Day nine (and ten) – there’s always room for cello

You’ll have realised by now that this isn’t a series of linear daily entries falling one after the other in the traditional fashion.

 

It’s been quite a while since ‘Day 8’, so we thought we’d better explain ourselves. In the time that’s passed, Liam has been busy doing a mountain of editing to get everything we’ve recorded so far knocked into shape.

 

At the same time Lou’s been working on the cello parts, getting them all figured out and ready to record.

 

That all takes ages, hence the gap of a few weeks... but in the last fortnight we’ve done two sessions in which we’ve recorded cello parts for more than half the album.

 

We’ve lumped them into one diary entry because the set-up was much the same for each session and to be honest, the photos of Lou playing the cello look pretty similar, though you’re welcome to write in and spot the difference.

 

Lou's cello - none of us were born when it was made.
Nor were our parents, or grandparents... or their parents...

 

Recording the cello is a very different experience from the full live recording part, mainly because of the room. Instead of all cramming into a soundproofed studio, we’ve been hiring out The Gallery at Antenna Studios, the venue for our first Extraordinarium a few Christmaseseses ago. It’s a great big spacious room with wooden floors and heavy curtains, which gives us a chance to really capture the sound of the cello in a large open space.

 

A nice big room - that's what we like

It’s also got nice spotlights and we brought beer and cakes which made the whole thing quite cosy. Because it’s not soundproofed we have to wait patiently for the odd car reversing incompetently around the corner and on one occasion the loudest conversation in the world down in the street. By and large though it’s a price worth paying for the sound we can get in there.

 

Lou and cake... she later ate all that cake by herself.
 Nobody else had any at all.

It also gave Liam a chance to use his new microphones which took him nearly 100 years to get delivered from America by useless couriers. More about that in the technical details at the bottom.

 

One of Liam's new mics compared to a beer bottle...
they're nothing like each other.

 

So, over two four-hour sessions we’ve managed to get parts for about 8 songs, including harmonies and clever layered up bits. We had an issue with a buzzing sound from the cello at one point but Lou beat it into submission with 10 feet of sellotape, or ‘cellotape’ as it’s now known.

 

In the next couple of weeks we’ll be working with Lou to get the rest of the parts right then we’ll go in and record them as well.

 

Lou celling

In other news, two of The Peryls have now appeared on the front cover of Transmitter magazine... it’s quite the thing and we’ll be doing a whole post about that soon.

 

Don't forget you can view all the photos from the live sessions by Nicolai Amter here. You can also watch a short video of us dicking about.

 

Next up – ‘Day 11, which could be ‘make room for more cello’ or ‘but this is how I always sing it’ or even ‘if you don’t blow your own trumpet, you have to hire someone’.

 

 

Technical info from Liam

We close-miked the cello using a Rode K2 condenser mic, from a distance of 1 or 2 feet. As we had a big room, we also stuck up a single omni mic, about 5 metres from the cello to capture all the nice reverb.

 

For this I used a Little Blondie, which is a tiny and seemingly indestructable microphone. They're custom made by a very nice man in America, who was extremely understanding and helpful when a succession of very crappy parcel services managed to take over 4 months to deliver them. 

 

I would strongly recommend never using a certain company whose name rhymes with Arse'll Force.