Retro synths, the order of the day.

Pitto and The Please were back in the studio today, and once more have been playing on every synth possible. The atmosphere in the control room was light and fun, but these guys were here to do serious work and their concentration and dedication as the session got underway was unbelievable.

They spent the day perfecting their track in Ableton (which had been rewired into Logic) and adding more layers to it. The retro synths seemed to be the order of the day, with the Juno-60 and the Oberheim Xpander getting the most action. The sounds Hans found on these oldies fit in perfectly with the feel of the track, and they helped to add some extra depth and richness to the music.

Just a quick entry for the blog today, as the guys have been mainly self-contained and we haven’t had to help them with much at all!

…intent on finding the perfect sounds for their track.

In the studio today, we welcome DJ Pitto and The Please (Minggus and Hans). It’s early in the session and already the guys are using lots of synths. As I walk into the room, I can already hear samples from the MPC5000 being played with, and Hans from The Please is making up some parts on the Yamaha XS-8. As the day progresses, the guys have tried out every synth we have in the control room, and seem intent on finding the perfect sounds for their track.

Hans on the synths

The afternoon rolls round quickly, and we have quick lunch break before carrying on the session. As the guys prepare to go into the live room to record some hand claps, fun and games with the in-house drum kit commence. Everyone is having a great time, but eventually we decide to get back on track. Frank and Matthijs soon have everything ready for recording, and Minggus, Hans and DJ Pitto are all placed around the microphone ready to clap. We get a few bonus noises, including someone on the phone and a laugh. These are all kept, incase they can be used in the track.

Hans and Minggus (The Please) with DJ Pitto

The guys come back into the control room and get playing with their new sounds. Then, more synths are played. Hans explores the many piano voices held within our wide array of synths, and the guys discuss the intricacies of timing before deciding to call it a day. They will be returning tomorrow to finish off their track.

Mr. Love and the Stallions release party extravaganza

This Sunday was to be different from the previous ones. Instead of recording in the studio, the SAE crew (today consisting of Simon, Frank and Matthijs) would focus on live mixing and live recording. The guys from Mr. Love and the Stallions have been busy rehearsing over the past few weekends in the live room of the studio for this day… for today is the day of their release party here at Rooms of Red Bull!

The day itself started with Frank to be the first to arrive around 10 A.M. The band arrived around 11 and Simon, who had to bring his live recording rig, came in at 11:30 due to public transport issues. The band started off by rehearsing in the live room while Simon and Frank waited patiently for the P.A. company guys to arrive.

Around 1 P.M. the Schellekens P.A. company arrived with the additional equipment and stage to make this release party work. With a team of four the build up went pretty quickly and around 14:30 they were waiting for the band to finish practicing and bring their backline down from the studio. In the meantime, Matthijs had arrived to help as well.

With the band setting up and the last microphone positioned, the sound check could start at 17:30. Matthijs was going to do the live mixing, Frank would be the runner and Simon would do the live recording. Not soon after the first full band check, the boys in blue arrived because of noise complaints from the neighbours. This effectively ended the sound check, but Matthijs and Simon had their setup checked and going already. The building manager Joost went to the neighbors to have a chat with them about the gig tonight and a compromise was made.

At the time of the show, the place was fully packed with people and the temperature was rising. The band started playing and thanks to the amount of public attendance causing massive acoustic dampening, the neighbors felt there was no need to complain about the noise. The guys played a terrific set and the crowd cheering them on constantly. The sound was good, the recording was good and the atmosphere was brilliant. All in all the show was a big success for band, engineers and Rooms of Red Bull.

After the fun always comes the work. The entire stage, mixing position and everything else concerning the show had to be cleared out and loaded up in the Schellekens van. Many thanks to the two chaps from Schellekens who brought more equipment than was ordered, but in the end was greatly appreciated and used to the full.

At the stroke of midnight, Joost gently pushed everyone out of the building to go home. A not so average Sunday in a nutshell.

Article by Simon Kemme, edited by Anya Graham

Our first full band recording!

Saturday 26th July marked the first occasion that we did a full band recording in our studio here at Rooms of Red Bull. That meant working with a switched on group of guys eager to perform, a day jam-packed with tracking and overdubs, vocal harmonies, and assorted fun. Mr. Love & The Stallions, in anticipation of their showcase in the main hall, decided to commit two songs they recently finished writing in our Music Room to tape, so rock ‘n roll it was.

Mere minutes after laying out our microphones to record the Premier drumkit, to be tracked simultaneously with the bassist playing next to us into our Focusrite FF ISA 828 channel strip, the guys arrived with their guitar amps and their pre-produced arrangements. We would be on a tight schedule, so we started right away. After a thorough soundcheck, we were ready to lay down the basic tracks. With Bartosz controlling the pre-amps, and Matthijs working the desk and sequencer, we spent the first hour working on the rhythm section. We were lucky to hit the mark pretty quickly, which boosted morale. Especially ‘Gonna make love’ sounded groovy indeed. Enter the guitarists, after some obligatory cowbell and percussion overdubs.

The band has five members with two guitarists and a violinist, and all of them sing. After reconsidering the timeframe, the guys decided they would rather finish one song entirely, meaning a full vocal treatment, than record two songs without vocals. ‘Rocketeer’ is a punky highschool-rocksong, and to make the sound slightly raunchier, we used a beat up vintage Sennheiser dynamic alongside our trusted Røde NT1000 condenser on the first guitar amp. The second, semi-acoustic guitar, we approached more gently – a Røde NT2000 condenser through a tube pre-amp convulsion on our Liquid 4pre. All guitar parts nicely complemented each other, and soon enough we were ready to start singing.

After tracking the lead vocal, the guys had some fun singing falsetto harmonies on the coda of their song, while giving each other honest feedback on their performances. To have some options at mixdown, all vocals were captured with the Røde K2 tube microphone, as well as a Shure SM57 dynamic. At five o’ clock sharp the band were off to their gig, while we were taking down a day’s worth of microphones. What’s wrong with this picture?

Article by Matthijs Kleywegt

Tascam DM-4800 Digital Mixing Console

We are starting off our Gear Reviews with a look at our digital mixing console, the Tascam DM-4800. As I’m sure you all know, this is an important piece of kit in the studio. This desk can be used as more than just a mixing console though, it can be used as a live mixing console, recording console or any other audio routing purposes you may have in mind. The current price according to Thomann is €6500, with the optional extras of the meter bridge and FireWire card. However, you can buy just the desk for €5180 if you don’t want pretty lights on top or FireWire capabilities.

It has become quite popular since its release: it might be small and compact but it packs in more than its fair share of features. For those who are used to Mackie (or other brand) digital consoles, the menu layout of the DM-4800 can initially be very confusing. However, with a bit of time and effort, it soon becomes an intuitive desk to use. All our engineers are now very comfortable with working the desk, and even the coordinators have been having a go!

With all the inputs and preamps, there can be plenty of flexibility in what you do with the console. Although the on-board preamps are more than capable at doing their job, here in the SAE studio we have chosen to use some preamps in some channels: so we can get the best combination of all our gear. From channels one to four we have the Liquid 4Pre, channel five uses the Focusrite Producer Pack and for channels seventeen to twenty-four we use the Focusrite ISA 828. 48 of the modules can also have internal EQ’s and compressors on them.
A closer look at the inputs: there are 24 line-ins, the usual 2-track in, a built-in 8-channel ADAT, 4 DINs, 3 (optional) ADAT cards that handle 8 inputs each and 3 TDIFs. We may have missed something on here, but you get the point!

Normally, the DM-4800 is used in conjunction with Logic. However, we occasionally run Ableton and Reason through it too. It’s brilliant for mixing tracks, again because of all the great outboard gear we’ve been given to play with. There are also built in compressors and EQ’s, which can come in very handy for us. There are also two TC Electronics Multi-FX units built into the desk.

Some features that we really like about the DM-4800 are the FireWire card, the Remote layer and the automation engine. The FireWire card can send 24 channels to your chosen DAW (in our case, Logic Pro 8 ) and receive 32 channels. The Remote layer also concerns the DAW, as it lets you control whichever program you are working in on the desk. This is really useful for us when people want to use the desk a little bit, but aren’t confident enough to use equipment outside of Logic. The automation engine in the desk can be synced via MIDI Time Code to Logic and is capable of automating various parameters (such as sends, volume and panning).

Some other things that we have found useful are the 8 assignable ins and outs, and the channel ‘strip’ setup. The assignable ins/outs can be used to program inserts or feed reverb units as you would expect. However, they are very flexible and you can send/receive from most of the ports on the desk. This kind of flexibility is great if you have a complicated studio setup. Moving on to the channel strip layout, we find that this is also brilliantly laid out because of its adaptable nature. After the preamp, everything is soft so you can arrange the modules in whichever way you want. While not ideal for some, we think this creates extra creative opportunities in a studio like ours.
One last little thing we like is the meter bridge. It does what it says on the tin, but it also allows you to meter another layer of the desk whilst the fader banks etc are on another layer. For example, your meter bridge could be on channels 25-48 whilst the rest of the desk is on channels 1-24. Again, this just adds to the flexible nature of the desk. When you have a console with these kinds of capabilities, you have to appreciate all the hard work that has gone into creating it.

Overall, the versatility of this console means that we can quickly adapt to all our artist’s needs, which is essential for us when they have so little time in our studio. So, thank you Tascam for letting us use this fantastic piece of kit!

Boemklatsch and Chocomel in the studio

Yesterday, Boemklatsch and Chocomel came into the studio to start off their collaboration. Mike Mago, Sjammie the Money and Chocomel built the basis of the track. Unfortunately Mike couldn’t join us again today, but Sjammie the Money and Chocomel worked solidly until a late lunch break, when Chocomel had to leave.
The guys have been working in Logic 8, so they had free range of all the synths and outbeard gear we have. This morning, they decided to use the Juno and the MicroKorg for some cool sounding extras to put in their track. As Sjammie the Money has worked in Logic before, they worked quickly and effectively, not needing much guidance from Engineers of the day Bart and Frank. The session finished right on time, and the end result made everybody smile!

3 producers = 1 track ?

We had an interesting day in the studio today which consisted of nice ‘deep house’ beats and some very lively discussions that ranged from Iggy Pop to decibel meters in Berlin. Three house producers joined us today, the locals Jarno and Esther and Dallas who came all the way from Detroit ( rock city ). Making their track they used Logic as the master with Reason and Ableton rewired into it. At first they tried using some of the outboard gear but then ended up using mostly all kinds of samples. They were all working together for the first time and it was very impressive to watch them work. I would have thought that getting three producers together in the same room would end up in some sort of a clash, but they were all on the same page with this track, were really professional and knew what they wanted. But then again that’s the point with this whole project, to get different producers in the same room to create something nice.

Over and out !

Jarno, Dallas and Esther

The Yamaha’s were the weapon of choice today

Today we had Aron Friedman, a house producer, in our awesome studio. His partner couldn’t make it because of knee injuries (but we all know what that means don’t we) :). While me and Bart were waiting for Aron he made a template in Ableton, that makes it possible for artists who prefer to work in Ableton to use the outboard gear.
Aron used Yamaha synths today for his ‘deep house’ track. He used the Motif XS8 and the S90ES and was very pleased with the outcome. After some string programming our engineers Bart and Simon helped Aron with some mixing and then called it a day.

Over and out !

An afternoon of Ableton

Today we have Mesjokke DJs and Delta Funktionen in the studio. The guys could only turn up for the afternoon, and wanted to work in Ableton so there has been no use of our fabulous outboard gear and synths as yet. Maybe tomorrow, when they have more time, they will get adventurous and try some stuff out!
In the meantime, the Gear Reviews will start to be posted soon so keep your eyes peeled.

Not the busiest day… but still productive

We had a pretty quiet and chilled out day in the studio today. The artists Tom and Brent arrived around 12 and used Ableton on their own computers and didn’t use any of our fine outboard gear on their house track. That seems as a bit of a shame because while I’m sitting here there are about 10 synths in all shapes and sizes in front of me that are collecting dust at the moment. But good things came out of it because the fact that the guys only wanted to use their own stuff gave our engineers some opportunities to do other stuff. Frank checked out Pro Tools 8, which he thought that at first sight looked pretty cool. Around five o’clock Tom and Brent packed their stuff and I asked how today had been and they said it had been very productive, which is exactly what we are looking for :) 

Tom and Brent busy making some beats

Over and out !