The Long-Lost Art of Recording a Live Backing Track

The guys from Black Tree Vultures came in for a recording session at Outhouse Studios last week, and wanted to record their session live. My heart sank because quite often when a band wants to do this, the drummer often isn't tight enough for the job. After flagging this concern with them, they reassured me that they’d been rehearsing a lot and were fit for the task. So we went for it!

I mic'd up the drum kit in my usual fashion, took a DI from the bass player's Orange Terror Bass head, and put my trusty Marshall 4x12 cabinet at the end of the corridor by the back wall of the studio. Anyone who has been to Outhouse before will be aware that it's a compact and bijou setup, and not necessarily the most ideal setting for a live recording. Regardless, I put the guitarist's Mesa Boogie amplifier in the control room and ran a speaker cable through the door and into my cabinet at the end of the corridor and cranked it up to an earth-shattering level (much to the neighbours' chagrin, probably). We then got levels on the desk, I set up a project, gave the drummer my iPhone so he could control his headphone mix using the Focusrite Control app, and I hit 'record'.

Wow!!! Cynical as I may seem, but in this day and age, rarely does one find a band that is capable of putting down a live backing track that doesn't need some level of doctoring afterwards. But they nailed it! We did three takes of each song, played them back, and chose the ones that had the best feel. There was no nudging or tweaking of any sort. The only thing that we did was double-track the rhythm guitar so that there was an added element of stereo.

I have to say, it's probably been in the region of 15 years since this last occurred at Outhouse Studios, and it was a revelation and pleasure to record something in the manner that it would have been done in the 1970s. I heard a rumour that Black Sabbath recorded their first album in two days, and I was always sceptical that this was possible. However, Black Tree Vultures have restored my faith in this somewhat neglected art form. Beat Detective, take the rest of the week off!

Check out their website at http://btv-band.co.uk/ 

Guilty Of This Drum Production Bad Habit?

On a fairly regular basis, bands interested in recording at my studio send me links to YouTube videos of modern metal bands that they aspire to sound like. These videos typically consist of cutaway storylines interspersed with live action footage of the band in question, and the usual on-stage antics and choreographed headbanging...

One thing that always strikes me as a great disparity when watching these videos is the footage of the drummer half-heartedly hitting his snare drum to the actual soundtrack of what seems to be a shotgun. You see kids, in this day and age, the generally assumed sound of a drum kit in recorded rock music bears very little resemblance to what a drum kit actually sounds like in real life.

In modern rock recording and drum production, it is pretty much always expected that a drummer will play to a click track, gets beat detected onto the grid, and then 70% of his or her kit gets augmented or replaced with super-processed drum samples, in a bid to make the drums sound like the second coming of the Lord! What you're basically left with is a bunch of very in time cymbals and a drum production that bears very little relation to the original performance. You may just as well have programmed the drums and saved yourself a world of pain in bothering to strategically mic up the kit (which will be another blog post soon!), while the drummer plays Xbox.

"So what?", you might ask. "That's what people expect to hear these days..." Well, from a purely luddite perspective, the above phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with the art and skill required in recording drums properly, and encourages extremely bad habits in the drummer themselves in terms of actually playing decent drum takes on the basis that it's all going to get fixed further down the line.

Yes, modern drum "production" sounds impressive, but at best it's creating sonic mythology and at worst, it's encouraging utter laziness. Listen to any record pre-1980 (e.g. The Police - Outlanders D'Amour, Led Zeppelin IV) and yes, the drumming may not have been perfect, and it may not sound like a 4th July firework display, but at least what you're hearing is what was actually played in the studio. Remember kids, the drum kit is an acoustic and very real instrument, and I for one think we could all do with regaining some of that core value.

The Importance of Finding Your Own Sound

What's come to my attention in recent months is how much bands covet the sound of other bands that our merry team of people at Outhouse Studios record, produce and mix. One band in particular springs to mind... our lovely old chums in Architects.

Now if you're wondering what this has to do with the price of butter, let me explain. If you have any interest in pursuing any kind of successful career derived from being in a band, there are many golden rules to be observed in the pursuit of this dream, but in my honest opinion the only one that really matters is - DO YOUR OWN THING.

Obviously we all start out in life in bands playing the covers of our favourite bands and wanting to be those bands (in my case it was Iron Maiden) and there's absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with that - after all, imitation is the highest form of flattery so they say...

BUT in the topsy turvy world of rock and roll these days, there are SO many bands out there to begin with and SO many that sound identical to other bands, it's almost impossible for any of them to rise to the top and find a core audience or indeed any level of success if that is indeed what they are trying to do.

You may have noticed that in each genre of music, there is always only one real flagship band who go on to sell a gazillion records. The Stones did the Stones, the Beatles did the Beatles, U2 did U2, Radiohead did Radiohead, Queen did Queen, and Muse does...well...Muse. But the ONLY reason that Muse became anything like as successful as they have is solely BECAUSE they stopped trying to copy Radiohead and found their OWN sound. In fact it hasn't gone unnoticed that the MORE they try to sound like Queen, the LESS records they sell (well that's my theory and I'm sticking to it). The point I am trying to make is that no MATTER what you do in music, surely the most rewarding thing in the long run is finding your own niche and striving for your own voice?

What REALLY was the point in the band Hoobastank? They were never as successful as Incubus and never sold as many records as them and IMHO were a very poor imitation of them and well - where are they now...?

It seems that all that wondrous musical discovery that went on in the early 70s has fallen by the wayside in favour of a blaze of dreary facsimiles. And not only that, bands have become HIGHLY complacent in bothering to learn to actually play particularly well any more. It seems more important that you have the right hook-ups/merchandise/look/tattoos than actually being able to play in time and in tune. How often do I hear.. "WOW...did you hear such and such the other night??? WOW!!! He actually can sing live!!" I'm sorry, but to me that is the lowest common denominator requirement. It's AS IT SHOULD BE. It's not impressive in the slightest. If you're a cat, you should be able to catch mice and jump off tall walls... if you're a clock, the fundamental reason for your being is to keep time, and if you're a singer the very least anyone expects of you is to be able to SING.

So let's have less of the shape throwing and cool haircuts and more 6 hours per day practicing in our bedrooms please :-) Oh yeah, and drummers, PLEASE don't try to play those really complicated double bass drum parts that you have NO business doing and then expect recording engineers to magically midi them into the middle of next week. Like swearing - it's not big and it's not clever.

Anyway, I digress. The point I'm trying to make is can people please regain some semblance of integrity and indeed creative thinking when entering the wide wide world of bands and composition? Is it too much to ask? We're all a product of our influences, and influences are just that. They should be as varied and as colourful and esoteric as possible. If you only ever listen to 3 or 4 bands, your output will never reach the realms of much more than the input of your influences. When I was a kid my cousin forced me to listen to Dire Straits. I can't say that I'm massively glad that he did, and when I asked him why he did it, he just said "because you NEED a musical education". I replied "but I like what I like... what's wrong with that?" and he came back with the classic retort "how do you know what you like when you only ever listen to Iron Maiden??". Very true. So I immersed myself in all manner of different music and even now I don't feel that I have listened to enough. The time to embrace music the most is when you are young. And don't just limit yourself to listening to stuff that was made whilst you have been alive because all the best stuff was recorded BEFORE you were even a glint in your fathers eye ;-) The more stuff you listen to, the wider and more varied your musical vocabulary will become and the more depth your own music will have.

Even in the modern age of cinema, film companies have run out of steam and have resorted more and more to simply remaking and regurgitating films that have already been made and were probably better first time round.

So PLEASE less of the carbon copying and more free thinking and trying to find a voice that is YOURS. Architects did... my mate Jem did, and so let's not be lazy.

(Disclaimer...I realise that I am a partial hypocrite in this debate as I front a band that sound not dissimilar to Genesis ;-)

(Disclaimer 2...no you CAN'T have the same guitar sound as on Daybreaker ;-)

That's Showbiz - See You On The Way Down

As my good friend Nick Beggs (clang) once said to me, "Don't worry John, there's no shortage of c**ts in the music industry". Sadly this brief refrain rings true to my ears almost on a weekly basis. Despite one's best efforts to be fair and just, there are always people you encounter along your voyage across life's rich tapestry who just don't have any real moral code. That's a given. It's also a given that miscommunication, misunderstanding and conflict is inevitable within the realm of business versus artistry, hence why we have a subset of individuals collectively known as lawyers who are there to profiteer from such conflict and confusion, and hopefully resolve any disputes. I get all of that. That can apply to any corridor of industry and is just how it is.

What I simply don't get about the music industry is just how many clueless berks there are per square mile comparative to any other profession. To be a clueless berk is one thing, to go around wearing a Sheriff's badge brusquely purporting to know what you're doing, spouting 'received yet not comprehended wisdom', and quoting dog-ended soundbites you overheard someone else say without really really grasping the very essence of what you are blathering is simply laughable in my book. Do NOT pass Go. RED CARD. If you fall into such a category, PLEASE, do yourself a MASSIVE favour and read Kill Your Friends by John Niven, then please take a LONG HARD LOOK at yourself in the mirror and question your place in the world. Maybe a career in the shoe industry might be a better calling for you? After all, you wouldn't expect to be wheeled into an operating theatre and find a chimpanzee looming above you with a scalpel would you? You wouldn't expect to find a small beaker of plankton in charge of choreography at the English National Ballet would you? It's an industry based around the very basic notion that having an opinion is far more important than not having one, even if said opinion is based on absolutely no knowledge of the chosen subject whatsoever.

An A&R person once said to me "I don't like the hi hat sound" on quite a popular rock record I was mixing at the time. That's the sonic equivalent of me saying to a decorator "that black paint is too black". The reason he/she was saying that and not "this song doesn't really have a very memorable hook" or "it feels about 5bpm too slow" is basically because he/she didn't know or indeed understand about such things but felt compelled to say SOMETHING. Said person PROBABLY got the job in A&R by spotting something cool down at the Barfly one night and got lucky on a whim but that, my friends, doesn't constitute a career, or indeed an understanding of what that career entails. Fortunately however, the A&R merry go round is very much results-based so such buffoonery is short-lived and if you really really don't know what you're doing, you'll get ejected back into the queue at the Job Centre before too long. Good, then that's one less moron I have to endure and pander to.

Sure, I get that there is always a certain amount of "learning on the job" and not everyone has to know everything from the get-go. An old friend of mine who was managing a band at the time (who are now one of the biggest rock bands in the country) once asked me what "points on a record" constituted. I explained to him in short form, he duly went and read up on the subject and there we go, more life skills. What I can't endure is people blagging it and then talking to me as if I don't KNOW they are blagging it.

Sorry to say kiddo, this ain't my first rodeo and you're fooling no one but yourself. I am reminded of the legendary Karl Pilkington and his imaginary superpower. He came up with "Bullsh*t Man" who flies to the scene of anyone in the act of mid blag and just cries "that's bullshit" then promptly flies off. My good mate Andy Shilletto once said to me, if you're in a situation in life and you don't understand something, have the humility to ASK, and if you feel you can't ask and have to bullsh*t because you've blagged yourself into that situation, well you probably shouldn't be there in the first place. Never a truer word said. I'm not very good at many things in life, but what I am good at (I think) is sort of throwing myself into my chosen fields of passion and doing my best to understand them inside and out, and at the very least to constantly challenge my creativity within those fields. You'll never hear me down the pub spuriously waxing lyrical about football or politics or indeed eastern spiritualism, I don't know anything about those subjects and a great many more. If however, you wish to get into a diatribe about music, music production and the industry surrounding said topics, make sure you have a handle on your chosen subject first please. You can fool some people some of the time, you can't fool all people all of the time and you definitely can't fool me ANY of the time.

Cover of Say Something with Rebecca Need-Menear of Anavae

My good friend Rebecca Need-Menear from the band Anavae wanted to record a cover version of the hit song Say Something by A Great Big World, as a duet with piano. So we teamed up with my grand piano in my living room, and here you go!

Lee Blackmore filmed and produced the video for us. Very pleased with the results - enjoy :) Check out all the other amazing songs Rebecca has recorded and filmed on her hugely popular YouTube channel here!