Monthly Archives: August 2014

Being an NYC recording studio we thought we had seen everything. We’ve recorded countless amazing talents, New York City nightlife staples, fringe entertainers, etcetera, etcetera. But I must say, this last week on Friday the 18th, we recorded something completely new to us: a bachelor party.

These guys were a whole lot of fun. They came in with an entourage of about 8 guys who had already put their party pants on (and ended up taking them off to play their tuba!). But aside from how unique and crazy this recording session was, they ended up actually being really talented musicians. The groom (or soon to be groom) is a professional trumpet player in the U.S. Military Band, so he was top notch.

Aside from him being a pro brass player, he killed it on the drums while his brother and man of honor played our Yamaha U1 piano. In addition to recording drums and piano, we got to do some trumpet, tuba (as you can see!), bagpipes (an amazing first for us), and vocals. Having so many different instruments to record, we went deep into our mic cabinet and used a Neumann u87, AKG (actually quite a few different ones), SM57s (all over the place), Sterling Audio, and even a Superlux.

The recording session posed a lot of new challenges for a recording studio:

1. we had to accommodate a bachelor party! That is hard enough for any establishment, but for a place with so much high-end gear around, we needed to be extra careful with all the partiers.

2. Not only did we need to make sure everyone was partying away from the gear, but we needed to run other logistics of the session like putting up and breaking down microphones.

3. The session was an informal one, so there was a lot of jamming, and we had to be on our toes with who needed headphone mixes, where and which microphones we were going to use. Get More Info from this site to buy the best pair at cheap prices.

4. How were we going to party along side them while still doing a great job recording and producing their session.

These were some really awesome challenges to have to solve, and at the end of the bachelor party, we were as confident with the recording as these guys were about wedding off their best mate 😉 But seriously, it turned out amazing, and it was a whole lot of fun. Only in New York City!

For the last few months, we have had the real pleasure to be working on recording, mixing, and mastering the demos for the new musical “Plastic The Musical”. These guys and gals are incredibly funny and talented. The show was written by Leigh Rivenbark (Founding Director of Theatre New Brunswick Theatre School), Tony LePage (Broadway cast of Rock of Ages), and Tania Breen (drama department at the University of New Brunswick).

Leigh came in at the end of last year, all the way from Canada to our NYC recording studio, to record some local talent. Leigh was totally prepared to record the session himself as he is quite an adept producer himself. But we couldn’t pass up the chance to be behind the board for this project, so we took care of the recording while Leigh took care of the directing and producing. We used a combination of AKG and Neumann microphones to find the right sound for each singer, and we are glad we did because after we were done recording Leigh approached us about mixing and mastering the tracks. It’s been a few months of hard work on these songs, but they are so catchy I would have been hearing them in my head even if I wasn’t working on them. Enough about how we recorded and mixed this project, here is what the show is about:

“Plastic The Musical explores the struggle between reality and illusion in contemporary North America. It tells the story of an ordinary woman named Amy More searching for authentic happiness in a superficial world. In the musical, Kenneth Hart, a plastic surgeon, bets Amy that he can transform her from an unhappy ordinary woman into a happy supermodel within six months. She agrees to the bet on two conditions: if he wins, she will admit that beauty is a key to success; if he loses, he will give up his plastic surgery practice. The musical features a pop/rock score of thirty-one songs, a cast of eight actors (two men, six women), and a band of five musicians (two keyboards, guitar, bass, drums).”

Keep an ear and eye out for this show as they are currently pushing the demos around and, with such a talented producer and musical team, we are sure they are going to be on Broadway soon enough.

A few months back we had the pleasure to record and mix a full album for Korean metal band Erlang Kovata, and we are psyched that they just released it! We know it was a lot of travel, but we were super jazzed that these foreign rockers chose our NYC recording studio to work on their debut album.

One of our favorite songs on the album, and I’m sure it will soon be everyone else’s favorite, is the track “Troll”. Not only is it one of the coolest metal tunes you will hear, with awesome mythical overtones and ominous guitar riffs, but it was so much fun to record. The guys were only in NYC to record at the studio for a short time, so we needed to really streamline what we were doing but we made sure to cut no corners, especially with “Troll”. We had recorded all the drums on their first night in NYC, and we recorded bass and guitar successively, but with “Troll” we jumped back and forth between getting some extra guitars, adding some new takes on the bass, and of course, these epic vocals. Recording the vocals was definitely the most fun with this track. Not to say that recording the drums, bass, and guitar wasn’t awesome, cause it was, but the vocal performance is spot on for this song. Malik killed it in the booth, Mike almost blew an artery screaming, and J.P. wails as hard on his vocal cords as he does on his guitar. Anyway, enough of me praising this track, just check out the video they just released for it:

Ok ok, I know, we are always bragging about how lucky we are to be an NYC recording studio, so you probably don’t wanna hear about it anymore. But I just really need to reiterate how great it is to be recording in New York City for the very fact that amazing artists come to record here from all over the world. This month we were blessed to have Tash Anderson come in and cut two new singles with us all the way from Australia.

Tash’s management, Robert Vaughn, is actually located in Ohio, so we were doubly lucky to get out-of-town talent from both another state and another country. And boy was Tash on point during the recording sessions. We spent two full days with her tracking piano and vocals, in between her playing gigs all over the city. We were amazed not just by her great piano playing and tremendous vocal stylings, but the fact that she was working so hard-hitting venues and meeting with A&R between recording sessions. It is always great to be recording with an artist who works as hard outside of the recording studio as inside it.

The recording sessions with Tash were actually really straightforward, we got her playing piano for both of her tracks, and then after got her singing for both of them. And what was so nice about her style is that it is all about the performance. We record all kinds of music, and sometimes it’s about the production first and foremost, but with these songs, it is all about the sentiment and performance. We are currently finishing up the mixes, but be sure to check out her page to keep up with the tracks as the drop.