StarMount Studio is Turning 10

We're celebrating our milestone with giving out BeyerDynamic DT770M headphones for every 10 hours of studio time. To make it a sweeter deal, you can choose between DT770M 80 ohm or 250 ohm, or even DT770 Pro 80ohm/250 ohm.

It has been such a wonderful journey, making friends along the way and most importantly growing and sharing experiences together with the music community are just priceless!

Lets go Live! @StarMount Studio

When there's new toy or new space, we love to share it with our friends. Bell and gang came over to our new live recording venue for an impromptu jam. Well, it looks pretty good and undeniably fun!

The new space is to encourage bands to have more live performance recordings in both audio and more importantly video. Getting own content out could be costly at times, so we have come out with this idea of a produced live performance. Bands, artistes, singer songwriters, even stand up comedies can have their performance and get recorded professionally by our certified StarMount Dynamic engineers.

Class outside Classroom@StarMount Studio

StarMount Studio hosted a series of class/education sessions for BMus and DBMI and CAP
students from International College Of Music (ICOM). We've covered the topic focused on music business and the students were getting some insights from working professionals, and having first hand experience from the "factory".

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:

                                      

Bihzhu "Bright Veins" @ StarMount Studio

Body percussions, indian ethnic percussions, gamelan and gongs, electric guitars, 2 choir groups, ringtones, double bass, coins, synths and more were being featured in Bihzhu's latest single "Bright Veins". 

With the same production team, Bihzhu as content creator and lead singer and Savy as music arranger and producer, once again we are able to have a dynamic and creative outcome that offers more compared to the "Nightingale Tales".

We used blumleins on the body percussions, most of the sound sources were captured with our favorite stereo ribbon tube microphones RT1. They work best on body percussions and claps, producing an un hyped and very natural sound reproduction, especially for finger snaps and claps.

Session was all the way 192khz 32bit and the track count went past 60 tracks. And we are still able to go further without slowing down the DAW at all, which was quite impressive for an i5 intel processor with just 4gb of RAM.

The objective of the music is to be as open as possible and it open its arms to participation to the music. Percussions and percussive sounds were mostly present in the song, everything was lead by Bihzhu's powerful vocals and backing harmonies.

We went mobile with the system, as we traveled out to capture the gamelan and gongs. Set up was simple and quick. Horus made connections easy with their DB25 to XLRs, and with Ravenna network, we got the shortest signal path as the Horus was placed right around the gamelan set, and all being connected to the DAW via network cable.

The track was mixed by Alex Tan of StarMount Studio and mastered by Woody at Westside Mastering. Such fun collaboration with so many talented and passionate personnels.

Watch "Bright Veins" Music Video, produced by Chris and his dynamic team, and get yourself a copy fromiTunes too!

Bihzhu, Zal and Savy discussing on the body percussion

Santosh providing the ethnic percussion touches.

Fly on the bass

"A Whore's Dream" Soundtrack Recording

We had Faraz Khordad coming in for solo piano act. Original composition for a short film titled "A Whore 's Dream". sE 4400a pair, omni, to the Neve Portico 5012 and 5043. Result is a dark yet musical sounding grand piano. It even changed the tone of the usually bright Yamaha. Great stuffs.

Pictures courtesy of Faraz Khordad.

Let the inspiration flow...

Enjoying the moment

Alex and Faraz

StarMount Studio Welcomes UCSI Students 19/02/2012

Simon Lee brought his music business students  from UCSI for a field trip to StarMount Studio. Its a huge group, 16 of them altogether. We had studio tour, followed by a sharing session by Alex Tan, touching on studio operations and music business in general.  It's always great and fun to share experiences with more people and we're glad that everyone enjoyed the trip.

Students at the lounge area.

The control room can fit in 16 people  :)

Group photo.

Soundtrack for film at StarMount Studio

Strings and more strings coming in the studio these days. And it's lots of fun and hard work, most of all great effort to everyone involved in the movie soundtrack production.
Mixing cues and matching music to pictures are something new to our engineers and not to mention around the clock tracking and mixing!

We had 2 groups of string players coming in for the tracks and also cutting some rhythm sections and most of all the beautiful voice of miss Bell Foo.

sE Gemini sounds great when paired up with Bell's vocals. It gives such hugging warmth around the vocals, and it is really good if you're looking for the "intimate" vocal feel. Top end was silky and it sits right in the mix nicely.

JZ V12 was use for some "sweet" vocals as the strong mids from the mic and creamy top end gives it a solid yet punchy performance. Its interesting that this FET could produce texture very close to a tube mic would.

Looking forward to the mastering of the movie and will keep you guys posted when the movie is out!

Cross checking strings arrangements : From Left Jin Tat, Felix, Chern Hwei 

Strings rehearsal at the lounge, we might record here next time :)

Edmund Yong on the drums

Studio A live room

One of a few group pictures : From right Felix, Alex, Jin Tat, Cellist Bell Foo, Vincent Chin and strings players.

Sirius Quartet Surprise Visit to StarMount Studio

Sirius Quartet was at StarMount Studio on a surprise visit. It was kind of a " Record and Dash" session. They're just amazing to record. The impromptu performance and intensity was great. 

Ron, Chern Hwei, Jeremy, Alex and Gregor at StarMount Studio

Masters at work