Hot horns on a humid day!

It’s a hot, humid and muggy Sunday afternoon here in the Red Light District and the studio air conditioning unit is working overtime at the moment! However, much to our dismay, the AC was not working when we arrived this morning, so things were looking rather bleak. Temperatures in the studio can reach tropical heights on days like these, so having a broken AC was not an option. We gave the apparatus a quick look-over and were thankfully able to get it working again, so now everything is fine and dandy!

Esperanza & Sense

We are once again joined by Sense and Esperanza today, who continue production on the project they’ve been working on here for the past few weeks. As in their previous sessions, they have brought in a friend to join them in the studio and lay down some analog instrumentation. This time it’s trumpet player Arthur Flink.

As well as bringing his trumpet along to the session, Arthur also brought a flugel horn, an instrument similar to the trumpet but with a darker and muddier tone. With these two instruments Arthur hopes to create a little horn section, which should fit perfectly in with the track Sense and Esperanza are working on. (Arthur tells me that James Brown’s horn section included two flugels and one trumpet, so that’s a promising prospective!)

Trumpet player Arthur Flikn

In addition to the two instruments, Arthur also has with him a little harmonizer effect unit, which he plays the horns through to beef up the sound a bit and, of course, as the name implies, add harmonies to his playing. It’s a pretty nifty little gadget!

Frank and Bart are engineering today in immaculate style as always, solving a few little problems here and there and making sure everything runs smoothly.

Today's engineers: Bartosz Sztandar &
Frank de Jong

The horns really add some muscle to the track, complementing other characteristics very nicely and fitting in perfectly with the theme of the tune. After quite a few different takes and variations (and a few takes for another track Sense is working on) everyone is satisfied and recording is complete for the day. Another fun-filled Sunday afternoon behind us then!

Young talent

We have two young electronic music producers with us in the studio today. They call themselves Soulrock but their individual names are Aron Friedman and Florian Rath. They produce house music, and what they’re working on today would be classified as ‘club house’.

Soulrock: Aron Friedman and Florian Rath

Aron and Florian prefer to work in Ableton Live and brought in a track they had been working on previously on their own. Seeing as the whole midi setup in our studio is set up to work through Logic, we tried to bounce their tracks from Ableton and import them into Logic. That didn’t work out quite as planned though, as the compression and EQ-ing didn’t sound the same as it should have. So they ended up hooking their laptop computer with Ableton set up on it to our studio mixer and worked on their session ‘in-the-box’ through there.

Simon Kemme with Soulrock

Simon has been engineering today and has been assisting the guys a lot with some helpful tips and mixing tricks, giving them pointers on using compressors, EQs and effects in a constructive and effective way. Soulrock is a relatively young group and pretty new to the scene, so they’ve been very grateful for all the help and information they have received and will no doubt take a lot from their experience here today.

SAE and DJ Broadcast Audiobot Competition

Last night, after the main session of the day, we welcomed in a second session. This time, it was DJ Pitto, Tom and Jorn. Tom and Jorn won the Audiobot competition run by SAE and DJ Broadcast, and as a prize got to spend a little time in the studio with Pitto.
Everything started off a little late, but once the guys got going things moved along quickly. As the guys had their session in Ableton, they chose to use their own laptop. This meant we could leave them to do their thing in the studio, handing out some tips and tricks here and there to help them on their way.
The first part of the evening was spent with Pitto and the guys making some adjustments to the track, and adding a few extras to it. The Korg NanoKontrol was made useful in creating some automation. There were plans to bounce the session files and import them into Logic for mixing, but everyone got so carried away that this stage was never reached! Another time perhaps.

Pitto, Tom and Jorn

A little later on in the evening, Ilco from DJ Broadcast tore himself away from the studio action for a little bit to come and take an interview with Frank. This will hopefully be appearing in the July edition of DJ Broadcast, so keep your eyes peeled!

Power failures and synthisizers

Hans (‘The Please’) and Baris (‘Sotu the Traveler’) arrived at the studio at around noon today and picked up where they had left things yesterday. They started with a bit of in-the-box mixing in Logic and gradually moved over to the synths.

Baris operating Logic Pro

Then, at around 13:30, disaster struck! We had 2 power failures, which were apparently caused by a short-circuiting vacuum cleaner. We believe the guilty appliance has been trashed and replaced by a new, trouble-free hoover. The work that the guys had done since arriving at noon was lost, so there was nothing else to do but start over again. But of course they had yesterday’s sessions backed up, so all was not lost.
They took a short break while the electrical problems were being ironed out and after the break they started redoing what had been lost.

Hans and Baris

Today the guys have mainly been focusing on synths, jumping enthusiastically from one synth to the next, though mainly sticking with the MicroKORG and the Yamaha XS8. Layers and layers of synthesized material have produced some funky hooks and catchy beats, which the guys have then sampled and worked into their track through Logic.

Bart has been our head engineer today and has done a stand out job at assisting the guys with minor problems here and there, mainly to do with the midi setup. Meanwhile, Simon, another one of our engineers, re-built the drum kit in the live room. It had been loaned out to the radio station above us, where it was being used for a live broadcast recording last night. After setting up and re-tuning the kit, Simon promises it will sound as good as ever for the next drum session.

Simon rebuilt and tuned the drum kit

As for Hans and Baris, they are very pleased with what they have accomplished here in the past two days and pleased to have had the opportunity to work together.

And just as we’re closing the studio down for the day… the power goes off again! I guess the vacuum cleaner hasn’t been properly replaced after all. At least the artists had saved all their work this time, thankfully!

Experimental grooves

Two music producers, Hans from ‘The Please’ and Baris, a.k.a. ‘Sotu the Traveler’, are in the studio with us today and tomorrow. Hans arrived at around 11:00 this morning and started familiarizing himself with the studio and hardware setup. We strike up a conversation and have a long discussion about musical genres and they way certain genres’ definition has changed through the years. He tells me his music would probably be categorized somewhere between house and hip-hop, though he really doesn’t like to tie himself down to any certain genre or musical style.

Baris arrives at 11:30 and the two producers waste no time. They immediately get their hands on the hardware in the studio and start having fun with the possibilities they have at offer. Hans is fascinated with the MicroKORG and plays around with some arpeggiators and the vocoder, while Baris amuses himself and others around him with the drum machine on the MPC5000.

Hans was very fond of the MicroKORG

They lay down some basic takes in Logic, just improvising and seeing where the groove takes them. Within minutes they have a large variety of loops and samples recorded which they then start playing around with and manipulating in Logic.

The track starts to take some form as Baris now jumps over to the MicroKORG and has a lot of fun with the vocoder. While Baris keeps himself busy with the MicroKORG’s seemingly endless possibilities, Hans steps over to the Yamaha XS8 and lays down some Keys for the track.

The guys continue rotating between instruments, with the MicroKORG and MPC5000 playing lead roles in what they’re doing, until Minggus, the other half of ‘The Please’ and one of the DJ Broadcast correspondents here at the Rooms of Red Bull joins in on the session for a little while.

Baris on the Yamaha S90 ES and Hans on the Novation

After a long break the guys gather back in the studio and continue their work. Hans starts working on a melody for the track, a catchy hook, which he figures out on the Novation synth. The artists then layer the track with all kinds of little effects and details, utilizing the sound banks from the Novation, Yamaha S90 and MPC5000 and the MicroKORG’s vocoder, giving it a pretty massive overall feel.

Hans and Baris layer on some details to their track

They keep adding bits and pieces here and there until time runs out for today’s session. Time flies when you’re having fun! As stated above, the guys will be back in tomorrow, so stay tuned!

A chilled day in the studio

As I wrote about yesterday the plan today was to record the cello and some vocals. The day started a bit after 12 when Sense and Matthias the cello player arrived. They spent the first hour and a half or so in the live room listening to the tracks and figuring out some nice cello lines. Shortly after that we started recording. We recorded the cello with four different mics all in different positions to have options in the mixdown. Our live room hasn’t got the best acoustics so to minimize the room sound we close miked the instrument. After a bit of tuning Matthias was ready to do a take. Matthias is a very talented cello player and knows his instrument inside out so it didn’t take us long to get a good take. 

Next up were the vocals. Esperanza got in front of the mic but somehow didn’t seem to feel the right vibe and after few attempts decided that the best option would be to not record the vocals today. 

The gang had also arranged for a rapper to do some takes today and around the time I was leaving the studio at 8 o’clock they had just started recording some rap. Although I’m not an expert about rap it sounded pretty cool to me. 

So all in all it was a pretty chilled out day and luckily the engineers, Bart and Simon, didn’t encounter any technical problems.

Over and out !

A day of great talent !

Like last weekend Esperanza and Sense are in the studio this weekend. There is only one word to describe today : Amazing ! The artists were great, the songs were great and Esperanza’s vocals and lyrics were beautiful. Sense had a few hip-hop tracks that needed bass lines, so they got their friend Steve Hartley to pluck the bass today. After listening to some of Sense’s tracks Steve was ready to record….and what great job he did !!!!  We were all amazed by his ability to play tight and funky grooves.

Sense and Esperanza had also arranged a flute player to join in on the project and play on some of the tracks. After a small lunch break we started setting up some mics. For the flute recording we used the K2 tube mic and ran it through the Liquid Channel pre amp. Before we could start recording we encountered an uncommon technical problem. The engineers tried to restart the Tascam console and reboot Logic several times but nothing seemed to work. Finally they realized that the firewire port on the computer had stopped working, but luckily the computer had another useable port so we were ready to go. Our flute player was Han Litz and watching him play was a great joy, especially for an amateur flute player like myself. Han works as a full time flute player so it didn’t take him long to improvise some impressive flute parts. 

Although at times we had 9 people in the control room the day was relaxed and productive while the airco was working over hours. It was a nice experience working with such great talents and professionals and I’m sure that tomorrow will be just as eventful as we will be recording cello and some vocals. Check the blog then !                    

Over and out

Djs in the house today

Brent and Steven joined me and Bart in the studio today. They are both djs and met up last night to lay down some beats for a new techno/house track in Ableton. The first thing they did when they arrived was doing some minor changes in the arrangement using the work station in the live room. After an hour or so they came in the control room and Bart converted the session into Logic. Brent and Steven aren’t really hardware guys so no outboard gear was used during the session. The guys are more familiar with Ableton so Bart used his lightning fast Logic skills to help them out. He sat by the computer and efficiently dealt with their requests and requirements, whilst adding some creative input along the way. The main area which needed attention was the low end which after the end of the treatment had improved a lot. Bart also helped them correct some timing issues which did improve the groove. 

The day was a great success in general and Brent and Steven were really happy in the end, which is obviously what we are looking for :) 
 
Over and out !

A mixture of metal, rock, prog and even a little glam rock…..

Today we had a slight change of plans. The artists scheduled cancelled so Frank arranged a vocalist that he had worked with before. His name is Ram and comes from Puerto Rico. He and his drummer friend are looking for a vocalist and a bass player to complete their band. Frank had recorded them few months ago but Ram wanted to do another vocal take to make it sound nicer. Ram is not a singer himself (although I heard a slight early Ozzy in him) he says, but wanted to record vocals and then eventually when the song is ready put it on the web and hope to get some response from other singers that might want to join the band.

I had a hard time defining the musical genre which the song belonged to but it was a mixture of metal, rock, progressive and even a slight old school glam rock. When I asked Ram which his influences were he wasn’t quite sure but was definitely into classic rock, metal and prog rock such as the masters in the Canadian band, Rush.

The recording itself went very smoothly with Bart in the control seat whilst Frank overlooked the final recording process. At the end of the day Ram was a very happy man. Now the song just has to be edited and mixed and hopefully they will get their singer soon.

Over and out !

Drum session with Terry Toner & Bow Everst

Yesterday we had Terry Toner back in the studio with us and he brought a long a drummer, Bow Evers from the band Hit Me TV. Terry had Bow lay down some drums tracks for a project he’s working on, so we finally got the chance to test out our drum kit during an actual recording session. And we weren’t disappointed!

Here’s a short video from yesterday evening’s session.