Last month Kat Robichaud and her band moved in to the studio to record an epic rock album, with Ian Schreier engineering and producing. The process actually began some time before that, but the studio came into play for some intensive rehearsals before tracking and mixing began. Here’s a shot of the whole band rehearsing, showing the great energy that everybody had throughout the session:
Most of the projects we’ve recorded in the past year have been about capturing the acoustics of the performance and relaying them as faithfully as possible. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a lot of creativity in the control room (as the Hindugrass mix videos demonstrate). But the arrangement and production of this record take things to a whole new level. In addition to the principal instruments you see above (lead vocals, harmony vocals, pianos, guitars, basses, and drums), marimba, trumpet, a snare line, and friends singing background vocals all come into play once the recording process begins.
At the start of the recording process, the instruments are all isolated one from another, which makes it a lot easier to radically layer and shape them later. We put the drums in Booth A, the acoustic bass and bass amp in Booth B, guitar amps in Booth C, the piano in the Music Room, and we built Kat her own booth in the Music Room for singing scratch vocals:
After the fundamental tracks were recorded, we brought in the guest instrumentalists. Here’s Kat giving a listen while Joe Kwon warms up his cello for one of the songs:
And here is Joe playing for real into our Microtech-Gefell 930s:
Want to know how it sounded? It sounded this good:
In case you missed it, here’s a short video showing the progress of one of the sessions:
(which is part of this playlist).
We’re finishing up the mix this week, and it should be available soon, once it goes to production.
Manifold Recording / The Miraverse 
Very Cool!