Studio Diary
form the Vintage Production with Piece Of Janis
The day of the production finally started and we arrived at 10 o´clock at the recording studio. The band was already there and was discovering the ground. After a short address of welcome we entered the „Interface“ recording studio, which is placed in the middle of cologne near the „Rudolf s Platz“. To welcome the musicians we took a brief conversation and drank the first cup of coffee that day. You would not think that a group of 10 persons could drink that much coffee ☺ After a short introduction how to go on that day, we started to dump the gear off the car. Slowly we began to build up the stuff into the recording room, for the first soundcheck.
For this action we placed the microphones in the recording room. The drums were recorded with four mics, two overheads, one snare and one bassdrum microphone.
The Guitar was recorded normal with one mic and the bass signal was taken form the di box. At last we placed a stereo pair of two dynamic microphones in front of the organs speaker. After patching the signalflow into the monitoring room, the band started their first soundcheck.
„What a sound“ – Due the musical talent of band we first had to take a deep breath, cause of the brilliant sound comming through the monitor system, without having done something special on the sound. We let the band play and started to optimize the sound, with the use of equalization and compression.
It is really improtant that we had to use the devices befor the signal was recorded onto the tape, so you have to use them too tape. After the audio material is recorded onto the tape, we had no choice to fix the sound again, so the outboard gear had to work perfectly.
Due the use of the devices, the sound was becomming fuller and stronger and the analogoue tape saturation started to give the sound some touch of the 60s and 70s.
We had not work with tape machines befor - because we are engineers of the new, digital age, that is dealing with computers and other things like that - so the sound was something new for us.
The band was already performing for more than two hours without becoming tiered, so we decided to finish the first soundcheck which we had directly recorded onto the tape. We meat at the monitoing room and listened to the first recordings. Befor we started our porject with Piece of Janis, they already had a few recorings, but the experience to record directly onto tape was something new for them too. Finally we were all totally enthusiastic cuase oft he sound comming from the analogoue tape. Being happy about the first part oft he day we took a lunch.
Meanwhile we interviewed the members oft he band and got to knwo each other. At two o´clock in the adternoon we already had all video material, except for some little things. So we went on recording other songs from the repertoir oft he band.
Cause of the musicians perfection we did not have to re-record the songs again and again. They recorded three takes of the song „Ball & Chain“, two versions of the song „Raise your hand“ and one version of the song „Capture the moment“ after playing hours for sound preparation and fun. We think that this day was the best recording we ever made, because the whole day we never had to deal with big problems. So the recording session was a really relaxed thing.
At this point we also had to thank the members of the band, because of the brilliant work thy did. To see the a gallery of selected pictures click right there. Also you have the chance to see the videos on our youtube channel or directly on this page by clicking right there. Thank you for reading. Your SMAC Team ...
Finally wo have some last pictures of the day ...
After beeing finnished, we were getting tiered after a long day of work.
