Recording Dinosaur Bones demos/pre-production
Bands playing live in the studio
Last week one of my bands (Elk) recorded an episode of southern souls live at our studio. Mitch did a great job filming while i recorded and mixed the audio, i’m really excited for everyone to see it. This Sunday I recorded the now 7 piece Love Banshee before they head out on tour in the states, completely live and mixed 100% on the studer with tyler the singer, without using a single digital plug in, i’ve never done that before and it turned out great! Between the two songs there was drums/vocal, acoustic guitar/vocal, tuba, trumpet, fiddle, glock, banjo and two female back up singers including my roommate/bandmate Jesse (thanks jesse). Its now 7am and I just spent two long and productive days with Dinosaur Bones working on demos for new material they’ve been working on, all the songs are killer so far! They tracked everything live no sweat (drums, bass 2 guitars and keys) except vocals. Its been really refreshing being able to have people play in a room together. Tomorrow night I’m going to finish up the first 3 tracks for the rituals record, looks like another late night :0)
My band Beliefs played with these guys at the garrison last night and they blew me away. I’m a big deerhunter fan and just super inspired by locket’s music especially after seeing this live.
I figured since this is my main website its definitely time for an update. Ok first off, the studio is done! Holy smokes, one minute its December and the next its April and we’ve been running for almost 3 months now! Its really surreal. Its called Candle Recording Studio in the Sterling Lofts near Bloor and Lansdowne. The name Candle is in reference to daydream nation. People seem to really enjoy and get the vibe for our space, a professional studio that feels like a home. Between my Partner Leon Taheny and I, we’ve had so many great bands/people in already working in our space like The Wooden Sky, Tokyo Police Club, Burning Love, Rituals, The Bicycles, Neon Windbreaker, Jon Drew (Producer), Modern Superstitions, Doldrums, The Wilderness of Manitoba, Thomas Gill, Peter Kauffman, Titan and Tyler Semrick-Palmateer (mare) and Donlands and Mortimer. Stayed tuned for upcoming stuff! Heres a couple pics of the space which were shot by Lori Waltenbury.
This is what i want the next Beliefs video to look like.
Its 4am and my ears hurt, but I’m happy to say Beliefs just finished tracking the last 4 songs for our LP.
If theres one thing i love, its reverb. I love reverb on a lot of things…drums, vocals and guitars especially. Wether its natural room ambience through distant miking, or creating a more imaginary picture with an effects unit like putting a vocal into a grand canyon courtesy of my TC electronic m3000, or warping a guitar lead into oscillation with my roland space echo. I needed a reverb pedal for my live rig, i wanted something between lush and springy, and after listening to dozens of demo’s, i found it. I walked into Moog Music downtown Toronto and told my friend Nyles who works there, “I want that pedal”. It’s the Earthquaker Devices Ghost Echo and its truly perfect. It really does have its own sound and vibe to it, its not as huge sounding like the hall setting on electro harmonic’s holy grail that we all know and love (though still a great pedal) but it’s way more usable and unique, and even though it can create “spring-like” tones if wanted, its more haunting sounding without being over the top. Theres enough flexibility to get a few different sounds (the attack knob acts like a time knob on a delay which can create slapbacks for example) and its pretty easy to find your sweet spot. The design is very cool, has a graphic of a planet, the font is very gothic and the LED is blinding bright white. Overall really stoked on this pedal. Pictured at the bottom left.
Were tracking 4 more songs for the upcoming Beliefs record. Going to post some photos. Noel Webb Is the best drummer BTW.
My Mix/Master room is almost done, will be adding a few more pieces of outboard in the new year and hopefully will have a overdub booth set up.
