4th Recording Session - 27 January 2008, Sunday (12.00pm – 4.00pm)

*pop* !

And Syai finally makes his virgin entry on this blog.

I'm here to rescue Ken (aka Tan ah Tan). He's spending almost everyday of the week pouring over his work responsibilities, and having him go through and fill the blog up can take quite a toll. I think this is why they call me syai-da-man. And it's not just because i'm Gifted.

And so it was, on that Sunday afternoon, where Rahmat(Matt) picked me up from Eunos MRT Station to head over to our sweet lil' nest in the middle of Dunlop St., our very own Abbey Rd-ish haven.
The agenda of the day was to lay down the lead vocal tracks, and my job was to..well..listen. And provide constructive/deconstructive critique, of course. But it wasn't as easy as I thought, as I shall illustrate below.


Songs - News & Astray
Instruments Recorded - None. The mouth isn't an instrument.


Recording Process
We first listened through the raw tracks that we've just recorded a few days before. It sounded good. Very good, in my own opinion. And these tracks weren't even mixed yet. After exchanging grinning, satisfied looks with Matt, we decided to get right down to business.

Before Matt even uttered a single line of lyric through his teeth, Nick put us through the most important step: choosing the correct microphone. He went into the recording booth, put up 3 different mic set-ups, and had Matt sing through each. We then went back to the cockpit and sat through each of the 3 samples. At this point, I apologise for not noting down the exact models of those 3 mics, but I promise you readers that i'll update this info the next time I return from a studio session.

Nick stressed the importance of knowing why we chose the mic that we chose. He questioned us on our choice, and we could tell he wanted to make us realise what is it that we like in the mic's sound. Nick explained earlier that the set-up for Matt is quite unique, because of his very bass-ey voice tone and scruffy texture. Not suitable for any 'ordinary mic'. And so, with the mysterious-chosen-mic, Nick placed the mic set-up just behind the inner door of the recording booth, and put up a sound buffer by using a suspicious-looking purple mattress. Mr.Matt stood between the door and the mattress.

And then Matt sang. Oh, how we sang. It sounded the way our songs should sound, except for the fact that Matt was down with the friggin' flu. There was a nasal twang to it, which we would only fully notice in the next session.

We took a little longer than expected, though. Aside from the time spent on setting up, the total time we took to lay down take after take of matt's vocals and filling the mic surface up with his saliva was close to 3 hrs. I personally discovered that I don't really have the ear for precise vocal melodies. Even if I do identify what a certain tune should be, what comes out of my vocal chords as i try to describe it sounds like a squeak. Maybe this is why we took extra long. I think my 'helping along' of the vocal tracks probably did more harm than good. *laughs*

Fin
At the end of the session, as we said our 'seeyouagainextweeks' to Nick, he actually told us that he'll treat this session as just an hour's take. Me and Matt were surprised, of course, but we were absolutely grateful. In these kind of circumstances, it helps to be able to realise that it's not really the terms of the situation, but the thought behind it that counts. Nick, you rock mannnn.

Afternote: i'll promise to put up the pictures of the mic(s) used, and i'll see if it'll be more appropriate to post it here or in any futures posts that i'll publish. Just for the record, we didnt have any camera during this session, hence the lack of my beautiful face plastered on this page. :(

2nd Recording Session - 20 January 2008, Sunday (3.30pm – 7.30pm)

Session 2

Ok ok ok ok. I've been b*tched by the band lately about the lack of postings and how the blog is getting stale cos no one comes to a blog to read about what happend 1 month ago... Ok ok ok ok. I know its true. So as a new month resolution, I've decided to quickly complete all the sessions I'm in charge of writing and pass writing duties to syai-da-man (like spiderman)! :) - happy person.

So. Session 2 started with Qader and Wadei. Basically, we were chilling and Nick was having his lunch. Soon, it rained. But look at how happy we were regardless. I think we appreciate that our producer can be as late as us (*hint hint* to everyone in the band). So... yeah. In the end, its perfect timing (just like our songs). This store shown here is just opposite the studio at Dunlop Street. Must say... Wadei tastes pretty wa wa licious. After Wadei-ing, we rushed to the studio in the pouring rain...

Songs - News, Astray

Instruments - Syafiq (Electric Guitar for "News" and "Astray"), Kenneth (Electric Guitar for "News")

Recording Session

So, 20 January shall be the day marked by electric guitars. Syafiq and I had the privilege of using almost all the guitars in the studio. I haven't got all the names down yet, but lots of them are Gibson guitars, kindly sponsored to/by Patrick (not the starfish) from musicforgood (check out his site http://www.musicforgood.com/)

So here is the rack of guitars (notice a few are missing. Why? They were being used by us of course!)

For guitars, Syafiq and I plugged into a Fender Bassman. Initially, we were just following Nick's instructions. But i'll elaborate in later posts what I like about the Bassman and include a pic on it (its now one of our many loves...). So what was difficult about recording guitars... (its really hard to remember now that its more than a month ago). Yet, I remember clearly how difficult it was to strum to a metronome beat. Syafiq definitely felt it the most during the recording of Astray. Most guitarists know that strumming is a "feeling" kind of thing which is really hard to control and keep consistent. Keeping it in time, and putting the feelings through into a recording were... to put it kindly, tough. News was a rather straightforward matter and wasn't difficult, but Astray. Woah... when you hear it, you might not realise how many takes it took to make it perfect, but i assure you it took quite a while!

What was special about Astray though, was that we added an additional acoustic guitar track to give it a really great soft rock vibe. So I did ask Fiq to give me details about the rig he uses but... argh. Musicians (this just means, musicians... always late). Moving on. For News, Fiq used a clean guitar w/o effects. For Astray, Fiq used a ProCo Rat and a Boss MetalZone (MT2) for distortion. In addition, Nick had lent Fiq a unnamed distortion pedal owned by a guitarist from March Twelve (OPPS!). Mental. When its out, listen to the interlude to hear how all three pedals sound like. Its crazy (especially when put together).

For me (Kenneth), I use a Boss Super Overdrive (SD-1) for the first verse of News and a Sansamp GT2 for the rest of my distortion. The SD-1 is famous for giving a nice warm buttery tone which is vintage. I highly recommend it to any guitarist. For beginners, its budget price (S$60 second hand is possible) makes it a must buy. For experienced guitarists, I heard that everyone returns to the tone of a SD-1 after trying all the highend stuff. I must say the pedal has its uses. GT2 is extremely well known in the Singapore guitarist community. I won't say much more about it (cos so much has been said on forums like soft.com) except that it retails at about S$330 first hand and S$180 (dropping) second hand. Check out luthermusic for great second hand deals (http://www.luthermusic.com/).

For me, I like the GT2 for its versatility and its edge. Its probably not as powerful as higher end distortions like MXR though... but MXR is much pricier and perhaps the premium is not really worth the improvement in sound (which is really still up to judgement and preference).

Ok. Enough about the technical stuff. I'm boring all casual music listeners. So what happened? Well, we kinda completed tracking (which means recording the raw tracks) for both songs, leaving Rahmat to fill the songs up with the vocals. Now you know who has the easiest job eh? ;)

End

So... I am kind of sleepy (after work, though its only 10.30pm) so i'll keep this short. One thing which is really important for guitarists is to learn to strum with a metronome. We actually re-recorded the acoustic rhythm part for Astray in future sessions again (no fault of Fiq, its really hard). Well.. maybe there are others who are just more talented than us... Anyway, I would like to talk more about amps (why the Bassman, why???), but I'll really leave it for a later post where I'll post some pics. I hope I remember!

PS: We met Syai's friend Hanafi at Sarpinos for pizza to discuss a video, we're shooting in NTU tomorrow (will say more soon)!

1st Recording Session - 17 January 2008, Thursday (8.30pm – 10.30pm)

Session 1
Alright, I guess we've delayed this for too long! Its been a month since the first recording session and here we are blogging history (not really what blogs were meant to be used for). Just to be clear on how this blog would work, its going to be like the blogging of every recording session. We start with a little introduction, followed by the two songs we recorded and the instruments! Here goes.


Songs – News, Astray
Instruments Recorded – Drums and Bass

Recording Process
Next, we talk about what we did. For the first session, we chose two songs, the first was "News" which was the first ever song we wrote together, and Astray, one of our less played songs (still rocks like a S.P.O.N.G.E). Mr. Q began the proceedings for the recording to start. Here's the drumset (without him).


I'll get him to elaborate on the set up once he's ready to talk.

Syai ran his bass through a Hartke amp (HA3500 Head and a VX410 Cabinet) Syai will elaborate on what he likes about this amp in future posts. Meanwhile, here's what I like :) I like it for its slight warmth and punchiness. Apparantly Hartke is rather famous for being a "rock" bass amp. I guess that's about right and that was the sound we really wanted for both songs. News required a more punchy bass sound and Astray, I would say a more traditional rock bass tonel. Here's the Hartke.

I would say... it wasn't a really eventful recording session besides the fact it kicked everything off! But maybe that's cos I forgot lots about it... Opps. Anyway, 2 hours and 2 drum tracks and bass tracks? That's really quite a good start.

End

Finally, at the end of each blog of every recording session, we'll end off with something that perhaps future bands can use. We call it "End" to make it sound better than... "conclusion" or "summary"...

Anyway, here's the short takeaway. Before we actually began recording, we had played through all the songs with the metronome, noting down the exact tempos we wanted for each song. (Note to new bands: A metronome is very important. Despite the difficulty and all the easy excuses about the lack of "feel", it makes you a better band. Honest. Even we hate playing with it and we often don't... but oh well).

Quite strangely, we do feel that Astray did end up a bit slower than we wanted. What we found useful was to sing along as parts were recorded so that we knew exactly how it felt and could correct it if necessary. This is why its important that most of the band members have to be present even if they are not recording (Yes! The vocalist should be around when recording drums. How would anyone know that???)

Yes. It does get a little boring sitting around doing nothing but listening to the same instrument being recorded for about 4 hrs. But it definitely beats a lifetime of listening to a mistake which could have been corrected easily. So our advice is (as indirectly said by Nick) is to be patient, especially with each other. Practical advice would try not to be too stingy with the retakes. It doesn't help to be stressed about getting each part right one time through. Like we try to convince ourselves, its really better than listening to a lifetime of bad takes.

Anyway, in the next post, we'll be talking our 2nd Recording session. It involves guitars (my faa-vourite). :)

Before the Recording

So, as you can probably tell, this blog started way after the recording process had begun (Recording Process Started: 18 December 2007, Blog Started: 5 February 2008). And the recording process does not begin with instruments. It begins with meeting people.

18 December 2007, 4 brave sponges (sans Kenneth) visit studios. While it will be prudent not to elaborate on what actually came into our minds regarding the other studios we looked at, let me (try to) explain and justify our choice of our producer, Nick Chan, and studio, the musicforgood studios (also known as "The Void".

The reasons are at times, obvious:
1. Our prior experience with Nick during Noise Singapore 2007 - This allowed us to really understand what he could do with our music and his commitment towards what the band wanted. We had to admit the Noise Singapore experience was not a total one (due to Nick's many jobs and the rush for time), however, the band felt more confident after speaking to Nick repeatedly about the album we envisioned.

2. Great studio set up - Now, while S.P.O.N.G.E isn't exactly a gear crazy band, we can hear good amps and equipment when they are around. However, it was not only the availability of good instruments and equipment made us fall in love with the Void (the line sounds deep), but also the fact that Nick knew what to do with them to make us sound even better.

3. Clean and nice environment - The musicforgood office/studio is clean, green and just basically a good place to hang out. A well stocked fridge with drinks for $1 (picture coming up), nice office table (to set up laptop and exploit the wireless connection while your lousy bandmate is doing his tracks and you're bored to half death), nice beanbags (to sleep or laze on), books and cds (Nick lends them out. I am currently holding on to "Sophie's World). Oh well... yeah. Its small. But its cosy, and we appreciate simple little things like this :)

4. The Producer, Nick Chan ("he's the man") - Astreal, I am David Sparkle, Marchtwelve, Muon (his own band) and Bismuth. We had plugged these CDs into our heads, analysed them and came to a consensus that Nick could reproduce the album the band envisioned (and hopefully more). We won't be counting the chickens before they hatch though... but what has happened so far, has been good.

Well. We have now completed the 6th recording session (and the 2nd blog post, but we haven't even begun documenting the sessions!). We know, we know, the photos aren't in yet... these will take time. We intend to take some.

S.P.O.N.G.E - Introduction

What is S.P.O.N.G.E Touted as one of the top local bands to "look out for in 2008", S.P.O.N.G.E is no stranger to the Singapore music scene. The band has transversed the entire length (and width) of the sunny island, entertaining audiences throughout Singapore. Originally a three piece band, S.P.O.N.G.E has evolved to now comprise of 5 members (elaborated below!). Describing their music as "Alternative Pop-Rock" (a mouthful), the band creates magical dreamscapes, to entertain, challenge, provoke and touch through the the medium they love the most. :)

Who is S.P.O.N.G.E Rahmat - Vocals, Syafiq - Guitars/Backing Vocals, Qader - Drums/Backing Vocals, Syai - Bass Guitar, Kenneth - Guitars.

S.P.O.N.G.E, the blog. This blog serves to document the recording journey of the band's first full fledged album. Beginning from the frustrating search for a studio and producer, to the final press of invisibile and intangible sounds onto a piece of plastic, which we hope, will be wrapped in nice packaging and sold at "reasonable" prices in "good music shops" everywhere (probably to be digitised and sent out to many more people so that less people would need to buy pieces of plastic - cheers for the environmentalists!). Of course, lots of advertising and selling of the album will be done here.

The Album Frankel Avenue. Record(ing) at the Void, under producer, Nick Chan. To be released in the 3rd Quarter of 2008.