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.

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

Get That Piano Recorded in October!

Up to 50% off  from our studio hour rate(terms and conditions apply) for piano recording done by the talented and certified team of engineers from StarMount Dynamics for the month of October!

Best time to record your piano materials with this introductory price, to try out (if you haven't heard of) the awesome Horus converters and latest Pyramix Masscore 9.1 by Merging Technologies. Of course, with the goodness of other outboards available from Neve Portico Designs, Tree Audio, Chandler Limited, Audient and more....

Contact us now at info@starmountstudio.com for this fantastic offer in October!

WVC+1 Waiting For That Day @ StarMount Studio

Finally after 6 years of waiting, we have got the chance to record the latest album for WVC TRIO+1 "Waiting For That Day". Its such a special occasion as this is one of the must do list set 6 years ago. We were recording Tokyo Blue "Naked Soul" and WVC was also releasing their debut album at the same time frame. The band was so good that we set out a goal to be able to record them one day.

The band, lead by Tay Cher Siang on the piano and keys are one of the hardest working jazz band that we know of. Constantly reaching out to the audience for the passion they have on jazz music, having performances in large to small scales. Most importantly they also held several music workshops to share their passion and spread the awareness towards jazz music to the local communities.

We were delighted to have the band in the studio. As this was also special to StarMount as we were in a transition to change our system entirely, from Pro Tools HD environment into a total alien system- Pyramix Masscore.

It was also a bold decision as we were considering system upgrades to improve our workflow and output quality. And we got a demo unit courtesy of Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup Asia to try out the system. It was in Pyramix 8 Masscore with Horus interface and we were loving the sound already.

We did not want to put the session at risk and decided to go on with our current Pro Tools system for a smoother workflow. As we proceed to recording the 2nd song from the band, we just couldn't hold it longer than to halt the session, requested 30 minutes break, reroute everything into Horus and Pyramix and resume recording.

We were then able to record at 192khz 24 bit, and we were impressed by the powerful DAW to handle high track counts without breaking sweat. The Horus mic pre were solid and had ample headroom for us to track the entire album without the need of any compressors. We did have the stereo piano through Neve Portico 5043 for the color and also the drums through the buss compressor from the Audient Zen Console (we called it the magic box)

The AD/DA conversion was superb. We had a larger stereo spread, higher headroom, and a better representation of separation as compared to our previous Lavry Blue. Though we love the punch and tightness  from the Lavry Blue AD/DA, Horus seems to have an upper hand for recording natural acoustic instruments.

We had maximum of three passes for each songs, sometimes one. It was thrilling to work with such efficiency and it challenge us to capture the chemistry whenever music is being played. Cutting down direct mics and focusing more on the overall was our objective. We would want to preserve the performance at its most organic form, which was in line with the band's idea of recording.

We love our tube ribbons, and it was placed on the acoustic double bass and as additional mono overhead for the drums. The bottom end was lush yet having a cushioned texture, and surprisingly we could get enough separation from the drumkit, which was just less than 1 metre away from the double bass.

sE 4400a pair was our favorite on the grand piano. We were able to play with different tones by switching polar patterns and its flat shape provides sufficient flexibility and reach for a semi covered lid. For a touch of color, Neve Portico 5043 were called up for the job, applying some sweet transformer characters towards a powerful and composed piano tone.

3 different microphones were used for saxophones, sE Gemini MK2, JZ 11 and AK47 by Telefunken. All of them contributed to the detail and tone, fitting the mood of the songs. No EQ were applied and what you heard from the record were just from the microphones.

"Waiting For That Day" is out in CD album and also available on iTunes. If you are in Malaysia, and better, in KL, Catch them live (WVC Trio +1 Concert) on the coming 24th and 25th of June 2015 at KL Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC) for two nights of musical journey with the band.

Can you tell which tracks are of Pro Tools and Which are from Pyramix?

WVC Trio+1 with special guest visiting

+1 Julian

KJ

AJ

HeyMun and Chern Hui @StarMount Studio

The talented singer songwriter is based in Sydney Australia, coming back to KL for a short trip. So it was supposed to be a drop by and say hi trip, but we were all excited to try out some microphones-Telefunken AR-51, JZ V67 and JZ J1 (thanks to Soundbuz for their high standards and relentless support), and a new DAW-Pyramix.

We have heard how Pyramix are known for their superior sonic quality, just that its not as widely used by the commercial studios. Thanks to Stagetec Asia and Merging Technologies, we got the Horus with premium ADDA to try out along with Pyramix Masscore system.

This is an impromptu session and the duo liked the idea. Without much delay, HeyMun had her Taylor acoustic guitar tuned while Chern Hwei was already on the resin for his violin.

We had the duo in the same room, 6 ft away from each other. We used the Telefunken AR51 on the vocals, and V67 for acoustic guitar. The violin was done with our favorite sE RT1 Tube Ribbon (great cinematic strings tone with the mic)

So, that was the first studio session for "Hail", a new original from Heymun about friendship. The performance was magical and we're very happy to be able to capture the moment. Pyramix is amazing, and its true that the sonic quality is of very high fidelity and natural. And we're liking it every second we're on it.(not a good sign)

The whole session was done in a default setting:192khz set at 32 bit. And only going through the Horus micpre and AD. We were amazed by how balanced and natural the mic pres could produce, and the headroom was huge.

Everyone was excited and with much delight to hear what was being recorded. We were using the Lavry Blue all this while and the Horus got the upper hand with a huge margin in terms of clarity, fullness and headroom.

Again, it opens up the discussion about recording/ operating beyond 96kHz. To us, listening is believing and we were impressed by this new system from Merging Technologies. Drop by the studio for your own AB comparison. We would like to have more ears to tell us that we're not "hearing things" in the studio or its the "new gear hype" that we are going through right now.

HeyMun 

Chern Hwei

Beautiful Duet