Studio Session - Take an insight

Artwork
 

Hey guys, I’m back. Today, I’m going to give you an insight into our artwork for the upcoming record. To be honest, we didn’t do a lot of recording the past month. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense, to talk about recording stuff. But the idea about the artwork developed itself over the past month and we’ve been working on this. But first, I give you some information about the importance of artwork and why it is so important.

The artwork per se is a very important factor to complete the whole product. At the perspective of a consumer, the artwork gives you a notion about the content of the product. It functions as a teaser to consume the product. Now, the artwork mostly reveals, about what the content of the product is going to be. By looking at the artwork, you expect something about the product and what could be insight. That’s why, you kind of want to consume the product. You are attracted to it and curious about its content. Therefore, the artwork and its content must be consentaneous. Though, there are bands and producers which like to mislead on purpose the consumer by creating an artwork that is not coherent with its content.

You see, the artwork about its content is so important because it is the first message you give with your product to a consumer.

As you know, our record has the story of a human being which searches for the truth. It questions its religion and its social system. On the path to find a personal convenient system, our person needs to break of its current social system in which she or he is trapped. Trying to break out, this person uncovers the dark side of the system, lays out the naked truth, and how perfidious and canting the system covers its flaws and its real aims.

To reveal the story in an exciting way on the artwork, we decided to work with symbols and imagery. The system in the story is represented by a church. To bring out the dark side about the system, the scene takes place at night. The diabolic content is represented by two towers of the church. In the scene you can see a person kneeling in front of the church. That person seems to be crushed. That symbols stands for the fight against the system and shows, how hard it is to fight against it. Further, we intend to draw a gaze of a person hidden in the dark night of the scene. That final symbol stands for the fact, that whatever system our person fights against, is made, controlled, and influenced by other human beings. A little hint of mine, take a hard look on the cover. Then you’ll find the hidden eyes.

There will be other symbols in the scene which refer to our band. For example, our brand will be implemented on the face of the church’s clock.

We are excited to present you soon the artwork.

Hope you enjoyed again reading this post. In December, I will give you the last insight for this year. Hopefully, it will be about the latest progression of our work.

Stay tuned for more information and take care.

Enjoy Seasplash!

Studio Session - Take an insight

Guitar Setup 

Hello dear fellows,

Our recording session is progressing. Now we’re coming to the more melodic part. After recording the drums, we do now instrumental things like guitars and pianos. Let’s start with the setup of our guitar rig. Basically, it’s the compound between my brother’s pedal gear and my stuff. That means, we take my Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Head and my Marshall 1960 A Cab and put some pedals in front of it. 

 

As you know, usually I play all three channels – Clean, Vintage Drive, and Modern Drive. Same for this record, although the Clean channel has more gain than usual and is set to 100 Watt instead of 50 Watt. The latter is necessary to give the Bogner Ecstasy Blue Pedal the right punch. Before I explain the signal path through all pedals, you need to know that Julien and I share the system. We just plug different guitars and then record. Let’s go back to the signal path.

The guitar’s signal goes directly into the Morley Wah-Pedal. Leaving this, the MXR compressor and the MXR phaser ensue. Usually, I start with the compressor though the Waha pedal needs to be added at the beginning. After the phaser, my MXR chorus pedal represents the follow-up. Then the distortion pedals are up. First, the signal goes into the Bogner pedal. From there it heads into the Boss SD-1. Last but not least, the signal path ends up at the MXR Smart Gate which feeds thereafter the Mesa Boogie. Same as ever, my T.C. Electronics Flashback delay is plugged as a send-return-loop into the Mesa. 

The Marshall cab has two microphones installed. One is the Shure SM 57, the other the Shure SM 27. Both microphones working together produce the sound picture we want for the coming record. 

The electric guitars, we intend to use for the record, will be the PRS McCarthy, the PRS custom, Fender Telecaster, maybe a Gretsch or Gibson ES, and MusicMan Luke III. Hopefully, the latter is going to be in my rig.

I will show you pictures of the guitar setup soon.

Stay tuned for more posts.

Enjoy Seasplash!

 

Studio Sessions - Take an insight

The Smart Gate from MXR

Hey guys, I’m back after a short break. We are still recording and working on our next record. As I have already announced in the last post, I’m going to present in this one my latest addition to my guitar rig – The one and only MXR Smart Gate!

While working on the new songs, I realized that I need a certain gear to get neatness and distinction into my guitar play. As you know, I never needed a “Gate” in my signal path and set my things up as if I was playing with one. But with the speed and heaviness of my guitar sound for this record, I had no choice than include a solid “Gate” into my signal path. Of course, it had to be the one and only “Smart Gate” from MXR. Not only because I’ve always worked with MXR but rather because it is in my opinion the best working “Gate” you can buy. Though it is pricey, it gives you just that what you want for a “Gate”. You are always flexible to set the “Gate” to your current needs. For instance, imagine you are in a live show. You can play a high distorted song with an active humbucker guitar. The next song, you would play something with a single coil guitar. Because of the different noise pattern, the single coil guitar causes, the “Smart Gate” offers a three-band noise cut switch which is exactly made for this issue. So, you are able to switch the “Gate” on stage simply and modulate it to your current needs.

Another fantastic thing about the “Smart Gate” is its refinement of adaptation on your play. That means, you can easily let a note decay without hearing the “Smart Gate” working depress noise. On the other hand, it perceives short intervals of thrashing riffs to make them clear again. Even if you switch between heavy distorted and clean sound characteristics, you don’t have to adjust the settings on your “Smart Gate”. Just let it work. It understands the differences of your play and what you really want to do.

It’s a fantastic gear which I recommend to everyone! Soon, you’ll get a sample to hear. In the mean time check out the YouTube video of MXR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpcEsUzYeq8


In the next post, I’ll give you a complex insight on mixing drums and give you some tips.

Stay tuned for more information!

Enjoy Seasplash!

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Studio Sessions - Take an insight

Hi everyone,

Here I am with another insight into our work. The last time, I talked about the microphone set-up on my brother's drums. With this post, we want to give you a little impression on how we work. Because the drums aren't fully recorded yet, I intend to give you a little impression on how we work. 

But before I start, I want to give my deepest symapathy to all aggrieved parties of Chester Bennington's death! 

Now, coming back to a little bit more cheerful issue. Take a look into the recording session from past Monday.

As usual, before continuing with recording, we check out if everything still sounds as it should. Then we test the monitoring / In-Ear-System. This is always one of the most important checks we recommend because it is so necessary to hear the sound perfectly clear and without distractions. That's the only way to achieve precise and flowing recordings.

Screening for drum issues

Checking out the Monitoringsystems

Controll the all settings and mixings for the AW1600 and the monitor mix.

 

As you know, we process the recording step by step. For this record we start with drum recordings. Then we overdub all the rest like guitars, keys, voices and further stuff. But coming back to the drum recording phase. Gilles does not record every song solely and by heart. Sometimes, we accompany him with accoustic guitars for examples (you see me playing there on the left). The attendance brings the huge advantage to provoke a flow while playing. That brings out more the dynamique and emotion of a certain song.

Rehearsal time

One point that marks professionalism is reflecting and rehearsing stuff. That was something we had to learn the hard way. But for the procedure of our new record we have to rehears and discuss every take, to give you the best music we produce. 

Though this post hasn't been a review nor gives it some new information, it still gives you a deeper insight into our work. And who knows, maybe the description of your work makes you considering your way of recording.  

However, I hope you enjoyed it reading again. Hopefully, in the next post I can give you another insight of a different phase of recording. Besides, I'll give you a little review about my latest purchase, especially for this record; The MXR Smart Gagte!

Don't miss out on this post. Now, I do a little pause and be back again in September. 

Still have a great summer and keep on rocking!

Enjoy Seasplash!

Studio Sessions - Take an insight

Set Up Drums

Hey guys. Let’s continue with our studio session for our new album. As I have given you a little review about the Shure SM27 microphons, as well fort he JBL LSR 308 active monitors. In this section, I want to give you an insight to how we set-up the drums.

First, my brother Gilles uses for this recording session a different set up of his drum. Besides the usual stuff like Snare, Kick, High-Hat, Ride, he plays with only one Mid-Tom and one Floor-Tom. On top, he uses two Crashes, one China, and one Splash. Let’s consider the microphone set up.
 

Of course it makes sense to use the Shure SM27 as Overheads. I put them on the right and on the left side of the drum (A/B). It is important to have a space of 0.5 meters between the top of the Crashes and the Overheads. I pointed the Overheads in direction of the Snare though it should slightly catch its sound. Overheads need to catch the sound of the whole drum, but specially the sound of the Crashes. I don’t put a solely microphone for the Ride, but for the High-Hat. This so, because the one Overhead sucks the sound of the Ride directly into it. Therefore, I only need to put a little PG 81 on top of the High-Hat. Actually, I can’t give you the right advice to set up the microphone for a High-Hat. I only recommend to experiment and vary with the position of the microphone. Find out what works for you the best.

For the Kick, I place a Beta 52 in the middle of the Bass-Drum. This so, because I want to have the aggressive Kick a little bit more directly into the microphone and still catch the boom and sound of the Bass-Drum. Of course, I could use a Beta 91A (uniform half-cardioid polar pattern) for the kick and put the Beta 52 on the outside of the Bass-Drum. But I prefer only to use one microphone. 

For the Mid-Tom, I use a PG 56 and for the Floor-Tom a Shure PG 52. 

For the Snare, I put on top a Shure Beta 98DS, and the bottom I put a PG 56 as well. In my opinion, it is necessary to put two microphones for the Snare not only for the heavier bam, but also for the sound. The Beta 98 gives your Snare the perfect snatchy crunchy sound which is sustained by a deeper bam of the PG 56. So you see, it is impossible to get out of one microphone a precise mid-high-end sound and at the same time, you need a precise low-mid sound to adjust delicately.
And here we are. The set up for the drum is done. We started recording a few weeks back. Let’s see when the other instruments will be recorded. If that’s the case, I will give you another insight on the set up.

Below, you'll find some pictures to see, how we set up the mics on the drums.

Have a nice summer and take care.

Enjoy Seasplash!

Studio Sessions - Take an insight

Entry 1

Hey everybody, I’m back after a short break. We did some preperations for the upcoming studio sessions. I’ve already told you about the production of a new record which has now started. We want to take you on the road with our studio sessions, and present you different contributions according the project. Besides the blog part, we’ll shoot also short videos, and do some picture stuff on Facebook or Twitter. We hope you enjoy the insight into our new project. Stay tuned for more posts!

Like the past posts, I like to make in this post short reviews about our latest studio additions. For the occasion of the new record, we bought two Shure SM27 and two JBL LSR 308 active monitors. Let’s see how they perform. 

Shure SM27

Before I start, I have to mention that I didn’t try the beta-version of the 27. But as I can imagine, they perform just a little bit more precise than the SM-version does. Now, the great thing about the SM27 is that you can use it for different operating conditions, like for vocal recording, as overheads, or a cab-mic, and so on. It’s specialty to me, is the freedom you have with this mic to do everything. You even can use the mic to produce self-made reverb. As a condenser mic, it absorbs noise linear though you can adjust a three different kinds of low-pass-filters (linear / steep slope on 80Hz / moderate slope (rolloff). In addition you can pad the for -15dB.

For our project, we use the mic as overheads, as a cab-mic, for acoustic guitars, and also for vocals with pilot-tracks. For the live-use, we intend to apply the mics for Gilles’ drum as overheads. In sum, this mic is an all-rounder you shouldn’t miss out to have in your equipment.

JBL LSR 308

As I remember correctly myself, I once posted a list for future studio acquisitions for the band. On this list, I put Yamaha MSP Series as studio monitors. We decided to purchase the JBL LSR 308. But why?

Actually, there is no particular reason we decided to work with JBL. There are so many great monitors out there that in the end, it only matters what kind of sound you are used to, and further, what kind of sound does your monitor produce. I started to work in another studio with the JBL LSR 303 models. Their sound convinced me totally. It is a solid processed monitor, which guarantees a great adaption to the room’s acoustic you’re in. With two switches you are able to adapt high- and low-frequencies in a range of +/- 2 dB each. Same for the LSR 308. The monitor itself has a 56W D class amp for high tones and deep tones with a 1” tweeter and a 8” woofer. Besides the fact, that I’m already used to its sound, for our heavy metal sounds it is important to have wide range of frequencies also for high-frequencies as well for low-frequencies. Because I like to work a lot with 40Hz frequencies, it was important to have a gear which generates that without having losses there.

Of course, we can only evaluate validly the monitors after the recording sessions are done. If there were some terrible issues with the monitors, we would review again this post.

For the upcoming entry, I intend to give you an insight into our mic-set up for the recording session.

Keep on rocking.

Enjoy Seasplash!

 

Review on Yamaha APX700II 12-String

Hey guys, it's me again.

In this post I'm going to make a short review about the acoustic 12-string Westernguitar of Yamaha out of the APX line. It's my latest addition to my guitar rig, and I'm crazy about it! Check it out!

Since the beginning of Seasplash, I've always played 12-string accoustic guitars. Not surpising, that my first accoustic guitar was a Yamaha. As you may remember, on tour we play Takamines EF341 SC (6-string version) and EF381 C (12-string) though the latter I once gave away. I regret that! But now I have again a fantastic 12-string guitar - this Yamaha. As you remember, Yamaha is one of my favourit brands for music stuff. More or less everything coming out by this brand is solid, made of good quality, and has a fair price. Let's start with the review.

The very first time, I unpacked the guitar I was shocked. The bodysize of the guitar was much smaller and thinner than a commom 6-string guitar has. Even in lenght with the 12-string head. I mean, normally 12-string heads are twice as long than 6-string heads. But this guitar was shorter and smaller. Besides, I searched for some flaws over the guitar but couldn't find anything. The wood was prepared solidly. After putting in the batteries, I tuned all strings by the assimilated tuner. The tuning pegs work great as well. The strings do not detune a lot. Then I started to play. 

Rightaway, I was shocked again. I would never have thought that this guitar brings out such a sound. It sounded more transparent and lovely than the Takamine EF381 did. It's like playing a 6-string guitar that sounds like a harp. What a gear! I kept on playing. And the funny thing is, it is easier to play than a normal 6-string guitar. So you are able to make every chord that exists without leaving out strings. Your hand does not even start to cramp after playing a while. Of course this has something to do with the neck size which is smaller as well as common 12-strings are, but still have a good size. Though I wouldn't recommend the guitar for fellows with huge hands, this guitar is basically made to be played by everyone. The bridge and the nut accord with each other perfectly, so the strings lay optimally over the neck. Same for the frets. There is no fret that distorts the vibration of the strings, not even slightly.

One big plus in addition is the Piezzo pickup. Usually, they are not always convincing in sound transmition. But this time, they are very solid. They sound warm, transparent, and bright. Because of the small bodyshape, the guitar doesn't generate much of deep frequenzies which is an advantage for mixing because you don't have deep bad frequenzies to cut out. In our mix, I put the Piezzo straight (cut out a bit of high-mids by point) and it works perfect.The highs are coming out straight with now addition necessary. And like I mentioned above, the tuner is also assimilated into the pickup board and works precisely. Because of the reasons that the sound hole is not in a round shape, Yamaha gives a tailored feedback buster already included in the package. 

In sum, this guitar is another evidence for Yamaha's work and quality. Everything is made precise and solid, from the preparation of the body over the frets to the tuner pegs. But remember, this guitar is made for being played live. That's the reason of the whole set up of the gear. For recording, in case you work with condenser microphonees, I wouldn't recommend the guitar because the deep mellow sound of a normal sized acoustic guitar does not come out of this bodyshape. Still, try it and you love it. And all of it for 650.- Swissfrancs. What do you want more?!

Stay tuned for more posts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND-ZjV77kRo

Enjoy Seasplash!