Small Island, Big Song, Huge Story

Tim Cole and BaoBao Chen set off on a recording adventure that would take them from Madagascar to Easter Island. Since then they’ve released a multi award-winning album, uploaded a series of music videos, and made a movie that’s screening at festivals around the world.

Story: Greg Simmons

So we hung the mics from trees, or found sticks to tape them to

While recording traditional music in

Vanuatu, producer/engineer Tim Cole learnt of a heritage shared by island communities throughout Asia, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Most of those communities were established by ancient seafarers; the indigenous people of Taiwan who, thousands of years ago, pushed their boats out to sea and headed for the horizon. Inspired by this, Tim thought “What an incredible wealth of cultures, music and instruments to base an album on.”

A year later he was in Australia’s remote Central Desert recording Inmas (songlines) of the Pintupi Elders. Their ancient songs were full of information about living on the land, maintaining social systems in harmony with nature, and more. That night, while listening to the IPCC report on climate change, a tragic irony struck him: the people who know how to live sustainably on the land will be the first to lose their land through the unsustainable practices of the rest of the world. The developed world is going to lose the knowledge it needs to hear, at the time when it needs to hear it.

This was all the motivation Tim needed to act on his previous inspiration. Teaming up with BaoBao Chen, they headed to the shores of Taiwan to retrace the paths of the ancient seafarers. They visited 16 different island nations and collaborated with over 100 artists to create a series of contemporary ‘Oceanic Songlines’ for a sustainable future. The resulting album won the ‘Best Asia & Pacific Album’ award at Songlines Music Awards (UK), the ‘German Record Critic’s Award’ (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik), and was nominated for ‘Best Concept Album’ at the American Independent Music Awards. They’re currently taking the movie of their musical adventure around the world festival circuit.

In the following interview, Tim relates their story of tropical islands, typhoons, bush mechanics and audio derring-do...

EQUIPMENT Greg Simmons: Thanks for stopping by, Tim. AudioTechnology is a magazine for sound engineers and recording musicians, so we’d better start with the recording equipment you used...

Tim Cole: Sure. I started with a few mics I’d collected over the years. I had a Neumann TLM102 studio condenser mic and a Shure SM87 live condenser mic, and with those two I knew I could pull a good vocal sound. I also had a little AKG 408 condenser mic that was handy because I could clip it on to things. I didn’t have a stereo pair, and I didn’t have a field recorder. I’d been working at CAAMA [Central Australia Aboriginal Media Association] before starting this project, and as a farewell gift they gave me a Zoom H6; it provided me with an XY pair of cardioids, and it also became my field recorder.

GS: You made this entire multi-tracked album using a Zoom H6 as your recorder?

TC: Yes. All the recordings were made through the Zoom H6; sometimes on its own with a guide track, other times as a USB interface recording directly into Protools on my Macbook Pro. So in terms of mic preamps and converters, everything passed through the H6.

GS: Any other gear?

TC: We planned to film as well, so I bought a lapel mic that could connect directly to the camera; it’s called a ‘MyMic’, it has a little gooseneck and was incredibly handy. It turned out to be the main vocal mic for many of the performances – but only after a lot of EQ! Then I also got a Zoom H1; I wanted to record surround sound at the same time, so I’d often put the H1 off in the distance to capture the left and right rear channels.

About halfway through the project we got a sponsorship from Røde, who were really happy to help us. They gave us a matched pair of NT5s and the Stereo Bar, an NTG2 shotgun mic, and a Stereo Video Mic to put on the camera for ambience. And, of course, their windjammers for everything!

GS: What about monitoring?

TC: I wanted to do all the post-production in the field, as we went from island to island, and I knew the biggest problem I was going to have from an audio point of view was sitting the bottom end accurately. I ended up with the iLoud monitor from IK Multimedia, and a pair of Sennheiser HD8 DJ headphones. Between them I knew I could sit the bottom end close enough for the mixes and videos I was going to make in the field, and do the finetuning later in mastering.

MAKING & BREAKING RULES GS: This was an ambitious project that aimed to combine instruments that evolved in different parts of the world and with different musical aesthetics and tunings. Despite that, you’ve managed to blend them all together and create a consistent feel throughout the album. How did you achieve that?

TC: When producing albums, I think it’s really great to set rules that define the approach you’re taking. Those rules help to provide consistency and they also help to define the album’s concept. I love concept albums, you know? Albums that are works of art, with a theme that bonds all the different parts together. The Small Island Big Song album is a concept album, of course, so I created some rules to hopefully tie all the different parts together while giving it the most substance and the most integrity; trying to keep it very honest and genuine.

GS: Are you referring to the producing/ engineering rules described on the Small Island Big Song website?

TC: Yes. They were the rules for producing and engineering: only traditional instruments and languages could be recorded; all recordings had to be captured acoustically with no pickups or DIs; all recordings had to be driven by feel with no metronome or locking to a grid; and all takes had to be filmed. Also, all the artists involved had to be first nations people who were connected together through the seafaring heritage that is behind the whole project, and who are keeping their traditional language and instruments alive through their musical practice.

GS: Did you ever have to break the rules?

TC: Sometimes... There’s a song called Gasikara that we recorded with Airileke. He’s a traditional drummer who has studied throughout Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, but he’s also a hip-hop producer. He said, “I’m gonna give you beats”, which was against our rules, but he recorded himself playing traditional patterns from the village of Gabagaba — which means ‘Drum Drum’ in Motu, which is his language. His beats contained the garamut slit drums, the paté log drums, and the kundu and warup skin drums; they’re all traditional drums from that region and they were all played and sampled by him. We broke the rules there because, you know, these cultures haven’t somehow been frozen in time since Western colonisation; they’re alive now with a vision of their future, and they’re still pursuing new ideas and adapting new technologies —

The only tools I let myself use for mixing were EQ and compression.

including sampling, loops and beats. That’s why Airileke said he was going to give us beats: he was essentially making a statement about that...

GS: I read on your website that you let the artists choose the location to record at. What if the chosen place was too difficult to get a good sound, or had lighting or other visual problems?

TC: That was always a possibility but the goal of the project was to create something potent, something rich in the sonic and visual textures of those locations and the cultures that have the longest living relationships with them. So we let the artists guide the process; where we would record, what music they would perform and what instruments they would use — as long as they stayed within the rules. Then it would be up to us to make it work.

GS: One of the videos shows a number of women standing in a river making music by splashing the water. It has a driving rhythmic pulse that seems to come from the water itself, and there are vocals but I cannot see any microphones in the video. How did you make that work?

TC: That was the Leweton Cultural Group from Vanuatu; it’s taken from an earlier project that helped to inspire Small Island Big Song — it’s called the Vanuatu Women’s Water Music. I was using different equipment then. I had a couple of Mann M1 microphones sitting in the bushes, and they were the key microphones picking up the water splashing.

GS: How did you capture their voices?

TC: Their voices weren’t loud enough in the recording from the river, so back at the village I played it through my monitors and asked them to sing along with it, close miked. That allowed me to add another layer of them singing, but cleaner and closer.

GS: What about that driving rhythmic pulse?

TC: I did some pre-recording as well. They often performed this same piece of music for tourists, but in a concrete swimming pool rather than the river. To record it – believe it or not – I dropped a Tandy PZM microphone straight in to the water.

GS: Deliberately?

TC: Yeah, I just dropped it straight in! I’d done it before in a swimming pool and in a bath, because I didn’t have a hydrophone. That Tandy PZM worked underwater with no protection, just like that — although it doesn’t work any more after that recording! I also used a Shure SM57 in a condom, all taped up and water sealed. From those mics I got that underwater sound; it’s a kind of explosive ‘boom’ that happens when the women slap a

When producing albums, I think it’s really great to set rules that define the approach you’re taking

handful of air into the water. I post-synced that sound to the movement in the video to recreate the low frequency rhythm.

MIC TREE GS: We’re heading into some interesting recording territory here... Many of the videos show the microphone taped to a stick or a length of bamboo, or hanging from a tree. Was that just to look good for the video?

TC: Not at all. That was actually a practical consideration. We could only bring what we could carry on the plane without incurring excess weight charges. Everything was weighed and budgeted because we were recording audio and capturing video at the same time, and there were only two of us. That meant no microphone stands, because they were too heavy. So we hung the mics from trees, or found sticks to tape them to. Sometimes we borrowed stands from the artists...

GS: I asked you about that because anyone who sees the video with the woman standing on the beach singing into a Neumann that’s taped to a stick embedded in the sand, with waves washing up around it, would naturally think you’re either crazy or it was just for looks.

TC: That’s the actual take you’re hearing in the song, breaking waves and all!

GS: That ocean looks and sounds pretty wild...

TC: It brings up one of the other reasons we were doing it this way; we want to talk about these environments and what’s happening to them. The woman on the beach is Ado Kaliting Pacidal from the Pangcah/Amis people of the east coast of Taiwan. It was just after a typhoon so the ocean is very rough, and that’s why she chose that location at that time. Extreme weather events are becoming the norm on the east coast of Taiwan, where that part of the song was recorded and filmed. It’s a direct effect of climate change, and there she is standing on the beach after a typhoon, representing her culture, singing, and drawing that experience of extreme weather events into the song and the video. We’re not spelling it out directly, but it’s there to see and it’s part of the sub-text of the whole Small Island Big Song project.

GS: Knowing that the ocean is rough because it’s just after a typhoon adds an extra layer of drama to that scene...

TC: Another one was filming Koyawa’s vocals for the song Alie Sike. There were a few options there; we were looking at this beautiful beach with all the outriggers in the background, but Koyawa said, “My outrigger is moored in the mangroves, I’d like to record there...” Mangroves are one of the world’s most precious but maligned environments. They’re vitally important to our ecosystems, they store two to four times as much carbon as any other environment, but we’re pulling them down to reclaim land with ocean views.

GS: What mic did you use for that one?

TC: That was the Neumann TLM102 hanging from a tree, it’s about 60cm to a metre in front of him. If you look carefully at the video you can see it. On that session I accidentally left all the windjammers behind, so I took off one of my socks and wrapped it over the mic. That’s the real take you’re seeing in the video and hearing in the mix.

MIXING RULES GS: That brings us to mixing. You made rules for recording to maintain a consistent feel throughout the album. Did you make similar rules for mixing?

TC: Yes. The only tools I let myself use for mixing were EQ and compression... I chose not to use any spatial effects; there are no added delays, no reverbs, nothing like that, even though I love mixing with that stuff.

GS: The album doesn’t sound like it was mixed with only EQ and compression. It sounds much more ‘produced’, with layers of atmospheres from all the different locations you recorded in. What apps and plugins did you use for mixing?

TC: I mixed the album in Pro Tools on my MacBook Pro. For the compression and the broader EQ work I mostly used Slate Digital’s plugins: Earth, Air, the VCA compressor and the Neve EQ. I just love how broad the low mids are on that Neve plug-in for boosting the substance and body. For the precision corrective EQ I used Pro Tool’s EQ, just to knock out some frequencies that were getting in the way. I used iZotope’s RX for cleaning up the tracks and removing unwanted sounds.

I love concept albums, you know? Albums that are works of art, with a theme that bonds all the different parts together

I’m using compression all over the place, but it’s usually just ratios of 2:1 and often I’d use really sharp attacks and long releases to pull things back about 2dB overall, just to pull the transients in. I got into a habit of doing that. I also made a choice not to take the levels too hot, and I kept the mixes all around -14 LUFS. For the whole album I tried to let it breathe as much as I could.

MASTERING GS: That brings us to mastering...

TC: I did all of the mixing as we travelled from island to island, using the iLoud and the Sennheiser HD8s to get them as close as I could to sounding right. Then I said to BaoBao, “I have to spend a day in a studio somewhere to run these mixes through proper monitors and check that all of my mix information below 100Hz is true.” She said, “What’s the best studio in the world to do this?” We ended up at Peter Gabriel’s Real World!

GS: An engineer’s dream, and a very appropriate choice!

TC: Yes, it was around the time of my birthday, too, so it was a great present! We got to sit in the same room as some of the world’s greatest while listening to our mixes through really true monitors and passing them through some very nice outboard gear, like the Massenburg EQ, just for a bit of broad tweaking. We also got to do tape passes, pre and post, so I had both to play with. We did all of this with Oli Jacobs, the in-house engineer at Real World.

LEGALITIES GS: What a way to finish the album! We’ve talked a lot about the rules you made for the musicians, and for recording and mixing. I’d like to ask you about rules of another kind: you were recording numerous artists from numerous countries, collaborating together on numerous songs. How did you deal with the contractual and legal aspects of that?

TC: I’m glad you asked about that, because it’s a really important consideration.

We spent a year developing that side of this project; looking into Fair Trade Music and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, trying to find the best ethical structure for Small Island Big Song in terms of distributing any profits among the artists, figuring out the best way to handle copyright and content in relation to working with indigenous cultures and intangible cultural heritages, making collaborations between really well-known artists and very grassroots artists, and so on. It took a lot of time and research. We sought out a lawyer who specialises in these types of sensitive crosscultural projects, and we eventually came up with something in which every contributor and culture is treated fairly and respectfully.

GS: I asked about that because people sometimes assume they can use recordings of indigenous music for nothing, and even profit from it with no obligations. I think it’s because no-one seems to ‘own’ this music in the Western sense of ‘ownership’, which overlooks the possibility that a culture itself could be an owner. I’m glad to hear that you gave it such thorough consideration.

TC: Having all the legalities and contracts sorted out not only keeps everything fair and equitable, it also brings a lot of weight and substance to the whole process.

CLOSING GS: The effects of climate change on traditional cultures, especially those on islands, is a recurring theme throughout the Small Island Big Song material and also throughout this interview. It’s a good topic to finish with. Do you have any closing thoughts about that for our readers?

TC: I’m not a factual documentary maker; I’m a music producer and I’m a sound engineer. So, as music producers and sound engineers, what can we do to bring these issues of climate change to people’s minds? We can record and produce meaningful music from people who have got something to say about it. That’s what we did, and we did it in the places where the effects of climate change are already visible. All the other stuff is great, too; I’m really excited about producing quality music, working with amazing artists playing incredible instruments with all these different tonal qualities, and creating incredible art... But at the same time I want to drop a boulder into the world’s psyche and let the ripples go out, to raise as much awareness as we can about the climate change problem, you know?

GS: Absolutely. You said earlier that you wanted to create something potent and rich with this project, and I think you’ve achieved that. It’s sonically and visually compelling, and carries with it an important and timely message for the world. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk about it, Tim, and all the best at the film festivals.

TC: And thank you for the chance to share the technical side and the legal structure; for me it’s just as important as the content.