done something!

So my weekend sojourn in the fortress of unsolitude that is a 15 person weekend in Elevden Centre Parcs inspired me to do some recording, and as it happens I have the house to myself tonight and tomorrow as Jane's mum's been a victim of the sheet ice that replaced the UK streets last week, nasty. So, anyway, Jane and Tom have gone to cheer her up. You'd never tell from the state of the front room though, as seen to the left. I decided that i probably wouldn't end up keeping the acoustic tracks I record now, for one thing I coudn't find my lovely closed back headphones so the click was bleeding into the mic when I was doing the over the shoulder positioning, so I went for a point the mic' at the 12th fret on the fingerboard and just get the sound approach. After a number of run throughs and a bit of squeaky chair noise that I was able to deal with by simply not moving while playing. I got something down that I was happy with, and did some very slapdash vocals too, to aid with the feel. So tomorrow I'm going to go completely mental and try and record some (very quiet) drums here! I will start early, and hopefully therefore not get murdered, once I have the drums, I'll redo the acoustic, lay some bass and slide on and then do a few vocal tracks, and bang the tune is done. To that end I'm off now to put a new strainer on my snare drum!

recording acoustic guitar

So now i have to figure this out, how to record my lame encore steel guitar and not make it sound like a lame encore steel guitar. I'm thinking take the LDC I have over my shoulder like my ear? As I quite like the sound. I have a really nice pickup courtesy of Mr P Chandler, as well. Hmmm, it's probably awful, but I love that box, it was an 18th birthday present from my brother. My niece, who was 18 herself last year, came in from the car before my brother and asked me "do you like your guitar?", somewhat spoiling the surprise. Never mind though, one can hardly hold 2 year olds responsible for such things (although secretly i did!). Probably no posts this weekend as I'm going on the first family holiday I have had since I was about 11, strangely I am now the dad. Centreparcs, are you ready?

"studio" time

So i've decided I'm going to record the drums for this first tune in the Portland arms. It seems a good idea since the place is under threat, so I may even have one of their massive burgers between recording one tune and practice with cavalier, and FIGHT THE POWER. The big live room should give me ample opportunity to get some room sound going on. Maybe I'll do the recorder man thing



with my sdc naiant mic's and use my Rode LDC as a distant room mic. Hmmmmm decisions, decisions!

Got some studio time pencilled

The ever willing bugs at
Half Ton has clued me in to some free evenings in the studio later in the month. Mayhap I will get a more than one bit of drums done. I intend to record drums using the tried and true Glyn johns method. I realised last time I recorded that I'd been doing it wrong for ages, as I'd been using omni condenser mic's instead of cardioid, what a div. I am eternally grateful to the people on the forum at electrical audio for all the masses of useful info that can be gleaned from it! The Glyn Johns method for drum recording is awesome in it's simplicity, as pictured! All of this exciting news comes amidst more snow, sadly not enough to close my place of work, or failing that destroy it completely, I wander if there are ever any Tsunami in essex?