Howdy Folks, we're back from the recording session and as promised, here's the blog. Rosie and the guys got some pics and footage and this time I am really hoping they'll overcome their dislike of the Blogging editor and get something posted.
Luddites.
Ahem.
That was a heck of a week and after consideration (and a well needed sleep) it looks like we got a result. The proof will be when we go into the studio for review, but that's not today's subject.
Right now, kick back, relax and enjoy a week in the country with Stormcellar recording Hired Guns & Borrowed Glory.
Item 1 - Thank you
To paraphrase the old quote 'If I have seen afar, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants' I can more personally say 'If we have made an album its only because we have received the willing assistance and help of a whole bunch of people'.
So to our personal giants, thank you.
In no particular order our thanks and love go to Monte Chan, Bill Varday, Geoff Columbus (AKA DDJ), Vicki Slattery (and MJ for letting us borrow her), Rick O'Neil, Pete Doherty (Saint Peter), Bill Powell and Pip at Bawley Bush Cottages. Yes you'll all get thanks on the album art too, but this is the right place to start the blog.
T-1 - The Night Before
What's the best thing you can do before a recording trip? Who knows, but we decided to do a gig.
Once again back to our favourite White Bay haunt at the Bald Rock.
We were joined on Bass by Mr Arthur 'Mitch' Mitchell for the evening. Cheers to Jan, Martin, Suzanne and Claudette, Josh, Fred , Joe and all the folks who came out for the evening.
We ended by Midnight, packed away the gear and headed back for a rest before the early start to the first day/
Day 1
With Carl still away and the two huge sound isolation cabinets to shift, we needed what is technically known as a Big Ass Van, which we picked up.
During the design phase for the cabinets, we opted to make the padding removable, which made the packing a little easier as they doubled as road cases.
Packing the requirements for a recording session and 'Away Mission' (uh oh, star trek reference, Tres Geeky) is a task and Tetris skills are handy.
With the van packed, GPS programmed, and a nifty plug for the iPhone into the radio console, we proceeded out of town, down south towards Bawley Point.
Rosie and I stopped in Berry (Tourist Paradise) to see all the day trippers heading back to Sydney after a Sunday at the markets. I was hoping to catch some of that awesome Chai they do at a particular shop down there but with Tourists gone, we were out of luck.
However, Paul and Theo had located a suitable alternative vendor of comestibles (ooh arr, pies like)
We arrived at the recording location as evening settled. To our great delight, the location was terrific.
Yes, yours truly was on KP for the week. Such is my lot. Expect a cook book soon.
We started unloading the van, checking the room for acoustics, (wandering around clapping and making meaningful ''Hmm' noises) and then setting up according to the initial floor place (see previous blogs)
The Bawley Bush Cottages are set on Lake Willinga, a few Km's back from Bawley Point and the surf beaches there. At night, standing on the lawn that runs down to the lake, you can hear the sound of the ocean rumbling in the distance.
On either side of the cottages is rainforest (citation required...might be some other type of forest) filled with Birds, Bees, Goannas, Bugs (I got bitten something shocking by Mozzies) and assorted Noisy Wildlife. Given that we'd borrowed some massively powerful microphones, you'll no doubt hear some Native Wildlife noises on the album :-)
I went outside that first night to look at the stars, here's the view back towards the Cockatoo Room (our main recording area).
Meanwhile, inside, the setup continued.
The Cockatoo room was bright sounding, so we had to mess around with the placement of blankets and sound baffles for a bit.
We found that the central corridor dividing the Cockatoo Room from the Cafe Cottage was sound dampened, so we opted to set the guitar isolation boxes up in there.
As you can see, we labelled them clearly so Paul and Rosie wouldn't get confused :-)
Pete was due to arrive the following morning, so our objective was to have the place as ready as we could, but without wiring it, so he could come in, listen to the sound, decided where to place things and then we'd crack onwards.
Bill Varday, our first ever official Guitar Tech had volunteered for the mission and brought a selection of primo guitars, strings, tools, you name it.
Setting up on the sound isolation cabinets as a temporary work bench, Bill got straight into restringing and doing Secret Guitar Stuff. I don't know what it was, ask Mr Wizard or Rosie, but it looked impressive.
Some sort of impressive guitars of some description. I think Bill talks about them in the video:
While Bill was busy with Guitar Boffinry, some of us were taking it slightly easier...or 'working' as guitarists might say :-)
As we realised it was now 2am and we had an early start we all retired to our various bedrooms in the Cafe Cottage (yay, I got a proper bed this time! Woo hoo! Luxury!) and bunked down for a nights sleep before Pete's arrival in the morning.
Day 2...Again
Day 2 was scheduled for sound setup and testing, to see what we needed to do with the drums, mike placement, amp placement, etc.
We tested the sound isolation cabinets with some noise, found that they worked well, ran them for a time and found that the amps were heating up, stuck inside all that insulation, even with the boxes not closed all the way.
This led to the phrase "power the reactors down' being used to describe the regular process of testing the amps for heat levels and then shutting them off and opening the cases to allow them to cool between sessions.
Here's Paul and Bill checking the Reactor Core temperatures.
Mid morning, Pete arrived and we began cabling and running up the sound recording unit.
Despite having done a cabling plan, diagram and yakked about the whole process during pre production meetings, we still wound up using every single cable and adapter and bit of kit we had to hand and almost ran out of adapters...almost.
. Borrowed Glory indeed - like this little unit from Rick - a single input to 3 output splitter thing preamp thingamajig whatzit.
As Pete did some adjustments to mike placements, it was almost time to try some recording and see what the sound was like.
We spent the rest of the evening testing sounds, using Texas Rosie as the test song. By the end of the evening we had identified from sound issues with power fluctuations at the recording unit (or so we thought) and we were getting clicks, crackles and pops from the recording unit and the PA system that's built into the cockatoo room. Pete was both puzzled and worried - if we got a good take with a click in it, it would be unusable.
We puzzled over the possible reasons for it and tried turning off fridges, pumps, lights, changing plugs, circuits retesting cables, yikes.
After a few hours of this we decided there was little for it but to proceed as best we could, and on that bombhsell, stopped for dinner and a rest.