Thursday 1 December 2016

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