue with the kit - no matter how budget my set up, I'm sure it's capable of what I'm looking for.


Right, enough prevaricating, let's crack on.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 8

Today, I shall be mostly recording vocals...*


My view for the next few hours is largely going to look like this:

On the left is a subzero tube microphone, it's an AKG clone at a fraction of the price but I've been very happy with it since I bought it, especially on my vocals.
On the right is a classic lollipop ribbon mic made by Stew at Xaudia. I don't normally tend to double mic vocals for my more acoustic/folky stuff but the band tracks are a bit more rocky so I thought I'd experiment with something.
The ribbon mic is going into one of these:

This (the box on the top) is a little tube pre-amp and I've cranked it as high as I can to try and drive the tube a bit. On the louder sections it's just beginning to distort a bit and I'm hoping a bit of judicious mixing with the other mic will give things a bit of edge in places.
Of course I'm keeping any distortion in the analogue part of the chain, overall levels going into Reaper are peaking at around -10dB so there's plenty of headroom.


Both mics are about 12 inches from my mouth and angled down from roughly eye-height. This deals with any proximity effect from the valve mic (I have it set in cardioid as I slightly prefer the sound), stops any plosives bothering the ribbon mic (could get expensive) and also keeps the vocals from sounding to bright and nasal.


So far I've recorded the vocals for Shadowbones and Words and I'm now taking a bit of a break for some lunch.
I do have another recording date this afternoon as well, it's my recorded session for the JBL competition I entered a couple of months ago, so I might not do much more this afternoon so I can keep my voice fairly fresh.


That does mean the room is going to look like this for the next couple of days:

Which isn't hugely convenient, but is necessary.
For those of you who are new to this, you may be asking, as a friend of mine has, "what's with all the duvets?"
The answer is that it's basic, but effective**, acoustic treatment for the room. The duvets act as sound baffles and stop the microphones picking up unwanted reflected sounds. Basically, I just want the sound of the vocals, not the vocals plus the boxy-sounding room. This is a side-effect of putting the microphones a decent distance away from the source but it's worth the trade-off in my opinion.


What has become clear is that I'm going to have to do a lot more manipulation of the tracks on these mixes. With a lot of my stuff to date, the vocal lines haven't been hugely dynamic, and a bit of parallel compression and some automation has been enough to keep things in control.
That's not going to be the case with this set of tracks, I'll be doing a lot more multing and grouping of tracks to get things in shape.


Right, the timer has just pinged for lunch...




* If you're of a certain age and from the UK you will have read that line in a very specific accent.
** Sound On Sound magazine did a test a while back looking at different commercial absorbers and their benchmark as a duvet: http://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/choosing-using-porous-absorbers

Band on a budget - the recording process part 7

It's been a while since the last post as real life has got back in the way, as it usually does, but I now have a bit of time off so I'm hoping to make some progress over the next couple of weeks.


First off is listening back through what we've got, confirming the best takes and applying any fixes where we've got issues on the recording.
We've got a few pops and crackles in places that will take a bit of surgical correction but most of it doesn't look too bad (I think there's a function to do multiple simultaneous edits in Reaper - need to check how that works precisely) but there's one chunk that is concerning me a bit more. The best pass of Denmark Street has an extensive chunk of crackling on the bass line and I'm not sure we're going to be able to rescue it. I'll have a quick look at the other takes but I think the best solution is to re-record it. Fortunately we just DI'd the bass so this should be pretty straightforward.


Further lessons for next time: I mentioned previously that my note-taking hadn't been as comprehensive as I would have liked. Thing to do next time is just leave the mics open after a take and get everyone's opinion straightaway. That way, at the end of each take, I'd have comments like, "that was the best one" or "nope, I screwed that up in the middle" etc.


My mixing set-up

Like everything else in this little escapade my mixing set-up is also at the budget end of things, however I've been able to make a few tweaks along the way to speed up the process. From input to output the set-up is roughly like this:


Input
Focusrite 8i6 interface - as well as the Tascam that we used for recording I have this focusrite permanently connected at home. It's a good little unit that allows me to put in overdubs and run separate outputs for headphones, my Yamaha THX10 (that I use for small-speaker-monitoring) and my main monitors.


DAW and template
Having recorded in Reaper it would be crazy to mix in anything else (not that I have anything else other than a really old CubaseSX) but here's where we get into the templates that I mentioned in an earlier post. My standard project template has 40 tracks set-up, 32 of these are set up as standard audio tracks and have ReaEQ and a focusrite compressor in the first two slots of the inserts. The other 8 are labelled as bus tracks for Vox, drums, bass, two guitars, candy, blank and the dummy master.
The candy one is for any little extra bits of ear-candy in a track, the blank one gets used either for extra instruments in band work or parallel compression if I'm doing more acoustic stuff.
I have the template set up like this so that I can use the couple of bits of hardware that you can see on the desk.
I also have the Sonarworks reference 3 plugin on the master channel - this little bit of code is designed to take the measured frequency response of your headphones and then apply an EQ correction to make them as flat as possible.


Hardware
The Behringer BCR2000 (bottom right with all the knobs) has been configured to work as a basic transport control and channel strip. By linking it to the ReaEQ and the compressor using midi commands I'm able to have hands on control of a 6-band EQ (frequency, gain and Q-factor for each band) and the compressor controls (threshold, ratio, attack, release, input and output gain). It also has a few other things set up: track mute and solo, track FX bypass, record prime, EQ bypass, compressor bypass, track volume and pan, master volume and pan, master FX bypass (for use when switching between headphones and speakers), master mono and the basic transport controls. For complex reasons this only works on the first 32 channels - hence the template.
The Korg nanocontrol (with the sliders, mid-right) then controls my 8 bus tracks. It's set up with volume, pan, mute, solo and track select for each bus track, plus a few more useful transport controls (the cycle button and marker set and steps being the most useful).
This took ages to set up but between them it gives me a much more tactile control and has speeded up my workflow considerably.


Monitoring
The output from the focusrite goes in three directions:
Headphones - I generally use a set of Beyerdynamic DT990 pros (the 250 ohm versions) which are driven just fine from the focusrite headphone socket.
Grot-box monitoring - I have my Yamaha THX10 guitar amp set up as a small-speaker monitor for checking how things will translate to things like portable speakers or radios.
Main monitoring - the main output goes to a Musical Fidelity E100 amplifier and from there to a set of Dynaudio Audience 50 speakers. This is Hi-Fi gear rather than studio gear so it can be a bit more flattering and bit less revealing that I'd like, but it is good kit and it's not the weakest link in the chain.


The room
Which brings my nicely to the room I mix in. It's a nice shape and size (13'x10'x8') but it has no acoustic treatment at all. I've never tried to measure it but I doubt it has particularly good properties in any aspect. Hence I do most of my mixing on headphones.




So there you go, that's what my world is going to look like for the next few days!