torstai 20. marraskuuta 2014

Kekkonen elää! #8 Juurakko - "Eipä Kasva Kaikki Laulut" live at Studio Kekkonen


This time we are proud to present Juurakko, five incredibly talented musicians mixing finnish folk and blues with a skiffle instrumentation twist. They recently released their debut album “Lauluja Kuistilta” on the Inkoon Musiikki label, including this song, “Eipä Kasva Kaikki laulut” (translated “O Roots, Where Groweth Ye?”).

Kekkonen elää! #8
Juurakko: Eipä kasva kaikki laulut





www.studiokekkonen.com
www.facebook.com/studiokekkonen

juurakkoband.blogspot.fi
www.facebook.com/juurakkoband

Performed by Juurakko
Written by Minsku Tammela, lyrics trad, arranged by Juurakko
Kaisa Saarikorpi - Vocal, suitcase kick drum, Moomin mug
Eija Kankaanranta - Concert kantele
Minsku Tammela - Vocal, flower pot
Anna Wiksten - Vocal, karttu
Laura Kaartinen - Vocal, pump organ

Recorded by Mikko Raita & Julius Mauranen
Assistant engineers Arttu Aalto & Janne Riionheimo
Mixed by Mikko Raita

Video by Luomustudio
In association with Soundtools


About the recording by Mikko

Once again we opted to set up this live session to our studio lounge instead of the dedicated tracking room, because of the better space offered for the camera guys to work in. This means shuffling around a table and a few sofas but on the plus side the lounge does look nice as well!

The recording was a challenge. We recorded Juurakko’s album (including this song) at Kekkonen, but for the album we recorded instruments and vocals separately. This was partially for sound quality issues and partially to let the band focus on their individual performances better. So a real live recording was uncharted territory, also because the band’s collection of instruments is not of the tried-and-tested variety, and most of them keep swapping instruments from song to song.

Juurakko uses an instrument amplifier for the concert kantele when performing live but here we decided to start completely acoustic and see how it would work. After some discussion with the band we also decided to do this one without headphones, instead setting up 2 Genelec 1030 studio monitors as sidefills for the band if needed.

During soundcheck, it became obvious that the kantele was not audible enough for the whole band so we employed the monitors, giving the band a hint of the kantele. The instrument in question has a built-in stereo microphone system which we could utilize here with no risk of feedback in the monitoring, and it came in handy come mix time as well.

We picked up the kantele with 2 Audio-Technica 4050 microphones, but it soon became obvious that the mix would need a good amount of the BSS DI’d stereo line signal, as the kantele player Eija Kankaanranta was playing a special effects-y cloth-muted pattern on the high register, which is acoustically very quiet and the neighboring pump organ especially was bleeding a lot into the kantele mics. Nevertheless, we set up the mics as close as possible using a bidirectional polar pattern so we could get the real miked attack tone at least. The line signal would also end up handy for low end extension, as like in many Juurakko songs, the kantele is doubling as the bassline here as well.

Next in line (literally) we had Laura Kaartinen with the pump organ and vocal. For the pump organ we opted for two trusty Shure SM57’s directly above the sound holes which worked quite nicely. For Laura’s voice, we had found during the album recordings that our tube Neumann CMV 563’s worked well on her so it was an easy choice.

Anna Wiksten was playing the “karttu” which is basically a dented piece of wood originally used for doing laundry (or something along those lines). In Juurakko, Anna uses it both as a kind of Quiro as well as just clapping it like in this song. We picked up the attack of the karttu slap with a Audio-Technica 4081 ribbon mic which gave us perfect separation with it’s bidirectional polar pattern. For Anna’s voice we used the Audio-Technica 5040 high-end condenser mic for the first time and it did not dissappoint, in fact it could have been a good complement to her voice on the album as well.

Next to Anna we had Minsku playing a flower pot filled with small sleek stones with a nice “big maracas” type sound. We picked it up with a small-diaphragm vintage Neumann KM88 condenser, which also picked up Minsku’s handclaps nicely. Minsku’s voice got our 2nd Neumann CMV 563 which we used extensively on her vocals on the album as well.

Last but not least we had Kaisa Saarikorpi, clapping hands for the beginning of the song and playing an Arabia-made Moomin-themed coffee mug with a pencil later on (the Moomin characters are an essential part of the sound!). Both were picked up nicely by a second Audio-Technica 4081 ribbon. Kaisa also had a suitcase “drum” which she played with a kick drum pedal, which we captured with a AKG D112 kick drum mic. For the vocals, Kaisa got our crown jewel Neumann U48 tube condenser, used on most of her leads on the album as well.

To top things off we had two room mic pairs: An Audio-Techica 4050ST Mid-Side stereo mic close to the band at knee level, and a pair of AKG C 414 XLS’s in a wide omni AB setting further back.

The recording went smoothly after setting up, with the band doing a few takes searching for the perfect feel and soon nailing it. The Luomustudio crew recorded every take collecting extra shots to be used as they only used 2 cameras.

The mixdown, still by Mikko

Mixing down “Eipä kasva kaikki laulut” was a relatively straightforward process. I had to spend some time sculpting the kantele tone and balances to cope with the amount of pump organ and percussion bleed in the mics but other than that it was smooth sailing. To start, I employed a similar mix template explained in previous blogs with a “colouring” analog/digital master section as well as a collection of my most used effects plugins in a readymade virtual “rack”, but with the addition of some additional “desk sound” from the Slate VCC in the master and individual channels as well as Slate VTM  “tape” on the master.

For the kantele, I just employed a hefty low end EQ boost to the DI signal to get the bass line really happening, and also added some high mids to both the DI and mic signals for presence on the high muted pattern which Eija plays for most of the song.

The pump organ got a similar treatment, a bit more bass and high mids, effectively scooping the mids slightly.

For the karttu, I ended up processing slightly more, trying to get a bit more “wood tone” out of the instrument. I compressed it somewhat heavily with the Massey CT5 and also limited the transient with a Waves L1 to try to even out the sharp attacks to be able to raise the volume a bit. I also boosted low mids, especially around the wood block’s own resonant note to bring it through the mix.

For the flower pot I just added some top end, but it was fairly present in the overall bleed so there was not much I could do to sculpt it anyway, luckily it sounded good in the room.

The Moomin coffee mug just needed some lows rolled off, it too was fairly present in the vocal mics and ambiences.

Kaisa’s kick drum was another difficult beast. “Au naturel” it sounded somewhat dull and mid-rangey. That’s obviously to be expected, the resonant “heads” on it are significantly thicker and more rigid than on a real kick drum. It does sound good in the room but the low end extension was not quite there for how nice everything else was sounding close miked, so I decided to trigger a hint of a sampled real kick drum (played quietly with lots of low end bloom) underneath it which did the trick quite nicely. For triggering I used Massey’s DRT and Toontrack’s Superior Drummer.

Both room mics were used with quite liberal midrange EQ cuts, I also used a bit of Waves S1 widening on the M/S pair.

For vocals, I did a similar treatment than on the album. Depending on the singer, a bit of de-essing and dynamic EQ:ing with the HOFA IQ-EQ was used, as well as mild individual compression with the Massey CT5 and group compression with the Softube Summit Audio TLA100 as well as further IQ-EQ on the group. The vocals were the only tracks getting artifical reverb, employing a mixture of my real EMT 140 Plate, Softube’s TSAR-1, Avid ReVibe and ValhallaDSP’s ValhallaVintageVerb. I decided here to keep the “room feel” of the picture so the reverb was mostly used subtly, just for a hint of sweetening.

To top things off I automated the vocals a bit section by section, enhancing the (always shifting) lead vocals and we could call it a mix! The whole mix was moderately limited with a Massey L2007 limiter as there was no separate mastering involved.


Setting up: Mikko adjusting Laura's vocal mic

Laura and Anna

57's

Laura helping with mic repositioning

Soundcheck is ready!

Arttu, Janne and Julius in the control room

Anna, Kaisa, Minsku & Luomustudio's Joonas and Sam listening

Preparing the intro materials

Shooting the intro
Channel list
Pictures by Luomustudio & Studio Kekkonen




perjantai 10. lokakuuta 2014

Kekkonen elää! #7 Delay Trees - "Perfect heartache" live at Studio Kekkonen

Kekkonen elää! is back with a brand new live session with one of our all-time favourite groups, Delay Trees to celebrate the release of their latest record Readymade in Germany. Thanks again to our backers at Soundtools and the video guys at Luomustudio.

Kekkonen elää! #7 

  Delay Trees: Perfect heartache




www.studiokekkonen.com
www.delaytrees.com

Performed by Delay Trees
Written by Rami Vierula and Delay Trees

Rami Vierula Vocals, guitar
Lauri Järvinen Guitar
Sami Korhonen Bass
Onni Oikari Drums, backing vocals

Recorded by Julius Mauranen & Mikko Raita
Assistant engineer Arttu Aalto
Mixed by
Julius Mauranen

Video by Luomustudio
In association with Soundtools 


 ABOUT THE SESSION

The thing I (Julius) love about working with great bands like Delay Trees is that when they show up, they bring their own special energy and quirky personality as well as their unique sound. I've worked with Delay Trees a lot, starting way back in 2009 when I mixed one track on their debut EP Soft Construction, I produced, recorded and mixed their eponymous first album and have worked on every Delay Trees release since, including Doze, Before I go go EP and their latest album Readymade, which was released early this year in Finland and today, 10.10.2014 in Germany by Soliti. Having said that, working with Delay Trees is always a great pleasure.


The song Perfect heartache was the first single of the new album and after some contemplating in prior to the session we ended up picking it for the live session. It's one of my favourite tracks off the new album and it was very nice working on it again (and also getting to record it the way I like). The band played four takes (plus one false start due to ProTools weirdness) and the keeper was take number two.

ABOUT THE RECORDING


We decided to record this session in our lounge, as we did with the earlier ones this year. Rami expressed a strong wish to be in the same room with the rest of the band - despite the obvious leakage from Onni's drums (and believe me, that was a LOT of leakage!) and having worked with them before, I knew this to be the most comfortable setting for Rami and the band, so that's what we went for.

To fight leakage I chose to record Rami's vocals with the Shure SM7 (through the Knif Audio V804 pre), but even then there was a lot of drums in the vocal mic. Rami's vocal style is very soft and I don't think anybody has played as loud as Onni in our lounge before, so that's a tough combination! As the lounge is not a dedicated recording space the acoustics weren't designed for medium loud drums. However, the leakage was the only real issue I had with the drum sound.

Also due to the leakage, we put Rami's guitar amps into our live room, Lauri's guitar amp into the office and Sami's bass cabinet in Mikko's control room. The cable run to Mikko's control room was 25-30 metres, so it's a blessing that Sami didn't have a combo and we could run it as a speaker level signal! Rami's guitar cable was long too, but thanks to the George L cables our great assistant Arttu soldered some weeks before there was no significant signal loss.

We picked up the drums with AKG D112 and Audio-Technica 4050 on kick, Shure SM57 on top and bottom snare, AKG C414 XLS's on toms (yes, with the -20dB pad on...), Neumann CMV 563's (into Knif V804) as overheads and Audio-Technica 4050's for the room. Onni's backing vocal mic was Sennheiser MD441.

Rami's guitar setup was a Roland Jazz Chorus in stereo for the classic, jangly sound and our Creamsound CS-1/6 for a fatter overdrive for the chorus. The Jazz Chorus was mic'd with two Audio-Technica 4081 ribbon mics and the Creamsound with an AxeTrak isolation cabinet (into GAP-73 pre), partly to prevent leakage, partly because we ran out of mic stands! This time around, Rami played his Fender Mustang instead of the loyal Rickenbacker. Lauri's guitar was picked up with the classic SM57 into a GAP-73 pre. Sami's bass cabinet was mic'd with a Sennheiser MD421. Most tracks went through the pres and fat Lundahl transformers of our MS Audiotron desk with no EQ and no compression at the recording stage.


ABOUT THE MIX



The mix of Perfect heartache was fun, but required quite a bit of work - again due to the leakage, the main issue being the drums leaking into the vocal mic. 

The first thing I did was lower all the bits where Rami wasn't singing by about 30dB with clip gain and filter out as much of the top and bottom end that I could comfortably do. This already helped a lot, but the snare was still pretty loud and sounded a little messy bleeding into the vocal mic. Also, as the dream-poppy quality of Delay Trees and the vocal on this particular song demands a healthy dose of Roland Space Echo (featured in the intro of the video too!) and Knif Audio K.Verb (i.e. tape delay and spring reverb), the snare leaking into the vocal mic wasn't a great thing. So I ended up setting up two compressors - one regular, one multiband with a sidechain feed from the snare, ducking the vocal mic briefly by about 6dB every time Onni hit the snare (a very nice snare by the way). In solo, the vocal sounded pretty obviously processed, but with the music it worked like a charm! Onni's backing vocal got a similar treatment.

I also duplicated the vocal track with all its processing for a send for the Space Echo and edited that track even more drastically to get rid of any non-vocal signal in the effects send.

There was other sidechaining going on as well as to make the vocal stand out a little more. I compressed both the reverb return and the 2-bus master a little with a sidechain feed from the vocal. The former was to have the reverb signal duck a little when Rami sings for more intelligibility, but without losing the nice tail of the spring reverb. The latter is a somwhat special technique where the vocal ducks the whole mix, but so that it's also within the mix... It's more simple than it sounds and the bottom line is that it actually works. There was more master processing going on, notably our desk's stereo channel going into the Gyraf G-SSL compressor. This time around I ended up using the Slate Virtual Tape Machine with very mild settings instead of our Otari, simply because the Otari's settings were set to such hot levels that it messed up the cymbal sound, making the hihat in the chorus too washy.

Other than that the mix was very pleasant and fun to mix! I used our lovely MXR Dual Limiter on the drum bus. It's a very strange compressor in terms of design (it uses the unusual pulse width modulation-topology), but sounds punchy and open with practically any settings. There was a dbx 160X on the kick and snare too and a Rantanen LA-4 as a "send parallel" compressor for all instruments in the mix, but not the vocal. The other processing for the drums was pretty basic EQ, Waves API for boosting. The bass had a little compression (Softube FET), a little extra distortion (Soundtoys Decapitator) and a small amount of subharmonic action from the dbx 120XP. Sami played his vintage Fender Jazz bass and the sound was great to begin with. Both guitars sounded great to begin with and aside from a touch of Softube FET and some EQ, it was mostly about getting the automation right. There was also a Slate VCC Channel on all audio tracks of the mix for some softening niceness.


Rami, SM-7

Onni and Julius miking the drums

Julius, Sami & the Jazz bass and Arttu

Lauri with pedals...

The Audio-Technica 50th anniversary 4050!

Gazing at the shoes

keskiviikko 30. huhtikuuta 2014

Kekkonen elää! #6 Sakilaiset - "Poppia" live at Studio Kekkonen

To celebrate the First of May (not by coincidence this time), our sixth Kekkonen elää! session is here! Brought to you by Soundtools and Luomustudio. This time something completely different!

Kekkonen elää! #6

Sakilaiset: Poppia







www.studiokekkonen.com
www.facebook.com/sakilaiset

Performed and written by Sakilaiset

Recorded by Mikko Raita & Julius Mauranen
Mixed by Janne Riionheimo
Video by Luomustudio
In association with Soundtools

ABOUT THE BAND AND THE SESSION

Sakilaiset was founded in 2002 and early on played and sang songs in Helsinki slang. After that the repertoire of the band has broadened, ranging from 150 year-old couplets to new “rautalanka”. The band is a combination of “rillumarei” music, a schlager orchestra (up to 12 musicians on the stage) and a folk band with a crude flavour. Some related artists might be M.A. Numminen from Finland and Max Raabe from Germany as well as Tuomari Nurmio and for the next album also Nick Cave. As a band member and the engineer of the band, I (Janne) will write something about the song and the live session.


As a band, we rehearse, perform and release music quite randomly, but we are now recording our third album at Studio Kekkonen. The song “Poppia” is one of the new tracks. The song is actually 5 years old, it started out from lead singer Olvi’s lyrics for which guitar player Pate made a tune, which was then finalized together in one jamming session. It became a strange combination of modern couplet, humppa and a pop-jingle. Slightly annoying like every pop-song!


We had booked studio Kekkonen a few weeks before this live session for the recording of five songs, but unfortunately our drummer Joni had an other gig so he couldn’t play at the session. We considered different options and ended up with a peculiar one: let’s hire our friend Jönkka to play banjo instead of having a drummer! So when we got to the studio we arranged Poppia for acoustic guitar, banjo, double bass and keys. After a few takes Jönkka found Juppu’s Yamaha RX-7, a drum machine from 80’s, and got an idea of adding some tom fills to the song. The song was already recorded without a click so we overdubbed the fills real time with the clumsy buttons. When it was time to perform “Poppia” for the Kekkonen elää! live video our drummer was again unavailable, so we programmed the drum track with the RX-7.

ABOUT THE RECORDING

For the live video recording we wanted a cozy and intimate setup in the lounge where everybody could hear each other without headphones. However, we needed to hear the drum machine track and the organ so headphone monitoring was still necessary. Although the playing balance was pretty good, we considered different options for the positioning of the instruments in order to minimize leakage. Beforehand we were thinking that the banjo would be problematic, but fortunately the tone of Jönkka’s instrument is not very loud. Actually the most problematic instrument was the kazoo!


The mic setup was as follows: An Audio-Technica AT4080 on Jönkka’s banjo, an AKG 414 XLS on Pate’s acoustic guitar and a Neumann U48 on Antti’s double bass. Antti and Pate had also electric “piezos” in their instruments, which were recorded just in case. Pate was also singing to an AKG 414 XLS while playing so we used figure-of-eight pickup patterns both on his guitar and vocal mics. Antti’s backing vocals were picked up with a Shure SM7B and Janne sang and kazoo’d into an Audio-Technica AT4047. We used two tracks for Janne’s Wurlitzer: DI and an amp, which was placed in Janne’s office and picked up with a SM57. Janne also used one of the studio’s weird organs, which was pitched realtime up by 30 cents in ProTools. Olvi was singing into a Audio-Technica AT5040 which was recorded though our Knif Audio V804 mic preamp. Another Knif channel was used for the banjo. The other channels went through our customized MS Audiotron Multimix desk (R.I.P Matti Sarapaltio 23.4.2014).
The song was played five times and the arrangement changed slightly in each take. Pate found a different more open position in his guitar at the last take and Jönkka changed his banjo lines also slightly.


Olvi, Juppu, Pate and Antti behind the Shure SM7B.


Pate with two AKG 414 XLSs.


Jönkka in front of AT4080.

Janne in front of AT4047.


Jönkka, Janne, AT5040, 2xAT4081, AT4080 and the RX7 on the floor

ABOUT THE MIX

The guideline for mixing Sakilaiset has previously been to “sound old”. Our previous release was a recording of J. Alfred Tanner’s couplets from early 1900’s so it wasn’t necessary to sound modern in any way, so the album didn’t have much high or low end and the sound was quite lo-fi. Our next album will be a collection of our own songs so the esthetics might change a little, but it will not probably sound too hifi. That was also the guideline for the video mix, which will be added to our album later on, with possibly some overdubs.
Although we didn’t have real drums I had a kind of a normal setup for the RX7. The distinctive tom fills were compressed with a RComp and equalized with a Digi EQ III (450 Hz cut and boost in the low and high ends). RX7 claps transients were slightly smoothened by a transient designer and mildly compressed with a DBX 160 (needle hardly moving). The bass drum had a low cut filter to get rid of the overwhelming sub bass and the shaker and the snare had a mild top boost. Our Stocktronics plate was used as a reverb as well as a room IR for the toms, and I also added parallel compression to the RX7 track with our Knif Audio Vari-mu compressor.


Bass channel (combination of DI and U48 tracks) had Digi EQ III, RComp, C1 and URS emulation of Neve to boost the pluck at 1,3 kHz. The banjo was compressed with a second channel of our 1178. No EQ was used. Acoustic guitar was mildly compressed with a LA4 and the top end as well as mid-range at 1,5 kHz was boosted with Waves API 550. Some distortion was added to the Wurlitzer with a Softube FET compressor and some mud at 350Hz was cut with a Digi EQ III, and some presence was added with URS Neve emulation. The organ had the before-mentioned +30 cent pitch, a chorus, Digi EQ III and Soundtoys Microshift to make it stereo. Kazoo was compressed mildly with a Digirack Compressor that was already on the track.


Olvi’s vocals had a little bit more processing. First there was a 3,5dB cut at 260Hz as well as very narrow and deep notch at 2,65 kHz to cut the unpleasant mouth or throat resonance peak. Then it was compressed with LA2 and 1178 and the high end was boosted with our new Waves API 550 plugin which was purchased just for that purpose. Before we had a Focusrite’s Liquid mix which has pretty good emulations of API and NEVE EQs, but we are about to upgrade our computer and update our OS (now 10.6.8) and unfortunately our Liquid mix won’t be supported anymore. In the end the vocal track was de-essed with a RDeEsser. The lyrics in the chorus have lot of p's and somehow some of the p's didn't have so much energy and sounded more like k's in the mix, which changed the meaning of the lyrics (for instance shoppia sounded like shokkia and koppia sounded like kokkia) so I had to reinforce them by replacing them by double p's from the word poppia.


I used our Slate digital virtual channel and mix bus in vocal tracks as well as some other tracks. I have often used Waves C1 with side chain in split mode on Olvi’s vocals to control the 2,5-3 kHz harshness especially when he is singing loud, but now I didn’t have to use it. Was it the AT5040 microphone or was it the feng shui in Olvi’s throat? I think it's the combination of different factors but alternative microphones are always worth trying - especially eccentric designs with four rectangular capsules!


Backing vocals were sent to a stereo bus which had Digi Comp, Digi EQ and a Massey tape head plugin in its inserts.


Master chain was our MS Audiotron desk stereo channel with master EQ -> G-SSL -> Otari MTR-12 1/4” tape machine.


The ambience was recorded with a pair of AT4081 ribbon mics in Blumlein setup. The not so optimal balance in the ambience track made the effective use of the track difficult so I played also with few IR samples to get a suitably balanced muddle for the mix.

These days I do studio work quite infrequently and for me this was the first time when I mixed with our new FAR active studio monitors so I felt little uncertain about the mix at the start, but after a few versions I was happy - so here it is, the song of the first of may 2014. Sakilaiset and Poppia!


Our new FAR monitors are being installed.

torstai 13. helmikuuta 2014

Kekkonen elää! #5 Nuria - "The great escape" live at Studio Kekkonen

To celebrate Valentine's day (or perhaps by coincidence), our fifth Kekkonen elää! session is here! Brought to you by Soundtools and Luomustudio.

Kekkonen elää! #5

Nuria: The great escape

Our guest this time around Nuria may not be a household name (yet!), but the trio only released their debut album "Winter's end" on Rockadillo / Zen Master Records in late 2013. The recordings began already back in 2007 and after a somewhat extended period of waiting for the right moment to finish it, Mikko entered the picture, mixed the album and helped the band shop for a label, which resulted in Nuria and Rockadillo finding each other!


It's a great track and we're proud to present it! Enjoy!




www.studiokekkonen.com
www.nuria.fi

Performed by Nuria
Written by Nuria

Recorded by Mikko Raita & Julius Mauranen
Mixed by Mikko Raita
Video by Luomustudio
In association with Soundtools

ABOUT THE RECORDING

This was the first time we've recorded drums in the lounge and although the drummer Pekka Saarikorpi's dynamics on "The great escape" are on the soft end of the scale, it's not the most straightforward setup to have next to a finger-picked acoustic guitar and vocals (Markus Kahila) and a cello (Tuukka Helminen), so there was an element of challenge! (We kinda like that, though.)

The drums setup was the following: AKG D112 and C414 XLS on the bass drum, C

414 on the top and a Sennheiser MD421 on the bottom of the (very large) low tom. We had an Audio-Technica 

AT4047 on the Djembe / "snare drum”. 

Another 4047 was on the top, and a Sennheiser MD441 on the bottom on the mounted hand Cajon (the inverted pyramid-like wooden thing!). Our Neumann 

CMV 563’s were as overheads and were recorded through a Knif V804 preamp

 and into ProTools through RME ADI-8 DS converters. The other drum channels went through the customised MS Audiotron Multimix desk.

On the acoustic guitar we first tried the Neumann U48 in figure eight, but the leakage from the drums was overbearing. We ended up using a an Audio-Technica ATM350cw clip-on mic attached to the body with some gaffer tape (the mic is inteded to clip onto a tom, sax, violin or similar, but it worked like a charm!) and as a safety we recorded the piezo DI from the guitar. The AT was recorded through a Knif V804 as well. The song usually features a delay pedal on the guitar, but we opted to use a delay plug-in in the monitoring instead, to have better control over the delay.



On the cello we ended up setting up both an Audio-Techica AT4081 and our trusty U48 in figure of eight (freed from acoustic guitar duty) as alternatives, as well as 2 DI lines, pre effects and post Tuukka’s Line6 POD used for octave and delay effects. The mics were positioned with the null facing towards the drumkit to minimise leakage.

Markus' vocals were recorded with the trusty Shure SM7B through the remaining Knif channel.

There was a pair of ambience mics too, surprisingly very useable and useful Behringer ECM-8000 omni mics (their only real downside is the noise floor, but it rarely becomes a problem when there's a drumkit around).

The hand cajon setup.

Cello - AT 4081, Neumann U48 and two DI feeds.

Markus, ATM350 and the elegant gaffer tape solution.

As you can see the ambience mics in the back point upwards. Just to leave a little mystique.

The drums setup.


ABOUT THE MIXING OF "The great escape" (from Mikko)

In the beginning, "The great escape" looked like quite a difficult mix to pull off due to the fact that the drumset was right beside the cello and especially the softly picked acoustic guitar - but that was to be expected when we decided to do it as a true one room live take.



To begin with, I again imported in my trusty master section and effects, opting for summing amp crucnh via my Vintagedesign SU1 summing unit, as well as enabling Pro Tools’ own HEAT processing on a moderate bright setting. 

I started with the easy part, mixing the drums. Pekka’s drumset sounded beatiful in the room and very little needed to be done to the tracks except for balances and basic EQ. I started off by adding some parallel compression via my trusty Knif Vari-Mu as well as a tiny hint of parallel bite from a EMI TG12143 plugin limiter. Then I proceeded to slightly tidy up the low end and midrange on the tracks. The bass drum was very resonant so I cut a little 90Hz out of it, as well as clearing some low mids from the second bass drum setup as a low tom. For the snare drum- like djembe I ended up boosting the lows to have some more body and adding a hint of my beloved EMT 140 plate. The overheads got a tiny midrange dip and some high end boost from the Softube Trident A-range. The only thing that needed more processing was the small and relatively quiet hand Cajon played in the verses. I ended up muting the track completely in the loud sections and added a liberal low end boost to the bottom mic to make it sound slightly larger. It also got some EMT Plate. I added a modicum of the omni ambiences flat to the mix and the drum sound was done - keep in mind, that we did have quite a bit of drum ambience in the other mics as well!



The cello sounded very good but it indeed contained quite a bit of drum spill, though not bad sounding due to the quality mics used in figure of eight. We were undecided between the ribbon and the U48 during recording and ended up keeping both which was just as well, as I ended up using both mics muting them in sections. I found that the AT ribbon had slightly less bleed so I used it in the loud intro and verses where Tuukka was playing a bass line in combination of some line sound. But in the bowed chorus I found the U48 to have a more pleasing top end so I switched over to that. Tuukka also had some effects on in the song. In the intro and first verse I used the post FX line where he had a +1/-1 octaver sound, but in the later stages where he used just a delay I switched to the clean DI and recreated the delay as a stereo version.

 The cello received moderate EQ and some group compression via a Softube Summit TLA-100A plugin. I also added some plate and Reverb One to the cello for a similar sound as what I used on the album version of the song. The delay used was a Soundtoys Echoboy, automated to be used only in the parts Tuukka had his own delay on.



The acoustic guitar sound was very quiet and even though we managed to capture quite a bit of it due to the drastic taped-on goosenec hypercardioid, I ended up using roughly 50% line signal in the loud parts, but automated the mic up in the intro and choruses when leakage permitted. It was also EQ:d and compressed liberally with a Massey CT5 and Softube Summit TLA-100A. For the song’s signature delay I again used an Echoboy.


The vocal was relatively bleed-free and sounded very nice already. I used some Waves RDeEsser as well as mild EQing and HOFA IQ-EQ dynamic EQing to clear it up a little as well as compressing it with a Softube FET compressor. I added some EMT plate and Softube’s TSAR-1 for reverb, as well as quite a bit of Echoboy delay fed into the TSAR, automated from section to section.



After a bit of volume rides I sent a reference mix to the band. They were very pleased and in the end I only went back to do a very minor recall, taking just a hint of the vocal delay off in the choruses and lowering the djembe “snare drum” a bit. The whole mix took surprisingly little time in the end, not so difficult after all!





perjantai 17. tammikuuta 2014

Kekkonen elää! #4 Joakim Berghäll & Aki Rissanen - "Bamboozle!" live at Studio Kekkonen

New year, new Kekkonen elää! session! Happy 2014 to everybody from us at Studio Kekkonen and our associates Soundtools and Luomustudio.


Kekkonen elää! #4

Joakim Berghäll & Aki Rissanen: Bamboozle!



This time we're proud to present you another jazz duet session, this time the fantastic saxophonist Joakim Berghäll and someone you know from our previous session, great pianist and keyboardist Aki Rissanen! The duet was - conveniently for all! - recorded on the same day as the Verneri Pohjola & Aki Rissanen session. 

The duo collaborated on Joakim's Dialogues I album (released in september last year, it's first in a series of duet albums) on the track "Bamboozle!" which they also perform here, although with a slightly different choice of instruments: Joakim plays baritone sax instead of the alto. Also, on the album Aki plays grand piano.

Enjoy!



www.studiokekkonen.com
www.joakimberghall.com
www.akirissanen.com

Performed by Joakim Berghäll & Aki Rissanen
Written by Joakim Berghäll

Recorded by Mikko Raita & Julius Mauranen
Mixed by Mikko Raita
Video by Luomustudio
In association with Soundtools

ABOUT THE RECORDING


The performance was pretty relaxed, Joakim & Aki laid down a couple of takes and chose their favourite. As this was a duet with only a single instrument each and no multitasking, it was a focused and concise session.

The setup was very similar to Verneri's & Aki's session (watch and read more about it here), as a matter of fact the piano setup was identical: A-B pair of Neumann CMV-563's in the back, a pair of AT4081 ribbon mics in the front side aiming at the hammers and a pair of workhorse SM-57's very close to the body of the piano in the back. Neumanns and AT's went through Knif Audio V804 mic preamps of which we have two at the studio.

Joakim's baritone sax was miked with our vintage crown jewel Neumann U48 just above the bell and a supplementary side mic (Audio-Technica 4047) to pick up some more body.

There were a pair of ambience mics: AKG C414 XLS behind Joakim and Line Audio CM3's facing away from the piano (see pictures!).








ABOUT THE MIXING OF "BAMBOOZLE!" (by Mikko)



The mix here is quite similar to the one we already documented earlier about mixing “Hyperballad”, recorded the same day and with the same piano recording, and again with wonderful world class musicians just doing their thing.



I actually started the mix by importing some mixer settings from the “Hyperballad” session, though obviously it had to be tweaked to work here where the whole arrangement is just the piano and sax. I kept the same master section (Vintagedesign SU-1, McDsp AC-1, Waves SSL, parallel DUY DaD Tape & L2007) as well as moderate HEAT processing.



For the piano, I had to tone tone down the large low end boost I had created for the prepared low end on Hyperballad for a more natural upright sound, though in the end Aki ended up requesting slightly more low end hype - their album version was recorded with a quality grand piano after all!

 To sweeten things I again used a hint of my EMT 140 Plate and Valhalladsp’s ValhallaVintageVerb, as well as some room mics. Here I ended up favoring the 414’s behind the sax despite having the more piano-centric Line Audios available as well - the 414's just had a nice combined room tone.

 Due to the full acoustic nature of this track I ended up dropping the KNIF Vari-Mu parallel compression I had on the piano in the previous mix, though I did keep slight group compression on it from the Masssey CT5.



For Joakim's baritone, I ended up using both mics with the low side mic -10db, from which I also cut some low mids to make it less boomy. I then grouped these and added very mild compression with both the Massey CT5 (actually added already during recording) and a Softube TLA-100A, as well as just tiny midrange dips in the 750 and 1900 Hz ranges. To “top” things off I added a few dBs at 10k on the Softube Trident A-Range.



For spatial effects I again used the prerecorded Stocktronics plate but also added some EMT 140 Plate as well as Softube TSAR & ValhallaVintageVerb, both at a darkish setting and hovering around the 2,5-3s range. I also used the “1970s” color preset on the Valhalla.



From there, it was just a matter of balancing the 2 instruments with very small rides, mostly to get the end of the piano solo and the transition to the sax solo to really gel. I wish all mixes were this simple and enjoyable!