So far so good, this adat is making me shiver.
We ended up doing two sessions with Dougs
adat and then i did a sesh with a citrus heights
band called the blessed.
Ski Instructors:
nice pop hooks with a little bit of a brit pop sound.
fun stuff. two guitars, bass, drums.
Ed carrol is the drummer (See FM Knives) and he
has a unique kit set up. the kick drum is sorta of
at a 45 degree angle to his right, the snare drum in
the middle and the hihats 45 degrees to his left.
the ride cymbal is right behind the snare drum
and the rack tom is right above the kick. a crash
cymbal on either side, and a floor tom left of the
hi hats.
fun set up, but its hard to get a snare mic in there.
ther eis room in the usual spot, but it gets alot
of ride cymbal, even with a gate. i did this the first
time, but the second time i put it tween the snare
and racktom, out of the way, but enough to get it,
and i think its a little more defined sound.
im only doing three tracks for drums, to save room
for vocals, so its kick, snare, and over head. i played
with mixing it a little, and found that panning the
overhead hard to the right, and the snare to the left
some that i get a cool snare sound, and some stereo
seperation. nice.
ive been using the RE20 for the bass guitar and it
just sounds punhcy and loud, perfect.
no what im doing for tracking is using the inserts
on my mixer to line out to the adat, and then using
the main outs as the headphone mix for me. even
with a jack in the out position in the inserts, the
signal still routes through the rest of the mixer.
the adat is getting preamplified signals, and thats
it. no eq or other electronics to rout through.
these recordings are coming along, we still have
vocals to do for the second sesh, but i'll mention that
to doug and im sure we can do them there.
The Blessed:
This is one of Will Sweeties new bands. Fans of ric
and the young rouges or the wizzards will love this
band. garagey punk, with great songwritting.
i arrive at will house at about 1230pm and check out
the scene. we are recording in his house, in the living
room. a small living room, but with tall ceilings, so
im excited to try out the Woodhouse drum sound.
i walk over to the drums, and though not the most fancy
kit, just needs a little TLC to get a sweet sound out of it.
Tune up the snare drum, alot, and it sounds pretty good.
we took the fron head off of the kick so i could get right
in there. so:
kick d112
snare sm57(this time pulled back a little and pointed more
at the center of the drum)
overhead mk-219(behind the drummer, Matt, and pointed
at the snare)
room yellow AT57clone (this was placed over by me in the
living room. the drums and amps are basicly in the dining
room.
i brought everything up and was excited and amazed at how
easy it is to achieve a great drum sound, and i hope im not
dispelling any myths here about Woodhouse, he's been a
great teacher fo rmy studies and im finaly confident with my
ablities in recording. things are moving along nicely.
the guitar and bass amp are each huge old fender cabinets
and bassman heads. i put one of my yellow at57 clone on the
bass (we think it was a 15, not sure though) and one of the
old radioshack instrument mics on the guitar cab (very sure
it was a 15) got those running and we were set.
the bass was a little outta control, ryan plays with his fingers,
and that made for some clipping here and there. i pulled out
the trusty compressor pedal and hooked him up. this controlled
the pops to a degree and smoothed out his sound over all.
we also turned the bass almost all the way off on his amp. at 0
it was still bassy enough but wasnt muddy like he had it.
will guitar just needed tuning. it sounded great.
also, i threw up the RE20 for will to singinto and auxed out
a line for his little amp(PA) so he could hear himself. this
worked out pretty well since the RE20 sounds nice when you
are right on it.
so we start rolling tape (after waiting 42 mins to format a fresh
adat tape, duh..) and realize that after 20 mins of recording time
has gone by, theyve layed down 10 songs. nice. so we go through
10 more. jeez i get to mix 20 songs? right on.
we fixed up a few vocal parts, added some guitars to acouple songs,
added in lots of tambourines, some horns, some shakers, and some
harmonies. i left one track for each song so we could do all this.
i cant wait to mix this and play it for someone. i may upload a song
to the pxpyahoo group sometime soon.....
Did i ever post about things weve done with PETS?
i'll hafta look into that.
In the meantime im recording the Ski Instructors
tonight using Dougs 8 track ADAT. i cant wait.
Doug gave me the tapes from the Frenchmen sesh we did
and i played around with mixing that last night.
These tapes didnt have any vocals or over dubs, but
i figured id play with mixing and try it out a little.
I still like mixing on a mixing board vs in the box.
It seems much more loud and i was able to get the guitars
in a better spot than on the mix from dougs. Man, though,
the kick is jsut s blip sound. i had to crank it.
also Leons guitar track was quieter and muddier. i think it was his.
the clean guitar came out great(signal wise) i wonder if a different
mic wouldve been better for leon.
the snare drum sounded fine, and when i brought up the
overhead/tommics it sounded great. just gotta find that sweet spot.
also, im hooked on hi hat mics. adds alot of definition to what could
otherwise be some buried hi hats.
so for tonight im thinking of doing:
kick-d112
snare-57
overhead-mk219
room
guitar yellow at
guitar yellow at(or mk219)
bass RE20
vocal
not sure about the room or vocal mic yet.
maybe what ever i have left.
the vocal could be a scratch track too, and maybe they'd wouldnt mind
going to dougs to record the vocals anyways. though it'd be super
clean and i think scott wants a raw recording.
do the vocals on the spot?
another idea is to use my old ass peavy mixing board as the
preamps.its got 8 in 8 out. ive been dying to use it that way too.
then i could monitor on my mackie with no problems, and maybe run the
cd burner to get the live outtakes...?
i think thats what ill do. thats way wicked too!
cant wait.
jeez, im behind, but soon i'll be keeping better tabs on all of this stuff.
I recently aquired cable internet at home and got my computer working, so there will be more time for me to goof off on the ol interweb and make fun of everyone.
Anyways, Hotel Pistol is where i left off.
They came over on a sunday and we decided to run the show from my bedroom, but have them play in the garage. Since i had dougs snake, it was no problem.
So i set them up in the garage, as they would in a live setting.
The drum setup is as follows:
kick RE20
snare sm57
Rtom mk219
Ftom d112
roomL/R sony ecm 900(909?)
i tried this and i was loving the sound i got. Nice in loud, with some cool klickly kick drum. For this type of music, its pretty nice.
I was having problems with the way it was hitting the tape though. Seemed to realy fade out and distort, even though levels were ok. so i just pulled it back.
Guitar was a mk219, and the bass was my red AT dynamic. One of these days i'll catalouge all my crappy mics and find their right names.
So we rolled tape for a few hours and i was loving all the songs. While mixing i ran a small delay on the guitar and got it all nice an dloud and stereo. Fun.
I think i can post new songs now to the PXPYahoo group. i'll post when i do.
PETS have started to record out at Dougs studio, Now named YOUR MUSIC STUDIO, which is fitting. Dougs a great guy doing some neat things.
I'll post more about pets soon. Time for bed.
