4 De Diciembre

Hello to you all.

Very soon new Demo Tracks will be avaiable to listen to on all our sites, 4de12.com,Myspace & Facebook.

Speak to you all soon,

Dan,
Cuatro De Diciembre’s Mixing Engineer.

Hi guys,
Just want to let you know about my recording find whilst recording 4 De Diciembre UK Salsa Band.
I really like to push new recording ideas into my work and this was one that paid off 100%.

Trying to get the powerful sound of a Bongo bell can be difficult.
The overtones from the best LP and Meinl Bongo Bells I find get lost when using a standard dynamic mic’s, or become too bright if using most condenser mic’s (be careful when using these with such a loud percussive instrument).

I found that by placing a Sure BETA 91 into the middle of a SE Reflection shield gave great results!
See the following photo:

Sure BETA 91

See 4de12’s MYspace page for more pictures

I had to gaffer tape the flat mic, normally used for kick drums, into the reflection shield. A bit of a bodge, but better than drilling into the surface’s of the SE Reflection shield.

The Sure BETA 91 gives great attack and captures the overtones from the Bongo Bell really well.
The nice nugget’y sound you get acoustically from the Bell comes across really strong (this can be eased back via EQ) but trust me it’s great hearing the high tones and Low tones come through into the control room. Sounds just like the real thing.

Because the Sure BETA 91 is used for Kick drum mic’ing normally, it can handle the really high SPL’s from the bongo bell.
Playing about 8-10 inches from the mic’s centre is the best placement.
A little bit of compression can aid bringing out the more subtle tones that can be hidden by the sharp sounds from the top case of the Bell.

Next time your recording Bongo Bell, ask the engineer if he has a Sure BETA 91, if he has just try it out! You’ll love it.
If not an AKG D112 work well, but the clarity at the top end frequencies aren’t as clear.

More to come soon, and if you have any question please email me:

dan@4de12.com

All the best and happy recording!

Dan.
Recording Engineer for 4 De Diciembre.

4 De 12 Recording Update.

After getting the Live MP3’s ready for the site, which was fun and games, I got straight back to work on the recordings.
We have a nice Excel sheet on the kitchen wall with what’s going on in each song, and I can tell is mostly yellow now (Done).
So what’s left? Backing vocals, Guitar, some Timbales, Bass, and a few other bits and bobs.

Last week I was recording the fantastic Ana (Bass/Backing vocals).
It was very important to get her voice to cut through the wall of male singers in the band and so we worked very hard on picking the correct melodic lines and testing them.
Over the space of a few days recording we managed to fine tune the backing vocal lines to suite her beautiful cutting voice.
It was great working with her as she was very good at taking advice and a great listener. Ana would pop down after a take and listen. If she wasn’t happy she would run back upstairs and have another go.

Her voice will now sit onto of the male vocals very nicely, just how our melodics do.

I’m really looking forward to the mixing now.

This is when we can take all the creativity recorded and give our listeners the true story of the songs meanings and the bands feelings towards the Salsa.

A big thank you to Loo, and the 4 De Diciembre band for giving me the chance to work with them and capture their skills (and their mistakes :-). A great mix of talents and experience make my job a joy.
Hopefully I can do the right job.

Dan Bradley
Recording Engineer
4 De Diciembre UK Salsa Band

By a strange turn of events we ended up celebrating the 4th of December at my place tonight. We had planned originally to record the guide melodics on Thursday the 6th, but one thing led to another and it got nudged forward by a couple of days. Now I’m not sure if many people would class a recording session as a celebration but we certainly did this time, although we sorely missed Catie who had to travel to Folkestone unexpectedly on a work-related matter.

I called Mei’s on Charles Street, my long-time favourite Chinese restaurant, shortly after close of work to place an order for the obligatory salt and pepper squid, and Singapore-style spicy udon noodles, and a plethora of other goodies. I had just enough time to pick them up, jump in a taxi, arrive home, and get the rice in the rice cooker when Dan arrived to set up the recording paraphernalia.

Here the AMT wireless microphones came into their own: the Roam 1 Elite on Carolyn’s tenor sax in the attic and the Roam 2 in Jan’s violin one floor above gave crystal clear sound with minimal setup. Dan reckoned it cut the time needed down to half; it certainly meant less trailing wires. Thom was also upstairs blowing his trumpet into the Shure Beta 91 gaffered into the reflexion filter (we’re finding lots of uses for that configuration), and Mike was on the ground floor playing his ‘bone into a Neumann KMS105. The much underrated Samson S-phone four channel headphone amplifier allowed Dan to give everyone the mix they individually wanted in their headphones.

The guys rolled up at 7:30pm as planned and hungrily fell on the still-warm food, washing it down with cups of tea. The scene is a jovial one: relaxed and warm. I remember my very first session at Yellow Arch as being a tense affair, and this was the polar opposite. Not a long while after and with bellies full, it was time to get going. While the guys were on soundcheck, I popped out to the local off-licence, the rather excellent Dram Shop for: Golden Glory (a badger ale) for Dan, Hebridean Gold (a Skye ale) for Carolyn, some Indian Pale Ale for Mike, and witty repartee with the sales-lasses for me.

The mantra of recording studios is ‘keep the musicians happy’. For Cuatro de Diciembre, feeding and watering them is the best way. Oh, and there was also chocolate.

I had thought initially that not having Catie there would prove a very difficult obstacle. This didn’t turn out to be so, as the guys had practiced it loads and kept track of the spaces for flute. ‘Bembé’ was the first to get the guide treatment and we kept the third take - there is always an element of playing, listening, reviewing and rerecording, but where it was once a luxury back in the bad ole days when we used to hire studio time, with our own step-up we can afford to take the time to do it right, even at guide stage. It’s helped our musicianship loads and I would recommend it to any conjunto with the expertise who might be slightly balked by the initial costs.

Then came ‘Recordando Africa’ followed by ‘Tiempo para el amor’. Somewhere along the line, Nathan turned up to join the party, as did Ana after work. On reviewing the first take of ‘Tiempo’ both Mike and Thom, after discussion with Dan, worked out a different arrangement which yielded a stronger take. It’s always nice to see that happen at a recording session; I think it indicates confident musicianship in a relaxed atmosphere. Kinda sums up 4de12.

And it’s funny how whenever we add a new series of tracks to the songs, we change what we think its central theme should be. Well at least I do anyway. Take ‘Tiempo para el amor’ for example:

When we laid down the framework, I thought that it would centre on the relationship between the vocal and piano; then when timbales and bongó went on, it had a more bolero character; adding the hand percussion gave it a more son montuno flow. Now with the melodic guides, it has a great old-time pre-mambo feel.

I think that’s one of the things the guys value about playing in the band. Everyone knows that they have the freedom to interpet the songs in their own way, and yet everyone is sensitive enough to accommodate everyone else. And so as the 4th of December 2007 drew to a close, we had all the necessary guides for us to resume recording in the new year for finalised takes. Ana is next up on backing vocals; we just have to sort out a schedule between her and Dan.

And I’m at home with a lot of left-over food.

Today’s been a mighty good day.

Loo Yeo

Happy Birthday To Us,
Happy Birthday To Us,
Happy Birthday To UUUU—UUUUSSSSSS!
Happy Birthday To us!
(To the rhythm of Feliz Cumpleanos)

Olé!

Is it Christmas yet?

Eric Alfonso is a Cuban timbalero of several decades experience. For quite a while now, several members of our salsa band have been getting about a bit and Dan and Nathan, timbales players themselves, have become well acquainted with Eric and his musician colleagues in Salsa Celtica. Taking advantage of a gap in Salsa Celtica’s touring schedule, the both of them invited Eric down south to sunny Yorkshire for a weekend of rampant Afro-Cuban noise-making, where he guested in one of our practices, and led a day-and-a-half of tuition.

It was an enlightening and much-needed injection of knowldege from an old hand. There are things one can’t pick-up from books or YouTube - subtleties… nuances that one must experience in the flesh. To say that his trip made an impact is a little bit of an understatement. But what’s really nice about the guy is that he wanted to see us do well; because he recognised instantly our musical approach as stemming from a genuine desire to understand the roots of his culture.

Since his visit, percussion development has been growing in cohesion and direction; so much so that our practice format has been amended slightly to capitalise on this, in the same way as we had made changes to the benefit of our melodics months ago. One of his main drives was in the use of breaks in our arrangements to build tension and add definition to our numbers. Although I had identified and written about this myself (see previous post), it required someone external to the band to provide the crucial impetus.

And I’m glad we’re finally rolling on it.

But I would be doing 4de12 an injustice and leaving you the reader with the wrong impression if I didn’t elaborate further. I believe that we are now in a stronger position to take on Eric’s advice than we were just a couple of months ago, because of a confluence of circumstances: a line-up change with Wib moving onto bongó and Jim coming in on conga; Dan having built up more experience on timbales; listening to and learning from the recording and editing of timbales in our upcoming album; and feedback from our Leeds charity gig which we recorded off the desk.

The latter, good as it was, highlighted several avenues of development including the benefit of increased break arrangments - there being a marked contrast between the numbers that had them, and those that didn’t. Suffice to say that we’ve got enough to keep us occupied until Eric’s next visit.

Loo Yeo

Nicolai called Cuatro de Diciembre to stage at 10pm. And he gave us a hell of an introduction; one which bore all the warmth of his character, and which drew from his years of experience as a public speaker.

We matched his introduction quality for quality with our opening number ‘Nueva Generación’ - one of our three suite songs written deliberately for high impact; AND we played it tighter than a badger’s ass in a tooling vice.

Of the many things I love about 4de12, one of the most remarkable is the sheer energy we can kick out on stage. I could see the atmosphere charging up as we powered our way through the sections, and the salseros responding accordingly. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the DJs: Nicolai and Tony, taking in the performance with grins splitting their faces. Make no mistake, Cuatro de Diciembre may not have been very well known in the salsa gig circle then, but for those who had, our debut in Leeds was very much anticipated.

Having opened with all guns blazing, we followed up with more of the same with Nathan taking it up on ‘Hijos de Cam’. We alternate singers to give the audience dynamic changes in texture as well as taking the load of the lead vocalists. It was received as enthusiastically, and from then on everything else fell into place. Being dancers ourselves, we plan our sets with energy cycles to give our audience respites as needed whilst still retaining that BIG atmosphere.

Our cover of Bilongo was going to be a potentially sticky bit because I’d heard Tony play it just two songs before we came on. True enough, just after I announced it, Tony heckled good-naturedly (he was really getting into the swing of things) from sidestage. I just smiled and said, “yeah, but we’re going to play it even better!” And we did, with our trademark unique middle section that Ana, Jeremy and I developed. The numbers kept rolling, and we ended the set fourty minutes later, exactly as the organisers had planned.

I did interrupt the opening of a song, the last one, to slow down the tempo. I’d seen that the dancers were getting fatigued and felt that we could help accommodate them more. It was a move received very positively by the salseros and the DJs/promoters, the latter of which are always reassured when a band demonstrates that it is aware of the audience’s needs and has the confidence to respond accordingly.

During the break while my colleagues were in the dressing room, I got some dancing in and chatted with the DJs to get a feel of how well our performance was being received. Amos of Salsa sin limite paid us a very nice compliment saying that he enjoyed it so much he forgot to dance - normally you can’t keep him off a dance floor. Tony of Salsa York used the word “astounding” (in a good way). Great! That meant that only small quantitative changes needed to be made for the second set, which had a playlist at least as strong as the first.

The rest of the band came in to watch the very entertaining dance demonstrations: one of tango argentino and two of salsa. Mike in particular was having a blast - I will always remember the look of delight on his face on the far side-of-stage. Just one short interval later that and we were back on. James, on hearing from Nathan and myself that we both felt as if we over-singing, put our monitor levels up. That helped us a tremendous amount and made the vocal performance a lot easier for the rest of the evening.

There were so many highlights: how all the Decembers were introduced during the first song ‘El Tambor’; the looks of astonishment on the faces of the DJs as we burned our way through ‘El hechizo del montuno’ aka ‘Salsa Gitana’ a beautiful and immensely challenging song for a band to make its own; and ‘Bembé’ which turned out to be one of the jewels of the night. Nathan tooks us to the close on ‘En la sangre’ and it was exit stage right.

A few minutes (and one tiny glitch) later, Nicolai led the audience in calling us back for an encore. This was where we pulled out all the stops having reserved ‘Tributo al son’ and ‘El gallo’ for this occassion. They absolutely cooked.

And then it was all over, finishing on a high.

Ana, Nathan and I managed to get just a couple of dances in before we had to go; we would have loved to stay longer, but given the poorly state of half the band, the prudent thing was to get them safely back home. Every December was and is an absolute trooper. It’s easy for me to be completely biased about how well we played, but the real proof is easily seen. Everyone (and I mean everyone) who was there at the Ball not only enjoyed it, but have been telling their friends that they had missed something really great. So much so that salseros from Sheffield were coming up to me the next day, saying that they’d heard how brilliantly 4de12 had entertained.

The organisers, DJs, demonstrators, attendees, and salsa band all played their part. For me, there is no better way of making sure that the Leeds Charity Salsa Ball becomes an established annual event.

Loo Yen Yeo

Post Script:
The Ball raised a total of £1650, split between the Leeds Society for Deaf and Blind People, and the British Heart Foundation. Cuatro de Diciembre’s thanks go to Verdant EcoLogic for their generous sponsorship, to make their chance to play at the Ball a reality.

Well, it’s been over a week since the gig and now that the dust (and germs, sort of) have settled I thought I’d write a bit about it.

First of all, thanks to the organisers for putting on the event, it must have taken some doing and as far as I could see, it went off on the night without a hitch! Huge thanks also to James for doing the sound. It can’t have been easy I’m sure, what with the huge mirrors behind the stage that reflected anything that came out of the monitors, but he did a fantastic job.

So, the gig itself, it was fairly tough going for me because I was right in the middle of an awful flu type thing that had been going round (I blame those freshers!) and I felt on the verge of fainting a few times. Thankfully I managed to wait until between songs to have a coughing fit. I personally thought there were a couple of dodgy moments in the first set, from me at least, but we played a blinder in the second set. My particular highlights were El Hechizo Del Montuno, now home of Mike’s infamous knee-dance and general melodics dancing randomness, and Bembe, which I thought went pretty well seeing as it was the first time we’d played it live. I also enjoyed El Tambor and El Gallo because, well, I always enjoy playing them!

All in all, a fantastic evening, despite getting back to Sheffield at about 3 in the morning! I’ve never seen the band look so smart (we certainly do scrub up well) and I hope our enthusiasm and enjoyment was reflected in our playing. Roll on the next gig!

Catie

It was the beginning of summer 2007, I was lounging around in Cubana on a Saturday afternoon. Nicolai had just finished his lessons and we were catching up, as we normally do after an age of not having done so simply because our lives had gotten in the way. It was then that he popped the question.

“Would 4 de Diciembre like to play at the inaugural Leeds Charity Salsa Ball?”

“Sure!” I said.

Summers being summers, people were away on holiday at overlapping times and we had the pressure of recording timbales then bongo and djembe. What seemed like a goodly amount of time soon started to evaporate; and our preparations for two killer sets started to acquire a fevered pitch. Pressures mounted, and over the esnuing weeks there were more that a few heated discussions between band members. Certainly, we could have made things a lot easier for ourselves by choosing a safer route with the playlist, but that’s just not our style - simply because it would feel like weren’t doing our best for the people who make the effort to come to hear us play.

One of the key pressure points was my intention (and I shoulder the burden of blame) to debut Bembé, even though it hadn’t been fully arranged yet. My extended absence in Asia and the States and a bad case of traveller’s flu afterward put paid to our ability to practice it. But still, I really wanted to do it to make the Charity Ball an extra special occassion, and to thumb my nose at conventional wisdom. True, few people would appreciate it, but the people who mattered would. Everyone in Cuatro de Diciembre put in a Herculean effort and Bembé survived final cull for the playlist with two days to spare. It emerged as one of the sparkling gems of the night, and the gathered were only told of its debut after the last strains had faded away.

We arrived at the Met hotel in plenty of time, and James our excellent sound engineer was already a good way through setting up his PA. The main hall is an acoustic challenge with highly reflective glass surfaces in the form of mirrors behind the stage, freely vibrating glass panes at the far end, corners that trapped bass, and a vaulted ceiling. That caused the soundcheck to take a little longer, but having the excellent AMT microphones on the melodics and the Markbass units for Ana’s bass made the job a easier.

Most of the band were labouring under the weight of flu, with Catie and Nathan at their worst. Whilst they were resting after soundcheck, I put my glad rags on and went out to mingle.

Having hired bands myself in a previous life, one of my pet peeves were of the ones who just turned up, played, took the money, and scarpered. When salseros attend a live music event, they do so not only to experience the performance. Such is the nature of Latin bands that the people who play the music are more accessible to the dancers than in other genres. In every gig by a top salsa band I’d been to, be it Spanish Harlem, Ricardo Lemvo or Manolito, some members always made a personal appearance either at the bar or dance floor after playing.

I decided to go one better and start promoting before the gig; Nicolai and I both knew how important it was that the first Charity Ball be successful…

(On to Part 2)

-Loo Yen Yeo

We’ve recently started separating our practices into 2 groups: rhythmic secion and melodic section. So once a week we work out our different arrangements separately and then the other practice we all play together. This was done as a necessity for arrangements as we never figured out a suitable way to combine and integrate melodic (flute, violin, saxophone, trombone and now trumpet) arranging and rhythm (piano, bass, congas, timbales and hand percussion) arranging into a practice.

Does anyone with any experience of this know of a way, or able to make suggestions, as to how this can be done with big bands?
(nb. it doesn’t have to be a Salsa Band. I imagine the same problems are encountered with any big band).

-Nathan