David Campbell :
Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion Electric guitar. Taylor and Godin acoustic guitars. Roger Linn's Adrenalinn. Fender Hot-Rod, Mesa-Boogie Maverick Dual Rectifier, and MarkIV Amps.
Claude Prince :
Status Graphite into Aquilar Tube DI.
Aaron Clark :
Pearl kit. Yamaha percussion.
Angie MacIvor :
Roland Fantom keyboards, Selmer Soprano and Alto saxes.
Session 1
The album was recorded over the course of 13 months at various studios. The original tracking sessions were done at Shattered Wings studio with Matthew Thomas engineering. We used quite a bit of gear there. Specifically:
Drums: Pearl. We used an AKG D-112 on the kick, a Shure SM-57 on the snare, two 57s on the piccolo snare (top and bottom), and a CAD E-350 on the snare side. On the three toms we used three Sennheisser MD-421s. On hi-hat we used a Audio Technica 4051a and on the overheads we used a stereo pair of Neumann KM-184s. We also used a pair of Neumann TLM-103s as room mics. All drum mics went into Geoff Daking pre-amps.
David's electric guitar (Gibson Howard Roberst Fusion) went into a radial direct box and was split to an Roger Linn Adrenalinn as well as direct injected. The direct injected part was later re-amped into a Mesa-Boogie Mark IV via a Neumann TLM-103 and a Millennia Media Origin channel strip.
On Ange's soprano sax (a Selmer Mark VI) we used a Rode NT-V into a Daking preamp.
Gary's bass was a Music Man which we ran into a Demeter tube DI. I later replaced it a Fender Jazz bass via a Millenia media pre-amp, or Claude re-did it with a Status Graphite into Aquilar DI or Millenia Media origin.
David's keyboard rig instudio was a Dell laptop running Live (as a vst host mainly) with Linplug Albino 3, M-Tron, Mini-monsta, Zebra 2, Cameleon 500 plug-ins.
Ange's keyboard was a Roland Fantom.
Voice: Neumann U-87 into a Millennia Media Origin.
The tracks were recorded into Cubase as wav files and then transfered into Fiction's Mac-based Logic system for overdubs and mixing.
Session 2
Additional tracking sessions were done at Fiction Music Productions. On Aaron's drums we used an AKG D-112 on kick, a Shure SM-57 on snare and another on the piccolo. On toms we used a trio of AKG SE300's with CK93 capsules. On hi-hat we used another AKG SE300 with a CK91 capsule and finally on overheads we used a pair of AKG SE-300s with CK94 caps. In addition we used a pair of Neumann TLM-103s as room mics (via a pair of Prosonus MP20 pres).
For David's electric Guitar (again the Howard Roberts Fusion) we used a Mesa-Boogie Maverick Dual Rectifier combo amp miced by a Neumann TLM-103 through a Millennia Media Origin .
Ange used her Roland Fantom DI'd.
We recorded live off the floor onto 16 tracks of ADAT and transferred it to Logic 8 for further tracking (bass, sax and vocals overdubs), production and mixing.
Overdubs used the following gear: On acoustic guitar (Taylor 314-CE) we used a TLM-103 and a Millenia Media HV-3 preamp.The bass was a Status Graphite and went into an Aguilar tube DI.
David's keyboards were a M-Audio axiom 61 controller, Korg Legacy Series MS-20 controller. Logic Audio on 8-core Mac. Dell laptop. Dave Smith's Evolver. Linplug's Albino 3, Cronox 3, and Sophistry . Native Instrument's B4, Reaktor 5 and Kontakt 3. G-Force's M-Tron, Mini-monsta and Oddity. Korg's Legacy series MS-20, Monopoly and Poly-6. Sonic Charge's Synplant and Micro-tonic. Spectrasonics' Stylus RMX, Toon-Track's Superior Drummer and Vintage add-on. U-He's Zebra 2, Zebralette and Filterscape. Sugarbyte's Unique. Camel Audio's Cameleon 500, Camel Phat and Camel Space. Arturia's Analog Factory. UVI's Extreme-fx. Logic's EXS24, Sculpture, EVB3 Drawbar Organ, EVP88 Electric piano and EVD6 Electric Clav.
Guy's keyboard was a Korg M-50 which he recorded at his studio and ftp'd us later.
Voices: Neumann U-87 and TLM-103, AKG C-414 mics. Millennia Media Origin and Millenia Media HV-3 pre-amps. Prosonus pres, RME hammerfall pres.
Session 3
We did further sessions at A&R studios July & August 2009. This time we mic'd the drums up with clip-on drum mics and recorded Aaron, Claude and David off the floor. We overdubbed sax , vocals and keys later as well as replaced some guitar.
On drums we used an AKG D-112 on kick, SM-57 on snare, CAD TSM411s on toms, and a pair of CAD ICM417s as overheads. All the drums went into a presonus digimax and, via adat lite-pipe, on to the remaining ADAT. We didn't track room mics or hi-hat.
Claude used his Status 4 string into an Aguilar tube DI direct to ADAT and David re-did his guitar parts at Fiction using his Howard Roberts Fusion into a Mesa-Boogie Mark IV or Maverick mic'd with either a Neumann TLM-103 into a Millennia Media Origin .or a 57 into a RME pre. Ange's saxes were recorded later using a Beta 58 and a Presonus pre. Her keyboards (Roland Fantom) and her vocals were both recorded into Reaper and transferred to Fiction later. David's overdubbed vocals used a Neumann U-87 into a Millennia Media Origin.
The live tracking session was recorded into an ADAT-XT and transferred to Logic 8 for final, tracking, production and mixing. The mix was done using tons of plug-ins, mostly by PSP, Sonalksis, Logic and Wave Arts. Outboard FX units were a TC-Electronics M-3000,and an Eventide H-3000. The mix was monitored through Dynaudios, and routed through a RME Fireface 400 from a Mac intel-based 8 core.
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