Recording Eush - Pt 1: Live Tracking

I recently went with Sydney band “Eush” into the studio to record two songs, which I would also eventually mix. Having recorded them before and seen them play live, I knew what to expect, but that’s not to say nothing unexpected arose during the session! These sessions were amongst the most fun I’ve had recording a band, but at times, equipment failure and time constraints became frustrating. I’ve documented the recording session in this blog so that if you like any of the sounds on the recording, you can have a go at recreating them. Assisting me on the tracking sessions was Pete Kossen.

The first session was dedicated to tracking the two songs live with the whole group playing together. Eush is a three piece, consisting of James Waples on drums, Sean Van Doornum on guitar and vocals and Nick Hoorweg. Each member is a talented player; in fact James and Nick are amongst the busiest players in Sydney when it comes to Jazz. Eush however are certainly not a Jazz band, hence I didn’t approach these sessions like a Jazz recording at all.

Setting up the band to play live in the small space was a challenge, but by no means impossible. We started by micing the drum kit at one end of the live space. James uses a very minimal setup which always makes the engineers life a dream! Using just one mic on the kick, one on the snare and a pair of overheads, we achieved a solid drum sound very quickly. Normally on a small, jazzy kick drum like James’s I’d have used a soft, round sounding microphone but the first track had a very sharp, percussive rhythm to it, so I instead emphasized the beater slap using an Audix D6, which has a naturally scooped frequency response. It was funny actually, one of the assistants from the studio walked by whilst we were getting a drum sound and said “D6”, to which we replied “Correct!” This goes to show the instant recognition of this microphone’s sound!

SCX25 Frequency Response

D6 Frequency Response

The snare grabbed some attention from a Shure SM57 (I know, boring), and the overheads were covered by a pair of Audix SCX25s. These mics are relatively uncommon but I find their naturally rolled off top end flattering on a Jazzier sounding kit. First comical moment of the session came here when James found a cymbal that had the word “ping” scrawled onto it in permanent marker. Upon setting it up for giggles we realized that’s exactly the sound it made. It ended up making it onto the tracks and you can probably work out which one it is.

With the drums sorted, we ran the bass through an Electroharmonix valve DI/mic pre, known as the MP-1. The box belonged to the studio, and I’ve not really been able to find much info on the unit. I wanted to get my hands on one or build a clone because it sounded really nice, but no schematics or info seems to be floating around. Might have to open it up one day and take some pictures and get Lachlan Colquoun to do a bit of backwards engineering. I’d have liked to put a mic on a bass amp but because of the limited space it wasn’t really an option. We could always reamp the bass later if need be.

Sean’s guitar amp was place in the adjacent booth, with a tie line running from the main space so he could stand with the rest of the band, which, by the way was very important. Never encourage band members to play in separate rooms or overdub their parts just for the sake of making your job in the mix easier. We miced the amp (Fender Deluxe) with an SM57, about 4 inches from the grill. After a quick listen I had Pete rotate the microphone around the capsule until it took the bite out of the high end.

With this set up the band rolled about 5 or 6 takes and we chose the best one. Not the one with the fewest technical errors, but the one with the best feel and groove. Technical errors can often be corrected, or add character if you just leave them, but there is no way of injecting fake groove into a tune.

The second song featured upright bass instead of the electric. We took both a DI and a microphone signal from the bass, which sounded great with the right blend between the two. Microphone of choice was a Neumann u89, which captured the growl and tone of the bass fantastically. We placed a gobo between the bass and drums to minimize the spill, but provided the band pulled off the take together, spill wouldn’t be much of a problem.

Again we rolled about 5 takes of the song and selected the better one. We wrapped up the first session here, but not before backing up our session to a few sources!

Go make a record.