Peace x Shane @StarMount Studio

Male x male duet is quite a rarity in the pop music scene, more so for a love song. Through Universal Music Malaysia & Singapore, Peace and Shane came together for a duet " You, Its You".

Alex Tan, the producer for this project got Dennis Law of A9 Strings for music arrangement, "Sotong" on drums, AJ Popshuvit on Bass, Dennis on the keys and Alex"the lion" Koh on guitars. 

Its also the debut recording for our new addition, Canopus Yaiba Groove Kit. We spent a nice 6 hours on recording the drums. There are 4 different snare tunings throughout the song, 2 different OH microphones on the first half and 2nd half of the song, and also we used 3 different snares for tone as well. The tones from the Canopus drums were so musical, easy to tune and sounds great recorded. The signals were all patched into Audient Zen Console mic pres and into Horus audio interface.

The bass went direct into Tree Audio Branch. Loved the tone especially cranking it through the opto compressors, the sound was almost complete into the mix.

Guitars were layered with multiple electric guitars and pickups. It provides a subtle but important support throughout the song. Hybrid processing of GTR and real pedalboard effects, combining DI and amped signals, especially for distortion powerchords towards the last chorus of the song.

JZ 11 was surprisingly fitting for the vocals in this song. We alternate JZ 11 into Chandler and Portico compressor for the chorus and JZ 11 into The Branch during the verse parts. Shane was using mainly Gemini MK2 while Peace was having a good mixture of both JZ and Gemini microphones.

Here's the music video and behind the scenes for the song:

                                      

Janet Lee "Restless Heart" @ StarMount Studio

Janet Lee "Restless Heart" is a musical journal of one of the most hardworking and sought after songstress in town.

We had much fun recording the album, as it involved many talented musicians starting from WVC Trio doing up the music, always a pleasure to work with the band. Followed by Cecilia Yap, a fantastic soprano singer to be featured in "茉莉花", not to forget Tan Jie on the chinese flute in "The Villager" This was interesting as the instrument was recorded entirely close mic in our tight vocal booth, yet sounding lively and the nuance were well preserved. Guessed it was down to the performer's ability and also the mic pres and converters from Horus interface. No compression or EQ was done on the flute at all.
Vocals were guided by Song Fan, and tracked entirely with sE Gemini Mk2 into Tree Audio Branch.  The band was done live, with 4 mics on drums ( overheads, kick snare), stereo sE 4400a in omni, RT1 ribbon tube on double bass and JZ V67 on the saxophone. All were routed into the mic pre of Audient Zen console.

Its a product of over hundreds of hours clocked in the studio, and the mastering was done at Westside Mastering by the Grammy Award Mastering Engineer- Woody Pornpitaksuk.

Songs are available in iTunes and Spotify.

Music Video:

 "Into The Sky"

One of the many sessions

During "Rider of The Wind" with Nish Tham and Janet Lee

《给它一个家》Awareness Campaign for the Abandoned Companions

The studio was star studded for 3 full days consecutively. We had 22 Malaysian artistes lending voice and their kindness towards the awareness of abandoned pets, especially the strays on the streets.

Its such a great experience where the the studio was charged up with positive vibes, seeing artistes from various labels getting together for a good cause. The crews were working tirelessly taking footages as we were recording. It was exciting and challenging at the same time, as we had back to back schedules to fit and we had to get the best tone in such a short time frame.
2 mics, sE Gemini Mk2 and JZ v11 were put to the tasks. We had an all tube setup and a transformer charged channel to handle different tones and projections from the artistes.

The sE Gemini was paired with Tree Audio Branch, and JZ v11 went through Chandler TG2 with Neve Portico 5043 Comp. This was an interesting pairing where the sE GeminiMK2 gave a crisps presence, only set back was the limitation of SPL handling. On the other hand, JZv11 through the transformer chain gave a warm, big sound which fits perfectly for the powerhouse vocals.

We had over 120 vocal tracks in the end, and the Pyramix DAW was handling well without any glitches or any signs of latency albeit having a few plugins on each channels. This was a first for us to put the DAW to test and we were very happy with its performances.


StarMount Studio is grateful to be given such opportunity to host the recording of this project. Heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Bocai and team for bringing such heart warming campaign into Malaysia!

Here's the artistes rosters, and the official music video of the theme song, launched recently on the 17th Oct.




张祖诚，Jaclyn Victor，林德荣，罗忆诗，Beeman @ Manhand，Alvin鍾瑾桦，谢婉婷，林健辉，Geraldine颜慧萍，方炯嘉，Apple 邱诗凌，刘界辉，龚柯允 ，Alycia ，Ribbon黄若熙，Jin薛炳进，Juwei Teoh，马嘉轩，王明丽，赵洁莹，Von @Manhand，Zen 俊倩

Candy Ice D.Va@StarMount Studio

Candy Ice, celebrity and pop sensation was here for her recording on D.Va debut album. Lead by Candy as the executive producer, the young and talented team of Kido Lee (Producer) and Wee Ting (Vocal Coach) came up with some nice tunes, covering fast paced and slow ballad.

Vocal Chain: Tree Audio Branch and Fredenstein F200 for the fast and slow songs. Microphones were sE Gemini MK2 and Telefunken AK47, going into Lavry Blue AD. Tree Audio Branch was cranked up hot, and we worked the opto compressor for the rich harmonics and extra saturation on the song D.VA.

Fredenstein F200 was being used (courtesy of Ganz from Soundbuz) for the ballad. We were looking for a clean and big but not in the face vocals. It was great to have the F200 as it was not only has 2 channels, it has a compressor (transformer) and it can be used as parallel or just pure transformer sound from the compressor. I would say its such a thoughtful and effective way, especially for recording. We love the versatility and wished it could be de tented for a more accurate recall.
We blended Telefunken AK47 with AE2000 just to get the body and top end, mostly from the AK47.
Fredenstein can be clean and also colorful, compressors are forgiving and easy to operate as well.


Links to music video: