Home Grown: Canary

SLOW & STEADY

GW: Was it a long process to make the record?

MK: It took us about a year overall. The bulk of the recording was done on and off within probably four or five months, whereas the mixing was done relatively casually and took most of the year. It took us a lot longer than professionals to initially track it all because Adam and I were constantly second-guessing everything. “Is that the right amount of gain level? Are the headphones too loud? Is it too roomy a sound? Can you hear the rain outside? There’s a slight hum, do you reckon it’ll matter?” A lot of it was resolved by a quick phone call to Zac. I’d spoken to him in detail beforehand about how we should do it and whether it was a bad idea for us to go off and try tracking it ourselves. He instilled a lot of confidence in Adam and myself to trust our ears and so, not knowing a lot about what the ‘right’ way of recording stuff was, we did our best to trust our ears out of necessity. From the start, I knew Zac and myself were on the same page with general sounds we were after in the album. We wanted it to be at times raw, stripped back and at other times, fairly produced and complex. So I had a lot of trust in him and his advice. As we were recording I’d check in with Zac to see if the sounds we were getting were usable. He was usually very re-assuring and quite amazing as an overseer to work with. This relationship allowed us enough freedom to muck around and experiment while still making sure we were getting good sounds.

GW: What were some of the hurdles you had to overcome soundwise?

MK: There were some results that were less than ideal. For instance we had an Audio-Technica 3035 above and behind the violin as well as a line out from the violinist’s amp on Very Impressive. But the acoustic sound ended up being way too roomy so we ended up almost exclusively using the line out takes. The guitars at the end of Little Christ were recorded at least three times – each time they were too ‘roomy’ (I was living in a house at the time that was all wooden floors and high ceilings). I took them to Zac twice and both times he suggested doing them again so he had something better to work with. On the third time, I got lucky. I ended up basically burying the mic and amp in pillows and blankets and a mattress.

GW: What gear were the main and backing vocals recorded with?

MK: They were all done with an AT 3035 going into a PreSonus Firestudio interface and then into GarageBand. Zac also used some ribbon mics for the backing vocals on Son and Father.

GW: The acoustic guitars sound great on this record. What were the instruments and the recording chain for that?

MK: There were a few different approaches to the acoustic guitar sounds. Usually I had the mic a few centimetres off the point where the neck and body of the guitar meet (I assume that’s fairly standard) using my AT 3035. All the guitar tracks were recorded mono. It’s a nice sounding guitar to begin with (Yamaha Compass Series CPX) and I usually had a mattress or something behind the mic to play into and most were just recorded in various bedrooms or lounge rooms. For tracks 12 and 13 we actually used an Elliott Smith technique. I’d asked Zac at some point early on in frustration, “How does Elliott get that sound?” So Zac looked it up. It turns out that often he had the mic placed somewhere about halfway between the guitar and his mouth (sitting position) and recorded playing and singing at the same time, and then double tracked it. So I liked the idea and thrill of having that ‘live’ pressure and we gave it a try. It was sounding vibey instantly and we didn’t have to do a lot mixing-wise to get it working. Those takes were actually recorded in a really nice bedroom in the barn. It had a few different angles in the ceiling and was a combination texture-wise of straw/mudbrick, metal, concrete and a rug.

OUT OF THE BOX

GW: The use of beat boxing on the record is really effective, is that something you’ve always done in the band?

MK: Beat boxing was something we definitely had been doing from the beginning. Being heavily into artist’s like Bjork and Radiohead at the time of the band’s inception, I loved the electronic and unorthodox sounds they produced. To me they weren’t at all distracting but refreshing and very interesting. So, not being computer savvy enough to mess around with beat programming and loops, I decided to use the next best thing – beat boxing. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why, but I wanted to steer away from a typical ‘band’ sound; acoustic drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitars, that sort of thing. So we went with electric violin (Xani Kolac), trumpet, synth and beat boxing. It certainly was a bit of a headache at times for Zac and I. I guess we just wanted to force ourselves to be as creative as we could and try and create something unique. Using odd instruments does often help with this. We actually spent the majority of the first trip up to Nagambie tracking the beat boxing tracks. I can’t express how disheartening it was initially. We discovered that beat boxing, at least the way we were doing it, doesn’t sound great immediately the way drums or most other things do. A fair bit of work has to be done to make them listenable and suitable to record other stuff over. And then they require a fair bit of tweaking as different elements gets added to the mix. There was a point early on in mixing the beat boxing where I just couldn’t keep up with the different compressors, EQs and limiters.

GW: Little Christ seems to be a song that exemplifies the album. Could you take us into a bit more detail and describe the conception, recording and production of that song?

MK: The basic concept for the song definitely evolved, but I knew from the start that I wanted it to be ballsey, dramatic, colourful, and intense. I was really happy when Zac showed me a fairly dark, pared back mix of it which brought more attention to the vocals and guitar parts giving it all a slightly sinister and much more snappy feel. Like a lot of the initial dumpings of tracks I gave to Zac, there was just too much. I believe after messing around a bit in the mastering, he applied a fairly hefty limiter on the loud build up section in the middle. We tried just letting it go without limiting it here at all but we actually really liked the crunch it was getting and that feeling of everything getting squashed. The beat boxing was laid down first in Ed’s bedroom. I believe he used an Audix i5 on this one. Everything else was done using an EV RE20. I think I just got him to lay out the rough form before it was really finished and then we may have looped a section in the end. Then Zac recorded a bass track, and I recorded the guitars and most of the vocals to the first half in a basement of a friend’s house. All brick walls and low ceilings but I liked the darkness and brittleness that the guitars and vocals naturally had there. Violins for this song were done in Adam’s living room. It wasn’t a great room or great acoustic sound in the end but Zac managed to make it work. After it was all roughly mixed I got an old friend to ‘preach’ for a bunch of takes and then speak in tongues. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to describe how weird that was to have him really trying to get into the role in front of me in a bedroom, both of us with headphones on. It was awesome. I think Zac put all the spoken stuff through some sort of reverb or ‘blown speaker’ emulating EQ to try and make it sound like a preacher getting into it in a small church.

GW: What did the mixing process entail?

MK: Overall the mixing on this song was a fair chore – the beat boxing mainly. It went through a lot of different EQs before settling on a fairly dark and stripped back mix in general. This was definitely a song where we pared back the parts to find the least amount that we could work with. Everything shifted around a lot until we finally settled on a balance between the bass and guitars and vocals that worked. Both Zac and I are cursed with a certain pickiness, and the parts and instruments were often tricky to ‘fit’ together.

THE SAGE ADVISOR

The man consistently on the other end of Keneally’s phone, Zac Barter, talks about the mixing process and what it was like to handle the raw material coming in from the barn.

Zac Barter: “Canary was performing the songs on the album well before recording began, so they usually had a clear starting arrangement but they also wanted to experiment heavily. The original plan was for a more conventional studio album but Matt’s rough old demos with a Behringer mixer into a soundcard convinced me that he performed better when he recorded himself. The band started tracking themselves in Nagambie with a few mics and a Firestudio running into GarageBand. The room was well suited to recording with angled walls and played a big part in the sound of the album. For the acoustic tracks Matt found a spot that he liked under the staircase and usually played a Yamaha Compass. I can’t stand the feel of that guitar but love how it records when Matt’s playing it. It’s quite similar to the way Elliott Smith’s Lucky Three video was recorded although we used two takes panned hard to each side. A subtle corrective EQ and a light opto comp were all that I used on these acoustic tracks before riding volumes to match the band. Some of the other acoustic parts were recorded closer and EQ’d more aggressively.

“I recorded Lachie and Ed’s drum parts at my small studio space using Beyer M160s as overheads, an EV RE20 on kick and some Audix and Beyer mics around Lachie’s Gretch kit. I particularly love his 15-inch Zildjian hats and dry K ride. We thought drums wouldn’t work for Be Yourself as the guitars were played quite freely and we wanted to keep them. We persisted and eventually managed to get the drums to fit with the guitars and now it’s my favourite moment on the album. We didn’t want to wait until tracking was completed to see if sounds were working, so Matt gave me files along the way to start editing and mixing. The work ahead became obvious as well over 100 tracks appeared on my screen for a number of the 14 songs. I was blown away by the raw tracks, and confident that the risk of recording rough had paid off. A few tracks needed rerecording, and some ended up muted, but most tracks sounded great and the performances were fantastic. Some of the later tracks were recorded in other houses where the rooms had a harsh ambience that didn’t work on some instruments. We had to redo some parts and get creative with others. Despite the challenges Matt still captured some great tracks.

“I enjoy working with and mixing bands that record themselves, although it is high risk and comes with problems. It’s vital to find the right space and to have a band with great ears and patience. The process will typically take far longer to complete than it would in a traditional studio environment because of the trial and error involved, and it’s entirely possible for the expense to end up greater if things go wrong. It can also place a huge strain on people and bands. Thankfully Dear Universe was a great experience because Matt and Adam are naturally talented at tracking and kept at it, no matter how long it took them. It was also important that my tastes in sound were compatible with Matt’s.

POOR PLATE, EXPENSIVE SOUND

“The album was slowly mixed over the course of a year in my treated room on ADAM A7s. Most songs weren’t complete yet so we kept adding tracks and working on arrangements and sounds right until the end of the mix process. We were determined to be satisfied with the mixes so I spent a great deal of time buying and exploring new plug-ins and techniques until I got the result that I wanted, which was a great learning experience. Decapitator was great for shaping sounds and I typically used Waves SSL Softube channel strips for EQ. A few compressors used were Waves PIE and SSL bus, MOTU’s opto compressor, and the Elysia Alpha. I liked Echoboy and Crystallizer for lots of dirty ambience even on long string parts. I used countless bits and pieces for different flavours of effects and distortion and had a great time trying out some very unusual choices. One of the few reverbs used on the album was a free little plug-in called Poor Plate. It has a really unique rhythm and air that helps to avoid clutter. Matt told me he’d been running my early mix of ‘very impressive’ through poor plate because he really liked it swimming in reverb. It actually worked surprisingly well and after trying a number of altiverb, Softube, and Sonnox reverbs I had to admit poor plate was the best! I ended up using it on the final mix after bussing the beat boxing and bass to a separate output.