Hot Cider, Hot Fire

Four Bellflur tracks are that much closer to done after a pretty good night. Redid a lot of vocals in a new style - we'd been feeling a lot of the parts felt a bit awkward, and then Carlos says he'd really like to try and do some of the vocals in more of a Sparklehorse sort of style. Ok, I thought, sounds fun, let's try. Started with an MD421/m76 and the Copperphone/DRS, switched the 421 with the MD1a. Summed into the Sta Level at it's fastest release, pretty slammed, finally into an EQP1 just putting in 1.5db at 5khz and attenuating 15khz 6db with a pretty wide Q. It's going to need a de-esser after that compression, but the sound is pretty darned cool. And it finally fits! Hurrah. Did a bunch of Tom's backing vocals too, mainly the MD1a or my new OmniMouse, which I'm thus far enjoying, DRS all around.

Had to add a couple samples as well. We didn't have the proper adaptor, and felt too lazy to go find a flashdrive, so hey! Let's just mic the laptop. Why not?

Emily and Susan arrived a little later, we're happy they arrived at all, as the roads were coated with ice. We all just about maimed ourselves every time we walked outside which was equal parts comedic and inconvenient. They did violins over a few songs, the O-Mouse in the middle through the DRS, and then each with their own overhead/spot. One was KSM141 - 2108, the other TM2 - v76. For a couple parts we had them play together into the Bova Ball. Their vocals were done two ways. Some parts both sang into the MD1a together, a few we pulled two mics, adding in a 4047 with the two mics about two & a half feet apart and the vocalists facing one another. I am tired, and another group in tomorrow. Resting time.

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.

Lazy

Slow day. Mostly cataloging serial #s and pics for insurance reasons, awesome. Other than that? We did some backing vocals and a vocal mic/preamp shootout for the main vox. Our "normal" chain is going to be Pearlman TM2 - V276 - Sta-Level - EQP1. More aggressive stuff is going GT MD1a - m76m - TG1 limiter. Snore snore. Later this week though? Strings, vibraphones, massive gang vocals. Fun.

Noise Day

Today was our day to make all the horrific noises we could handle to fill out tracks. Started out with Tom wailing away on the Jazzmaster with a drum stick through a mess of pedals as Carlos screamed into the mic. Oh, and the mic? A set of headphones broken in half in reverse wiring. It was later suspended in the middle of a huge bass drum as a floating echo mic which we could also beat on while tracking. Ran old vinyl records through a minispeaker mic'd with the Bova ball, looped back through the Lexicon Vortex and Kaoss Pad. Drums super-gated and fed into bitcrushers. Horrid, horrid, horrid, excellent!

Ended the day with guitars, redoing some earlier parts. Jazzmaster into AC30 and Sound City at once, a little compression and grind from an old Marshall Guv'nor. Bova Ball/m76 and MD421/2108 on the AC30, I5/2108 on Sound City. Started into some heavy fuzzed out chunka-chunka stuff but we decided we were just being impatient; with the tracks in an utterly unmixed state there wasn't the surge of sound we need at the end yet. We set out on a misguided heavy guitar mission but came to our senses... there just needs to be some dynamics built in around the bass mixing and drums to give the end of the song the push it needs. Power chords, be gone.

Lightniplosionz!

Weird, man. Insane bursts of blue and green lightning like explosions in the sky all night and big winds had the power surging on and off (and all points between) throughout the night. The power conditioners kept thing moderately civil, but sessions were interrupted by several outages over the day.

When electricity was available, we worked on guitars, bass effects, and keys for Shooting An Elephant and Activate Your Cancelled Check.

Patrick's guitars were Jazzmaster + AC30 and Sound City 100mkIII. SM7b + Phoenix DRS and Audix I5 + UA 2108 on the AC30, MD421 + UA 2108 on the Sound City. AC30 for cleaner tones, Sound City for the fuzz. Can't begin to keep track of Patrick's pedals. Carlos' guitars were his brown turd special into the AC30, all low end carved out, mic'd with the EV 642 + DRS w/ boost and compressor pedals. Tom's basses were reamped from the V71 direct tracks into his Mesa head+4x10 and mic'd with MD421 + UA 2108 + Sta-Level taking just a couple db off. His effects... are classified. Keyboards today were the Bass Station x2 on Elephant's build section direct into UA 2108 and the Nord Electro into the Mercury M76m.

The guitars get pretty heavily layered so I'm generally carving out a low of low mids wherever I can, leaving usually just one track with much low end. What with the bass, keys, and all that it just gets too crowded.

Started tracking bass for We Can Build You, which is mostly chorded, but even tracking the bass through the AC30 we weren't getting enough clarity. Solution? We're getting a baritone guitar, which I think will be perfect for the chording while the Bass Station holds a constant low end (ducked by the chording baritone when it enters.)

This Day Was Hard Fought

New rule: don't let the drummer get all tweaked on energy drinks.

also, try to limit one's coffee consumption. I think I'm going to internally melt.

This was a trying day. I struggled to find a sound I really liked for Activate Your Canceled Check, which we were redoing the drums on. After an hour of moving mics around small amounts, we got it, bu because of the shifting we did of the original recordings to match the speech samples that make up the bridge, the second half of the song was totally off the click, which led to many passes through before we had the one.

Then on to a new song, Shooting An Elephant. Easy to get a good sound in, took 20 minutes at most. ATM25 on the kick beater, a 4047 at the end of a drum tunnel. The beater mic was into a UA 2108 and Orban 642b, mostly to pull out tons of 300hz. Tunnel mic ran into Phoenix DRS. Snare top was Beyer M201 ino 2108, bottom was SM7b into Altec 1591. Overheads were Shure KSM141s, -15 pad, middle low-cut setting into Mercury M76m and Drawmer 1968ME, attack at 2, release at auto-1, tapping 1-3db reduction with no sidechain. Room mic was Pearlman TM2 into Altec 1566 + EQP1.

At this point, Hunter had consumed an amount of energy drink + vodka which led to many takes. Many, many takes. In the end, we spliced two performances together, and it sounds great. Kick was my Gretsch 20", toms were Hunter's Mapexes (his custom kit arrives the 20th) and snare was my blackie.

Bass was tracked with Tom's Jag + TAB V71 + Sta Level @ about 6-12db + EQP1.

whoo. long day.