Click Click Click CLUNK ...

As far as recording the actual tracks for this album, and the best means of getting a click track into Rick's brain (taking into account the present absence of Tim's vocal cues), we've finally managed to achieve satisfactory results by simply funneling a previous version of the song directly into some headphones.

This bypasses the need of a traditional click track, which we found to be wrought with problems during the making of the last album. This is because a few songs were found to have subtle, natural rhythm changes (one hellishly frustrating attempt to record over a flat-metronomed version of 'Shaken Partial' was enough to convince us to find another way) and attempting to remedy this within the click track itself seemed a little too mechanical.

A basic run-down of how the last album's drum track was achieved is as follows:

The drums were set up in one room of the house and connected to the PA system, which then gathered all five drum tracks simultaneously before spitting the result at the computer as one single (or mixed-down) track. This meant that it needed to be mixed on the way through of course, and little could be done with it after the fact. The rest of the band stood out in the hallway and played 'silently' into an old 10-track mixing desk which was wired through to the drummer's ears to allow him to play along with us; this is important, as the drummer needs to know where in the hell they are for various fills and changes and whatnot. This method also allowed the natural feel of the songs to be captured pretty convincingly (other issues sullied this a little, but that's a different story) ...

With such previous experience in mind however, this time around, a couple of quick attempts were made to bypass the click track issue by having both Rick and I hearing my guitar through two sets of headphones (the guitar was played into the old 10-Track with the signal being split at the phones jack). The results were mediocre at best due to lacking vocals and lacking volume in general.

Obviously the best click track to use would be a pre-recorded version of the song with all elements and all cues present - and with our penchant for recording each practice, there were plenty of options to choose from.

Once the track to be used had been decided upon (proper tempo, no major gaffs, etc.) the idea was to simply play this on the computer and via headphones have it pounding away in Rick's ears as he laid down the new track over it's old bones. Getting to that stage wasn't quite as straight-forward as envisioned, however, as the distance from PC to drum kit (and up to ear level) was approximately seven metres; a problem further complicated by every cable and patch-lead being mono when stereo was needed in the phones so as to properly block out unnecessary percussive distraction during the live take; nothing to throw you off a drum fill with two of them happening at once!

We eventually got there by temporarily re-arranging the practice space to have all leads stretched to their utmost, as documented by cellphone captures below:

This photo shows the rear of the PC, with the black cable headed to the lower-right being a headphone to RCA connector.

Shown here from the reverse-angle, the PC cable enters this old stereo from the right-hand side of the photo. An old set of 'closed' headphones then exits the front of the stereo and heads directly towards the drum kit.

With little room left to move, we had no option but to actually secure the headphone cord through one of Rick's belt loops so as to keep it away from the kit but

allow it to reach his ears.

Although seeming a little convoluted, the results were excellent and have since inspired us to continue using this method (at least in the short-term). Newer material will probably be recorded in a similar fashion to that of the first album, but for the time being this will more than suffice.

We've since lessened the ordeal somewhat by truncating the distance from PC to stereo to headphone too (though I've yet to take a photo of it) ...

Panned by the critics of knowledge

My initial idea with regards the panning of each individual drum section (all recorded into the desk straight down the centre and panned afterwards during the mixing stage) was characteristically an amateurish approach and documentation has since been found that produces a far better initial result and, by extrapolating the scenario further, a superior end-result also.

Rick's research into this (which actually stemmed from an altogether different issue that'll be discussed in a future post) discovered that one should set the correct panning during the recording process itself, which of course seems obvious when faced with hard copy detailing of such simplicity.

Beginning from zero knowledge though, below were my original ideas of how we'd (eventually) pan the various drum kit components (the information gathered from my best interpretation of a track from The Deftones' album Diamond Eyes whilst sitting with my face buried between two speakers):

My terminology with regards the toms exposes me as no drummer,

but you get the idea.

And above/below are the settings we now have on the desk with all components panned accordingly as they go in: hard left (HL), hard right (HR), or centre. So far we've kept these settings in the final mix too (by effectively re-panning them in the editing software), with the exception of the hi-hat going to 50% left.

Eight heads of the snake

So, on Monday night, with the departure of our vocalist to Peru for a month or so, we finally set about organising the Korg D888 for some serious attempts at recording.

The first task was to unload Rick's Wharfedale KMD-7 drum mic kit and to attach the various pieces around the kit as necessary; one of the major benefits of having clip-ons (as opposed to microphones balanced in and around the place on various stands or dangled on strings from the rafters) being that the microphones won't get knocked and shunted sideways by any errant feet and/or instruments etc. This means that each time we enter the 'studio' there won't be any need to re-measure and re-align any of the mic distances, as they shouldn't ever move; the barest alteration can make an enormous difference ...

In an effort to keep the floor space as tidy and efficient as possible, we're utilising a large snake cable that's been cut and separated at both ends so as to allow the various sockets to reach their appropriate mics. The only issue we had with this was the need to get the KM3s capacitor stick mics above the kit, so we settled on using independent leads hung from the rafters for those.

These stick microphones also provided us some further bother until we realised that phantom power was needed for them to collect any sound; the fact of my having neglected to bring the manual along a major hinderance. With this activated however, we had all eight channels receiving ample input, as verified by the alighted peak meters.

Thursday night was spent tweaking the sounds that we were getting (eg. thickening the kick by adding low end and stripping out some high). Again, the capacitor mics caused us some problems in that even with nothing being played (their associated tracks merely armed) we were getting a whole pile of ambient noise. We eventually just trimmed the hell out of the tracks they were active on (until no ambient activity could be seen on the peak meter at all). Despite our initial concerns though, there was plenty of sound still being collected by them.

After recording several sample beats (playing them back through the PA for purposes of basic critique) and getting the foundation of the sound pretty well sorted, the next step on Monday night will be to actually record a couple of full drum tracks so that the guitar can then be laid over top, which'll hopefully give us a better idea of how and where the drums are going to eventually sit amongst a mix (of sorts).

Gideon's Disease

'Twould appear that straining my left wrist around some atypical chords over the weekend (whilst unnecessarily employing a wide-necked classical guitar) has aggravated a previously minor ganglion cyst, which has since swollen considerably. Admittedly, it's still a decidedly weak specimen when placed in direct comparison with those found on various websites about the place.

Pictured below however, it's the weird 'bump' on my wrist (thumb side). Photographing it properly was inexplicably troublesome too, though perhaps this was simply a case of me wanting the photos to lie in their exaggeration of what wasn't actually there ...

Not quite sure of how best to approach its remedy (or, in lieu of this, minimalisation) but I suspect paying greater attention to my arm/wrist position whilst playing and making alterations as necessary will help considerably.

Incidentally, a new demo, aptly named id=10T (though not purposely so) was evacuated into being during the conjuring of this current ganglion's rage.

Milking a dead horse ...

Video footage, from an entirely different angle and courtesy of an entirely different video camera, has come to light and has thusly now been shared via Youtube. This new footage contains the opening acoustic set of the Wundy gig (23 April, 2010) and can be found here.

And now that the well has run dry with regards this particular gig, next stop: recruiting a new bass player.

Electrical genitals

An issue that was recently brought to light whilst unloading some recent recordings from our multi-track recorder was that the vocals, although occasional buried beneath the sonic surrounds, were actually (and obviously) still there - merely decidedly low in the overall mix. This was easily remedied by simply lifting the affected track within our editing software, making it more prominent when necessary (normally only the first half of each verse) before leaving the remainder relatively untouched.

Of course, when playing live, this luxury quickly vanishes beneath the general fuzz of on-stage noise, and so mooted for trial at our last practice was the idea of attaching a foot pedal to the microphone, effectively returning to us some basic level control. Conveniently, we happened to have a disused Boss DS-1 laying around.

This pedal will intercept a newly purchased Cannon to Cannon lead, which was cut in half to give us the two desired end connections (one for the back of the mic and one going into the PA) plus two newly severed ends that'll have the necessary jacks attached (one for the DS-1 input signal and one for its output).

There's a level setting on the DS-1, which controls the output volume, and (with the applied distortion amounts set to effective zero) we'll hopefully get a simple boosting/de-boosting of the vocals when the pedal is kicked on and off.

Of additional benefit, we'll hopefully also gain the oft-mentioned ability to apply effects to Tim's vocals (most especially within 'Movement Eight' ) ...

A quick Google search for 'replacing XLR with jack' led me to here; a simple diagram showing the standard method of wiring an XLR to a 1/4" TRS (stereo jack plug). I managed to harvest a spare one of these from the workshop, although another one will be needed to finish the job, of course.

To confirm which connections needed to be made and to where, I stuck the multimeter on 'diode test' and followed the wires from the Cannon sockets (numbered 1, 2, 3) to their appropriate ends, listening for a 'beep' whenever a connection was present (as shown above). Once I knew that the shield (the weaved mass of wires surrounding the four actual wires inside the cable) was 1, blue(s) was 2, white(s) was three, it was simply a matter of connecting them all appropriately.

Note: Before soldering the wires into place, ensure that the eventual sleeve is positioned back down the cable (as above), as once you're done, this pulls down to cover the connections and provides a nice finish.

The final two photographs show the end result (albiet of only one cable!)

Whether or not there'll be any complications with this idea when it crosses that all-important line from concept into practice remains to be seen ...

Edit: Turns out that using a stereo jack was actually overkill, because the DS-1 sockets only have two connections and thus support mono only. The basic idea did worked in practice however, though some unwanted 'noise' started to creep in when lifted to the volumes we wanted to achieve. A fix for this new annoyance shall now be worked on ...

The Mixer; facefixer

After recording the drums for our debut album with five microphones syphoned straight into our PA system (the sounds then merely flung at the computer in whatever mixed state we could achieved 'on-the-fly'), it was decided that this time around we'd employ a proper multi-track recorder to do the job, whereby we could then tamper with the results to our heart's content; deepening the kick, lifting the hi-hat, dampening the snare, without each manipulation automatically being applied to every other component of the kit as well.

And so, with this specific task in mind, the purchase of a Korg D888 was commissioned.

The sheerest modicum of knowledge is possessed by the sum of us three with regards recording in this manner however, so there'll be the inevitable difficulties, although my delight of moulding mistakes into justifiable musical expressions is wallowing in frolic at the prospect!

Prior to the departure of our bassist, who possessed a wealth of recording knowledge encompassing the better part of two decades, we (in the collective sense, that is) did actually manage to capture several live recordings of various songs, and I've since managed to extract these from the D888. This was easily achieved and no more drastic than transferring data from one external device to another.

Below is a screenshot of the result (it essentially dumps eight streams of equal length into sequential tracks):

'Twas a positive beginning.

From memory, five tracks were derived from precariously-placed drum mics (kick, hi-hat, snare and rotos, toms, and cymbals), one was the vocal mic going directly in, one caught the bass amp, and the last microphone performed duty in front of the guitar amp. Bleed was present, although it was relatively minor (or at least workably so), and makeshift baffles - actually old office dividers - were used in front of both amplifiers to aid in this prevention.

Also, as a delightful surprise, also found on the mixer were some older, full-band practice runs of two (at the time) brand new songs, 'Under The Table' which has since been smoothed out and played live, and an energetic version of 'Face Down'. This last song, although slated for inclusion on the new album, is not currently being performed due to its ungainly bass-driven structure being irrepressibly hollow at present, so we're certainly glad to have this early rendition for future reference; both from a technical point of view, and one merely divined by interest.