The last leaves of Autumn....
Here we are at the tail end of autumn now firmly under our new identity 'Ragged Moon'. The trees are looking decidedly bare, the dark evenings and cold damp nights are back. Looking on the bright side, the on-coming winter months are the best time to be shut in the control room beavering away on our recordings and projects. We'll be composing and crafting songs and samples whilst not feeling like we're missing out on the sunshine.
Looking back over the summer and autumn there's been so much going on here...
Lila J
 |
| Lila J performing recently at the Prince Albert Stroud |
Lila J are an acoustic duo from Newent. A combination of Lisa's soulful vocals and Gav's unique guitar style make their collection of songs an eclectic journey. Lila J came in to record a 'live' performance album capturing the spirit of their songs. With titles such as Gypsy Van, Night Polka, Dearest Mabel, Overboard and Clouds I found the songs inspiring, endearing and enchanting all at once and was completely hooked.
The duo set up in the 'Longroom' and Lisa's vocal was captured with a U87 and the Avalon channel, The acoustic guitars were tracked with a mix of their internal pickups and Rode NT5's mic's for some small condenser detail. The songs were well rehearsed and many were done in one take. Niks and I were aided by our work experience trainees Emily Hawker and Harry Slattery who made great contributions to the whole recording process.
Lila J are currently out there performing at various venues in Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire (notably the Queen's Head in Monmouth 18th Dec 2014) if you want to see them.
I hope to see 'Lila J' back in the studio with a new set of songs for the next album! (Photo's by Geoffrey Head)
Here's a link to Lila J's website
Here's a link to Lila J's website
Lila J website
The Racketeers
In August cover band the Racketeers came in to use the Skyspace to make a live performance video in conjunction with Stroud based company Zebrafish media. We set up the band as a live gig and all the mic's were fed back to the control room. Zebrafish's Matt Brawley directed the shoot and Nik's and I recorded and mixed the audio ready for the video editing. (The Skyspace is being used more and more as a location for video shoots and we are planning to expand on this in the forthcoming months.)
The Racketeers are lead by frontman Robin Lewis who also plays guitar and congas. Robin delivered fine vocal performances captured with a combination of an SM58 and our U87. Bass guitarist Simon Ives' tight playing was recorded through a combination of his mic'd bass cab and a DI signal through our TL Audio channel which works well on bass guitar adding some valve edge. Shaun Cook's awesome lead and rhythm guitar work using two mic's on his 4x10cab, an SM57 and an AKG214 which I find really smooth for guitar. Paul Donovan's drum kit was recorded with an Audix D6 for the bass drum and the ubiquitous SM57 on the snare. His well tuned kit sounded great and his playing style punchy and accurate.
The Racketeers are a busy cover band playing a huge range of song from the 50's, 60's and 70's and have a busy gig schedule. Check them out at their website;
theracketeers.co.uk
Casimir Greenfield
Work has continued through the summer on 'Casimir Greenfield' project. The new album is now complete except for a few tweaks here and there plus a batch of alternative mixes. It's been a monster project and the 'beast' will be unleashed when the album is placed with the right record label, one that will do justice to this very unique and rich collection of songs from Casimir. Pulling in many musicians from Stroud, and the surrounding areas, the arrangements and instrumentation are colourful and diverse. Casimir Greenfield deserves a detailed blog entry in it's own right which will be out in the next few weeks with loads of info about this stunning project.
Here is a link to Casimir Greenfield on Reverbnation
Here is a link to Casimir Greenfield on Reverbnation
Casimir Greenfield
Look out for huge blog update soon!
Control Room Work Experience....
 |
| Emily Hawker and Harry Slattery at the mixing desk |
 |
| Guitarist Harry Slattery |
Early in the summer I had two students from local schools to help out in the control room. Emily Hawker and Harry Slattery spent a week here gaining experience in music production. Both keen musicians they helped out on our commercial recording projects and seeing how it all runs on a busy session. I set them the task of writing and recording a song in two days. After some deep thought and head scratching Emily came up with a track called 'Caught in the Monsoon' which Emily and Harry crafted into shape, Emily providing main vocals and keyboards and Harry on guitar with backing vocals and whistle. I thought this was the best way of taking our students through the whole process and the end result was a really great pop song. Emily has now uploaded this to 'youtube' and has had it played on BBC introducing. Well done both, I hope their week with us was as rewarding to them as it was to Ragged Moon.
 |
| Emily Hawker Singer/songwriter |
Listen to 'Caught in the Monsoon' and judge it for yourself.....
Caught in the Monsoon
Sonic magic - new toys
In August I took delivery of two new tech essentials;
Universal Audio 2-1176
 |
| The Daddy |
Avalon Vt737sp
 |
| True love |
Alongside the daddy of compressors above Ragged Moon have invested in the Avalon 737 recording channel, a vacuum tube beauty which partners our Neumann U87 perfectly, gorgeous transparent compression, a pure and open pre-amp and powerful EQ which can dial in 'air' at 20-32KHz, this baby is now working hard on virtually every session just doing it's thing....very well. Maybe true love does exist after all :)
Further blogging adventures next week for parts 2 and 3 of the Autumn updates...there's so much going on;
Tallulah
Tobias Mapleton
Barney Morse Brown - Duotone
Middle Aged Angst
Sophronie - Fire in the Heavens
Emily Barker
The Pigeon Swing
Joe Chiccarelli Seminar
Southside
Andrew Hopwood
Sunday Sessions....and more more more!
With that I'll leave you with a seasonal image until next time. Now where did I put my coffee?
No comments:
Post a Comment