I just spent a day at Brendon’s house (who really needs to update his site, by the way) getting the almost final touches done on the studio. The first half of the day was spent running around looking for a cable organizer, or a trough as Brendon calls it. The second half was getting the drum kit tuned, setting up the mics, and then messing around with recording distances and such.

I remember the first recording that Brendon and I did, the Anamnesis Theme, which was recorded at IADT’s studio. One of the big problems we had was time; it was very much against us on that night. Our drummer could only stay for half an hour, and the equipment clerks had given out the XLR cables I’d booked for the session, so one of my project partners had to run out and get more cables. Needless to say, we didn’t have much time to set up and fine tune the mics to record the kit properly.

One of the things that stood out about how bad that recording session turned out, was the sound of the kick drum. It sounded almost like a click. There was literally no bass at all to it. We didn’t have time to set up a metronome to keep perfect time. We only set up one overhead. We were only able to record three takes. The list goes on.

Contrast that recording session with the test session we did today. We spent about 45 minutes trying different positions for the kick drum mic alone. That’s 15 minutes more than we spent setting up and recording our drummer at the school. We got to hear the difference in the mic placements, and we got to choose an optimum one. It felt very, very good.

It seems that the best way to improve the sound that you record is time. We had some of the best equipment money could buy at IADT - a 24 track 2 inch tape machine, acoustically padded rooms, a fucking SSL console(!!!) - and yet, what little recorded at Brendon’s house today is already showing more promise. Mind you, Brendon’s spent a nice chunk of change on his studio, but to put it in perspective, the amount that he spent on his entire recording set up is about the price of a 24 track analogue tape machine. An SSL console runs about 120K; you can buy 5 decent cars for the same amount. What we couldn’t buy in the studio was time, and since Brendon owns a studio, we’ll have all the time we need. Expect something very good; I’m setting the bar high.