Day One in studio - Setup

Hey all,

Just got back from a days work in the studio. We didn't get to do that much from a band's point of view cos it was all down to getting rad basic sounds from which we'll record the basic tracks for our songs - drums, bass and the 2 guitars. We took a camera along to take some snaps but unfortunately Jem forgot it in studio (wasn't my bad this time :) ) but tomorrow I'll edit this and add a couple so you can see what the whole setup looks like and what went down. For now I hope you enjoy this picture of me getting caught on camera not having learnt all the words to "A little help from my friends" from our occasional switch-instrument house party cover band The Daredevils. Note Sash rocking the bass... and the styling suit :)



The way we're doing it this time is to have all of our amps in the same room we're jamming and mic them each up with 2 mics. That's music to my ears (excuse the cheesy pun) cos usually from a bass point of view I go D.I. so the amp sound makes it feel like we're playing a gig, which is precisely the vibe we're going for - making the songs sound as if we're all playing our parts in the song to you at the same time, ie. the same vibe as a Plastics gig. It feels so comfortable so that's definitely gonna help us capture our vibe the best. Gordon worked out all the mic configurations and put them all through different compressors (something we didn't do last time) and as a basic sound it sounds fricken awesome! He sat mostly in the control room working with Matt "back of the bus" James and Carel from Sound and Motion guiding them towards the sound and looking up the history of Africa hehe! I've unfortunately got a bit of an ear infection at the moment which makes loud sounds quite hard to bear (hardly ideal at this moment in time) but the drugs definitely help ;)

So a lot of waiting for us but lots of behind the scenes work. Tomorrow is our time to shine and we'll be tracking 3 or 4 songs so it's a biggie. We've also decided to do one of our songs in the most old school analogue way - to tape which we're all excited about. I've always wanted to experience recording the way The Beatles and the guys from the 60's did it so here's our chance.

Till tomorrow, time to rest my ears now.

Karl