Masters of mastering

Today is our last day of production for this summer’s Rooms of Red Bull music studio project. Last week was a mixing week, where we mixed all of the material we’ve been recording this summer, and this week we are doing the mastering of said material. The SAE Institute has been running the studio at the Rooms of Red Bull this summer and today’s mastering sessions are being held at two of the SAE’s own studios.

Frank was wearing an appropriate shirt for the occasion

Studio 1 is our Icon studio, where Bart and Frank have been doing their work today. Their weapons of choice have been the Sony Oxford and DigiDesign Revibe mastering plug-ins, working through Pro Tools 7.4. The tracks they’ve been working on are from collaborations from artists such as Terry Toner & The Party Squad, Boemklatsch & DJ Pitto, Sense & Esperanza, Boemklatsch & Chocomel, Brakko & Sotu and JayKid & The Space Pirates.

Frank working in the Icon studio

Matthijs and Simon, our other two engineers mastering today, have been conducting their work in Studio 4, which is the SAE’s production suite. They have primarily been using the Ozone 4 and Oxford Mastering Suite plug-ins with Logic 8, running through a Digidesign HD1 Pro Tools interface. The guys have been working on tracks from The Fringe, M.O. & Brakko and The Space Pirates amongst others.

Matthijs and Simon hanging out in SAE's Studio 4

Once all the mastering is done these tracks will be ready for release. The Rooms of Red Bulls organization plans to release the work that was done in the music studio over this past summer on CD within the next few weeks. So stay tuned for that!

Tomorrow we break down the studio at the Rooms of Red Bull, and then during the weekend we’ll have the closing party. After that the Rooms of Red Bull project will be officially over for the summer. There are plans to repeat the project next summer, but whether it will be in Amsterdam again or another city remains to be seen.

Peace out!

…last day for the SAE studio.

As the Rooms of Red Bull project draws to a close here in Amsterdam, the engineers have this week been concentrating on mixing all the tracks that have been created during our time here. These tracks will be released on CD, so the guys have been making sure every track is ready for the mastering process next week! With four main engineers, we managed to split the week evenly- each engineer taking a day to mix two or three tracks. Frank is in today, making sure that any last minute tracks are also ready to be mastered.

Today also marks the last day of use for the studio here at RoRB. The live room has already been dismantled in preparation for this weekend’s parties: there is another audio set up being built in there as we speak. So the control room has been slightly rearranged, with any extra equipment from the live room being brought in for safe keeping. But do not fear, we still have a couple of days next week to entertain you! We will be bringing you a few more blogs before everything is completely finished. On Wednesday, the whole team will be coming in to break down the studio and pack up all the equipment to send it back to the sponsors.

In the mean time, check out the page next Tuesday to see how the mastering sessions go. These are being held in some of the studios back at SAE Amsterdam, with all the engineers again taking turns with the tracks. If you’re lucky, we might give you a blog about the release party of JayKid and the Space Pirates (Friday 28^th August), and the closing parties!

Good vibes all around

JayKid and the Space Pirates are with us again today. The guys have brought a lot of gear with them for the session including a couple of synths, a voice box, a PC computer hooked up to a beamer and plenty of other fancy gadgetry. So understandably the studio is very crowded this afternoon, not only with all the band members but all the gear as well.

The guys are using reason on the PC, which they control with an external Behringer controller. The beamer has been connected to the computer and is being beamed at the wall in the control room. We have taken the output of the PC and hooked it up to Logic on the control room computer and record directly from there. The guys really seem to be having fun with what they’re doing and the good vibes in the studio are quite contagious!

Bouke & Joost recording from Reason

Next up is recording some synths. Bouke, one of the Space Pirates, sings ‘We like girls who like it 69′ through the vocoder on his Korg R3 synthesizer, which sounds pretty damn cool. Add some funky synth loops on top of the bouncing beat and the studio sounds like one tight party!

Bouke sings 'We like girls who like it 69'

JayKid and the Space Pirates will be here again next weekend, so stay tuned for more goodness!

On a side note, our engineer Bart has gone missing. Since learning there was a Playboy photoshoot on the floor above us, he has mysteriously disappeared! Anyone who has any information on Bart’s whereabouts is kindly asked to contact one of the SAE Studio coordinators.

A return to the studio for Arjuna Schik and Franklin Reeves

We have an extra session with Franklin Reeves and Arjuna Schiks scheduled today, so the guys can do some more work on their track. Bart has been impressing them with his Logic skills all morning, and with his help they have been learning more and more about the program.

The guys enjoying some Red Bull

The ‘Das Boot’ remix is instantly recognizable when you hear it blasting out of the studio speakers, and is sounding a lot more polished after a little bit more work on it. At midday, Bart leaves and Frank comes to cover the session.

Franklin and Arjuna hard at work

We have a pretty easy afternoon ahead of us, as the guys don’t need too much help with Logic, so we just leave them to their own devices mostly. They are not using much outboard gear on the track, a quick burst on the MicroKorg for its vocoder abilities is all. They are using the Loopmaster Sample Libraries to add some extra parts in to the track, but their main focus is on perfecting what is already there- using time-stretch and other helpful tools found within Logic.

…an enthousiastic and productive day.

Today we have Le Chien Perdu (that’s French for The Lost Dog) in the studio. They were ready to start their work bright and early this morning, and it didn’t take them long to start playing around with the synths and outboard gear. They have been quite self-sufficient today, and Simon hasn’t had to spend too much time showing them how things work.

By the early afternoon, the guys have used almost every piece of equipment we have in the control room: the keyboards in particular have been keeping their attention. The Yamaha XS-8 and the MicroKORG are popular with these guys, as well as the Novation X-station.

Looking through the liveroom window at Le Chien Perdu

As generally happens when we have artists in who know their way round the studio, there is not much to blog about today. On days like this, we do the cleaning! Our liveroom is now looking considerably cleaner, ready for the return of JayKid and the Space Pirates tomorrow.

The liveroom, newly restored to cleanliness

As a last note, earlier in the day, we had a visit from T.C. Electronic, who seemed satisfied with the way we are using their equipment… good news! We wouldn’t want to make them mad after they were nice enough to give us all this gear for our studio! All in all, this has been an enthousiastic and productive day for everyone here in the Rooms of Red Bull studio.

Focusrite Producer Pack

Time for another gear review! This time, we will be taking a look at the Focusrite Producer Pack (also known as the ISA430 Mk11). According to the Focusrite website, it is “the pinnacle of Focusrite’s analogue channel strip technology”. We are inclined to agree, we like it a lot and use it on many of our recordings here at the Rooms of Red Bull.

We’ve been using the Producer Pack mainly on vocals, with the likes of Esperanza and theFringe getting some time in on it, but we have also had the chance to use it on some instruments. A bass recording was the most successful experiment, and it was sounding pretty good!

Here, you can see an image of the back of the unit. This is slightly different to the one we have here in the studio, as ours does not include the digital card (seen on the upper left hand side of the picture).

The I/O

On the device itself, there are various inputs. A balanced line and mic input (both XLR) and two unbalanced instrument inputs, one on the back and the second on the front of the unit. The mic input has four different impedances to choose from: low, medium, high and ISA. We don’t use the post-mic output, instead we stick to the main output which goes to the Tascam DM-4800 (channel five, to be exact). There are also two sets of insert points (sends and returns) available for use in the strip: there is a manual on/off button for both of these.

Features

We use the ISA 430 MKII quite a lot in the RoRB studio, and we have found quite a few features that we like about this piece of kit. Lets start off with the gain stage. This has not one, but two gain knobs. The first is your average gain knob, which goes up in steps of 10dB, but the second allows you to fine tune between the steps on the first.

The EQ section is fairly straight-forward to begin with. It starts off with hi- and lo-pass filters followed by two parametric EQ’s: lo-mid and hi-mid, moving on to the lo- and hi-shelves. As with many modern EQ’s, the separate sections can be activated individually. This, we think, is a nice feature, but we are not so fond of the fact you have to press the ‘all EQ in’ button to get any of it to work (although it does come in handy for bypassing the whole EQ section at once when doing A-B comparisons). Because of its clear and precise layout, the EQ section allows you to get what you want pretty fast, and many of our engineers have commented on the nice sound of the EQ. One last highlight is the ability to use most of the EQ’s to trigger the dynamics section.

There are a couple of things we haven’t used yet on this device: the compressor and the expander/gate. The compressor has two circuits: a VCA and a vintage opto-electric circuit. You can place the compressor either before, or after the EQ section. We haven’t had much chance to use this compressor as our engineers generally compress after recording. However, it does a good job of preventing clipping when high-level signals are being recorded. The expander/gate presumably does what it says on the tin, and no doubt it is good at it’s job, as the rest of this device does things well.

From things we don’t use to something we frequently use, next on the list is the de-esser. This comes after the expander/gate and you can select which frequency band you want to de-ess, rather than only have one choice. It works well and is pretty transparent, which is always important to our engineers. It gives the results fast without compromising on sound quality.

Many devices nowadays have VU meters, they are a popular element of audio units across the board. This one can be set to several sources including input, output and compressor gain reduction.

All in all the Focusrite producer pack is a very clear sounding pre-amp with an extremely flexible and advanced channel strip. You can get hold of one from Thomann for €2275.

Punchy piano chords and laid-back beats…

Sotu the Traveller and M.O. & Brakko returned to the studio today. Much of the morning was spent perfecting the track in reason, and in the afternoon the final vocal takes were recorded. There’s not much to mention today, the synths saw a bit more action as Sotu added more layers to the beat: there are some punchy low piano chords in there that give the piece a good vibe and the more floaty synth lines help give balance to the piece.

Brakko in the live room

The NT2000 was rolled out again for the second round of vocals, and M.O. and Brakko both seem happier with their takes today. They are fast workers and comfortable in the studio setting, so they got their parts down in record time without compromising on the quality. This is what we like to see!

And finally, as promised, there are some pictures below of the new T.C. Electronic stuff for you to feast your eyes on!

The T.C. Electronic D-Two in its new home

The G-Force, not yet installed in the live room

New toys and some familiar names in the studio…

M.O. & Brakko were in the studio today with Sotu the Traveller. The guys decided to work in Reason (which has been rewired into Logic 8 for the occasion), and as soon as a basic beat was there, M.O. and Brakko were busy writing some lyrics to go with the piece.

Mid-afternoon, a surprise from T.C. Electronic arrives. In the boxes, we find a D-Two and a G-Force: pictures will in the blog tomorrow. We are also told that the Head of T.C. Electronics in the Netherlands will be coming for a look around on Friday. We’ll have to get the feather dusters out and make sure everything looks perfect for their visit!

After some preparation, Brakko enters the live room to put down some takes on his choruses. Frank and Matthijs set up the microphone (our trusty NT2000) and in no time, we are recording into Logic while M.O. sits in the control room, writing out his sections of verse ready to record afterwards. It doesn’t take long for Brakko to do his thing and within a few minutes he is back in the control room, with the engineers adding some serious reverb ( from the T.C. Electronic Reverb4000) onto his lines.

After listening to the choruses, Brakko goes back into the live room to get a guide take of his verse, and M.O. does the same right after. Tomorrow, the guys will put down some final takes.

JayKid and Space Pirates, recording artists for August!

Jay Kid, and the Space Pirates, will be gracing our studios for the month of August. Yesterday, they just came in to take a good look around the studio and work out how they are going to work with us. Today, we had some engineers (Simon and Frank) come in to help the guys out with setting up whatever equipment they feel like using.

The live room has been rearranged to the specifications of Space Pirates, so that they can bring in their laptops and use some of their equipment (like an Akai drum pad and some controller keyboards ) with Reason.

Some Space Pirates have taken over the live room

After the lunch break, they come in to the control room to see what we have to offer them. They want to record some of the synths in here, so spend some time looking around and choosing some interesting sounds. As they inspect the equipment, Jeremy tells us that he thinks Korg make some pretty cool stuff. Anyone who praises Korg is a friend in my mind!

The Yamaha SY1 and the Juno-60 seem to fascinating the guys with their retro cool, and they show some interest in the Kaoss Pad, which they are already familiar with and like to play around with.

An ‘arty’ shot of Jay Kid rocking the synths

Space Pirates have been delighting us with stories of how they play live, and we were so impressed by it we thought we’d let you in on it. Apparently, they have two computers- a Mac and a PC- both running Reason 3. The two computers are attached to a fader bank, and mixed together in real time. This is a pretty unusual set up, and sounds like the type of innovative work we like!

Another Space Pirate

Jay Kid, also known as Jeremy, has come to play in the control room while Space Pirates do some more work in the live room. So, each of our rooms is in full use and everybody seems satisfied with the work they are producing. Mid-afternoon, Space Pirates have to be off somewhere else and after a few more hours making beats, Jay Kid decides to call it a day too. All the guys will be back in next weekend, so check the blog then for news of their progress!

Retro synths, the order of the day.

Pitto and The Please were back in the studio today, and once more have been playing on every synth possible. The atmosphere in the control room was light and fun, but these guys were here to do serious work and their concentration and dedication as the session got underway was unbelievable.

They spent the day perfecting their track in Ableton (which had been rewired into Logic) and adding more layers to it. The retro synths seemed to be the order of the day, with the Juno-60 and the Oberheim Xpander getting the most action. The sounds Hans found on these oldies fit in perfectly with the feel of the track, and they helped to add some extra depth and richness to the music.

Just a quick entry for the blog today, as the guys have been mainly self-contained and we haven’t had to help them with much at all!