recordings | The Skamonics - London ska band

Demo recording – an update

Feb 14, 2011 recordings Comments are off

As we’ve explained we need some new demo tracks, and we are now half way through producing three new vocal tracks to complement our largely instrumental CD.

At the beginning of January we did the trickiest bit which is recording drums, thanks to Mark’s mobile recording rig. We also laid down the guitar rhythm track, and added a guitar solo to one of the tunes.

Since then we have been slowly building up the rest, and have now finished the recording phase.

After the drums, the next track to be added was the bass. This was relatively straightforward as Nigel can do this with his PC. It’s not as portable as Mark’s rig but is perfectly capable of doing single tracks.

After that Nigel recorded Veronica playing keyboards and singing, and did a rough mix of the full rhythm section plus vocals ready for the horns to overdub.

The final recording session took place yesterday when the horns crammed into Nigel’s dining room to add their parts. This required a lot of careful planning.

First we had to move furniture around so that we could fit three players in. We’d love to record the whole band together as if we were playing live as that would catch the proper Skamonics vibe. But that is too much of a technical challenge as we don’t have enough kit ourselves to do this, nor do we have access to a large enough room suitable for recording a seven piece line-up.

But we were determined to record the horns together. Adding them one at a time would simply not have worked. It’s vital that the horn players can play off each other. All the nuances that come with any instrument that you blow need to be caught together. It’s not just a matter of playing the right note at the right time, but of how you accent a note and how long it lasts.

Second we had to drape the room with duvets, bits of acoustic foam and Rockwool in order to dampen the acoustics. There is always a danger that instruments recorded in small rooms sound boxy. Just as the great long reverbs you get in concert halls or churches can sound gorgeous, small rooms can sound nasty.

Thirdly we had to really well organised as inevitably we did not have enough time. If you don’t know about recording, you may find it hard to believe bands can take days or weeks recording a single song. Anyone who has done it knows exactly why. There is so much that can go wrong, and always the feeling that just one more take will deliver the perfect recording.

We had just over four hours with everyone available in which to record three songs worth of horn parts, add a flute overdub to one song and capture a sax and a trombone solo for the other two.

And we needed to video one of the songs, as we are trying to make a video of recording of one of the songs.

This was a challenge.

We weren’t helped by the headphone amp that decided to start distorting like crazy, nor by computer crashes, but we just about got everything done. Everything behaved fine when recording single tracks, and in a technical run through the day before, but not when we were under time pressure.

But there were still a few wrinkles. Steve played a brilliant solo, but neither the good or the just about all-right video cameras were running, only the cheap and nasty one. So we will have to work out how to cover that up in the video. The moral of that is that you can’t engineer a recording session and video it at the same time.

Nor did we have time to listen carefully through to everything to check that there aren’t mistakes or odd fluffs that we did not notice.

Now the hard work of mixing and video editing starts.

This takes hours. Mark is mixing two tracks, and Nigel is doing the other and the video that goes with it.

Getting a decent sounding mix is both a science and an art. While we have no need to resort to the kind of Autotune trickery that some singers need to sing in tune, there’s still a lot to do to get a recording to sound half-decent so that all the instruments fit together smoothly. Even though we’re aiming for a fairly raw and natural sound as these are meant to promote our live playing, there is still a lot to do.

Perhaps we’ll post in more detail about the mixing and mastering stage, when we’ve done that.

Demo recording – day one

By skamonic

Jan 4, 2011 recordings, videos Comments are off

We need some new demo tracks.

Our cd is still an excellent advert for our instrumental tracks. But as at least half of any live set is normally made up of vocal numbers we need more than the one vocal track that is already on our cd if people are going to get an accurate picture of how we sound.

It may shatter some illusions, but not all bands live communally in big houses with recording studios attached. Nor are we all so time and cash rich that we can hire out Abbey Road for a week. But between Mark and Nigel we do own enough equipment to record ourselves, and Mark has lots of experience.

So yesterday we began the slow process of recording three new demo songs – and doing a video of one.

The trickiest part of any recording is doing the drums. To get a decent drum sound you need to use at least four microphones – one on the kick drum, one on the snare and two overhead that can capture the whole kit. In fact we used a mic on each tom as well, and one under the snare to get its real crack – seven in all. It’s impractical to do this at home too, drums are too noisy and you cannot get away with recording them in a small boxy room.

So we begged and borrowed a bigger room and Mark arrived with all his kit – both drum and recording at 10:30. Setting all this up takes two to three hours. Some people have been known to spend days getting a good drum before they record anything.

But after a morning setting up the equipment, Mark and Nigel were joined by Frank and Veronica to lay down some tracks. The real objective was to record the drums and guitar as we will add the bass, keys and vocals later, but it gets a much better feel if there’s the whole rhythm section playing.

The recording went pretty well. After recording Enola Gay we realised that our live version is seven minutes long, which is a bit much for a a demo. So we quickly chopped bits out of each song before recording it – losing a verse here and a solo there so that they all come in at about four minutes.

Once we had worked out the new arrangements we got everything down in one or two takes (not counting a few false starts particularly in My Boy Lollipop – but what’s that between friends?).

In addition we wanted to video Can’t get you out of my head – but as we didn’t have anyone else to operate the camera this meant doing it quite a few times to get enough video footage (not that digital video comes in feet).

We then finished the day – after pausing for some of Nigel’s homemade Christmas cake – by redoing the guitar parts and adding a guitar solo to Enola Gay.

Next it’s Nigel’s turn to add the final bass parts and record Veronica’s vocals and keys. They can all be done at home. Then we’ll finish with the horns.

Some dodgy live recordings

By skamonic

Sep 6, 2010 gig, recordings Comments are off

We’ve got a new Zoom H2 recorder (well, actually a refurbished one off Ebay).

It had its first try-out at last Saturday’s gig.

We thought we would share a couple of tunes via the blog.

But first a health warning.

We simply stuck the recorder on a mic stand in the middle of the stage area.

The sound the band hears on stage has very little relation to what the audience hears out front.

This is because the horns and vocals are being projected by the PA. On stage we have monitors for these, but the sound can’t be too loud or we would get feedback. That’s a particular problem with the vocals. Not only was Veronica the furthest from the recorder, but the horns, who are naturally louder anyway, were much closer.

No bass, drums or guitar go through the PA so they have to be loud on stage so that they project with the PA into the audience. The recorder was also close to the drums and bass.

And of course any commercial recording is carefully mixed before issuing. You can’t do that when you just stick a microphone up in the middle of a band.

So if you’re prepared to use lots of imagination to imagine what the sound was like on the dance floor, here’s Man in the Street. This is one of the 60s ska original instrumentals we play, so the very quiet vocals are not a problem here.