My Projects and Work

Modern Rock Drums

Taking notes from the methods of Darrell Thorp, I experimented with using a low mono overhead in conjunction with a spaced stereo pair of overheads. By using a Coles 4038 ribbon mic as the mono overhead, much of the body of the kit is kept in the centre. This is complimented by using brighter and thinner AKG C451s for the spaced pair of overheads, creating a sense of width whilst not adding too much weight to the left and right channels. This then allows for midrange focused instruments (in this case electric guitars) to be panned hard left and right and not compete for space with the stereo overheads. The mono overhead then acts to maintain clarity in the centre and add cohesion between the close mics.

Folk Band Recording

The basic track (acoustic guitar and vocal) was cut using a close mic on each element, in combination with a mid/side setup a few meters away, providing cohesion and some stereo width to compliment the 2 mono close mics. The rest of the elements were then overdubbed to the basic track. For the electric slide guitar part (tracked at home), the amp was turned up loud, with a close mic on the speaker and a second mic facing away from the amp and out into the bathroom, adding a sense of scale and depth as the amp resonates the room.  

Talking Heads Track Recreation

Instrumental recreation of 'Once In A Lifetime', from Talking Heads' 1980 'Remain In Light' album. To keep true to the periods popular techniques, the drums were tracked in 3 passes - kick, snare and hat together, then toms, then crash cymbals. This crucially allows for greater processing on the individual elements, allowing for the very thin sounding cymbals and heavy nonlinear reverb on the toms.  In order to achieve the swirling soup of synths, 4 tracks of arpeggios, of varying lengths and tempos, were layered on top of one another. Guitar and bass tones are simply DI with some heavy compression and chorus, achieving that quintessential early 80's sound.

Live Mathrock Session

SUPERMARCHÉ came into the studio to track a live demo for an upcoming session. The band played brilliantly along to the prerecorded backing tracks (rhythm guitar and vocals) provided in advance by the singer, which are what you still hear in the final mix. Notable tracking techniques include the combination of rear kit mics along with a mid/side arrangement in front of the kit for drums, providing a wide and natural sound, as well as using the nulls of a figure of 8 microphone on the saxophone to provide clean separation from the drums, despite them both being tracked in the same room (see gallery for diagram).

Radiohead Track Recreation

Instrumental recreation of Radiohead's 'Karma Police'. Based off of session photos, we recreated the drum mic'ing setup - alongside typical close mics and spaced overheads, a third overhead mic is placed in the centre of the kit, and higher up than the spaced pair. This mic helps to add length to the snare and keep the stereo image of the kit more focused. The distant room mics were placed behind a baffle, allowing them to be compressed heavily without destroying the cymbal sound - this creates most of the weight of the kit. In order to recreate the wall of noise in the outro section, two delay pedals were fed into eachother with the feedback all the way up, which was then sent to a guitar amplifier to achieve some further distortion, which on the original track would have come from simply saturating the tape echo unit.

Blues/Rock Recording

A vintage sound with a modern edge. One notable inclusion is the use of a centre overhead microphone in conjunction with a spaced pair, maintaining a strong mono image of the drum kit to ground the doubled and hard panned guitars and percussion. 

Live Band Recording

Who Killed Bunny? came into the studio to to track some demos together as a live recording, providing the interesting challenge of achieving clarity and isolation in a relatively small space. This was done through the use of baffling and by taking advantage of the off-axis rejection of the microphones used, reducing extraneous noise. By using exclusively condenser mics on the kit (C414's on overheads and rooms, C451s on close mics), the drums have a clarity and open-ness that cuts through the guitars whilst still allowing them to breath. Vocals were later overdubbed.

Glyn Johns Mic'ing Method

Testing a super simple setup for a vintage but still full drum sound - 4038's as overheads, 57 on kick in and snare side. Notice the separation between all the elements of the kit (particularly the hihat) despite the lack of direct mics - they must've been doing something right in the 60's.

Folk Recording

Basic track (guitar and vocal) were tracked together live, with an AKG C414 on the guitar and Neumann U87 on vocal. With both mics set to figure of 8, the nulls of the polar patterns can be angled to reject bleed of the other source in the respective mics. The reverb on this track is mostly from a chamber set up in a stairwell (see gallery for photos), and the off centre guitar harkens back to early Bob Dylan recordings.

90s Style Grunge/Rock

Instruments recorded individually to allow somewhat aggressive processing during the mix. In true 90s fashion, put every mic you own on the drum kit - notably C414s on the toms to capture a rich low end, and a C451 pencil condenser on the snare top, giving the detail and clarity needed to cut through the guitars. The filtered vocal delays in the outro were recorded through a pair of walkie talkies, and the intro was ran through an 80s cassete recorder.

Modern Hip Hop/Jazz Fusion Drums

Tried out one of Steve Albini's later methods for this recording - a spaced pair of "rear kit mics" around head height, looking very slightly down on the kit, and a mid/side setup in front of the kit, along with regular close mic'ing. The rear mics capture a lot of the body of the kit, hearing more of the reso/snare side heads than traditional overheads, and the front kit M/S setup captures a lot of cymbal detail as well as room sound, giving the kit a really nice sense of depth. Note the small diaphragm condensers on both hihat and snare, to capture the subtle and intricate ghost notes and accents.

Beatles Cover with 60s Tracking Techniques

To match the time period, each instrument was mic'd minimally and (barre the vocal) with only ribbon and dynamic microphones. Bass and drums were tracked together, and piano and guitar together, both for efficiency and to create more interplay between the performances. Much of the processing was done on the recording console on the way in, and the reverb was made using a stairwell echo chamber, keeping things somewhat period correct.