Day 2 - or 'Never leave bananas in a plastic bag'


Day two of recording began with a reminder that leaving apples and bananas in plastic bags overnight in a warm studio is a bad idea, because they ming the next day.

They make a smell a bit like the one your lunchbox contained at the end of the school day. To make that smell properly we’d also need a Wagon Wheel wrapper and an empty Coke can, but it was getting that way.

Everyone notices the smell

As for recording, we left everything set up from the night before, which meant we got going about 11 in the morning.

Like the day before we bashed through the drum and bass parts (not the genre) for eight whole tunes over the course of the day. We also listened back to what we’d recorded the day before, to make sure there were no stray trombones or lions that we hadn’t noticed at the time.

Wearing the same clothes as day 1 and standing in
the same positions helps to recreate the vibe.

That put us way ahead of schedule. We’d originally planned to spend five days getting the drums and bass tracks down, but as it happened we found ourselves with most of it in the can already after just two days. That’s great, because it means we can spend days 3, 4 and 5 on getting piano parts, guitars and whatever else we can think of done.

We’re working really well with Nick now, which means we can let off the occasional fart in his presence. In any case the studio is air conditioned and spacious.

The farts still embarrass Mat

The tunes are averaging about 3-4 takes... a practice run-through then a couple of actual takes.

That’s the benefit of rehearsing the hell out of them right there. It also means we get a nice vibey record that sounds like a band enjoying making a record, which is always good.

We spent the last hour of the day forcing a Mac to communicate with our PC formatted hard drive and eventually left with a fat wad of tracks for Liam to reassemble at home.

You can see more photographs of the recording sessions by Nicolai Amter right here

You can also familiarise yourself with the strict professional conditions we work under by watching our short studio video.

In the next instalment we explain why drinking coffee all day can be a bad thing.

Look out for ‘Day 3 - whatdoyoumeanI’mtalkingtoofast?’


Technical Notes from Liam

For day two we used the same setup as day 1, so the technical info is the same. The only real difference is that we discovered how to change the temperature on the air conditioning, so where day 1 was a cool 21 degrees, day 2 was a more ambient 23.

Still... we reproduce the information here, just in case you missed it.

Just wait until we get to day 3 and tell you all about the inside of a piano. Then you'll be laughing on the other side of your face.... oh yes.


Drums:


Nick used a single Neumann M147 as an overhead, and there were two Blue Kiwi condenser mics placed roughly two metres either side the kit.

On both toms were Sennheiser MD421's. I like these mics, they look like Captain Kirk's phaser from The Wrath of Khan.

I paid no attention to the kick mic. It was probably an AKGD112, placed through the sound-hole near the beater. I can't say for sure which fictional weapon these mics most resemble. Maybe a thermal detonator from Jedi.

There were top and bottom snare mics. As with the toms they were a good 3 or 4 inches from the skins. Bottom mic was an SM57, while up top we used a Beta 57.

Bass:

We recorded a DI feed and also miked up the amp with another AKGD112.