Tag Archives: blub

Lymbago and the (dying) Lady of the Lake (Day 5)

Alarm, Shower, Shoes, Car, Road, Studio. Standard.

brunetti As planned, we took the Brunetti to the studio. We tried it and it revealed to be perfect for the sound we were looking for. I don’t need to precise how relieved we felt. Good point !

But we didn’t record this morning, we preferred to dedicate it to a rehearsal in order to finish all the remaining issues of the songs. Since there’s a lake just behind the studio, this was obviously the best place to go and get inspired. After a few hours, Louis, Mehdi & Diego came back with everything wrapped up.

lake

Around 12AM, we calibrated again all the amps to be sure we were safe for the rest of the recordings. Then, we jumped to the recording. Louis and Mehdi managed to record successfully Stomach and we added some parts to get a richer sound. I don’t tell you more, you’ll discover it with the album :D. Around 8PM, Stomach was done.

louis_gratteThen started a nightmare. We started to have many xruns during the recording. Xruns are basically desynchronization with the soundcard that makes the sound crack. After a few minutes, I realized that the disk was full. Ok. Shit. Let’s move some stuff to the backup device. What ??? The backup is just dead. Yeah, the hard disk decided to stop displaying its contents and we couldn’t write anything nor read on it. The bright side of the story is that I always make two backups. So, yes, we had another drive with to save us :D. We therefore lost one hour replicating the hard drive (we have more than 30Gb of data at the moment) to another, to be safe again.dead_hdd But ok, we could go on with the recordings.

We finished Blub around midnight and we added a bit of acoustic guitar, which, I have to say, make some parts of the song really better !

back_roadAnd then, as every night, we came back home… knowing that only two days remain to complete that. Waho !

Lymbago, from dawn till dusk (Day 4)

Fuck. I’m late. It’s more and more difficult to wake up on time for us, we’re accumulating the effects of many missing hours of sleep (we do about 15hours of studio per day…). Hopefully, the spirit here keeps us motivated and we’re doing everything we can to succeed.

We have three guests today : Laurine, Chloé & Elvina ! Cheers :-)

diDo you remember our DI box problem yesterday ? We were very lucky. I was near the Gambetta metro, waiting for Laurine and I met a friend who works at the Euroguitar shop. He could sell me a DI before the shop opens. Yeah !

The morning was dedicated to finish the bass. We planned to finish around 3PM and… we finished at 6PM. Hum. Anyway, Diego managed to record everything even if some songs (especially HJ) was, as expected, an obstacle course for him.

It was time for Louis to start recording. He did Stomach fast and we were happy with the sound. To save a bit of time, I then decided to record both guitars to finish the songs one by one.

orange_ampWe therefore moved the Orange amp of Mehdi to the big room so that he could get a better sound. After a few minutes of micro placement, we indeed managed to get a great sound. Louis was jealous. Yeah really :D. That’s right, Mehdi’s sound was much better. So, we moved his amp to the big room too. The problem is his sound was still the same… I therefore fired the jamin500visual scope and we found the problem : his sound was, again, very low in the mediums. After spending minutes (hours?) of tweaking his GT-6 pedalboard and his amp, we couldn’t get the sound we wanted.

We therefore decided to give up and bring my Brunetti amp the next day and use it instead of Louis’ amp.

At this point, we couldn’t do anything better, so we came back home knowing that the following day was going to be very busy.

Lymbago recording, Day One

Bertrand at the drums
Bertrand at the drums

Just back from this first day of studio. Well, I have to say, things seem to go pretty well for now :-)

8:00AM: the bell rings, Louis is here with the van, we load all the gear and we’re ready to go. Mehdi was kind enough to bring the breakfast –even if it was dated. 50 minutes later, we’re there, joining Diego, Bertrand & Tania.

They were here, waiting for us, like dogs ready to bite. Diego, using his ol’ litt’l Colt, blew the barrier’s padlock with style so we could break into the studio… piece of cake. TRUE STORY. Hum, I’m digressing.

The morning was in fact dedicated to install the amps, guitars and other stuff in the studio. The first step was to hook all the cables according to the cabling scheme and see how it goes. During this preparation step, I took an express course on the available hardware (such as this Tascam TM-D8000) and we could hear the first sound a few minutes later. Great !

As the good practices outline, I’ve decided to record all the drum tracks in a row. The reason is simple : placing and calibrating the microphones on a drumset is just as hard as hell. This is why we spent about 2-3 hours trying to get a decent sound from the drums. Hopefully, it was smoother than expected (no big phase problems, etc) and we could jump to the recording step faster. We were basically ready to rock, awesome !

We started recording Stomach since it’s pretty straightforward for Bertrand and we could focus on fixing the remaining details on the console side. After a few takes, all was wrapped. Then, followed Blub which ended to be easier than expected : legen, wait for it, dary !

While Bertrand and I were focusing on recording the drums, Louis, Diego & Mehdi were trying to write the incomplete songs and finish the last minute modifications. They grabbed three acoustic guitars, went outside to play and managed to sort that out. Almost (:D). In fact, some of the songs still need more work since they have undergone heavy changes during the last days. You’ll know who to thanks for that (hint: this guy is bearded, hehe).

Then we tried to record HJ, but it was merely a disaster due to the lack of sound tablatures. We gave up after a few tries and decided to postpone it to the following day. Therefore, this was Salami‘s turn. The recording went smooth, even if Bertrand had some difficulties with the fast double-kick parts. Even if it was not perfect (still, quite good), we ended this day by recording Ttta. Not an easy one, and trust me, it was quite a tiring day for Bertrand, which started to feel the fatigue in his legs and arms. After a few unsuccessful takes, we decided to record it without the blasts (and record them later on). This way, we could have a safe base and complete it the next day. That revealed to be very successful !

So, to sum up, we now have a calibrated system to record all the drums and the already recorded songs are : Stomach, Blub, Salami* & Ttta* — (* = kicks missing).

Let’s see how it goes tomorrow but, as I said earlier, we’re on tracks I think. For now, it’s time to go to bed since we’re leaving at 7:30AM !

PS: I’ll update this post tomorrow with photos from Louis.