DIY recording success?

Pine have been one of Christchurch and New Zealand’s leaders in the indie pop revolution and a few months ago we finished up the recording and mixing of their latest album ‘Books and Magazines’.

This particular recording project was not only one of the last albums to come out of the studio (pre earthquake) but also one of the more interesting and interactive that The Sitting Room studios has been involved in. Aaron (guitar) had taken some time to record a good chunk of the album themselves in a Hall at the University of Canterbury over a summer. I’m a huge fan of DIY recording, the vibe it can create and experience and lessons that can be learnt as a band that records their own music.  Aaron and the band then brought these recordings to the sitting room and we ‘tweaked’, fixed, mixed, re recorded and re formed what is now the final album.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with the initial material that had come from the band’s initial recording session and would like to encourage other bands to think about doing the same some time.

Congratulations to Aaron, Steve and Hannah on this album and I hope the album release shows are a smashing success and you receive more glowing reviews like this one.

Well done little lady

A while ago (2009) Julia Deans  came to The Sitting Room recording studios to record a bunch of songs for her Debut Album – ‘Modern Fables’. This is just a very short post to say well done Julia, Dave all the musicians that played on it. The album has been released for about a month now and has been receiving fantastic reviews both here and in Australia.

It was a pleasure to work with you and be involved with the recording of such a wonderful piece of music.

Shooting

For those who haven’t been involved in film or audio post production for film, shooting, editing and mixing this amount of footage of this calibre is no easy feat. In fact it’s a time consuming and costly process, but once again Logan and Katie have managed to ace this and the proof is simply in the pudding.

Logan has been a big DSLR fan and in fact one of NZ’s DSLR poster boys. He’s been using and shooting HD video on DSLR’s longer than anyone else I know in the industry and as far as I’m concerned getting some of the best results in the country. All this does not come easy or cheap, he’s spent 100’s of hours using, shooting, researching and testing to make sure he get’s the best results.

The shoot for this campaign was spread over 5 shooting days and comprised of a 2 camera set up, a large crew and crap load of Hell Pizza for lunch.

Film shoot, location audio recording and zombies

Some of you will know that one of the major drawbacks to the DSLR shooting at the moment is the audio recording capabilities. Not that it has none, but that they’re limited and well, average to say the least. It was discussed at length before we started the shoot how we’d deal with this as usually I would be swinging a boom or making sure we’d be recording location sound as best we could, however being an actor and also the tight shooting schedule meant that we opted for a shoot with little or no location audio being recorded to be used in the audio post mix… scary? Yes.. a little dangerous… yes.. but did it work out.. yes, just. Essentially this meant full ADR recording for all the actors, massive foley sessions and FX laying and some very long and intensive audio post mix sessions..more to come on this in the next few posts.

Well this happened some time ago and I meant to post it when it was exciting, current and super uber cool… but I didn’t.

BUT, back in May I took part in the V48 Hours Film Competition which was pretty fun. I was part of the Ruffell Productions entry and helped out with a spot of acting, location sound and some band recording/soundtracking.

It was the most relaxed 48 Hours shoot I’ve probably ever been on – we drank some gin and plotted on Friday night, slept a solid 8 hours and then filmed from 930am – 6pm! Beautiful. On the Sunday we convinced the Unfaithful to come into the studio and record a tasty (but adequately stupid) theme song for our short.

Our genre was ‘Sports Movie’ which was pretty fun, the character was Sydney Manson – a fabricator, the line of dialogue was “when you look at it that way” and the prop was a broken toy. Each team also had to use a dolly or hitchcock zoom somewhere in their short film.

Anyway, here’s our entry entitled ‘Hot Foos’ – let me know what you think!

PS – I might post up the full version of the Theme Song to Hot Foos at a later date too.

It seems as though the world is turning faster and faster, I’m hardly able to keep up. Whether it’s the latest obscure indie music video that’s storming the web, the latest iphone app or even just the latest and fastest way to get weather updates, these days one must have a full time ‘ear to the ground/finger on the pulse’ technician giving daily debriefs on what’s happening in the world of the interwebs and techbiz land.

A month or two ago I got an iPhone. After the initial jizz fest of figuring out how I could not only streamline my workflow but more impressively do it from anywhere, things slowed down. To be honest most iPhone owners shudder in shame when they hear that I only have a handful of apps and most of which I never use. Shame on me, tisk tisk. I struggle to actually see the practical use for a lot of iphone apps so you can imagine my jekyl and hyde response once I saw Tim controlling Ableton live from his iPhone, I freaked out. How awesome was this? I was pretty syre that it could revolutionise recording and music performance? And so after a quick interweb search for anything similar for Pro tools, I uncovered this:

Now, I know it’s not an official release and it’s only working on Jailbroken iphones, but it got me thinking….

Why do we have this? Why do we need this? What has happened to us? Is this just another grossly unnecessary example of useless techno-landfill? Or am I missing the point and it’s potentially brilliant and maybe with more development the future of portable recording control surfaces?

I think I have a fair idea, but we’ll see.

Gotta get a record deal, gotta get a record deal!

That has been the catch phrase for young indie musicians for decades, myself included. Hordes of long haired, guitar wielding mumma’s boys religiously following the teachings and trends of ‘Rolling Stone’ or ‘NME’ all pinning their hopes on the fact that it just might be them that catches the next big break.

Those days are all but gone, big breaks are not quite as big as they used to be, record labels and deals are smaller and fewer and far between than ever before. The internet, digital media, digital audio recording and distribution have demolished those highly impenetrable walls, the game has changed. These days musicians are more often than not funding recording themselves (if not doing it themselves), possibly even funding the first run of CD production and then attempting to P&D deals and publishing deals. It seems a far cry from the Hay-day of yesteryear but it’s still a bloody great achievement when a band can manage to get through this process and get out the other side with a contract and a plan to forge ahead with. It’s an achievement, something that so many people have worked for and never managed to make.

Christchurch has produced more than it’s fair share of New Zealand’s best musicians and song writers and it’s time to pick up a pencil and etch another name into that list. The Unfaithful Ways, Christchurch’s latest young, hip band has just recently signed a publishing deal with Native Tongue and I am pretty sure that if they can keep their heads will be onto great things both nationally and worldwide.

Well done boys, I am very happy and proud to have been involved and really look forward to where you end up in the future! Keep an eye and an ear out for the next release from this group, and be sure to keep an eye out on NME magazine in a years time, I am positive these indie-country pinups will be gracing its glossy cover.

When we heard about MJ’s death this morning we knew something had to be done. We quickly put down the incredibly important work we were doing and set to work trying to create something that would really bring honour to his quickly fading memory.

Guitars came out, tears were shed, sweat was sweated, ideas were bandied about and powerful recording software was called upon to record our 2 minute opus.

We also found some lovely photos of MJ which we thought would suit the extra special song we wrote.

Here’s the movie/song:

This is the MP3 (you can download it by clicking on the down arrow on the right!):

RIP Michael.

Yesterday we launched our Sitting Room Facebook Page and eagerly awaited the nothing that would probably happen. But, in just 12 hours we got over 100 new friends signed up to the page – we were proud as punch!

The process was helped along by a very special competition between Ben and I. Ben thought it would be great to have a specially designed profile picture for the page, so he took to the best image creation software known to man, Microsoft Paint, to design his masterpiece. When I saw his creation (aptly dubbed ‘The Turd Mic’) I just knew I could do better and created probably the most beautiful piece of art since the Mona Lisa was painted: ‘The Rainbow Pride Flower’.

But how could we decide which picture to use? We put it to our new Facebook family to vote on the profile pic they thought suited The Sitting Room best. Votes are still coming in but as of this morning it’s Rainbow Pride Flower 13, Turd Mic 11.

If you want to become our fan on Facebook just visit: http://facebook.thesittingroom.co.nz and you’ll be taken right there!

Here’s the two pictures for your viewing pleasure (feel free to download them, print them out and put them on your fridge):

Recording software: Music industry and studios take note!

Isnt it funny when certain items, software, guitars, shoes, clothes, anything really become what is known as ‘the industry standard’. I find this term and phenomenon totally bi-polar, it’s either perfectly warranted and the item is by far and away the leader of the pack, OR it’s almost completely bamboozling, where it almost seems as though the only reason it occupies the top spot is due to critical mass… and mass attracts mass, right? So, in saying this… Pro Tools. What is up with digidesign? I mean, can anyone tell me why the industry standard in software and hardware continue to use cheap components, design and manufacture in their products? Why is it that the software is limited in it’s uses compared to some others? Why? Why? Don’t get me wrong, we use it at the sitting room, we have it but the more and more I use it the more I think that the only reason it is here is because joe public always asks ‘do you have Protools?’. Within the last 3 years I have almost done a full 180 regarding ‘the tools’ (I would say I am at 175 right now). I used to be the biggest poster boy for protools, always the first to dismiss anyone’s  claims that there was something else out there that was better, or faster, or cheaper, or more stable…until….Until I was introduced to Reaper.

Reaper has been on the scene for about 4 or 5 years now and is the brain child of Justin Frankel (the guy who made winamp and then sold it). He was sick of the same limiting things I was about ‘other’ multi track audio editing software on the market. So he made one himself. A fraction of the footprint size of protools, the reaper installer file is tiny and can be run off a USB drive. It’s simple, it’s fast, it’s stable, it’s unlimited, it’s customisable, it’s cheap… like REALLY cheap, it allows you to use ANY hardware with it, but best of all the developers are DAILY refining it, asking users for ideas and feedback, implementing changes and you know what? All of these updates… for ever… and ever… are FREE.
Dare I say it, but I think protools (digidesign) better keep a close eye on the underdog here before it sneaks up and gives them a very large, long overdue bite on the bum.

Snapshot of REAPER in action

Proudly and lovingly brought to you by Tim Chesney and Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room Recording Studios Christchurch, New Zealand. The south island home of audio production, sound design, mixing and location sound recording.

Last year I wrote and recorded an EP for my side project called The Sneezes. The Sneezes is comprised of Ben on bass, Ivor ‘Pants’ Richards on Drums (nepotism anyone?) and me on vocals, synths and guitars.

Our debut single ‘All We Could Do’ had some measure of success on RDU. Yesterday the track was accepted to Hipster Tracks a daily blog of music. You should head over and there and check out the track – you won’t regret it, it’s a great store of fantastic music! In the last couple of hours the track has been played several hundred times and been reblogged a bunch of times too!

It’s always so exciting to have new people from all over the globe listing to and (better!) enjoying your music.

Proudly and lovingly brought to you by Tim Chesney and Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room Recording Studio, Christchurch, New Zealand. Home of audio production, sound design, mixing and location sound recording.