Studio Diaries Vol. 1 - A week in Rockfield studios

In my new series, 'Studio Diaries', I want to share me experience and knowledge that I gain on every studio session I run or assist on. I want to enlighten the reader to the incredible efforts that go into recording a hit record!
This week I am assisting Romesh Dodangoda; a highly revered music producer and mixer. Romesh has produced hits for bands such as Motorhead, Bullet for my Valentine, Funeral for a Friend and Kids in Glass Houses. You can read up more about him here: http://romeshdodangoda.weebly.com/
His specialty lies with Heavy Metal, and this week is no exception. We are recording drums for Cologne based band 'Tides Awakening'. They're an awesome band and really great people. Check them out and give them a like over on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/tidesawaking/

What I really wanted to talk about in this post was the recording studio. Based in a beautiful farmhouse building in the heart of Monmouthshire.
This place has so much hertitage. Freddy Mercury stayed here with Queen in the 70's and recorded Bohemian Rhapsody. Kingsley, the owner of the studio, has told me what a wonderful man Freddy Mercury was.

The 80's and 90's saw Robert plant and Oasis record seminal pieces of work here. The Worldwide hit by Oasis, 'Wonderwall' started life here on a rainy Tuesday evening. Kingsley also remarks on seeing the Gallagher Brothers fighting on the lawn outside the studio building!

More recently, Coldplay have recorded their hit 'Yellow' here as part of their 'Parachutes' album. Chris Martin's producer supposedly came up with the opening lyrics
'Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah they were all yellow'
Whilst looking up at the beautiful stars in the pitch black Monmouthshire countryside.
There's no denying that this place is oozing with heritage. This no doubt has a positive effect on the music that is being recorded here today as the musicians are more likely to feel inspired and excited by their predecessors.
I'm not able to share any clips of the drums we are recording this week, but I can show you the insane microphone setup!
A total of 19 bespoke microphones, all contributing to the massive drum sound pumping out of the studio monitors right now!

Every aspect of the kit is individually captured with a selection of boutique dynamic and condenser microphones.
I am seriously loving the pair of AKG C12a valve microphones being used for overheads. These things average at around £3,000 a piece!
The Coles 4038 ribbon mic is placed directly in front of the kit to capture a Mono picture of the kit and the space it is in.

Capturing a fat kick drum sound is so important for this genre of music, so we have used a blend of three microphones to capture the different timbres of the drum. An AKG D112 is used to capture the initial transient of the front skin and beater, A Neumann FET 47 catches the tone of the outer skin and a Yamaha sub kick for the sub frequencies to really get that air pressure moving when Patrick, the drummer goes for the double kicks!

Romesh blows me away with his choice of room and ambient microphone placement! He throws them up with seemingly no rhyme or reason, but they always sound incredible! In the adjacent hall we have a Neumann U67 valve microphone with it's polar pattern set to omni-directional. We then have two AKG 414's capturing the early reflections from the wall. We used room mics in this hallway as it is tiled and highly reflective, meaning we can create a natural sense of space in the recording.

There is also another live room next to the one we are using. We have deliberately left the doors open to allow the sound pressure to move through the hallway and into the room, where there are two Neumann U87 condenser microphones to capture a stereo image of the room ambience. Those two big rectangular boxes in the background, they're EMT 140 plate reverbs. They sound incredible!
This is just a glimpse in to the huge effort that goes into creating a great recording. I've got a lot a studio work coming up for the rest of the year. If you felt like this was valuable and would like to see more, please Upvote and follow me!

You can read my last post on 'The Power of Music' here: https://steemit.com/music/@boston1994/the-power-of-music-vol-1

Big Love
Jack