colleen

The first mix for my first album was very representative of my various obsessions of the time, among which Indonesian music (and East Asian music in general), African music, weird songs (Sun Ra’s “Rocket# 9” ), sixties girl groups, with a bit of contemporary electronics thrown in and “classics” that transcend their time such as My Bloody Valentine or Terry Riley.

At the time of this second mix, December 2003, I was already thinking about a second album, and reading a Lou Harrison interview in The Wire and hearing the piece that opens and closes this mix convinced me definitively that I would give up samples and start to build up a collection of instruments and learn how to play them. This mix also features some of my all-time old school favs Delia Derbyshire and Raymond Scott, but I’ll let the tracklisting do the talking.

Lou Harrison « Double Concerto For Violin, Cello And Javanese Gamelan » (Music And Arts)

Philip Jeck « Spirits Up » (Touch)

Nobukazu Takemura « Curious Child » (Wea)

Tim Hecker « Hello Detroit » (Alien8)

Delia Derbyshire – BBC Radiophonic Workshop (BBC)

Clangers « Intro Music – Dialogue From Episode One » (Smallfolk / Fellside)

Half Asleep « Sea Shells » (Demo)

Penguin Cafe Orchestra « Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter » (Virgin)

Flip And The Dateliners « My Johnny Doesn’t Come Around » (Hmv)

Brenda Holloway « When I’m Gone » (Tamla Motown)

Raymond Scott – Portofino / Good air (Basta)

Amalia Rodrigues « Troca De Olhares » (Pharaon)

Pauline Oliveros « The Fool’s Circle » (Lovely Music)

Lou Harrison « Double Concerto For Violin, Cello And Javanese Gamelan » (Music And Arts)

The photos are from a concert at Les Les Voutes in Paris in December 2003, a place where I played many times, and I must have started to play the cello very shortly before that (I was pretty reckless at the time!).

I am finally getting close to finishing my 7th album, and if all goes according to plan it will be released in May 2021 (6 months are needed between delivery of the master and the actual release to allow for all preparations). It is now 90% composed with all production ideas in place and tested through tons of demo recordings, though the actual recording hasn’t happened yet, since I am following to an extreme degree the method I started using on A flame my love, a frequency: I want to record everything live with as little editing as possible, and this time I have pushed rehearsing the songs again and again to a more extreme degree, since it’s the first time I’ve really had to play keyboards.

This decision is philosophical, aesthetic and practical: I want the album to be live to reflect its emotionally raw content, but quite simply I also know that joining keyboard parts that go through heavy Space Echo delay or crazy Moog Grandmother modulation is simply not going to work – it will really have to be seamless from the start.

One of the things I realised these past few weeks is that this is the first album that really reflects *all* of my influences, it happened naturally, and I didn’t notice it at first because I’m only using one melodic instrument, which really unifies the wholeAs I know that some of you discovered my music fairly recently, I thought I’d do a mix retrospective so you can get to listen again to the mixes I was invited to do for each one of my albums! Kicking off with my first ever mix for the release of “Everyone alive wants answers” in May 2003! Hope you enjoy these!

Gamelan Degung “Catrik” – Java – Sunda Country (Ocora)

Terry Riley “Poppy Nogood” (Ancient Word Music – Bmi)

Mulatu Astatqe “Yekermo Sew” Ethiopiques 4 (Buda Musique)

The Caretaker “Date With An Angel” (V/Vm Test)

Chet Baker “My Funny Valentine” (Blue Note / Capitol)

My Bloody Valentine “No More Sorry” (Creation)

Novisad “Einsam” (Tomlab)

Sun Ra “Rocket # 9” (Evidence)

Autechre “Rae” (Warp)

Vietnam – Music Of The Montagnards “Hani” (Le Chant Du Monde)

Joy Division “Insight” (Factory)

The Supremes  “My World Is Empty Without You”(Motown)

2003 press photo by Sophie Mandon.

This entire series was born because someone in the comments section of my Instagram asked me what pitched delay effect I was using on the vocals of “Winter Dawn”, so here goes.

On my album A flame my love, a frequency, I stopped doubletracking my vocals. On “Winter dawn”, I bussed the vocal track (via my DAW and physically via my Scarlett Focusrite18i20) to the Moogerfooger MF-104M and then sent its two outputs (mix out – which gives you the original signal mixed with whatever amount of delay you dial in with the mix pot on the pedal – and delay out – which gives you the delay only signal) back into the DAW on individual tracks. I kept the original vocal track centered, and panned the mix out and delay out tracks 50% on each side, with a tiny bit of Overloud’s Springage spring reverb emulation added to these.

Et voilà, three vocal tracks from just one single original take, with the added advantage that you can do this in two steps: first you record your vocals and tweak as needed, then you record the delayed parts, which means you are then free to play with the pots in real time to get some cool dynamic effects… such as toggling the short/long switch – my favorite thing to do on the MF-104M! I could literally do this all day!!! You can distinctly hear it here when the words become pitched either high or low, as well as on “Separating”, which uses the same recording setup.

A more subtle variation of this approach can be heard on “The stars vs creatures”, where I use the MIDIMuRF instead of the MF-104M to just filter the vocals slightly and again take advantage of the separate outputs that divide the filter’s frequencies in left and right channels, this time panning them at 25% on each side, and again keeping the original track in the centre.

I really hope that this vocals series has been somehow helpful or illuminating to some of you who like to hear about these things!

Amazing “Winter dawn” video by Connor Burke.

 

On Captain of none, which was heavily influenced by Jamaican music from the 70s, I wanted tape delay and spring reverb for the viola and my vocals, and since I didn’t have access to the real thing, I went on a search for the plugins that would get closest to what I wanted. I  highly recommend Overloud’s Springage reverb, which is fully customizable in more ways than you can imagine, and can really transform sounds in powerful ways (also recommend their Mark Studio II for bass lines, which is what I used for the treble viola’s bass sounds produced through my OctaBass octaver pedal).

For delays, the Interruptor’s delay plugins blew my mind (donation ware, Windows only), particularly the Bionic Delay which is all over Captain of none.

I applied both plugins on each doubletracked vocal track, with one track being less effected than the other, and as I often do,  panned the vocal tracks (typically do 25%/25%, sometimes more).

I also systematically gently push the high frequencies and reduce low frequencies with the Sony Track EQ that comes built within my DAW, Acid, so that the vocals sit on top of the mix more easily, without having to increase their volume.

Back tomorrow with the answer to the question that started this series: what is the delay on my vocals in “Winter dawn”? 😊

Video by Naoko Tanaka. Album released on Thrill Jockey Records, 2015.

 

After my 2007 album Les ondes silencieuses, my mastering engineer Emiliano Flores sold me the mike and preamp we had used for a lot of the takes, a Beyerdynamic MC834 and a Symetrix preamp, and ever since then it’s been my go-to mike for vocals and a ton of other instruments too (on Captain of none, the melodica, percussion and floor tom were also recorded with it). I also systematically use a popshield (SP Studio Projects) as I sing real close to the mike.

At the time of recording The weighing of the heart in 2012 I was still using a really old soundcard, so had to go through the Symetrix preamp, but since upgrading to my Scarlett Focusrite 18i20 soundcard, the MC834 goes straight into the soundcard and I’m very happy with the results.

On The Weighing of the Heart and Captain of None albums, I almost systematically doubletracked my vocals – a trick the nervous beginning vocalist I was found very handy to both have a richer sound and mask slight imperfections in pìtch. I of course had to overdub too when singing harmony.

I abandoned this on 2017’s A flame my love, a frequency, and instead found another way to add width and texture to my vocals in a way that made sense for that album.

More on my specific production choices in the next and last two posts of this series 😊

Pic is from my former studio in San Sebastián, Spain, circa Captain of None, 2015.