This week my group jumped into HeadGap in Preston to track a band live to tape. Over the last couple of weeks we had drawn up an input chart based on the gear list on the studio’s website, and have been looking forward to getting some sounds through the Studer tape machine. We had prepared to record a band called “Superholics”, but on the day it turned out that they had since disbanded. In their place we recorded the rhythm bed tracks for a 3-piece rock project with drums, bass and guitar. I think this worked out in our favour as there was still plenty of workflow to figure out in an unfamiliar studio, and having a simpler lineup allowed us to give it our proper attention. We also benefitted from the previous group’s patching and drum mic setup, which sounded great and saved us a lot of time. Each channel was routed from the console to the tape machine, and then to protools, and back to the desk for monitoring (the tape send was coming from the “Monitor” faders on the console, which got a little confusing now and then). The tape was running at 15ips which gave us 30 minutes of record time. The practical element of using tape certainly changers the approach to the tracking session and highlights some of the conveniences of protools that I have become accustomed to. The most notable in this particular dual-system setup was the need to bounce all the takes off tape into protools. The best time to do this was when the band came into the control room for playback. However, this didn’t always happen.

The way the session unfolded, the first 5 or so takes were all a bit slow and the drums and bass had trouble finding the groove. At this point we were out of tape and had to either stop and transfer all the takes to protools, killing 30 minutes, or rewind the tape and risk losing the earlier takes. We had already bounced the first two takes (about 10 minutes worth) earlier in the session, so to keep things moving we rewound the tape and recorded over them at the new tempo. These were the favourites and at the end of the night we decided to just transfer these into protools and leave the missing takes on the tape to be erased. Of course none of this would have been a consideration just using the DAW, but it is a good way to maintain the focus on the performance and capturing the right take rather than being tempted to manufacture it.

Meanwhile, I mixed a pretty cool gig at the Spotted Mallard this week. It was a 50s-style stage show featuring the all-girl barbershop quartet “Bobby and the Pins”, backed by the 13-piece “JC Little Big Band”. The band played their own set to start with, then the barbershop quartet performed a solo set, and then a final set with both together. The way the stage was laid out the rhythm section was stage right, and all the brass players lined up along the back behind the singers. Thankfully they were all exceptionally well-controlled players who stayed nicely below the vocals and made it very easy for me to mix. This was a very impressive and ambitious show with some talented people and I was lucky to have been a part of it.

Thanks for reading!