We recorded this live version of the album track at Studio Wij, with great video work from Chris Lucas
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My first foray into the world of 3D audio. A slightly tricky one as they wanted to use a backing track, overlayed piano and vocalists who moved into position, all in a very live room. I used individual radio mics and a central blumlein pair under the camera. Mixing was done in Reaper using 3rd order ambisonic free plugins courtesy of Blue Ripple Sound, and plenty of referencing the Blog of Bruce.
To get the full immersive effect, listen with headphones and pan around the video…
Here’s the other video, which was sonically easier to deal with as it was just static singers around the mic with piano backing.
This up and coming band from Bath got in touch with me to mix stems that they had already recorded. I enjoyed this job, country music is not something I’ve done before but this was a great track to work with, well recorded, well written and structured, with great performances all round. One challenge was that the lead and backing vocals were recorded together on one mic, making balancing them a little more tricky, however the band had carefully positioned themselves and the mic, so it worked well. I used the fact that the chorus repeats to make a vocal double that I could use to make the chorus bigger.
I had in my head a salsa arrangement for Sunny, inspired by this great James Brown version of the track, so I decided to make it happen. Latin music is a passion of mine, I’ve been playing salsa bass for years and I think although I wasn’t born into it, it’s definitely part of my DNA now.
I came up with the basic arrangement and then got together with Raimundo ‘El Nene’ Fernandez (who plays piano and soprano sax on the track) to flesh out some of the horn lines and tweak the overall arrangement, this dude knows his salsa.
Some great musicians feature on this one, including the fabulous vocals of James Lambeth (he had never sung over a salsa track before), Rory Francis the one man percussion power-house, and Michel Padron playing both the trumpet and trombone parts. That’s me on bass too…
When trumpet supremo Gary Aylesbrook’s not running around touring the world with artists like Kasabian or Raphael Saddiq, he heads up his own top-quality band the Duval Project. These 2 tracks were location recorded at The Tunnels, Bristol Temple Meads for a promo video. You can read about it here if you want to know more about the process of location recording a live band. Incidentally, the vocalist Marie Lister is one of my favourites on the scene, check out her other projects…
Recorded and mixed by Wij Productions, mastered by Richie Blake
This was an interesting job, I had to take over the project half way through because the producer / engineer, Pete Josef, was called away on tour with Kelis. The tracking had been done (at NAM studios in Holt, Wiltshire and at Petes house) and some tracks had been mixed, at least partially, where others were just raw stems. I had to work hard under pressure to get this done in the short timeframe they required, and to get the sound they had been working on, but the results were very satisfying. The final mixes were mastered by Loud Mastering down in Taunton.
Greg’s a fellow bass player on the Bristol scene, and great composer and educator to boot. This first album of his was recorded at Fieldgate Studios in Cardiff, where they have an exquisite Fazioli grand piano, then post-produced and mixed by me at my place in Bath. This was an interesting and lovely album to work on, I particularly enjoyed doing the sound design for the disintegrating outro of track 8:23 as well as some noise rock production for a couple of the other tunes.
Classical pianist and violinist Emily (who incidentally is also a film producer and does an amazing line in regional accents) recorded a short showcase of her classical compositions, making use of the Knight upright piano in the studio.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by me, produced by Wij Productions and Emily Blacksell
The debut album of modern, original jazz from this trio. Featuring myself on bass, Mark Whitlam on drums and the mighty Jim Blomfield on piano (these are all his compositions).
Captured in the lovely acoustic setting of the Chapel, Royal High School, Bath
Location recorded, mixed, and produced by me, Mastered by Pete Bernard
Bristol-based jazz quartet, recorded at Fieldgate Studios, Cardiff, mixed by Nick Dover and mastered by me. A subtle job where I used a little saturation to add warmth, some spatial processing for depth and gentle EQ and compression to bring it all together. Here’s a track from the album Call Of Mind
