Kaleiders Studio Diary

The next task was going to be a personal favourite of mine - the guitars. 

I knew I wanted to try something new with the amplifier setup, something I hadn't tried recording before. I decided that a stereo-amp setup was the route for me, not only would this allow for greater versatility for tonal options, but would allow me to achieve a richer and more unique sound. 

The perfect match came in the form of my VOX AC30 and my Marshall Plexi clone. These amps combined with the double tracking from my trusty Fender Telecaster and Jaguar provided a rich and full sound which was sweet to the ear.

Of course this setup didn't come without issues; it required a complex signal path using effects pedals which would allow me to send different effects to an individual amp. I elected to send time based effects and modulation effects to the VOX, as I felt the cleaner sound of the amp would compliment these sounds more effectively. Conversely, I ran the gain based effects such as fuzz through the marshall for the same reason. 

With 2 microphones on each amp, I had to make sure I took the time to ensure that phasing was never an issue, thankfully It never was thanks to the help from my handy tape measurer. 

Following the bass recording session, I decided that a few of the recordings were slightly too fast of a tempo than what we felt were appropriate for the songs themselves. To fix this, I simply used Pro - Tool’s elastic audio feature to slow the tempo of the chosen tracks, ranging from  2-5 BPM depending on what we felt sounded most natural.

After almost a month since our drum recording session, yesterday we had the chance to return to Futureworks in order to track the bass parts for the majority of the songs. 

Throughout the process of producing this album, we are also currently “training up” Kaleider’s newest bass player. As a result, our previous bassist kindly took the time to come into the studio to record all of his parts to the older tracks, as he knew that, despite not wanting to rush the project, I am keen to get the recording process completed sooner rather than later, so that our collective attention can be put elsewhere.

We are well underway!

Over the last 2 days, we have been hard at work setting up, fine tuning and finally recording our drum sounds for the album. I arranged to book 20 hours over 2 consecutive days in the SSL studio at Futureworks University to allow for enough time to conduct this task. We began by borrowing a Tama Star Walnut drum kit from a fellow student who was kind enough to help on these sessions. We wanted to ensure that the kit was of the highest possible quality that was available to us, and that we could capture the best possible tone at the source.

Once the drummer had tuned each drum with fresh heads to his preferred tone, we proceeded to mic up the kit. We chose microphones which we knew the frequency response would compliment the type of sound we were trying to achieve. 

We used to EQ on the SSL to fine tune each drum whilst recording, in order to reduce the amount of work needed during the mixing stage. We also used hardware compressors on both the snare and kick drum on the way in for a similar purpose.

Once we had achieved a drum sound which we were more than happy with, we proceeded to use the remaining few hours of the first day to begin tracking. 

As part of my BSc (Hons) Audio Engineering and Production Honours Project, I have decided to produce an album of my own band “Kaleiders”, documenting the process over the course of the next few months.

I intend to act as the lead songwriter, recording engineer and mixing engineer, whilst simultaneously working to effectively promote and market the release of the album, which I aim to take place in late Spring. I have chosen not to master the tracks myself, due to my lack of experience in the field. This will also allow me to allocate my time after finishing the final mixes to the promotional side of this project.

In total, I aim to record 16 tracks to a high quality, which can then be individually selected to be released as a 10-11 track album. To accompany this, we also aim to release a music video for one of the songs, which I will supervise the edit and post production.

I would like this project to not only be an ongoing project for my university course, but also as a genuinely successful release for both myself and my band