Counting down from …

#2011. Nothing gets us more excited than recording a new indie artist or band with great originals. As a recording studio, we always do our best to engineer and deliver the best possible mix for whatever material the artist or band has, but we are also limited by the potential of the songwriting itself. 2011 was remarkably a bumper year in terms of the high level of creative potential that we have witnessed in almost every indie artist and band that we recorded at Backbeat, from Vanessa Faith in early 2011, Kris Gunalan, Midnight Tantrums, Inert, Atlas to Godzilla and many many others. Their songs in the rawest from were already gems by themselves, making the whole recording and mixing process a joy, as well as an opportunity for us to showcase the quality of the gear we have here at Backbeat. Check out their songs at our “Past Works” section

Vanessa Faith – Local singer-songwriter

#2010. Last year also saw a significant number of upgrades in our recording signal chain as we continually strive to deliver the best sounds possible for our recording clients. One noteworthy upgrade that gear junkie would be interested in would the Universal Audio 6176 Tube-Channel strip that now sits on the front end of out signal chain now. Many recording engineers go on a never-ending holy grail search of the “best microphone” to improve their sound. But what every microphone could offer is but a different sonic character, which many fail to realise is also largely a product of the pre-amp or channel strip that the microphone has been paired with. The reason why some of the best recordings have vocals that sound so “wide” is simply the result of using the quality preamps rather than any miracle in the post-production stage. Getting it right at the source is the only way to the big, expensive vocal sound that makes everyone sit up and listen to you with excitement.

The Preamp as the secret to the big vocal sound

#2009. Last year, we also set a new record of the longest running recording session of 18 continuous hours non-stop for the NUANSA 2011 music production. NUANSA 2011 was the musical production by the NUS Indonesian Student Association about the Old Batavia legend. Due to the large numbers of musicians and singers involved and the difficulties in their scheduling, we did an ultra-marathon of 18 continuous hours of recording, where the music were tracked live simultaneously. No a simple engineering affair, given the number of instruments involved.

Here’s a clip taken during the recording:

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#0001. And yes, we have our own Backbeat Wall Clock!

Previously, we have been using Skype to enable clients to “sit in” (virtually) during recording sessions so that they can give realtime input and feedback. But, the latest audio codec employed by Skype boasts significant to the frequency bandwidth of up to 8khz, making it realistically possible to capture broadcast-ready audio material via the internet protocol service. We recently recorded football presenter Mayur Bhanji from Tokyo via Skype for an interview on the Football Fever Podcast Series. He was travelling on a bus at that time and we got him recorded via Skype using his mobile phone while he was on the move!

With the help of a bit of post-tweaking, we have managed to produce a Skype-audio recording that meets the need of professional broadcast. Check out the skype-recorded podcast here!

Russian Cigars – Oktava M12 small condensor mics

The first that came was these Russian pair of small diaphragm condensor mics packed in a cigar-box-like encasement. It came with switchable caps for three different pick-up patterns (cardiod, hypercardiod and omni).

The vogue with mic-modding these days stem in part with the large number of condensor mics being supplied out of China factories. Of course, MIC(made-in-china) mics being cheap isn’t an issue, but sounding cheap is! The idea of a “cheap-sounding” mic, I believe, is more pyscho-acoutiscal rather than something that you can acoustically define. There’s no doubt they tend to sound a bit harsh in the 4-6khz region. But more significantly, most MIC (made-in-china) mics are essentially coming out from just THREE main MIC plants in China. So with the flood of MIC mics that are similarly sounding at their core, their common lack of distinctive sonic flavors would not be helpful in your quest for an “expensive” boutique sound.

The Michael Joly mod on the Oktava M12 is supposedly useful in helping “increase resolution, lower noise and reduce distortion while improving transient response”. A lower self-noise was important in my mod decision as I needed them for distant miking applications for large orchestra. But how much does it improve the sound?

I put it to test almost immediately as a spaced pair for recording the classical guitar track for Debra Khng’s “Prince” track (to be release in 2012). I was rather shocked by the details and smoothness that were being captured by the Oktava M12 with relative ease. Usually in the past, it would have taken a lot more effort to find a sweetspot between the guitar and the mic. Here’s a sound clip of the recording – raw and UNMIXED.

Debra prince intro (oktava m12) by backbeat

caroline_christmas_voiceover_recording

It’s Christmas Day and suddenly I recall the voiceover recording for a mobile children’s book we did a few months ago. It was a lovely christmas story called “Caroline and the Mysterious Christmas Tree” written by Wheezards and developed specially for the Iphone and Ipad platform.

This was one of the numerous recording projects we’ve done this year for the children’s market and we were lucky to have a very talented voiceover artiste Evon on this project. There were many different characters in the story and it was a great joy watching her slip in and out of the various voice personas with such ease.

“Caroline and the Mysterious Christmas Tree” was released on Itunes on Dec 3. It’s a very cool app that not only offers multi-lingual support but also allows parents to record their own narration and have some fun with their kids. Check out a preview of the story here. It’s still not too late for to get a Christmas gift.

Meanwhile, Backbeat Studios wishes everyone a merry christmas!

Is Izotope Nectar that bad?

Just installed the 10-day trial version of the Izotope Nectar Plugin and jumped right in to use it immediately during a recording session. Usually I wouldnt do that (i mean, what if it crashed your system, right?) but Izotope is a name I have come to trust. It didnt take much for their promo video here to make me buy in all the “hype” …

And so during the recording session, I slapped it on to the vocal buss while tracking. There was no visible latency introduced. Really near-zero. What I really liked was the ease at which you can dial in a preset and, with some tweaking, get a comfortable reverb mix with all the right vibes. (There’s a doubler effect which you can use even during tracking).

Usually, I track vocals through a LA2A or 1176 with a light touch of reverb. But with Izotope, it gives me a very useful and fast option to audition different colors of compression/eq/reverb “strips” and pick one that’s right for the job on hand.

As engineers or producers, sometimes we are so trained or used to hearing the final mix in our mind  based on the dry vocal takes during tracking, but for the singers or voice talents, they  can only hear something pretty dry in their cans due to our judicious usage of plugins at tracking stage to minimise latency. But with Izotope Nectar, you can generously afford to let your talent hear something close to how you envisioned their voice would be mixed and processed at the tracking stage. I think that would help ease or coax the talent in delivering better performances as well.

This is my first impression of Izotope Nectar. 8/10 (havent tried the pitch correction though). Interestingly, I’ve come to realise that Izotope Nectar is being slammed in quite a number of forums. One even labelled it as the worst plugin ever by Izotope.

Presently, I actually already own quite a library of Universal Audio compressor/eq/verb/channel strip plug-ins that I’ve been using quite a lot on my usual voiceover, singing or band projects. But Izotope Nectar being a 11-in-1 vocal processing plugin with such simplicity in usage seems capable of speeding up my workflow in certain vocal projects (voiceovers, karaoke singing). It worked for me the first time “right out of the box” and I would love to try out the breath control option next on voiceovers.

Buy iZotope Nectar Complete Vocal Suite at the introductory offer price if you love it

baby-blue-bottle-mic

I owned a Baby Blue Bottle mic before, very briefly, before it was damaged in a fire accident, during which I lost all mics (of course and a whole lot of other stuff). Interestingly, when I rebuild my mic cabinet, I didnt opt to replace the Baby Blue Bottle. I thought it was a mic that I could probably live without.

During that few months that I had it, it was used quite a fair bit on acoustic guitars and vocals actually. A very cool looking mic, nonetheless, but it wasnt a mic that would readily capture people’s attention and “wah”s right away…

Two years on, after numerous projects involving acoustic guitars, I dug out my old projects recorded using the Baby Blue Bottle and begun to appreciate the value of a Baby Blue Bottle. Some people call it a “dark” mic, as opposed to being “bright”. “Bright” stuff tends to impress people instantly, but, really, in the context of a mix, the “understatedness” of so-called darker acoustic helps gel a mix better than a bright one would.

Plus it works quite as well on certain vocals. Check out the sample clip of Smash Inc’s Neverland in the previous post. The vocals was tracked with a Baby Blue.

In any case, the Baby Blue bottle always looks to cute to resist. Hence, when the Baby Blue Bottle mic had a special price reduction recently at some US store, I decided it was time to restore it to my mic cabinet… My goto mic for acoustic guitar from now on…

Blue Baby Bottle Guitar Sample by backbeat

Smash Inc at Bassist Jeff’s wedding

The bassist of Smash Inc Jeff got married recently and the rest of the bandmates were in Backbeat rehearsing their wedding dinner performance (minus Jeff). I was really happy to meet them again (it was quite a coincidence as it was only not long ago when I recorded the drummer, Michael, currently drumming for Equinox).

Smash Inc was a band that I really enjoyed recording WITH… We worked together twice in fact when they were still at NTU. The guitarist-songwriter Lawrence has a natural talent in coming up with songs with good commercial hooks (i like). And I especially like recording Leroy’s “british-sounding” vocals also. I never tired from playing their test-mix in my car over and over again.

SmashInc Neverland Sample by backbeat

Here’s a sample clip of a song called Neverland that we recorded 2 years ago… Interestingly, we had a hard time nailing the vocals. It was about 9pm. We decided to take a break as we couldn’t get past verse 1. Leroy went off to take some murtabak for dinner at Boat Quay (Backbeat was at HongKong St back then). I thought it was a really bad decision — chilli/curry when the vocals aren’t even done? But when we resumed at around 10pm, wow, … it turned out to be one of the best vocals I’ve recorded.

Smash Inc Album Cover

The band, Equinox, from NTU Hall 16 was recently at Backbeat Studios doing a multitrack recording for Play-On Band competition. Thanks to them, here’s a video of the whole process. We managed to get quite a good separation of the individual instruments due to some careful positioning, as also because the band did quite a good job of controlling the overall dynamics… pardon the mono sound quality from Youtube though… the original video is too big to upload

They are in the finals, I heard… Congrats!

Electrico recording their Channel V Interview at Backbeat Studios

What do you see?

Yes, Electrico recording their Channel V Interview on the lazy couch at Backbeat Studios. Electrico is Channel V artiste of the month for July. Not sure how many of you guys managed to catch their TV Special where they recorded their interview and studio session here at Backbeat. If any of you guys have a copy of the TV special, let us know, alright?

Well, August is probably the month of Electrico too… here’s a clip of the 2009 NDP song if you have yet to catch it on TV! Happy National Day!!!