And Now, for Something New

A break from the 'flur to track a few songs for some ex-bandmates. We kept it simple - close mics, track live, easy.

Drums were the "house kit" - some random Mapex with a 22" kick. Snare was '65 Ludwig Jazzfest for 2 songs and the Pork Pie Big Black for the other. Snare mic was Beyer m201 into UA2108, kick was ATM25 - 2108, toms were CAD M179s in hypercard into V276, FOK was TM2 - m76, OH Groove Tubes MD1a - m76. No EQ or compression at tracking as the room we were in sucks and I didn't want anything until I was hearing it totally clearly in the monitors (or as much was possible when still in the shitty room, burned out/exhausted, and coming down with stomach flu.)

Guitar was primarily DuoJet RI and p90 SG into a Hiwatt/Matamp 2x12, mic'd with SM7b into Phoenix DRS. Bass varied the most. One track a Geddy Lee(!!!) Jazz into Tom's Mesa 400, one the Jazz into the dying fuzzy Ampeg B25, and one featuring Venus In Furs, the ol' Tele bass, also into the Mesa, all using Tom's 4x10 cab. Thanks, Tom. Mic'd with 4047 - 2108 - Sta-Level really cranking.

Vocals were mixed around between the TM2 and MD1a / M76 and v276, as is normal for me now. MD1a/m76 was my favorite. The Copperphone was used to feed a stereo reverse reverb on one track behind the main.

mixing was done uncomfortably quickly but sounds decent for such a quick job, I thought. All done in the box aside from 2-track bounce on one track which went through the pair of EQP1's and Drawmer 1968 as it needed more low end push and a little touch of tube harmonic distortion sorta something. The rest leaned heavily on UAD Neve 1073 EQ and Plate 140 reverb, the Chandler limiter for drum parallel/vocal, and a little of the Massey CT4 here and there for shaping things (need to get the new Transient Designer plug... and switch to Logic...)

Strings + Vox

Lost my cardreader.

SO. We did some strings. Emily and Susan from Exit Clov came in and tracked many, many layers of violin over a few tracks. This was my first time doing strings so played it safe and set up a couple options. Started with a Crowley and Tripp Naked Eye and a C451EB as closer-mics for each (going for one darker, one brighter tone), a Pearlman TM2 overhead getting both, and the Copperphone as a room mic, just for kicks. The 451 was right away apparently not right so it was swapped out for the Royer 121. The NE was backwards, using the brighter side of the ribbon. The NE and TM2 ran into Mercury M76m, the 121 in Phoenix DRS, and the Copperphone Altec 1566a. This worked out pretty fantastically; when we did multiple tracks of them we could just pan to make things sit right with a little volume automation to push things back.

Vox. Same as before, mainly. TM2 into v276/Sta-Level, sometimes the EQP1 to open things up a touch. Blending in random mics for color.