StarMount Studio: NewSound "BEARING WITNESS" @ StarMount Studio

John Dip Silas brought NewSound over to track originals from his new band "NewSound". Talented band mates like Hor Chee Seng on the guitars, Icco Noel and Terence Ling on bass and drums, Hiroyuki Yagi and Scott Murphy on the horns, and of course John Dip Silas on the piano and keys.

The sessions were all recorded live/simultaneously. Its challenging and exciting the same time especially when we're trying to achieve full sound recordings with minimum spills into each microphones.

Both saxophones, tenor (Scott) and alto, sometimes soprano (Yagi) were placed in the control room, and the rest of the band in the main tracking room where the grand piano and drums were at.

Bass was tracked directly into Avalon U5, Guitars went into Radial JDI, tracking the direct signal and tie line into the amps (Mostly Fender Hot Rod) in the booth, So we've got both DI(direct for re-amping) and amp sound captured in the room.

Again we're glad to have our Canopus drum kit with its diverse tuning range to accommodate to different styles and genre. Apart from the tone, I personally like how the drum kit breathes within the confined space where its loud but not overpowering others in the same room.

Glowing valves for the horns

Kick was covered with sennheiser e902 for the solid low mids, complemented with Audio Technica AE2500 utilising the condenser capsule for the attack and extra air. Snare was done with the workhorse SM57 top and SM 58 on the bottom, AKG C451B on the hats, Sennheiser MD421 taking care of the toms and sE 3a stereo pairs looking over the drum kits.

The grand piano was comfortably wrapped up with heavy duvets and had a pair of our new found favourite JZ V11 spaced pair, approx 5 inches on top the sound board.

Horns were done with sE4400, sE 3a with reflexion and the supercardiod and pads saves the day. We had the horns side by side for tracking and the leak/ spill was unbelievable low. sE Gemini was used to capture the room sound of soprano sax and another side was covered by sE3300.

Wonderful IRF on Tenor Saxophone.

As for the guitars, Chee Seng's Fender Strat was plugged into JDI RADIAL, thru to Fender HotRod Deville. Icco's bass was directly into Avalon DI mic out to Tree Audio Branch for extra harmonics. We had to track 2 guitarists for one song and we had only one booth to store the amps.
Both the guitar amps, Fender HotRod and Vox AC30CCX were placed 2 inches against the wall in 90 degree. Both were captured with MD421, and we were amazed by how much rejection/ separation we got having both amps playing simultaneously in such tight spot.

All mic/lines were connected directly into the mic pres of Horus interface (except for piano, that went through Chandler TGII- Portico 5043) and the tracks were managed in Pyramix DAW at 96khz 24 bit.

The physical CD is available to be purchased from the band, and do follow the band's Facebook Page for updates on digital downloads and upcoming performances.