Ah. Fall.
Leaves.
and recording.
first of all go to
here for 4 songs that we did a few months ago. good stuff.
now the carpet pissers.
a new three piece lookin for a cheap demo.
not bad. im borrowin Troy's mighty 4 track
whilst he is on tour, and its cool. a tascam
414 i think. 4 tracks at once.
the drums i did the d112 kick, and sm57 snare, and
a single "room" mic, the mk-219. i only got 4 tracks
so this was a mono drum kit.
guitar was a radio shack mic and same with the bass.
these little guys work fairly well, and even though i
thought i broke them years ago (was using them at the
garage alot on drums, they came with these clips to
put them right on the drums, very cool. i impressed
alot of lame bands witht these mics "ooohh, the drums
get mic'd here? rad!" but they arent the best. but
they got the job done.
the drums needed a major tweak, and after sitting in
on a clorox girls session at the hangar with chris
woodhouse, i felt confident i could transform the drums.
the snare in particular. it needed a new tophead, you
could see through the middle of it. the coating had worn
off, it almost looked as if someone peeled the center
dot off of it! the head was actualy not as bad as it
looked, and both heads just needed some tightening.
that helped alot. a little tape and it was where i wanted
it.
no rack tom, but a floor tom. just needed to be tuned
better. detune them all so you can tighten them by hand,
hand tight?, then give them all one extra turn with the
key(and in order across) to keep it even and it'll be
thundery.
the guitar amp was a 2x12 fender combo, a newer solid state one.
just sit in front of it and crank it up til it sounds good.
start with the mids all the way up and bring up the highs/lows
for extra body. i usualy find it better to turn down distortion
or gain and add volume, and make that amp sing.
the guitar was a nice fender jag-stang. its got a humbucker and a
single coil. turning the single coil off and leaving the humbucker
on at full blast sounded best.
the bass was some peavey combo. he wanted to use this effect box
that had distortion in it, but it wasnt loud enough and sounded
cheap. so i pulled out the RAT pedal. turned the tone up pretty far
and lots of volume(im finding that on guitar these things sound a
little better with more tone/volume, you can get better feedback,
not the high screchy stuff, but the hollow body kind). now it sounded
good.
so we ran through a bunch of songs and kept 5 keepers.
added a vocal track and that was that. easy sunday.
during mixing i was trying to get all 4 tracks out of the
tascam 414 but it wouldnt let me. the effects sends only send
if the main volume fader is up, which also sends it to the main mix.
duh.
so i utilized this as best i could.
i ran the main outs to the mixer, added a little compression.
brought things up so the mix sounded fine. guitar on one side,
bass up the center, drums up the center and vocals up the center.
then i used effects1 and sent the guitar to my fx box for some delay.
a mono delay that i sent the output of to the mixer on a different
channel and panned it opposite the first guitar and found a nice spot
for it. 24mms delay i think. now this recording had some growl to it.
i like the sound of the "dual" guitars and figured the vocals need
some too, so i just brought up effects1 on the vocals too, and it
didnt sound to bad, just enough for some extra vocal sound. it was on
the same guitar track but it was audible enough. delayed vocals usualy
sound best if they arent delayed too much (unless the song calls for
heavily effected vocals).
now the drums started to lose some volume with the extra guitar and
vocal processing and i had the effects2 that i could try. so what
would work there? the fx box is already being used, but i do have
a nanocompressor thats not being used! so i ran the drums out to that,
gave them a little squash, and sent them back to the board on a new
channel. brought that up and wow! big drums! even for being mono(i
think i added a little reverb to this new channel using the mackies
built in effects) it worked fairly well.
so thats about it, i mixed it all to the cd burner and dropped a copy
off with Kristie last night and they were all super excited.
thats what its realy all about i think. that feeling when you make
someones day. its perfect.
