Jul/100
On the 7th day, God created jazz…
…And our new house band, The St-Joachim Quartet! The band members goes as follow:
- Gabriel Desjardins: Rhodes
- Pierre-Olivier Gagnon: Bass
- Maxime Simard: Drums
- Guillaume Tremblay: Alto Sax
This first song is a modern classic, Maiden Voyage from Herbie Hancock… Great song to demonstrate the various dynamics in the playing. The second is a composition by Gabriel Desjardins, cleverly named after the studio’s mascot, Saint-Barthelemy. Since the band was first formed for corporate event purposes, it is the band’s first composition. It will also be the anthem of our soon to be bourn underground venue space dedicated to arts and culture, Le Saint-Barthelemy. Stay tuned for more info about it.
Maiden Voyage (Herbie Hancock, 1965)
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Saint-Barthelemy (Gabriel Desjardins, 2010)
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- Recording occurred Sunday, July 11th, 2010.
This is an other of our ‘just for fun’ recording session, mixed live, without effects nor extensive processing. For the gear heads, the set up is pretty much the same as it was for the Regroove recording, about a year ago, in the same conditions. A combination of a Royer SF-12 for overhead, Sennheiser MD-409 under the snare and our beloved cardboard speaker on the kick. We are very proud to have used our very own, recently tuned up 4 pieces 1964 Meazzi Hollywood Drum Kit. Considering the limited amount of info and visual of it, we’ve decide to write an extensive article on that hard to find percussion legend of jazz recording. It will be published soon.
The rest of the microphone choice goes like this: AKG D-25 on the Eighty Eight keys Rhodes, Sennheiser MD-409 on Alto Saxophone and a Cad Trion 7000 as a Room Microphone. (believe it or not, we had not enough room in the basic microphone set up. It really made the recording live!) You can see pretty much everything on the pictures. Speaking of which, you have to understand that the melting of the glaciers and the fartinghouse effect has provided us with 5 extra celsius degrees… So as good as the church is to keep its coolness, (all meanings included) it still was pretty hot in here. That explains the lack of fabric on everyone’s chest… Please excuse the hair.
And no… On the 7th day, God did not have a break… Breaks are for sissies…
Feb/100
In the beginning, there was a Church…
After almost 9 months of hard labour, we finally got to sign the official ownership transfer papers from the group managing the church. This was February 11th. Therefore, the real work begins now (and for the past two weeks!) The validation and formalization of the transaction also comes to prove the certainty of our ongoing project, which apparently caught the ear of medias. Good for us, we can sure use the coverage! So this week was a great week! After a full page in ”La Pige”, ”Le Progrès”, printed at over 120 000 copies last sunday, pulled out our story for the front page. The article is an amazing all-colour two pager that very well describes our plans towards the establishment of the studio amongst the biggest. Turned on by the article, Valérie Fortin asked us for an interview on behalf of V Télé who will broadcast two minute of footage, shot earlier this week. Don’t miss it, it will be on the air this week-end on the 5:30 news. Finally, “Le Journal de Montréal” took the best bits from Daniel Côté’s article in Le Progrès to make a half-page with a photo. We are very happy to see that every one is so enthusiastic concerning the whole concept… Now wait till it’s finalized, you’ll be amazed! This is only the ”big-inning”…
Our front page in Le Progrès, printed at over 120 000 copies.
Oct/090
Product of the Week: Eigenharp…
Ok, I have just stumbled upon what could be the most ingenious interface after the much beloved Monome… The Eigenharp (from Eigenlabs) is, from what I understand, a combination of sequencer, note by note pilot and ribbon type controller with a touch sensitive fader on the back, making it THE most polyvalent controller device EVERRRRR EVERRRR… Good pictures of the unit are hard to find, and you need to see the video to understand! Here’s to make you understand a wee bit more!
FYI: I am currently in negotiation with the devil to trade my mother’s soul for one of these…
Sep/090
About our graphic department…
One brilliant idea we came up with is starting a graphic department… We really like to do EVERYTHING on the projects that steps inside our facilities (no, not these facilities) and are very proud of this newly developed graphic department. So, just like parents do with their proud children, we’ve decide to post their latest work on the fridge! Here’s what they did last week… Click on an artwork and watch it as it grows!
Kudos to festiville.com and worstalbumcovers.org for their amazing findings!
Sep/091
More ReGroove & Pictures…
Here’s that song that I think was the most successfully recorded out of our incredibly primitive recording chain, constituating a very unorthodox signal path… It’s also my favorite song from the album, sort of a Zorn-esque kind of vibe, introduced by a Free-Jazz improvisation. Don’t get to frighten by it, an actual ”real” song is beginning around 2:15! This is a one-taker, mixed live, straight to 2-tracks… Without further due, here’s How it sounds:
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Now here’s some pictures of the church from the outside. Yes, the B&W thing is very artsy, I know… But considering the lameness of the capture instrument, I had no choice but to photoshop them into a decent format, which is Black and White…
More picts to be coming soon for you gear sluts… Enjoy!
Aug/091
The ReGroove Quartet Test Recording…
So! After a long time dealing with township issues, we finally found the time to have some fun and get our old gear out together for the recording of our friends from the ReGroove Quartet before getting into the big construction work. This is a recording that should test our current acoustical potential, just for the heck of it, and see what we could do with the bit of gear we had from our previous home studio… Everyone is being recorded all together, and very few overdubs will be considered (some solos and other glittering such as shakers etc…). Considering the incredible liveliness of our uncorrected raw room, we decided to go with only dynamic mics, which is not something we did a lot in studio, but that has its purpose here, and definitely got me totally turned on once we listened to the unprocessed result. The setup goes like this:
Drum : a Royer SF12 overhead and a crappy speaker cone for the kick (which is freaking us out how good it balances!)
Guitar: GenzBenz amp into a 67′ Fender twin 12” miked with an SM57 in a remote room.
Sax: Sennheiser MD421 as a direct intake and a Cad Trion 7000 as a room mic.
Bass: Ampeg DI into a nice empirical labs FATSO, setup with the transformer coupled output.
Rhodes: into the Fender Blues Jr. miked with a AKG D-25 in a remote room.
Now here’s how it sounds unprocessed, straight out of the take… So no reverb add-ons, no mastering whatsoever:
Épisode Bleue – Take from 08-14-09
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As you can see in the picture, this is a freaking garage set up, but sounds very fine for something without dynamic mixing, laid straight down to 2 tracks, conforming to the good ol’ 1952 standards… We’re recording where there should be the floating control room, hopefully, no more than 6 months from now. All the surfaces of the ceiling will be covered in a flexible thick fabric structure that will enable us to achieve any acoustical conditions from a 5 seconds tail reverb to the ultimate studio dryness, with enough space to record a big ensemble. The back of the church will be separated in half to house the rest area and individual bedrooms for bands who stay.
View from the bell tower
View of the temporary work space from the mezzanine
The holy Rhodes, 8 O'clock sun.
Fender Blues Jr. in the baptizer
AKG D-25 on the Blues Jr.
Royer SF-12 & paper cone on the drum set
Ti-Guy on Sax & defragmenting Louis
Jul/0910
R.I.P ProTools, Logic 9 is out!
Finally! All the editing capabilities of ProTools in a comfortable DAW! This is something I was waiting for a while… The major Logic Pro 9 upgrade! Just like Apple did with Final Cut Pro 4 a while back, this upgrade to Logic is SERIOUSLY replacing the expensive Digidesign rigs by a comparably inexpensive computer with whatever interface you want and all the power you need, making it a TRUE alternative, not just an add-on. Not to mention that it’s all wrapped up in a much more friendly environment, stuffed with quality plug-ins and instruments… A musician’s dream, and the end of the engineer’s nightmare!
As an engineer, one is seeking for rapid editing and efficient file management in order to have an effective workflow that will save precious studio time for creative mixing. Up until now, editing was Logic’s weakness… To most engineers, the way to edit is the PT way: a one size fit all tool. Logic’s old tool menu was time consuming and not so effective. So much crap has flew out of my mouth because of that thing! But fortunately enough, this is all in the past… Logic has developed a new way to ”know” what tool you want to use. Apparently there are ”hot zones” in which your tools will automatically switch to what is best suited accordingly to where your pointer is.
The other biggie between Logic and PT was the time adjusting tool, as well as the whole quantization process, which in PT was made very easy… Well it’s all implemented in the new version of Logic, and way improved from the PT time stretching tool. It’s more closely resambles to the ”Ableton Live” approach of elastic audio rather than it’s, now obselete, Digidesign lookalike. The idea is to be able to easily move, stretch and compress bits of audio timewise. This is a serious improvement from the last version’s time stretching capabilities that was a little awkward to use…
The whole quantization process has also been improved by a very helpful visual color coded transient separators, making it very easy to quantize, groove or simply apply small corrections to an already tight track. To me, it looks much more versatile and friendly than PT’s beat detective…
An other fun implementation in version 9 is the sample converter, which enables an audio region to be automatically sliced up in bits and pieces based on transient response and re-mapped in a sampler, each bit being automatically assigned to a midi note which lengths is proportional to it’s original ”audio” length. It therefore makes every ”hit” or note independently tweakable and editable in the sampler instrument… But my words are shallow to describe the power of this new feature, so might as well show you the video…
Next is the major upgrade of the amp emulation. Honestly, i’ve never been a fan of plug-in amps and other such emulators, nothing sounds like the real thing… On the other hand, I’m a big fan of re-amping, thus giving its credit to a good emulation… Let me explain… If I am to track guitar overdubs for a band that is not quiet sure how they want their guitars to sound like, the idea of tracking the pure signal coming out of the guitar and taking as much time needed to find the right amp, microphone, placement and tone is pertinent. But tracking a guitar through a DI won’t get the player to play as he would in a real amp, as the DI sound has nothing to do with the real thing! That’s where the plug-in comes into play… By sending the player back a realistic amp sound, I’m allowing the performance to be as close as possible to one played directly in an amp. Also, playing around with the plug-in is a fast and time saving way to audition what kind of sound that would best suit the mix… Logic’s new ”Amplitube” approach does that just well! If we get to a type of sound we like turning knobs and switching amps with a mouse, then I’ll easily be able to get to that sound with the amps and cabs I got in the studio, sparing us from trying every single Head/Cab combo possible!
Finally, the last thing worth talking about is the whole ”comping” business… Logic found a way to improve their amazing non-destructive multi track comping stack. It’s easier and much more flexible from the earlier version…
Even if I had already convinced myself that ProTools was history, the new version of logic seals the deal! Now i’m all over it.
Jul/090
The first mass… (La première messe)
Finally, I was able to master the art of MySQL and all the other web crap caca doo enabling me to write this message! Well I guess this is sort of an intro to our blog… So here’s how it goes:
First, the purpose of this blog is to post some tips on recording and post some new gear that either caught our attention or just that we know of. From those vanished away in the forgotten realm of vintage to the brand-spanking-new, straight out of the box piece of gear that just came out on the market, we won’t have rules… Just passion, that will clearly leak on you. Because we all are, gearsluts, weather it’s assumed or not… We sure assume it!
We’ll also post the progress of the transformation of a newly acquired church into a completely awsomely wicked ass-whipping recording studio, hence the name “The Recording Church”. No need to mention that this is also a way to promote our services and prove our competence, hoping you will read a post, see a picture, visite our web site and happily book a week or two! No seriously, I think we’ve got a pretty unique concept, that proudly merges a quality recording session with an unforgettable human and travel experience. You need to go to the web site to understand the concept… ya ya… now!
- Greg and Louis, Recording Church owners and engineers.
Bon! J’ai finalement passé au travers des débilitudes MySQL et autres merdes de programmation qui me permettent d’écrire ce message! J’imagine qu’il serais donc pertinent d’introduire notre blogue… alors, voilà!
Le but premier de ce blogue est de donner des trucs et des anecdotes sur nos techniques d’enregistrement ainsi que d’écrire des revues sur l’équipement qui a attiré notre attention… Des vieux dinosaures sortis des boules à mittes au chef d’oeuvres technologiques qui sentent encore le neuf, nous n’aurons pas de filtre autre que notre passion pour l’équipement en ce qui à trait de nos choix de revues. Car avoué ou non, nous avons tous un côté ”pute à gear” qui sommeille en nous… Dans notre cas, il est bien réveillé!
Ensuite, nous passerons par ce blogue pour vous tenir à jour sur le développement de la conversion d’une église en studio d’enregistrement haut de gamme; d’où le nom ”L’église d’enregistrement”. Pas besoin de mentionner que ce blogue promeut aussi nos services ainsi que de vous prouvé nos compétences, en espérant qu’un jour vous allez tomber sur un article, voir une photo, visiter note site web et joyeusement nous réserver une ou deux semaines pour votre session! Non, mais sans blague, je crois que nous tenons un concept assez unique qui marie une qualité d’enregistrement incomparable avec une expérience humaine de voyage que vous n’oublierez pas! Il faut aller visiter le site web pour bien saisir le concept… oui oui… maintenant!
- Greg et Louis, Propriétaires et ingénieurs de l’église d’enregistrement.
P.S. Nous allons essayer de traduire le plus possible nos articles pour notre clientèle francophone… Il reste que parfois, le temps est un obstacle! On vous promet un gros effort en français!