Tag Archive for: Chris Hancock

M. McCosker Fith Studio Session

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A graduate of SAE has set up a studio down the road from my newish residency in Thirroul, namely, Fith Studios.

I’d been looking forward to taking a session down there, and some vocals and guitars for Michelle McCosker’s debut album seemed the perfect combination.

Fith Studio is a small, one live room, one control room set up, featuring a TLA Audio console, a small selection of outboard, and owned and run by some lovely crew.

How did it sound? The room was small enough, and live enough that when the vocalist hit their louder notes, the room sound became quite present in the recording when using condenser mics. Fortunately, the room reflections suited the tracks, sounded pleasant, and therefore the recording became a recording in the old fashion sense of the term; a record of a particular performance in a particular room / acoustic environment.

The stand out signal chains from the session included Fith’s in-house Neumann TLM 49 combined with their Neve 1073. The TLM 49 shares the same capsule as the famous U47 & M49, and approaches the warm sonic signature of the tube-based U47, but from a transformer solid-state technology. This into the legendary 1073, was a lovely coupling for a classy vintage vocal tone.

Also sounding great was a combination of gear that I brought down to the session, that being a pair of Sennheiser 8040s, coupled with a pair of Telefunken V672 preamps. The warm, classy definition of the 8040s combined with the vintage quality and character of the V672s was a great stereo A/ B micing combo on acoustic guitars.

Reflections; the studio is cool, but suits louder music generally. Those TLA preamps in the console need a bit of volume to get them going as they have a max of 60 dB of gain. Further, the slight sound bleed from outside noises and weather means that again, loud sources are the safest best for recording in this space.

Nevertheless, stoked to have such a studio within walking distance from home, and stoked to be recording the great vocals and songs of M. McCosker.

Below are a few shots from the session.

 

The Grove Studios

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Recently, I visited The Grove Studios, Studio 1, to record drums for a client’s record. We stayed at the studio over two days, loved the studio, pulled some great sounds and had a great time. A big thank you to Scott, Izaac and Owen for having us.

The input list for the session is at the end of this post. Stand out signal paths from the session include; the Crunch / Crotch mic, our Gabriel Roth / Daptone, one mic technique, and the Kick Out signal.

For a crunch mic, I usually will use a Sennheiser MD441-U (left), but went with a MD421 (right) as despite The Grove’s great mic locker, they were without a 441.

   

The mic worked well, but the real gold within this signal chain was a Neve 1064 (Pre-amp and EQ), and DBX 162 Stereo Compressor.

 

The Neve 1064 has that lovely colouration that has been commented on by many, and the DBX 162 can be driven into harmonic colouration as well. All up, it was a tight, warm and coloured signal that proved very punchy within the overall drum sound.

On a similar one mic technique, we used Gabriel Roth’s one mic trick, that being a mic placed side of kick, almost under the snare. The mic chosen was a vintage Reslo ribbon, notorious for a mellow lo-fi high-end frequency content, or lack thereof. The Reslo was patched into the SSL 4000 G console to balance the mellow top end of the ribbon with the brighter SSL preamp and EQ options. Further, an 1176 Silver Face was inserted to smash the signal, apply colouration, and to compress the signal and bring forth all the drum sounds into a tight image. Again, within the drum mix, this particular mic gave us access to a punchy, lo-fi, coloured overall drum sound.

 

The kick-out signal was comprised of a Rodes Classic in Omni (for a larger bottom end), a blanket to help the kick have separation from the rest of the drum kit, and the Neve 1064 preamp for a coloured and thick low mid. The signal was then routed to Empirical Labs Distressor; a slow attack, quick release applied. The high pass button was engaged in the signal detector to allow the bottom end under 80Hz to not trigger the compression and result in a larger uncompressed low end.

In conclusion, what a live room and control room. Very highly recommended for any studio needs. Lovely grounds, functional kitchen, and accommodation to boot. Below are some pictures from the session and the input list.

 

INPUT LIST:

1. Bass DI (J48 Radial Active DI) – Quad 8 – LA 2

2. Kick in – D6 – SSL – (1176 Black Face insert)

3. Kick out –  Rodes Classic – Neve 1064 – Distressor

4. Sub Kick – SSL – (1176 Black Face insert)

5. Snare up – Beyer Dynamic M201 – Telefunken V76 – Distressor

6. Snare down SM57 – SSL

7. Hi Hat – Octava MK012 – SSL

8. Rack Tom – Sennheiser MD-421 – SSL

9. Rack Tom – Sennheiser MD-421 – SSL

10. Floor Tom – Sennheiser MD-421 – SSL

11. OH L – Coles 4038 – SSL (C2 Smart L)

12. OH R – Coles 4038 – SSL (C2 Smart R)

13. Crunch / Crotch Mic – ? – Neve 1064 – dbx 162 L

14. Daptone (side of Kick position) – Reslo Ribbon – SSL (1176 Silver Face insert)

15. Room close – RCA DX 77 SSL – (1176 Blue Face insert)

16. Room Far – AKG C34 Stereo Condenser – Chandler TG-1 L

17. Room Far – AKG C34 Stereo Condenser – Chandler TG-1 R

18. Vocal Guide – SM7B – SSL

19. Guitar Tele DI – Neve 1064 –

20. Guitar Tele Amp – SM57 – Neve 1064 –

21. Hammond – Leslie Speaker – L  – AKG C414 – (Urei 1178 L)

22. Hammond – Leslie Speaker – R – AKG C414 (Urei 1178 R)

Saad album finished + glowing Amnplify review

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I recently finished mixing a contemporary Pop project for Sydney singer-songwriter, SaaD, aka Dylan Regtop.

The influences and brief for the overall album sound contained references such as Bon Iver, S.Carey and the like.

Challenges with the record included the artist’s desire to have drums and bass that could hardly be heard, yet still desiring a balanced mix, ie not too top heavy. As a result, I used a lot of very processed lo fi drums, and bass content, often stemming out to a cassette player and back into the DAW to achieve murkier sounds that whilst having more harmonics, had less attack and audibility within the mix.

The album was a pleasure to work on, and the brief precise. However, the vocals were by no means an easy mix. The takes were great, but the vocalist is quite sibilant, which when combined with the harsh top end of their mic, Rhodes NT2A, was hard to control in the mix. Sibilance had to therefore be dealt with in multiple stages, those including tape to mellow the high frequencies, standard de-essers, Pro Q3 dynamic EQ and F6’s dynamic EQ.

Another production journey that further related to the vocal, was the presence of mouth clicks, through out each track. The Rhodes’ brittle top end once again had any mouth noise unpleasantly emphasised, but through treatment by Izotope’s RX, we were able to de-click the vocals with a great outcome. Note a forth coming YouTube tutorial will be coming on RX and de-click vocals.

Finally, post the production journey, some positive reviews are starting to come in.

Amnplify comment;

“musically, the album is a pastiche of atmospheric genre pieces given depth by Regtop’s extraordinary ability to create sparse, but haunting soundscapes.”

Further, it seems we achieved the production brief, Amnplify comment,

“it’s tempting to draw comparisons to something like Bon Iver or Sigur Ros, though even those records are more akin to conventional structure than the individual pieces on SaaD. Sonically there are similarities to some sod ven stuff, perhaps even Beta Radio, but even then the sparsity of this album is probably beyond the reach of both of those acts.”

Anatole – Medlow Bath

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In 2018, I was at Music Feeds studio with Anatole / Jonathan Baker recording some grand piano parts for his forthcoming releases. One of those track has just been released and it’s a beauty. Enjoy!

Danga Island comes to town

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2019 kicked off in fine form with a 4 day session for long term collaborator and man of mystery from Danga Island.

He and his musical muse, Cam Cooke, were down from their bohemia of Dangar Island, and had drummer Mark Spence in tow from Port Macquarie.

The crew had hired a beautiful mansion in Annandale with view across the city, and next to an allegedly haunted church. The sessions mainly took place at Musicfeeds aka Megaphon Studios with DI’d guitar and bass, whilst the focus was on great drum takes from Mark. By night a bit of extra tracking was also conducted at the mansion.

With all the inevitable large swirling psychedelic guitars and synths to come, we decided on a tight, smaller room drum sound, with a couple well placed room mics that allow us to expand the drums into a more splashy big room sound.

Notable elements in this session were;

The kick sound. We created a tunnel to avoid spill into the kick mics, and used the legendary D12 on the inside, plus a TLM107 on the outside. The TLM107, just keeps surprising. It seems a workhorse for a widest possible range of applications; vocals to kick drum mic ing.

The snare also sounded gorgeous, and for this session we taped both a AKG451 and a SM57 together for a bit of tonal flexibility in the mix.

Lastly of note, was the the movement between Pro Tools in the studio, and cloud-based multi-track recorder Soundtrap for the late night mansion sessions. Further, the acoustics of the large mansion were also of note and I look forward to hearing the takes back from those overdubs.

Non-Urban Decay VR collaboration

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Recently I had the pleasure to collaborate on a VR installation entitled, Non-Urban Decay, for the New Tricks group exhibition at Tortuga Studios, St Peters.

Grace Kingston, used photogrammetry techniques to create assets in Agisoft Photoscan and created, with assistance from Games Academic (SAE) Geoff Hill, a VR environment in Unity. The environment was then sonically realised by myself, giving a range of audio assets to Unity wizard Geoff Hill, to express the progression from natural environment into a decaying digital environment.

Below are a few images from the exhibition.

360 Project for Masters

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As part of my masters, in particular a module entitled, AUD456 – Immersive Audio, I have been studying the world of 360 content, with a focus on spatialising audio within a 360 field. Please wear headphones when viewing the above to experience the 360 Audio.

For the major work, a group of musicians and non-musicians alike were invited into SAE Studios for an Sunday afternoon improvisation. The work is titled, Men’s Circle, and features a group of men in a circular format, playing a range of provided instruments.

The instruments included; an acoustic guitar, various bells, a singing bowl, a bamboo flute, a melodic wood box, a pre-prepared Push control surface populated with field recordings, vinyl crackle and percussive one-shots, amplified via a small guitar amp, a contact microphone connected to a mini Orange amp, den-den daiko drums, and a rain stick. The participants were encouraged to choose an instrument that they felt comfortable with and change after each improvisation to another instrument.

The improvisation was captured via an InstaPro 360 Camera. Both visuals and audio were captured on the device, however, the Ambisonics microphone had some issues and glitches were present in the file. Fortunately, coupled with the in-camera Ambisonics microphone, was 4 small diaphragm condensers, Sennheiser 8040 x 2, Rodes NT55 x 2, plus 3 dynamic microphones that were used to capture a vocal performance (Shure SM58) and close mic the two amplifiers (SM57).

These microphone inputs were phase balanced and recorded to Pro Tools. The mono signals from the close micing were then spatialised using the free FB360 Workstation plugins with the DAW Reaper.

As the sounds were close mic’d, Ambi Verb HD from Noise Makers was also used to emulate a sense of the space and at points to embellish instruments such as the flute and voice with a large reverb.

To embellish the work and in order to see how Reaper and the FB 360 workstation handled Ambisonic files, some 2nd Order Ambisonic files were created using Sound Particles. The files are of an ambient nature and are only very subtly mixed in toward the end of the improvisation. The agenda was to not detract from the improvisation.

Hoped that you enjoy the improvisation and it’s presentation in both 360 Audio and Vision.

TEChSLo included in Deep Moments Vol. 2

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An original track from my Dub Techno alias TEChSLO, plus a couple of my tracks being remixed were recently included on GOS Music Studios release, DEEP MOMENTS Vol. 2.

Noni Hazlehurst – Customs House VIVID Sydney 2018

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L-R – Adam Lowe (Event Director Vivid Sydney), Lucy Keeler (Artistic Director Ample Projects), Noni Hazlehurst, Ignatius Jones (Creative Director Vivid Sydney)

Once again I’m helping Ample Projects with voice over recording for their Vivid 2018 content. This year Customs House will be receiving a more narrative treatment than in previous years.

I therefore had the pleasure of recording Noni Hazlehurst reading May Gibbs’ Snugglepot & Cuddlepie. Many of us grew up listening to Noni on Play School. Beyond having a familiar comforting tone, she also nails a script; what a vocal talent.

Not only did we have Noni and the infatiguable Lucy Keeler (Artistic Directore Ample Projects) in the studio that day, we also had Vivid royalty, Ignatius Jones (Creative Director Vivid Sydney) and Adam Lowe (Event Director Vivid Sydney).

Royal Chant March 2018

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Mark Spence, the multi-instrumentalist, mastermind behind Royal Chant was down again for a couple days of tracking.

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