Cosmic Trifle - The Band

Apologies

2003-09-16T11:09:04Z

Haven't updated here for ages ...

... we *have* had more recording sessions, and we've also cancelled at least one session due to non-availability of musicians and of a rough mix to work on things like solos ...

... the trouble with recording with people who all have lives and (in many cases) paying jobs and families and such is that it's hard to say that a non-paying hobby should take precedence over the exingencies of life ...

... which is why we're running behind on the original recording schedule (the rough mix CD that was going to be sent out in June, or early July only arrived today, three days before the next recording session) but when it's all being done as favours by friends that's what has to be expected ...

... using a "professional" studio with engineer would cost something like 25 pounds an hour and you'd still be paying if you were sitting around with the engineer drinking tea ... and you'd still be hard pressed to record 8 separate tracks for a song, including retakes, microphone setups etc. in, say, four hours, so a maximum of two full tracks a day, and so we'd be looking at (for our 15 tracks) about 60 hours at 25 pounds an hour = 1500 pounds of studio time, plus travel, food and drink, somewhere to sleep etc. which will probably come to about 2500 (8 nights at, say, 30 pounds per person per night for five people plus about 150 in travel costs for each of four weekends plus food & drink etc.), plus the actual manufacture of the CD disks (mastering, labelling, inlay cards etc.) which is another 1000 pounds, so producing a CD, at the cheapest, comes to 5000 pounds. Which means that selling 500 CDs at 10 pounds each (12 quid retail, 8 quid wholesale to dealers, averages out around 10 quid a disc) ...

... "using" generous friends who've put a lot of their own money into putting together a home studio, plus who will do the cooking and provide accomodation etc. means that we can nearly halve the cost of making the album (travel costs remain the same, but there may be more weekends because we won't necessarily be as productive as in a "pro" studio, on the other hand, there are fewer microphones etc. to try out so we can get down to recording that much faster!) ...

... so basically the budget says we have to sell between 200 and 250 CDs to "break even" on our basic costs (oh, and there's a percentage that has to be paid to the Recording Rights people for permission to do the cover songs (Sally Free and Easy, Dust in the Wind) plus we need to make sure that the songs we've got individual permission to do (Second Hand Songs and the parody Second Rate Songs, Swing the Cat, Lament for Gwyddion) are adequately compensated (hey, how does a few "free" CDs sound? Oh, you'd rather have the cash ... never mind!) and thankfully Pacobel isn't taking any royalties for his "Canon! (Well, if he'd answered the email we sent him ... <big grin>)

Fingers crossed, the CD will be available for the February filkcon (ideally I would like it out sooner so we could get it to the January filkcon in Atlanta, but that doesn't seem likely at the moment) and then there should be copies available at the Eastercon and at any other conventions we get to this year. It will also be available via the usual filk outlets.

So if I don't give *you* a free copy, it's not because I don't love you, it's because until we sell 200-250 copies, then we've had to put up all this cash and every sale leaves us a little less in debt. Once we've sold our first 250 CDs, then any money we get for the rest goes towards paying for instruments and strings and such, possibly getting a meal out (yay!) and then the rest goes towards the costs of doing the next recording (and perhaps getting another microphone or some other bit of tech that will help!)

We still haven't discussed what our internal band price for CDs will be (how many "free" copies we each get to give away as Christmas presents or have to swop with other artists for their CDs ... and how much each additional CD will cost) and how many are for "marketing" (to be sent to venues where we might want to perform or to radio stations etc.) but that can come once we've finished recording and actually are ready to order the CDs.

Basically producing 500 CDs costs an amount, we've been shopping around and fleetfootmike has found us a couple of wonderful deals, but a large percentage of the cost is the set up costs (converting artwork, getting the masters made up for the disc and for the inlay cards etc.) so the difference between ordering 500 CDs and 1000 CDs is not twice the price ... but we don't expect to be selling more than a few hundred (200-300 CDs) so 500 will be enough and if we ordered 1000, even though it isn't *that* much more, we'd just end up with boxes and boxes of CDs in someone's garage for the next ten years plus an additional cost that would have to come out of the 300 sales and would probably mean we wouldn't break even.

But that's the music biz!

Second recording weekend May 31/June 1st 2003

2003-06-02T13:59:03Z

Arrived Saturday morning to find that Rachel and Valerie were already there but that Zander wouldn't be able to make it this weekend.

As we only had Valerie for the Saturday, we mostly concentrated on her (or rather Mike did, while I I spent part of Saturday small child wrangling, and part of it just lying on my back in the sunshine hoping that a flat surface would do good things to my shoulders and neck … and yes, I remembered the sunscreen!) Also did some noodling about on the bouzouki which was sounding nice…

We all recorded "Blunderbuss" (Pachabel's canon as re-arranged for 12 string guitar, tenor recorder, fiddle and bass guitar, plus four part vocal harmony and silly lyrics!) with everything except Zander's vocals (as we'd decided that the bass part was just so simple (just the bass note of each chord (G, D, Em, Bm, C, G, C, D) over and over again) we'd simply sequence it on the computer.)
Valerie put down the guitar and vocal parts for her song "Afraid of the Dark" and a few other bits and pieces and she also added her vocals to the stuff we did last time (since last time she'd had a cold and had decided her voice wasn't up to recording).

Sunday morning since Valerie hadn't left yet, we did some more with her (well, I was asleep but Mike was in the studio with Valerie at 8am!) and then added fiddle and vocal stuff, and then I added some Bodhran stuff before finishing off with me doing a guitar+vocal version of "Trust Begets Trust" which the others will add to at the next couple of sessions.

For those of you unfamiliar with the recording process (as done at fleetfootmike's anyway) "recording" consists of:
1) deciding which track to do next and figuring out which is the "guide" instrument (so that the rest of us can listen to that on the headphones as we each add our own bits)
2) setting up one (or many) microphones (plus DI boxes for instruments that have a pickup in them) and trying different settings until the best is found (lots of swapping microphones around and arranging them in different patterns)
3) tuning the instrument
4) maybe a run through to find the peaks etc. and to make sure we all agree on what is being done
5) taking one or more goes at recording the guide track until either one good track is achieved or until enough parts have been recorded that Mike can cut and paste them together in Cubase to build a good guide track
6) It then varies a bit depending on whether we want to leave that microphone setup so that we can record the same person/instrument doing a different track (or another part of the same track) or whether we want to add a different person/instrument to the current track. So, assuming it's the same track, then we repeat steps 2 through 5 with the additional voices and additional instruments until we've got enough goes at each bit that they can be spliced and mixed together to form a track.
7) Mike and Anne then spend ages adding effects, compressing and normalising sounds, removing extra clicks and breaths etc. using the digital tools to produce a listenable track.

So the actual time any one of the musicians spends actually singing/playing on a standard, say, three minute track is probably, say, 3-5 minutes of tuning (and retuning), 5-10 minutes of microphone placement, 5 minutes of discussing the best way to approach this particular bit (sing softly close to the mike, sing loudly further from the mike, more emotion, more clarity, getting the vowels right (e.g. not "Reach-el" but "Ray-chel"!) etc.) Maybe three or four times through the song, plus playback to hear what worked and what didn't. Plus some more tweaking at the desk etc. so it can take the better part of an hour to get one person to do one part of a three minute song. And since we tend to have 6-8 parts in a song (up to four instruments, up to four voices), that means we have to work fairly quickly if we aren't going to take forever to record this CD!

Recording Session 1, 2-5th May 2003

2003-05-06T13:19:12Z

Well, we planned on using the early May bank holiday to give us a good head start into getting the album recorded and the original plan, of course, failed straight away!

Plan version 1:
The entire band (including Zander's wife Janet) to arrive Friday evening. (Zander hasn't passed his driving test yet, so needs a fully qualified driver to sit next to him, something Janet is happy to do, but it also means they can't drive on the fast motorways and must use the slower "A" roads, so the journey time from Zander's to the studio is four to five hours!). Rachel doesn't drive, so she would head over to Zander and Janet's on Friday afternoon ready to travel up with them. If they could leave by 6pm, then they'd arrive in time for a cup of tea and falling into bed ready for an early start on Saturday. Chris and Valerie to each drive their own cars and arrive by 11pm on Friday also.

Plan version 2:
Rachel announced that her boyfriend was doing something poetical in a venue Friday evening and she wanted to be there to cheer him on, so the plan became:
Chris and Valerie to arrive Friday evening by 11pm. Rachel to head over from Bristol to Zander's after the performance, and they'd get an early-ish night and be on the road before 8am, so that they (Rachel, Zander and Janet) could arrive for lunch.

Plan version 3:
Marion was planning to come down to visit Zander and Janet that weekend anyway and it was agreed she'd come along to help with food, child wrangling (the owners of the studio (Mike and Anne) have a three year old and this would allow both Mike and Anne to be doing engineering stuff if Marion could watch James. There could be problems with fitting four people, luggage, the bass guitar and a fiddle in the car, but they'd figure something out.

Plan version 4:
Janet decided she didn't want to come along this time, but since Marion has a full licence, that meant Zander could still do the driving.

So having arrived at a final plan, of course that was followed to the letter, right?

No.

Friday evening:
Valerie arrived at the studio as planned. Chris got stuck at work until 8:30pm and didn't actually manage to get home, packed, load the car and on the road until nearly 9:45pm (it's usually about a two hour drive to the studio from west London) and he finally arrived at the Studio sometime around 11:30pm). Unpacked car, drank tea, chatted about the plans for the weekend and then fell over in a heap. A little worried about this session since Valerie showed up with a cold and a nasty cough and so won't be laying down any vocals this weekend, and Chris has a pinched nerve in his neck which means that the outside of both arms (down to the little fingers) are a bit numb (like sleeping on your arm) and there's the occasional stabbing pain down the right arm … arghh!

Saturday morning:
Up around 9am and breakfast consumed by about 10am or so. Chris switches on his phone to check the arrival time of Zander, Rachel and Marion. Finds a message from Rachel … 10am, they haven't left yet (arghh!), Zander's back is hurting (and the bass guitar is heavy!) and worse still, Rachel has managed to tear a muscle in her back on Friday night and can't play the violin … she's also torn her left hand first finger nail down the middle and probably can't play violin or guitar … ARGGHH!
Chris gives her a call and Rachel's injuries aren't quite so bad, but she hasn't slept much Friday night due to the pain and she's using cold packs and hot compresses and anti-inflammatories etc. to try to get it all back and working.
We realise they are unlikely to get to the studio before 3pm so a shopping expedition for groceries is planned. Anne pulls out all her vegetarian recipe books (loads!) since Rachel is a vegetarian, that's going to be the general focus of the meals, with some ham or something on the side for those that are unrepentant carnivores!
Anne, Chris and James head off to the supermarket while Mike tries to format the spare 48Gig SCSI drive for the Mac we'll be recording on. (Quick jump ahead, he fails since he is unable to locate a copy of Silver Lining lite which he needs to format this otherwise unrecognised hard disk). Not sure what Valerie does, probably practices or talks to Mike).
A full trolley of stuff later (lots of vegetables and fruit, milk, bread, toilet rolls, sugar substitute, many kinds of cheese, cream and stuff inbetween (sour cream, fromage frais etc.), some munchies, fizzy water, tea bags, diet Pepsi, fruit squash etc. and the total comes to 100 pounds (yike!). Yes it's food for eight people for three days, but still, yike!

Saturday afternoon:
Head back and decide whether to have a picnic lunch or just eat in the kitchen. This is influenced in part by the knowledge that part of the studio payment is going to be paying for a Behringer UltraCurve Pro graphic equaliser for the studio (and that if we go into Cambridge quickly, we can pick it up before Zander et al arrive and have it available to use during our first recording session). So we grab a quick lunch and then leave Anne and James behind, while Valerie (driving), Mike and Chris head into Cambridge (about a 40 minute drive, given Saturday town traffic) and pick up the device (and a pop shield) from Digital Village (and drool over other equipment!)
On the drive back we get in touch with Zander, Rachel and Marion and find out that they are only 10 minutes away from the studio and will be back there before we will (but Anne is there to feed/water them and to allow them to unload their stuff).
After cups of tea etc. we reconvene in the studio and do a run through of all the tracks as far as practicable (Rachel sings her fiddle parts as her back is still bad, Zander manages to play the bass without (apparently) *too* much discomfort. This allows Mike a chance to mark up the track listing we'd sent him already (with each instrument used etc.) so that he can figure out a sequence for recording things.
Just like Eliza Carthy (and her most recent album) we've decided to do without a metronomic click track to keep us all to a steady rhythm/tempo but to allow the songs to speed up and slow down as appropriate, which means we have to have some sort of backbone track for each song that we can then work over.
We pick out four that can be done with a guitar backing (i.e. Chris!) and make plans to start recording those. But by this time it's definitely coming on for dinner time.

Saturday evening:
A wonderful dinner consisting of aubergine stuffed taco shells smothered in melted cheese (gorgeous!) and a lovely dessert.
Back in the studio to finish off the run through, and then since we're sitting in the studio with our instruments, we start jamming around with different arrangements of a couple of songs, including Zander on piano doing a totally different arrangement of one of Rachel's songs, which we all join in on and improvise harmonies … it sounds brilliant! But it wasn't being recorded and it's not going on this album, so you'll have to wait to see if we ever manage it again!

A cessation is called at about 9:30pm and Chris quickly gets changed and disappears off to a party while everyone else chills out.
Chris eventually returns about 2am and goes to sleep pretty much instantly!

Quick answer, no … but then we're using a hard disk recorder so that's not so surprising!

Up around 9am, breakfast by about 10am, and then into the studio. Spend the morning laying down four backing guitar tracks (which means setting up microphones, swapping DI boxes around and all that sort of techie stuff to find the best sound from each of the two guitars Chris is using for the four tracks, and then actually getting a couple of good takes that can be used.) Zander is delegated to the job of mouthing the words of the songs so that Chris knows which verse he's playing and how it speeds up/slows down and the guitar part changes. The theory is that if the guitar part is good enough, then these guitar parts will be used in the final mix.
Four backing tracks are duly completed:

Arden (12 string Ovation)
Following in Valentina's Footsteps (six string Ovation)
Wednesday's Lament (six string Ovation, may put in six string nylon Ovation for between verse twiddles)
Dust in the Wind (six string Ovation)

We are all impressed by the kit that Mike is using, he's got a nice Mac G4 running Cubase 4.something, a nice set of monitoring speakers and amp, a Behringer Composer (which appears to be a compressor/expander sort of thing, good for taming wild vocal swings and extreme instruments like tambourines!), some nice microphones and a fair bit of other kit (like various DI boxes and pre-amps including tube ones to give different sounds to the instruments). Chris declares he's going to come back sometime and get Mike to teach him how to use Cubase properly!

Which brings us pretty much to lunch time, and more gorgeous food!
After lunch back into the studio to start adding vocal tracks. Valerie's voice is still not as good as she'd like (Chris's voice isn't as good as he'd like, but it's unlikely to get much better in the short term <grin!>) so she doesn't record any "final" stuff, but has to put her harmony line in for a couple of the songs so that Chris can find his notes.

It's very strange standing alone in the recording room, with just you, the microphone and the disembodied voice of the engineer (Mike) in the headphones. We manage to get the rest of the vocals recorded during the rest of Sunday (with various people going outside to play football with James, to enjoy the sunshine or to watch the end of the Grand Prix). Mike does well getting a good performance out of everyone and, while each of us is a perfectionist and would prefer to get an even better take, Mike is very good at saying "it's good enough for now. We'll either fix the duff notes using Autotune or by finding a better version from another take and patching it in … or we can come back another weekend and redo bits". By the end of Sunday we have four tracks pretty much complete except for Zander's bass, Rachel's fiddle and Valerie's voice. We complete Sunday by Valerie and Zander adding the tambourine hits to the tracks that require them.
We all fall over before midnight.

Monday morning:
Zander wants to be back to Janet by 6pm, which means leaving by 1pm. So up at 9am, breakfast by 10am or so, and then back into the studio for Zander's bass lines and Rachel's fiddle (by now her back is good enough that she can manage an excellent performance, and some superglue on the fingernail seems to have done the trick). And Mike does some quick level balancing, throws some of the stuff through compressors and limiters, adds a valve pre-amp and marshall 4x12 stack sound to the 12 string and brings in the treble from the mike'd track of the guitar (to blend with the pickup track) and then plays us back what we've got … gosh, he's double tracked some of the backing vocals, spread them around the stereo mix, added reverb etc. and it sounds glorious! (There is some minor concern that it may be a risk of it getting a little "over" produced, but we've got time to play with the mixes later, let's concentrate on getting the base tracks recorded properly to start with!)
Monday lunchtime, another wonderful lunch and then it's time to wave goodbye to Zander, Rachel and Marion.
Chris is enticed back into the studio to see if he can lay down the backing track (and possibly lead vocal) for "Trust Begets Trust", but by this point in the weekend, his fingers can't handle the barre chords on the classical neck of the Ovation Elite nylon-strung and too many buzzes and missed notes occur. Mike tries to put together one good version from three or four runs through but the amount of effort involved is judged to be too much and Chris will go away and practice the part some more (to strengthen his hands and to make it much more fluent) and we'll go again in three weeks or so when the second session happens.
Chris wants to watch the highlights of the Grand Prix and is joined in doing so by the rest of the people still around. Eventually, closer to 5pm than anyone had planned, Valerie and Chris set off for the long drive home.

Final results:
All in all a good weekend, but possibly a day less recording than planned … on the other hand a lot of good stuff was accomplished, the graphic EQ was patched into the recording chain and did its job and we've got four tracks (out of 16) very nearly finished and a good idea of what we need to accomplish next time.

The band, some background

2003-05-06T11:42:20Z

There are four of us in the band and we play instruments as follows:

Chris (The Magician) O'Shea: Guitars, bouzouki, flute, bodhran and potentially a whole bunch of other stuff (cittern, mandolin, mandola, banjo, other percussion etc.)
Rachel (The Fiddler) Shurmer: Fiddle, banjo, guitar
Valerie (No Nickname) Housden: Guitar, banjo, various recorders, percussion
Zander (Zander!) Nyrond: Bass guitar, percussion, recorders (and at some point, keyboards)

And we all sing! Which means that for some of our songs, we've got four vocal parts plus four (or sometimes more) instruments all in the same song. Makes it fun for tech, especially as we keep swapping instruments around between songs when performing life (one set Chris used seven different instruments in twelve songs).

Additional groupies etc.:
Whenever possible Zander's wife Janet comes along and provides artistic support (and constructive feedback!), "Auntie Marion" is our official roadie, and Keris has provided excellent sound desk support!

Update 1: 2nd May 2003, preparing for first recording session

2003-05-02T12:42:51Z

The first recording session is this weekend and already I'm running behind in getting prepared for it. I haven't changed the strings on my instruments, I haven't been listening to the practice tapes, I haven't been playing enough guitar so my finger tips aren't sufficiently calloused ... arghh!

Also I've got to review the track listing we prepared a couple of rehearsals ago to send to the recoding engineer so he has some idea of what tracks we're doing and what setup we need for each.

And I've got to build up a new set of lyrics/chords etc. so that I'll have stuff to markup as we go along rather than using the already scribbled on sheets from the previous live gigs.

And I've got a ton of work to finish today and then I'm supposed to be on the road to Peterborough tonight. Looks unlikely at the moment!

Welcome!

2003-05-02T12:37:30Z

This is going to be the ongoing trials and tribulations of the band "Cosmic Trifle" recording their first CD!

I don't expect it to be mind-spinningly fascinating, but it will be a good diary to read back on in the future to see what went right and what went wrong.

cheers!

Chris