I had taken three days of work off this week starting Wednesday to knock out some serious recording at Let 'Em In Music. I'm also in for a half day tomorrow (Saturday) to get in some extra time while my gear's all there. It's been immensely convenient to only have to deal with load-in and drum set-up once. Pat and I have been able to knock out rhythm tracks for several songs over the first two days, with me switching over to guitar tracking when I was too exhausted to drum anymore, then simply picking the sticks back up the next day. We've laid down rhythm tracks for Ten Miles, Far, Answer, Deny, and Missed, and hope to take care of Steal today for good measure. I hadn't even intended Missed to be on the list as it's a song I thought we'd have trouble doing well too a click, not to mention the fact that I had only practiced it maybe once or twice on drums. However, come about 4 o'clock yesterday, when Pat and I were feeling a bit weary and mellow, Pat wisely suggested we give it a stab rather than trying the uptempo Steal then. We actually nailed it in two takes, really locking into a solid groove. I don't think anyone would know that it was done to a click. Who woulda thought?
I think I will talk a bit more about the technical approach we used on the drum and guitar tracks in a future post since I must soon be on my way for today's sessions, but I'll leave you with lyrics for Ten Miles, which I intend to be the next song we move towards completion. It's a down tempo tune, with a slightly hip-hop-like 16 beat in the beginning of the verse that opens up into a nice loose 8 beat on the ride at a key chord change. The chord structures themselves are somewhat reminiscent of a Chris Cornell ballad. Lyrically, this song is a bit abstruse, but I do think it's one of the better ones in that sphere of my lyricism.
Ten Miles
(verse)
Needed to stay
Ten miles away
We dared to feel emotion
So we couldn't help but cry
Till we refilled the ocean
Can't talk through walls
A thousand feet tall
We tried to live forever
Now we're dying all the time
To recapture that notion
(chorus)
Call to me forever through the wind
I'll atone for what we've done
(bridge)
(chorus)
Call to me forever through the wind
I'll atone for what we've done
Call to me forever from within
I'm a ghost out on the run
Friday, December 9, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
A Tough Call
After receiving back the first mastered version of "Aloud" from John at Spleenless Mastering, I have made the somewhat unexpected decision to go back a step and revisit the mix. Somewhere during the transition from the final mix that Nadim and I settled on in our last mixing session to the version Nadim produced without buss compression for John, the balance of the song got totally thrown off. I think compensatory adjustments were made when the compression was removed and some of them ended up actually weakening the song. The primary difference was an increase in overall level for the guitars. This had the unfortunate effect of burying the vocals (especially during the chorus, where they were already on the low side) and swallowing a lot of the sustain on the drums, making them sound flimsy. Going back to the original final mix, I was surprised at how much more propulsive it felt, but after conducting comparisons with some of other driving rock music I own it's become clear that prominent drums and bass and fairly understated guitars are commonplace for that style of music. You really need that strong rhythmic underpinning to be prominent for the song to hit hard. The plus side of all this is that I will get to revisit the mix and implement a few needed changes, like an increase in volume for a couple guitar riffs and perhaps some changes to the processing of the vocals.
All in all I feel like I'm still on the right track here, it's just going to take some extra time to get things right. This is very much a learning experience and one that will immediately inform the other upcoming recordings. For one thing, I'm going to give myself a buffer of a week or two from the time the next song is "finished" before I send it out for mastering, in case I have second thoughts about a particular decision.
This stuff is hard!
-T
All in all I feel like I'm still on the right track here, it's just going to take some extra time to get things right. This is very much a learning experience and one that will immediately inform the other upcoming recordings. For one thing, I'm going to give myself a buffer of a week or two from the time the next song is "finished" before I send it out for mastering, in case I have second thoughts about a particular decision.
This stuff is hard!
-T
Saturday, November 26, 2011
A Time for Patience
The final mix went out for mastering at the beginning of the week. A few days later the mastering engineer sent me an email inquiring as to whether we had applied any leveling or compression to the output buss and if we had requested a mix without. I wasn’t specifically aware of having done so, but I inquired with Nadim, the mix engineer. As it happens he had applied some very minimally, only to flatten the highest outlying peaks in a couple of spots. It doesn’t seem to me like this would adversely affect the mastering process, as these peaks would clearly be squashed out of the final mix anyway, but I decided that I’ll just take it as a sign that the mastering engineer is paying attention and I may as well oblige him. Nadim was on vacation at the time, so I lost a couple days while waiting for him to come back and send out a new version sans dynamics processing on the busses, hence the lack of updates. I had initially hoped to perhaps have the whole thing ready in time for release after Thanksgiving weekend, but that seems rather unlikely at the moment. We're now bumping up against some scheduling problems with the mastering guy so all in all this could take quite a bit longer than I initially hoped, which is frustrating because I had pressed to hard to finish the mixing. I remind myself that the most important thing is quality, so I will exercise patience as necessary.
Since we’re not producing an album in the traditional sense, it hadn’t initially occurred to me that we didn’t have any imagery to associate with the new song when it’s released. Thankfully I had recently hung out with my friend (and former bandmate) Justin Drobinski, who’s a talented filmmaker and photographer (I highly recommend his recent short, Snowfall at Goat Hill Farm). He and another friend had expressed interest in working with me at some point on a video. I wasn’t ready to think about a video, but a few days later I emailed Justin about creating a photograph to go along with the song, the idea being that we could plan to produce a new image for each song as it's released. We exchanged a few emails back and forth and settled on idea he came up with that I think captures the aloud/allowed imagery of the song in a way that’s literal but not too cheeky, and not so dark as make us out to be more serious than we are. I’m very interested to see how the visual aspect of the band develops; it’s something that I think is important but haven’t really had much of a chance to think about.
That's really all I've got to talk about at this moment, though I will soon continue profiling some of the songs to be recorded at our next sessions, which begin December 7th.
Thanks for reading.
-Terry
Friday, November 18, 2011
A Tall Order
I am pleased to report that mixing for "Aloud" is complete thanks to an immense effort by Nadim at Let 'Em In Music and delivered at the expense of a fair amount of sleep on my part. As I have previously iterated, we were quite careful by and large in the tracking stage about getting a good sound, but nonetheless mixing proved to be immensely challenging and it took 8+ hours Tuesday and an extra 3 hours Wednesday to get something we were both happy with.
Mixing is very much like putting together a puzzle and designing it at the same time. On the simplest level you're trying to fit all the pieces together such that they lock into each other in just the right way to make the desired shape. They can't be stepping on each other or you're gonna have unsightly bulges in certain places. The trick is that simultaneously you're figuring out what each piece should look like individually. Every change you make to one piece affects how the other pieces need to look in order to make them all fit together as a whole. You EQ the guitar cause it's not delivering enough on the low end and doesn't sound "thick" the way you want it. Well, now the bass isn't very articulate since the guitar is stepping on it's upper end more, so maybe you boost a key frequency to see if you can improve definition. Well now you can't hear the vocal very well because the guitar and bass are all up in its business so you turn that up. Now the whole thing is just blaring... oh and where did that kick drum go? It's hard work and it's exhausting work. It requires a lot of focus and a lot of know-how. Being able to accurately assess what's causing a given problem in the mix and knowing where to look for the right tool requires a well-trained ear and a deep knowledge of the tools at your disposal. That's not to say trial-and-error doesn't play a roll. In fact it plays a huge role. But when you're on the clock you want to be making educated guesses wherever possible, and the digital tools available these days are so myriad you could spend weeks trying out different plugins that do essentially the same thing trying to decide which works best in a given situation. Again, these are among the reasons why I am glad I decided to work with a professional engineer. As I bonus, I've learned a lot in the process.
Three major challenges for "Aloud":
Bass: My idea with the bass was to mix the DI signal with an amp signal that we could distort a bit to get sort of a gutted, overdriven sound that would cut nicely at all volumes. Ultimately what we discovered is that we just weren't getting a sound that was working with the overall mix using that approach and ended up using primarily the DI signal for a deeper, richer, but perhaps more subtle sound. As it happens, this really fit the song best because of the guitar lines that are either chugging along during the verse with palm muting or ringing out during the chorus with an open low E string. Essentially the guitar is providing a lot of the "bass" in the song. Thus we ultimately realized that we needed to let Pat's bass sit more on the true bottom end, with just a little edge and some boosting in the midrange to make it possible to follow along with what he's doing even if you don't have speakers with good low end reproduction. Both Nadim and I agreed that we should spend a bit more time getting the tone right on the bass during tracking next time.
Guitars: We spent a fair amount of time during tracking finding a guitar tone that could pass muster, yet even so what we got was a bit harsh around the high end. Ultimately Nadim was able to work some studio wizardry, cutting out several specific problem frequencies and also applying multiband compression to tame some of the peaky frequencies (the guy's got plug-ins and he's not afraid to use 'em). I'm happy with how the guitars sound on the finished product but perhaps we can do even better next time, or at least make our lives a bit easier. Nadim is convinced that Fender amps do not handle distortion well (apparently this isn't the first time he's had issues with them), but I'm not sure I'm buying it. For one thing, we did end up using my distortion pedal, not the amp channel. For another, my Fender Prosonic does not have the characteristic bright-on-the-high-end Fender clean channel. In fact I think it's fairly dark and rich. It's also worth noting that I think the guitar line itself could accentuate certain difficult-to-manage qualities, such as the upper extensions in the verse and ringing notes in the chorus. I would be interested in trying out some different mics next time around and also possibly either placing the amp against the wall to close off the back or trying out my Peavey 5150 closed-back 4x12 speaker cabinet, which delivers a much darker sound (we'll see if I can manage to transport that). Maybe I'll even look into a different pedal. No, wait. No more spending money on stuff. I need to save so we can record songs!
Vocals: We were really pleased with what the Studio Projects C1 mic did for my voice, but the song presents certain inherent challenges in that the first two lines of each verse are sung rather quietly in a low register and the second two are sung loudly in a high one. We did record these parts separately so we could get a proper level for each, but we found it challenging to get the quieter part to sit on top of the mix without just turning it up ridiculously loud. By the end of the night Tuesday we had applied a doubling effect that seemed to do something to help it cut, but when I listened to our mixdown Wednesday morning on headphones I found it incredibly annoying. I happened to listen back to the rough mix from the tracking session, which I remembered being quiet listenable and not having any real issues with audibility. Lo and behold that part of the vocal line sat much better. When we reconvened Wednesday night I mentioned my observation and we tried dropping the old track into the mix. For whatever reason, it was a step in the right direction. From there we applied some subtle EQ to help with intelligibility and a subtle reverb for body (I didn't want to add too much because I wanted that part to sound close to the listener).
I am very pleased with how some of the embellishments that I had worked on on my own after tracking worked into the final mix. As I alluded to in my last post, I spent several hours in the studio Friday, Sunday and Monday and at home Tuesday experimenting with some sounds and dropping them into the Logic project file from the tracking session. I think they really added something to the song, especially during the 8-bar "breakdown" in the bridge, where I was able to let things get a little wacky in a way that I like without derailing the song (thanks to my crazy noise synths, a brake drum run through a guitar amp plugin, and a delay loop from the end of the slide guitar lick I played run through a filter for an video-game/alarm-like effect). The slide guitar lick itself that leads into the bridge helped smooth over a high B I sang which was a bit shaky, as did my idea to add a harmony a fifth below it and 4th above it (an octave above that, Bon Jovi style). A quiet organ part that fades in during the outro adds some weight there.
The final additions, cobbled together Tuesday morning at 6 AM, were some talk radio samples. I actually reused some material I had recorded in college for a video off of my clock radio. The samples feature what is actually a politically tinged rant by some guy about herbal medicines and supplements, but I edited out all allusions to that and just left some of the impassioned political rhetoric. These open and close the song. I had thought of this idea for the beginning of the outro at some point a while back, but I remembered it while playing the rough mix for my girlfriend. I had a video interview open on some web page on my computer and it just started playing in the background at that point in the song. We both thought it was cool, so I made a note to make use of that idea in some way.
These additions caused the meaning of the song evolve a bit for me, which is somewhat surprising given that I wrote it over two years ago and it hasn't changed much over that time. I even went back and made one tiny, tiny change to the lyrics to reflect my new understanding (I've edited the previous post that includes the lyrics to reflect the change).
-Terry
Mixing is very much like putting together a puzzle and designing it at the same time. On the simplest level you're trying to fit all the pieces together such that they lock into each other in just the right way to make the desired shape. They can't be stepping on each other or you're gonna have unsightly bulges in certain places. The trick is that simultaneously you're figuring out what each piece should look like individually. Every change you make to one piece affects how the other pieces need to look in order to make them all fit together as a whole. You EQ the guitar cause it's not delivering enough on the low end and doesn't sound "thick" the way you want it. Well, now the bass isn't very articulate since the guitar is stepping on it's upper end more, so maybe you boost a key frequency to see if you can improve definition. Well now you can't hear the vocal very well because the guitar and bass are all up in its business so you turn that up. Now the whole thing is just blaring... oh and where did that kick drum go? It's hard work and it's exhausting work. It requires a lot of focus and a lot of know-how. Being able to accurately assess what's causing a given problem in the mix and knowing where to look for the right tool requires a well-trained ear and a deep knowledge of the tools at your disposal. That's not to say trial-and-error doesn't play a roll. In fact it plays a huge role. But when you're on the clock you want to be making educated guesses wherever possible, and the digital tools available these days are so myriad you could spend weeks trying out different plugins that do essentially the same thing trying to decide which works best in a given situation. Again, these are among the reasons why I am glad I decided to work with a professional engineer. As I bonus, I've learned a lot in the process.
Three major challenges for "Aloud":
Bass: My idea with the bass was to mix the DI signal with an amp signal that we could distort a bit to get sort of a gutted, overdriven sound that would cut nicely at all volumes. Ultimately what we discovered is that we just weren't getting a sound that was working with the overall mix using that approach and ended up using primarily the DI signal for a deeper, richer, but perhaps more subtle sound. As it happens, this really fit the song best because of the guitar lines that are either chugging along during the verse with palm muting or ringing out during the chorus with an open low E string. Essentially the guitar is providing a lot of the "bass" in the song. Thus we ultimately realized that we needed to let Pat's bass sit more on the true bottom end, with just a little edge and some boosting in the midrange to make it possible to follow along with what he's doing even if you don't have speakers with good low end reproduction. Both Nadim and I agreed that we should spend a bit more time getting the tone right on the bass during tracking next time.
Guitars: We spent a fair amount of time during tracking finding a guitar tone that could pass muster, yet even so what we got was a bit harsh around the high end. Ultimately Nadim was able to work some studio wizardry, cutting out several specific problem frequencies and also applying multiband compression to tame some of the peaky frequencies (the guy's got plug-ins and he's not afraid to use 'em). I'm happy with how the guitars sound on the finished product but perhaps we can do even better next time, or at least make our lives a bit easier. Nadim is convinced that Fender amps do not handle distortion well (apparently this isn't the first time he's had issues with them), but I'm not sure I'm buying it. For one thing, we did end up using my distortion pedal, not the amp channel. For another, my Fender Prosonic does not have the characteristic bright-on-the-high-end Fender clean channel. In fact I think it's fairly dark and rich. It's also worth noting that I think the guitar line itself could accentuate certain difficult-to-manage qualities, such as the upper extensions in the verse and ringing notes in the chorus. I would be interested in trying out some different mics next time around and also possibly either placing the amp against the wall to close off the back or trying out my Peavey 5150 closed-back 4x12 speaker cabinet, which delivers a much darker sound (we'll see if I can manage to transport that). Maybe I'll even look into a different pedal. No, wait. No more spending money on stuff. I need to save so we can record songs!
Vocals: We were really pleased with what the Studio Projects C1 mic did for my voice, but the song presents certain inherent challenges in that the first two lines of each verse are sung rather quietly in a low register and the second two are sung loudly in a high one. We did record these parts separately so we could get a proper level for each, but we found it challenging to get the quieter part to sit on top of the mix without just turning it up ridiculously loud. By the end of the night Tuesday we had applied a doubling effect that seemed to do something to help it cut, but when I listened to our mixdown Wednesday morning on headphones I found it incredibly annoying. I happened to listen back to the rough mix from the tracking session, which I remembered being quiet listenable and not having any real issues with audibility. Lo and behold that part of the vocal line sat much better. When we reconvened Wednesday night I mentioned my observation and we tried dropping the old track into the mix. For whatever reason, it was a step in the right direction. From there we applied some subtle EQ to help with intelligibility and a subtle reverb for body (I didn't want to add too much because I wanted that part to sound close to the listener).
I am very pleased with how some of the embellishments that I had worked on on my own after tracking worked into the final mix. As I alluded to in my last post, I spent several hours in the studio Friday, Sunday and Monday and at home Tuesday experimenting with some sounds and dropping them into the Logic project file from the tracking session. I think they really added something to the song, especially during the 8-bar "breakdown" in the bridge, where I was able to let things get a little wacky in a way that I like without derailing the song (thanks to my crazy noise synths, a brake drum run through a guitar amp plugin, and a delay loop from the end of the slide guitar lick I played run through a filter for an video-game/alarm-like effect). The slide guitar lick itself that leads into the bridge helped smooth over a high B I sang which was a bit shaky, as did my idea to add a harmony a fifth below it and 4th above it (an octave above that, Bon Jovi style). A quiet organ part that fades in during the outro adds some weight there.
The final additions, cobbled together Tuesday morning at 6 AM, were some talk radio samples. I actually reused some material I had recorded in college for a video off of my clock radio. The samples feature what is actually a politically tinged rant by some guy about herbal medicines and supplements, but I edited out all allusions to that and just left some of the impassioned political rhetoric. These open and close the song. I had thought of this idea for the beginning of the outro at some point a while back, but I remembered it while playing the rough mix for my girlfriend. I had a video interview open on some web page on my computer and it just started playing in the background at that point in the song. We both thought it was cool, so I made a note to make use of that idea in some way.
These additions caused the meaning of the song evolve a bit for me, which is somewhat surprising given that I wrote it over two years ago and it hasn't changed much over that time. I even went back and made one tiny, tiny change to the lyrics to reflect my new understanding (I've edited the previous post that includes the lyrics to reflect the change).
-Terry
Monday, November 14, 2011
A Step Further
Tomorrow I will return to Let 'Em In Music to finalize mixing for "Aloud." Nadim Issa, the engineer I've been working with there, will spend about 4 hours getting the mix in order before I arrive at 6 and then we'll work together from there until 10. This marks a notable relinquishment of control on my part, born by my eagerness to complete the mix (the next available date booking isn't for a couple of weeks) as well as my genuine confidence in Nadim's handling of the mix following our successful tracking session and promising rough mix. Moreover I'll still be there with plenty of time to request any tweaks. I'll also be adding a few embellishments and FX in a couple places in the song.
The one aspect of the recording that hasn't quite come together for me yet is the bass, though I remain confident that we'll be able to come up with something to work with. We tracked both the direct signal and an amp so we've got all sorts of tools to work with from applying plug-ins to re-amping the DI signal. I like what we got to tape out of the vintage Ampeg amp we tracked with, but I think I'm looking to embellish that with more of a dry, overdriven tone that could help the bass cut through the mix, even on your laptop speakers. The bass line adds a lot of interest to the song and I'd hate to have that drop out completely on an underwhelming sound system. It's worth noting that I did try "re-amping" (without any of the proper equipment of course) through a small bass amp in my own studio space cranked to the max. It didn't quite deliver what I'd hoped, but this may have been because I lacked the proper box to drop the signal back down to instrument level.
I've also recorded a few sound effect type things on my own that I'd like to experiment with in the mix. For the transition to the bridge, I added a guitar slide that I achieved by using a can of WD40 on the strings (using the can itself that is, don't worry I didn't spray anything on my guitar) and some delay effects tweaking in Logic. I also recorded some wacky synth noises to add into the heavy, half-time part of the bridge with my Skychord Glamour Box and Audible Disease Infection IN-2. Lastly, I've laid down some clanks during that same part of the bridge on a brake drum run through a guitar amp plug-in in Logic (channeling a little Skeleton Key, admittedly).
Additionally I've come up with a brief harmony for the "Dared to live..." line that I will try out for good measure, though I may deem it unnecessary. I also like the idea of adding a piano bassline in a couple places in the verse, particularly the quiet end part.
Most importantly, I hope not to ruin the song by getting too carried a way with extras and details. This song is very much a straight-ahead pop tune, perhaps more so than any in my catalog, and I can feel my inclination to try to make it just a little less accessible and more abstruse. At the same time my impulse to give the song dynamic range and some texture is a good thing and indeed separates the song a bit from the treatment it would get from a band really looking for a hit, which would probably just push the groove hard through the whole song without much variety and have something catchy but nondescript. We'll see soon enough.
-Terry
The one aspect of the recording that hasn't quite come together for me yet is the bass, though I remain confident that we'll be able to come up with something to work with. We tracked both the direct signal and an amp so we've got all sorts of tools to work with from applying plug-ins to re-amping the DI signal. I like what we got to tape out of the vintage Ampeg amp we tracked with, but I think I'm looking to embellish that with more of a dry, overdriven tone that could help the bass cut through the mix, even on your laptop speakers. The bass line adds a lot of interest to the song and I'd hate to have that drop out completely on an underwhelming sound system. It's worth noting that I did try "re-amping" (without any of the proper equipment of course) through a small bass amp in my own studio space cranked to the max. It didn't quite deliver what I'd hoped, but this may have been because I lacked the proper box to drop the signal back down to instrument level.
I've also recorded a few sound effect type things on my own that I'd like to experiment with in the mix. For the transition to the bridge, I added a guitar slide that I achieved by using a can of WD40 on the strings (using the can itself that is, don't worry I didn't spray anything on my guitar) and some delay effects tweaking in Logic. I also recorded some wacky synth noises to add into the heavy, half-time part of the bridge with my Skychord Glamour Box and Audible Disease Infection IN-2. Lastly, I've laid down some clanks during that same part of the bridge on a brake drum run through a guitar amp plug-in in Logic (channeling a little Skeleton Key, admittedly).
Additionally I've come up with a brief harmony for the "Dared to live..." line that I will try out for good measure, though I may deem it unnecessary. I also like the idea of adding a piano bassline in a couple places in the verse, particularly the quiet end part.
Most importantly, I hope not to ruin the song by getting too carried a way with extras and details. This song is very much a straight-ahead pop tune, perhaps more so than any in my catalog, and I can feel my inclination to try to make it just a little less accessible and more abstruse. At the same time my impulse to give the song dynamic range and some texture is a good thing and indeed separates the song a bit from the treatment it would get from a band really looking for a hit, which would probably just push the groove hard through the whole song without much variety and have something catchy but nondescript. We'll see soon enough.
-Terry
Friday, November 11, 2011
A Day's Work
EDITS: Made a few changes to reflect the correct mic names below.
Pat and I spent Tuesday at Let 'Em In Music in Brooklyn to record "Aloud." I'm very pleased with what we accomplished. We managed to lay down all the basic tracks, leaving only mixing and embellishments to round it out. Our engineer, Nadim, was both professional and amicable, demonstrating a good ear, knowledge of his gear and space, and a willingness to put in the extra time and effort to get it right. This last piece was the most valuable to me.
As a newcomer to recording in a commercial studio, I was concerned that I might be too tentative to demand the level of care I feel is required to deliver a satisfactory result. Operating on the clock, at significant expense I might add, moves one to impulsively settle rather than persist in seeking optimum correctness, and to be sure there is a point at which dwelling on minutiae may become frivolous and impede progress. The fact is that while I can identify a final recording that I deem "acceptable" in quality, I have yet to take part in sessions that have created one, and as such I greatly valued Nadim's feedback and help in triangulating where each component of the recording needed to be to lead to a finished product that will meet my overall standards.
At the last second I decided to bring my drum kit, reskinning the toms a couple days before. I'm glad I did. The old Samson kit is a real clunker, but I know how to get a good sound out of it and thought that minimizing the number of variables for the first session was a good idea. Lo and behold the hunk-a-junk delivered a solid sound, combined with the studio's Black Beauty snare. I tuned the rack tom to deep but articulate "doom" with ease; the floor tom took a bit more work to get an appropriate "gung" that delivered the low end I wanted with adequate articulation but without excessive boom. Moon gels were applied amply to the top head. The snare was tuned to a nice mid-range "thwack," not quite fat-back but with some body. Took some adjustment of the strainer tension to prevent from choking off the sound without ringing too much, but we got it eventually. The kick was tuned with just enough tension to be articulate on the batter head (an Evans EMAD provided ample muting) and I balanced the tension on the front head to focus the sound as best I could. Tuning in an unfamiliar space was a small challenge but just required some additional patience to allow my ears to adjust and let the room tell me where each drum should be.
We miced the kit up with a pair of Beyerdynamics mc930s (small-capsule condensers) for overheads (model forthcoming), an SM57 on snare top, an attenuated RODE NT5 on side head, an Sennheiser MD421 on rack tom, an Elecro Voice RE20 on floor tom (really fond of this mic on floor tom for rock), another 421 on kick inside the small port on the reso head, an Audio Technica 4033 (large capsule condenser) outside the kick, and a pair ofBeyerdynamics Cascade Fathead II ribbon mics, one in front of the kit and one in back, and a RODE K2 as a room mic. We would later add another SM57 on the batter side of the kick for a little extra snap. Whew, that's a lot of mics (12 in fact). We even thought about adding a hi-hat mic but decided it was unnecessary. I've gone back and forth over the years about whether many mics are required for a good drum sound. With a great room they're certainly not, but used properly they can help achieve the right sound for a given song, and in the case of an upbeat rocker like "Aloud," we needed strong articulation on each individual drum as well as the lively ambiance of the room. The kick ate up 3 mics itself, and I think that's gonna be common for kick if you want that real "thunk" with some chest thumping boom and a satisfying snap, certainly in a large room. We tested it out and made some minor adjustments to mic placement, swapped out my 21" Zildjian rock ride for a lighter ride that was less washy and sits at a better place in the mix for cymbals, baffled off the kick and were ready to go.
All the while we set Pat up with his bass running direct through a DI and also into a vintage Ampeg that we baffled off to minimize bleed (of which there was little). All accounted for, we started hitting tape (or hard drive). We took three full passes of the song and decided that we had enough material to comp together a good take. Relatively painless tracking I'd say. The comping was a bit tedious, but needed to be done before we could move on, so after grabbing a quick bite we set about putting a comp together, with the possibility of doing another take if it proved necessary. Pleasantly it didn't; I even managed to nail a notoriously difficult fill-in on one of the 3 takes, which pleased me immensely as I had recognized beforehand that I may have to go for something simpler if I couldn't land it in a timely fashion.
On to guitars it was. Getting the right distorted tone for the guitar proved to be the most trying part of the process. I had started out using the distorted channel of my Fender Prosonic combo, an uncharacteristically high gain channel for a Fender amp. I happen to quite like the sound in that it's a bit unusual and kind of messy, but it's true that I've had difficulty picking it up in a pleasing way on tape, and we encountered that problem here. Set up with an SM57 on one of the two 10" speakers and aBeyerdynamics Cascade ribbon on the other, Nadim found the hi-end way too brittle and not usable. The way the open E string rubs against the higher notes in the chorus of "Aloud" exacerbate this effect quite a bit. We played quite a bit with the EQ and tried lowering the gain too, achievable what would have been an acceptable sound too me. But Pat pointed out that a bit of the "garage-iness" of the song was lost. Finally we elected to try out my Suhr Riot distortion pedal, which I bought primarily for live use (so I could use house amps where possible and avoid the channel pop/ eq imbalance when switching between channels on the Prosonic). Some more eq fiddling and we had a winner. I'm really glad we spent the time getting a tone that works here. I think your guitar tone does a lot to define the sound of your band and can also be one of the toughest things to find the proper space for in the mix and we got a tone that both reflects the music adequately and sits nicely in the track.
We switched over to clean guitar next, adding the K2 as a room mic. My Music Man Axis Sport running into a Deluxe Memory Man into the Prosonic's warm clean channel is the just about the most pleasing sound I can produce and I think it came across well here. It didn't take too much tweaking to nail that one down.
Notes on mics:
SM57 - I know I knocked this guy in the last post but he performed admirably. I've also confirmed that it DOES in fact have the exact same electronics as the 58, even if my tests on toms led me to believe otherwise (there can be a slight change on the high end due to the grill, but I doubt that came into play). A couple of explanations for my experience a couple weeks ago:
a) I'm incompetent.
b) I wasn't scientific enough about placement when switching mics.
c) My 57 is screwed up.
I actually think there might be some legitimacy to option c. I'll have to test my two 57s against each other some time. While two mics might electronically be "the same," that doesn't mean there aren't occasional manufacturing deviations (next time you're clothes shopping, try on three pairs of the same pants with the "same" waist size and see for yourself).
Option a) is also a distinct possibility.
RIBBON MICS - I've never used these before, though I've heard quite a lot about them. The fact is that on their own they weren't much much to write home about in our session, and can sound a bit toothless. But because what they pick up is so different from your dynamics and condensers, they add quite a lot to your overall sounds, contributing all sorts of otherwise absent sonic information.
Vox were next after some guitar comping. We shot it out between the Rode K2, a Shure SM7, and a Studio ProjectsCS1 (or CS5?) C1 for the hell of it. The SM7 was thoroughly underwhelming, much as I've found the similar RE20 to be on my own voice, though certainly a very usable vocal mic in its own right. The K2 was mediocre at best. But the Studio Projects mic really shined. We fussed with the preamp selection for the K2 a bit for comparison, but it was pretty much a slam dunk with the SP. It accentuated frequencies in my voice such that it sat perfectly atop the mix in a way that I've never quite achieved before. Who knew? Go Chinese mics! I think I'm going to have to pick one of these up at some point to have on hand for future recording sessions elsewhere because it just seems to be a match.
Getting the vocals down, we spit out a rough mix for me to deliberate over at home, then I packed up and left. A truly productive and incredibly exhausting day. Looking forward to meeting again on Tuesday for mixing. I'm really excited about how the tune is coming along; it sounds like the real thing.
More soon,
T
Pat and I spent Tuesday at Let 'Em In Music in Brooklyn to record "Aloud." I'm very pleased with what we accomplished. We managed to lay down all the basic tracks, leaving only mixing and embellishments to round it out. Our engineer, Nadim, was both professional and amicable, demonstrating a good ear, knowledge of his gear and space, and a willingness to put in the extra time and effort to get it right. This last piece was the most valuable to me.
As a newcomer to recording in a commercial studio, I was concerned that I might be too tentative to demand the level of care I feel is required to deliver a satisfactory result. Operating on the clock, at significant expense I might add, moves one to impulsively settle rather than persist in seeking optimum correctness, and to be sure there is a point at which dwelling on minutiae may become frivolous and impede progress. The fact is that while I can identify a final recording that I deem "acceptable" in quality, I have yet to take part in sessions that have created one, and as such I greatly valued Nadim's feedback and help in triangulating where each component of the recording needed to be to lead to a finished product that will meet my overall standards.
At the last second I decided to bring my drum kit, reskinning the toms a couple days before. I'm glad I did. The old Samson kit is a real clunker, but I know how to get a good sound out of it and thought that minimizing the number of variables for the first session was a good idea. Lo and behold the hunk-a-junk delivered a solid sound, combined with the studio's Black Beauty snare. I tuned the rack tom to deep but articulate "doom" with ease; the floor tom took a bit more work to get an appropriate "gung" that delivered the low end I wanted with adequate articulation but without excessive boom. Moon gels were applied amply to the top head. The snare was tuned to a nice mid-range "thwack," not quite fat-back but with some body. Took some adjustment of the strainer tension to prevent from choking off the sound without ringing too much, but we got it eventually. The kick was tuned with just enough tension to be articulate on the batter head (an Evans EMAD provided ample muting) and I balanced the tension on the front head to focus the sound as best I could. Tuning in an unfamiliar space was a small challenge but just required some additional patience to allow my ears to adjust and let the room tell me where each drum should be.
We miced the kit up with a pair of Beyerdynamics mc930s (small-capsule condensers) for overheads (model forthcoming), an SM57 on snare top, an attenuated RODE NT5 on side head, an Sennheiser MD421 on rack tom, an Elecro Voice RE20 on floor tom (really fond of this mic on floor tom for rock), another 421 on kick inside the small port on the reso head, an Audio Technica 4033 (large capsule condenser) outside the kick, and a pair of
All the while we set Pat up with his bass running direct through a DI and also into a vintage Ampeg that we baffled off to minimize bleed (of which there was little). All accounted for, we started hitting tape (or hard drive). We took three full passes of the song and decided that we had enough material to comp together a good take. Relatively painless tracking I'd say. The comping was a bit tedious, but needed to be done before we could move on, so after grabbing a quick bite we set about putting a comp together, with the possibility of doing another take if it proved necessary. Pleasantly it didn't; I even managed to nail a notoriously difficult fill-in on one of the 3 takes, which pleased me immensely as I had recognized beforehand that I may have to go for something simpler if I couldn't land it in a timely fashion.
On to guitars it was. Getting the right distorted tone for the guitar proved to be the most trying part of the process. I had started out using the distorted channel of my Fender Prosonic combo, an uncharacteristically high gain channel for a Fender amp. I happen to quite like the sound in that it's a bit unusual and kind of messy, but it's true that I've had difficulty picking it up in a pleasing way on tape, and we encountered that problem here. Set up with an SM57 on one of the two 10" speakers and a
We switched over to clean guitar next, adding the K2 as a room mic. My Music Man Axis Sport running into a Deluxe Memory Man into the Prosonic's warm clean channel is the just about the most pleasing sound I can produce and I think it came across well here. It didn't take too much tweaking to nail that one down.
Notes on mics:
SM57 - I know I knocked this guy in the last post but he performed admirably. I've also confirmed that it DOES in fact have the exact same electronics as the 58, even if my tests on toms led me to believe otherwise (there can be a slight change on the high end due to the grill, but I doubt that came into play). A couple of explanations for my experience a couple weeks ago:
a) I'm incompetent.
b) I wasn't scientific enough about placement when switching mics.
c) My 57 is screwed up.
I actually think there might be some legitimacy to option c. I'll have to test my two 57s against each other some time. While two mics might electronically be "the same," that doesn't mean there aren't occasional manufacturing deviations (next time you're clothes shopping, try on three pairs of the same pants with the "same" waist size and see for yourself).
Option a) is also a distinct possibility.
RIBBON MICS - I've never used these before, though I've heard quite a lot about them. The fact is that on their own they weren't much much to write home about in our session, and can sound a bit toothless. But because what they pick up is so different from your dynamics and condensers, they add quite a lot to your overall sounds, contributing all sorts of otherwise absent sonic information.
Vox were next after some guitar comping. We shot it out between the Rode K2, a Shure SM7, and a Studio Projects
Getting the vocals down, we spit out a rough mix for me to deliberate over at home, then I packed up and left. A truly productive and incredibly exhausting day. Looking forward to meeting again on Tuesday for mixing. I'm really excited about how the tune is coming along; it sounds like the real thing.
More soon,
T
Sunday, November 6, 2011
A Sound Allowed
When we enter the studio Tuesday morning, we'll be recording the song "Aloud." As a matter of fact, that may be the only song recorded that day, depending on time. My inclination is to complete a single song to the furthest extent possible before moving forward. Here are some reasons why I think that's a good idea:
1. I like the idea of re-imagining things like the drum micing/tuning a bit for each song rather than simply leaving the whole set-up in place and banging out every tune on a given instrument. That's not to say we have to reinvent the wheel each time, but I think it's a good idea to consider each song and make an educated decision about what that song requires sound-wise from each instrument.
2. It will allow us to arrive more quickly at a finished product, giving us something to can share online with any interested parties online. Here are some sub-reasons why that's desirable:
a. I will feel as though I've made tangible progress towards my goals.
b. We will be able to better assess the quality of the work we're doing and determine whether to continue in the same fashion or adjust our methodology. We're feeling the process out essentially.
c. I wouldn't be so foolish as to think anyone's waiting with baited breath for our first release, but perhaps I can convince some folks to listen to a single, digestible track in finished form more readily than a whole slew of new tracks. If it's well received, perhaps folks will look forward to the next one.
3. Frankly I'm not sure I have the drumming stamina to do multiple hours straight of tracking. Gimme a break, I'm pulling a fair amount of weight on this stuff between drums, guitar and vox!
"Aloud" was completed before any of the other songs that came to comprise our repertoire (though there are others that have appropriated unused riffs devised even earlier). It can in that sense be credited with setting me down the path that led to our present style (which was more solidified by the composition of "Scared" and "Steal" not long after). When I first wrote it, I was alarmed to realize that it harkens back a bit to my writing style in early high school, though certainly reflects the modicum of maturity I've accrued since those days, both as a musician and lyricist. It rests on rhythmic patterns borrowed from pop/punk, with a verse employing muted bass notes accented by un-muted fifths and a chorus that leans on a simple riff in three power chords, moving on the and of 4. I referenced pop/punk in my writing with some regularity back in my halcyon days, though I much maligned its contemporary practitioners, which I suspect was more a reaction to the cloying affectations of their lead singers than a distaste for its propulsive catchiness. Certainly I would be loathe to deny the impact on any 9-year-old when Green Day hit big in 1994, yet unlike many of my peers, I declined to make their record my first CD purchase, put off by the broad "consensus" it was garnering. Aloud breaks the mold a bit with a slightly surprising angular riff that appears in the bridge, closed by a figure in 5. The song then ends on an understated repetition of the verse figure. I debated whether to crash back into the chorus here, which would have been a more conventional choice, but decided instead to air on the side of brevity, a lesson learned from my years arranging for a cappella. In a cappella, the novelty of hearing a well known song arranged for voices wears thin rather quickly and a song can degrade from charming and novel to drab rather quickly around the 3:30 mark. I also prefer the way an understated ending changes the tone of the song a bit, giving the lyrics more of a chance to tame the pop-ness a bit.
Here are the lyrics:
(verse)
Never gonna turn my fate around
Said I gotta pull the whole thing
Paid a price for words I spoke out of necessity, well
I don't know why they're aloud
Never gonna live this whole thing down
Built upon a shadow of a doubt
Dared to live for something more than petty frivolities, well
Who's to say that's not allowed?
(chorus)
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire now
Now
(verse)
Screaming but I never hear the sound
Searching for the strength to cry out loud
Crucified for trying everything thing to make 'em see, well
I don't know why that's allowed
(chorus)
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire now
Now
(bridge)
(verse)
Fool me left and right I hate to know the joke's on me, well
I don't know why that's allowed
I'm going to refrain from talking about meanings of lyrics and things like that on this blog as a feel like the lyrics say what I want them to say and everything needed to understand them is there on the page and in the music. I will point out that in this case they utilize one of my favorite devices, homophones (i.e. "aloud" and "allowed").
I've selected this song to record first for a couple reasons. For one, as the oldest song in the catalog, I feel it's very ripe for finalization: I'm ready to be done with it. Secondly I think it will be a good point of entry for our music. It's catchy and upbeat and seems like starting on the right foot.
That's all for now.
-T
1. I like the idea of re-imagining things like the drum micing/tuning a bit for each song rather than simply leaving the whole set-up in place and banging out every tune on a given instrument. That's not to say we have to reinvent the wheel each time, but I think it's a good idea to consider each song and make an educated decision about what that song requires sound-wise from each instrument.
2. It will allow us to arrive more quickly at a finished product, giving us something to can share online with any interested parties online. Here are some sub-reasons why that's desirable:
a. I will feel as though I've made tangible progress towards my goals.
b. We will be able to better assess the quality of the work we're doing and determine whether to continue in the same fashion or adjust our methodology. We're feeling the process out essentially.
c. I wouldn't be so foolish as to think anyone's waiting with baited breath for our first release, but perhaps I can convince some folks to listen to a single, digestible track in finished form more readily than a whole slew of new tracks. If it's well received, perhaps folks will look forward to the next one.
3. Frankly I'm not sure I have the drumming stamina to do multiple hours straight of tracking. Gimme a break, I'm pulling a fair amount of weight on this stuff between drums, guitar and vox!
"Aloud" was completed before any of the other songs that came to comprise our repertoire (though there are others that have appropriated unused riffs devised even earlier). It can in that sense be credited with setting me down the path that led to our present style (which was more solidified by the composition of "Scared" and "Steal" not long after). When I first wrote it, I was alarmed to realize that it harkens back a bit to my writing style in early high school, though certainly reflects the modicum of maturity I've accrued since those days, both as a musician and lyricist. It rests on rhythmic patterns borrowed from pop/punk, with a verse employing muted bass notes accented by un-muted fifths and a chorus that leans on a simple riff in three power chords, moving on the and of 4. I referenced pop/punk in my writing with some regularity back in my halcyon days, though I much maligned its contemporary practitioners, which I suspect was more a reaction to the cloying affectations of their lead singers than a distaste for its propulsive catchiness. Certainly I would be loathe to deny the impact on any 9-year-old when Green Day hit big in 1994, yet unlike many of my peers, I declined to make their record my first CD purchase, put off by the broad "consensus" it was garnering. Aloud breaks the mold a bit with a slightly surprising angular riff that appears in the bridge, closed by a figure in 5. The song then ends on an understated repetition of the verse figure. I debated whether to crash back into the chorus here, which would have been a more conventional choice, but decided instead to air on the side of brevity, a lesson learned from my years arranging for a cappella. In a cappella, the novelty of hearing a well known song arranged for voices wears thin rather quickly and a song can degrade from charming and novel to drab rather quickly around the 3:30 mark. I also prefer the way an understated ending changes the tone of the song a bit, giving the lyrics more of a chance to tame the pop-ness a bit.
Here are the lyrics:
(verse)
Never gonna turn my fate around
Said I gotta pull the whole thing
Paid a price for words I spoke out of necessity, well
I don't know why they're aloud
Never gonna live this whole thing down
Built upon a shadow of a doubt
Dared to live for something more than petty frivolities, well
Who's to say that's not allowed?
(chorus)
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire now
Now
(verse)
Screaming but I never hear the sound
Searching for the strength to cry out loud
Crucified for trying everything thing to make 'em see, well
I don't know why that's allowed
(chorus)
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire
Staring up at a wake of fire now
Now
(bridge)
(verse)
Fool me left and right I hate to know the joke's on me, well
I don't know why that's allowed
I'm going to refrain from talking about meanings of lyrics and things like that on this blog as a feel like the lyrics say what I want them to say and everything needed to understand them is there on the page and in the music. I will point out that in this case they utilize one of my favorite devices, homophones (i.e. "aloud" and "allowed").
I've selected this song to record first for a couple reasons. For one, as the oldest song in the catalog, I feel it's very ripe for finalization: I'm ready to be done with it. Secondly I think it will be a good point of entry for our music. It's catchy and upbeat and seems like starting on the right foot.
That's all for now.
-T
Friday, November 4, 2011
A Decision Made
I'm pleased to announce that A Hypocrite & Slanderer will begin recording on Tuesday at Let 'Em In Music in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The highly capable Nadim Issa will helm the session and hopefully tolerate the various questions and suggestions I proffer along the way. More on the studio to come, but for now a little on how I made the choice to record in a pro studio.
Since deciding a couple months back that recording needed to happen with or without a band proper, I have been back and forth quite a bit as to how to approach the process, namely what amount of it I could realistically do myself with my own gear and what needed to be done in a professional studio. My initial plan was to do all the tracking myself and rent time in a mix room somewhere to attempt the mixing, hiring a professional mixer if I was unable to produce an adequately listenable mix on my own. Mixing at my rehearsal space was of course out of the question, as in no way could I consider what I hear out of the monitors there "true" or "flat" (a fault of the room and its setup, not the monitors themselves). I could however conceivably do the editing, organizing and some basic processing there and just do final balancing and EQing in a proper mix environment. My fear was that improper monitoring at the tracking stage sets up a situation where I may not realize the inadequacy of something like mic placement until it's rather too late and I could be forced go back to square one. Still, it seemed a risk worth taking to save quite a lot of money, while of course maintaining the option of reevaluating my workflow if my first song attempt was a disaster.
I resolved to conduct "tests" of my engineering ability and equipment to assess what I can realistically expect to achieve on my own. I've been tinkering around as an engineer since high school, with results ranging from awful to respectable, but I've yet to produce a mix that I felt was "releasable." There are several reasons for that, the first of which being impatience. Recording requires a saintly amount of patience, an amount further augmented by the fact that I'm often functioning as both engineer performer, playing at least one if not all of the instruments (though clearly some can pull this off exceedingly well - I'm looking at you, Craig Potter). My tendency was always to move ahead when perhaps I needed to fool around a bit more with drum tuning or mic placement, or maybe I needed to do a few more takes to nail that transition. Then I'd get to the end of the song and be thinking to myself "This is garbage, I've got to start over." Another count against me was a simple lack of sound engineering know-how, having next to zero hands-on experience in a real studio or with a trained engineer. Most of what I do know is from my own research and trial and error, which are in themselves perfectly acceptable means of learning a skill. Regrettably, without access to accurate monitoring at any stage and using rooms that have unhelpful acoustic properties, trial and error learning can be frustrating and results can be misleading. Also, without guidance use of more ethereal implements of recording, like EQ and compression, trial and error often feels like a "shot in the dark." Let's not even get started on how endlessly complex DAW software can be if one has aspirations of exploiting its full potential.
That said I have picked up a few tricks and have done pretty well for myself as a mostly self-taught engineer (see our reverb nation page for a sample recording, tracked mostly all simultaneously in a 9 x 11 ft. room, vox added later with an sm 58 and monitors blaring). What ultimately tipped the scales towards doing as much basic tracking in the studio as possible was simply was the burning need to just get something done and fast. I've been sitting on these songs for quite some time and busy as life can be, it's easy to put off things indefinitely, especially when they're hard. And recording is hard. Doing it all yourself is harder. I can skip the endless debate over whether I need to acquire some fancy mic pres, stop worrying about if ceiling reflections are killing my snare drum, and not have to get up and down after every take to stop the tape.
I'm looking forward to not having to bear the full brunt of the responsibility for engineering, but I did learn some interesting things during my technical trials. One example was which close mics worked on the drums. I've got SM57s on toms, widely used in that capacity, and had been using an AKG C535 EB on snare. But when I put my (limited) mic collection up to a shootout, I was surprised to end up with this configuration for the close-mics.
Snare: SM 58 Beta
Hi Tom: SM 58
Lo Tom: AKG C535 EB (Toss up with EV RE20, but wanted that for kick)
That's right, the SM 57 got shut out. I think the engineer will probably have my neck is I ask him to put an SM 58 on the hi tom, and I'm sure there are better options available, but if there's one thing I take from this it's serious doubts about the old standby 57. It's worth mentioning that the AKG was strong on both toms in my opinion.
-Terry
Since deciding a couple months back that recording needed to happen with or without a band proper, I have been back and forth quite a bit as to how to approach the process, namely what amount of it I could realistically do myself with my own gear and what needed to be done in a professional studio. My initial plan was to do all the tracking myself and rent time in a mix room somewhere to attempt the mixing, hiring a professional mixer if I was unable to produce an adequately listenable mix on my own. Mixing at my rehearsal space was of course out of the question, as in no way could I consider what I hear out of the monitors there "true" or "flat" (a fault of the room and its setup, not the monitors themselves). I could however conceivably do the editing, organizing and some basic processing there and just do final balancing and EQing in a proper mix environment. My fear was that improper monitoring at the tracking stage sets up a situation where I may not realize the inadequacy of something like mic placement until it's rather too late and I could be forced go back to square one. Still, it seemed a risk worth taking to save quite a lot of money, while of course maintaining the option of reevaluating my workflow if my first song attempt was a disaster.
I resolved to conduct "tests" of my engineering ability and equipment to assess what I can realistically expect to achieve on my own. I've been tinkering around as an engineer since high school, with results ranging from awful to respectable, but I've yet to produce a mix that I felt was "releasable." There are several reasons for that, the first of which being impatience. Recording requires a saintly amount of patience, an amount further augmented by the fact that I'm often functioning as both engineer performer, playing at least one if not all of the instruments (though clearly some can pull this off exceedingly well - I'm looking at you, Craig Potter). My tendency was always to move ahead when perhaps I needed to fool around a bit more with drum tuning or mic placement, or maybe I needed to do a few more takes to nail that transition. Then I'd get to the end of the song and be thinking to myself "This is garbage, I've got to start over." Another count against me was a simple lack of sound engineering know-how, having next to zero hands-on experience in a real studio or with a trained engineer. Most of what I do know is from my own research and trial and error, which are in themselves perfectly acceptable means of learning a skill. Regrettably, without access to accurate monitoring at any stage and using rooms that have unhelpful acoustic properties, trial and error learning can be frustrating and results can be misleading. Also, without guidance use of more ethereal implements of recording, like EQ and compression, trial and error often feels like a "shot in the dark." Let's not even get started on how endlessly complex DAW software can be if one has aspirations of exploiting its full potential.
That said I have picked up a few tricks and have done pretty well for myself as a mostly self-taught engineer (see our reverb nation page for a sample recording, tracked mostly all simultaneously in a 9 x 11 ft. room, vox added later with an sm 58 and monitors blaring). What ultimately tipped the scales towards doing as much basic tracking in the studio as possible was simply was the burning need to just get something done and fast. I've been sitting on these songs for quite some time and busy as life can be, it's easy to put off things indefinitely, especially when they're hard. And recording is hard. Doing it all yourself is harder. I can skip the endless debate over whether I need to acquire some fancy mic pres, stop worrying about if ceiling reflections are killing my snare drum, and not have to get up and down after every take to stop the tape.
I'm looking forward to not having to bear the full brunt of the responsibility for engineering, but I did learn some interesting things during my technical trials. One example was which close mics worked on the drums. I've got SM57s on toms, widely used in that capacity, and had been using an AKG C535 EB on snare. But when I put my (limited) mic collection up to a shootout, I was surprised to end up with this configuration for the close-mics.
Snare: SM 58 Beta
Hi Tom: SM 58
Lo Tom: AKG C535 EB (Toss up with EV RE20, but wanted that for kick)
That's right, the SM 57 got shut out. I think the engineer will probably have my neck is I ask him to put an SM 58 on the hi tom, and I'm sure there are better options available, but if there's one thing I take from this it's serious doubts about the old standby 57. It's worth mentioning that the AKG was strong on both toms in my opinion.
-Terry
Thursday, November 3, 2011
A Splendid Indulgence
And so commences this most indulgent of endeavors, though it is endeavored with a pure heart and in earnest pursuit of concrete goals.
GOAL #1 - To create recordings of the compositions I've written over the last couple of years for A Hypocrite & Slanderer that can serve as acceptable final documents of those compositions.
GOAL #2 - To disseminate said recordings via the internet as they are finished.
GOAL #3 - To document the process, as well as some of my thoughts on music and recording, here on this blog.
A Brief History of the Recent Past
I began writing the songs that would lead to A Hypocrite & Slanderer approximately 2 years ago. After waffling about musically for a few years prior, trying desperately to forge something edgy and complex and spurning accessibility in the process, I noticed (or perhaps "allowed") a reemergence of my proclivity towards power pop. I did not, however, entirely abandon the edginess or complexity that I was cultivating previously, but instead sought to sprinkle it amidst the unabashed friendliness that my songwriting is prone to.
Early on I had decided firmly that I would get a band together and focus on live performance. I had no desire to so much as entertain the idea of recording and the tedium I associated with it. Moreover, I think I felt an intense desire to prove myself as a performer, something I could scarcely claim to be at all at that point.
Each time I went to a great show, I would walk away thinking about "the difference." What is it that this performer is doing that makes their show so effective? There was certainly a common thread amongst these great performances, unrelated as they may be stylistically. Great songs certainly go a long way, but that's not the kind of "difference" I'm talking about. There are a lot of very mediocre bands with great songs.
I came to realize that "the difference" is an unrestrained commitment to one's songs and message. It's the ability to "go for it" without reservations. It's a temporary confidence that borders on folly. This was what I was most lacking in my music and what I sought to cultivate in myself as a performer while putting together a live band.
Though the live incarnation of A Hypocrite & Slanderer lasted only about 5 months and 3 shows, the experience yielded enduring rewards. I was able to grow a bit as a performer and singer from show to show. I worked to be more direct with the audience, more honest, and not to hide behind artifice (even though my songwriting could be said to employ a fair amount of it). Most of all I was beginning to learn how to put my songs on the line and not worry about what anyone's going to think. This gave me a new confidence that trickled beyond the stage and will be reflected in any forthcoming recordings. It's also worth noting that this boost in confidence directly correlated with improvement in my singing ability. While I don't know that my guitar playing has improved much over the last few years, I can say that my singing has improved measurably even in the last few months, and I continue to be astonished by how much of it, and perhaps all of it, is purely mental.
The second enduring reward from the experience of the live band is my continued collaboration with bassist Pat Schoultz, whose immense skill on the instrument is matched in importance by his valuable and unique musical perspectives, which force me to step outside of the closely guarded tunnel-view I have of my songs and reevaluate, often for the better.
More on my plans for recording in the next post.
-Terry
GOAL #1 - To create recordings of the compositions I've written over the last couple of years for A Hypocrite & Slanderer that can serve as acceptable final documents of those compositions.
GOAL #2 - To disseminate said recordings via the internet as they are finished.
GOAL #3 - To document the process, as well as some of my thoughts on music and recording, here on this blog.
A Brief History of the Recent Past
I began writing the songs that would lead to A Hypocrite & Slanderer approximately 2 years ago. After waffling about musically for a few years prior, trying desperately to forge something edgy and complex and spurning accessibility in the process, I noticed (or perhaps "allowed") a reemergence of my proclivity towards power pop. I did not, however, entirely abandon the edginess or complexity that I was cultivating previously, but instead sought to sprinkle it amidst the unabashed friendliness that my songwriting is prone to.
Early on I had decided firmly that I would get a band together and focus on live performance. I had no desire to so much as entertain the idea of recording and the tedium I associated with it. Moreover, I think I felt an intense desire to prove myself as a performer, something I could scarcely claim to be at all at that point.
Each time I went to a great show, I would walk away thinking about "the difference." What is it that this performer is doing that makes their show so effective? There was certainly a common thread amongst these great performances, unrelated as they may be stylistically. Great songs certainly go a long way, but that's not the kind of "difference" I'm talking about. There are a lot of very mediocre bands with great songs.
I came to realize that "the difference" is an unrestrained commitment to one's songs and message. It's the ability to "go for it" without reservations. It's a temporary confidence that borders on folly. This was what I was most lacking in my music and what I sought to cultivate in myself as a performer while putting together a live band.
Though the live incarnation of A Hypocrite & Slanderer lasted only about 5 months and 3 shows, the experience yielded enduring rewards. I was able to grow a bit as a performer and singer from show to show. I worked to be more direct with the audience, more honest, and not to hide behind artifice (even though my songwriting could be said to employ a fair amount of it). Most of all I was beginning to learn how to put my songs on the line and not worry about what anyone's going to think. This gave me a new confidence that trickled beyond the stage and will be reflected in any forthcoming recordings. It's also worth noting that this boost in confidence directly correlated with improvement in my singing ability. While I don't know that my guitar playing has improved much over the last few years, I can say that my singing has improved measurably even in the last few months, and I continue to be astonished by how much of it, and perhaps all of it, is purely mental.
The second enduring reward from the experience of the live band is my continued collaboration with bassist Pat Schoultz, whose immense skill on the instrument is matched in importance by his valuable and unique musical perspectives, which force me to step outside of the closely guarded tunnel-view I have of my songs and reevaluate, often for the better.
More on my plans for recording in the next post.
-Terry
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