JiveTurkey
Goatlord
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- 16,447
This has a "belongs in a Tarantino soundtrack" vibe. Dig it!
Starting an album recording project tomorrow
- Thread starter Cirrus
- Start date
This has a "belongs in a Tarantino soundtrack" vibe. Dig it!
Cirrus
Roadie
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- 311
The singer's gonna be over the moon with that - it's exactly what we were going for.
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- 1,245
Sounds like a fun project! Looking forward to hearing more!!
Cirrus
Roadie
- Messages
- 311
Second recording long weekend.
I deigned to allow some drums to be in stereo for certain tracks. There was more of the same (as described above) and also some fun bits - recording a live fuzz jam with guitars and drums going mad in the room together, a full band live recording with acoustic panel amp dens to control spill. We got the ghosts of dead '60s US AM radio evangelists coming through an old lap steel. Not what we expected in Birmingham, UK, 2023. Other than that, none of the kind of technical gremlins that plagued us two weeks ago.
The live recording was my favourite one. We had 4 mics on drums (one of the snare mics pictured isn't plugged in) in a "Recorderman" style. Bass cab was close to the drums but facing away, as that at least made the spill less wishy washy than having it over on the other side of the room. Lap steel into my little DIY tweed, and singer played a bass six into his Supro.
Lap steel into delay is just so much fun. I have no idea how to play the f*cking thing.
we did like 8 takes and I just picked the one we screwed up least on. Isolation was good enough that we were able to do half a dozen little punch ins and I slid a couple of bass notes around to fix a part where he was late to come back in.
We've got 16 songs started now so I think we need to draw a line under opening up any new ideas for now.
I deigned to allow some drums to be in stereo for certain tracks. There was more of the same (as described above) and also some fun bits - recording a live fuzz jam with guitars and drums going mad in the room together, a full band live recording with acoustic panel amp dens to control spill. We got the ghosts of dead '60s US AM radio evangelists coming through an old lap steel. Not what we expected in Birmingham, UK, 2023. Other than that, none of the kind of technical gremlins that plagued us two weeks ago.
The live recording was my favourite one. We had 4 mics on drums (one of the snare mics pictured isn't plugged in) in a "Recorderman" style. Bass cab was close to the drums but facing away, as that at least made the spill less wishy washy than having it over on the other side of the room. Lap steel into my little DIY tweed, and singer played a bass six into his Supro.
Lap steel into delay is just so much fun. I have no idea how to play the f*cking thing.
we did like 8 takes and I just picked the one we screwed up least on. Isolation was good enough that we were able to do half a dozen little punch ins and I slid a couple of bass notes around to fix a part where he was late to come back in.We've got 16 songs started now so I think we need to draw a line under opening up any new ideas for now.
Cirrus
Roadie
- Messages
- 311
Well, I let this one die didn't I?
It all went slow for a long time. The singer had some personal stuff to work through that made things go slowly for a while - it felt like he was avoiding vocal recording. Plus, a mental defence mechanism I have; I pretend that it'll take about as many hours to do the guitars and vocals as it takes to do the bass and drum tracks. Because then I can face starting the project - if I really thought about the endless evenings & weekend days stretching out ahead of me, recording, shepherding 4 sets of egos and dreams, writing, re-writing, second guessing, dreaming new things up, editing takes together, playing with sounds... it'd be too much and I'd never want to start a recording project.
The big roadblock we had to get over was an interpersonal one. I'm hyper focused and driven to get results when it comes to recording. I've found it's the only way to really get shit done. I want to get home at night and be able to list off the things that have been accomplished on the road to the finish line. That means I think well ahead of time about what the part is going to be and how it fits into the whole song. It's not that I don't go experimenting and trying new things, it's just that when it comes down to it my instinct is to trust the decisions we made and the things that came naturally to the songs over months or years of writing, rehearsing and playing them live. The singer is not like that. At the drop of a hat, apparently on a whim, he'll chuck out everything he did before and just be like "what if the melody did this?"
And he'll do it for everything. He's got a real irreverence for any part that's already been written, and much prefers the excitement of just trying stuff in the moment. During tracking, and I mean any tracking - bass, guitar, vocals (his own and anyone else's) he'll let you get like half a take in before suggesting something different. Something that changes everything.
There's a golden rule in producing. Never say no to any idea, give it a try. So you give it a try. And you're halfway through giving it a try when the next suggestion comes. So you try that. And he seems to not realise that you've not actually tracked a full take of the first idea yet. Then you realise the new idea rubs badly against the bassline, so that'll need to be changed. Or the guitar part that I egotistically am attached to, a part that I'm proud of, spent 3 hours recording the week before and had honed over a year or playing the song live, suddenly doesn't work any more. And then I realise 2 hours have gone by and I don't have a single workable take.
At that point, I admit I started to say no, to protect past effort and decisions, going back to the original part in order to have *something* and that caused tension. It's taken me many months to start to understand how to navigate it and how our different methods can coexist.
You know what the real twat thing about it all is? The singer is great. He is inspired, and he has a vision. And sometimes following his ideas gets us to a magical place we would have otherwise missed. It just makes it all take so much longer.
So... June and July, we did about 4 tracks worth of lead vocals, bass for every track, and guitars for 12 of them. August, We started down a rabbit hole of re-inventing a few of the tracks, re-balancing them away from the live band vibe in search of something grander & cinematic. I also got an old piece of rack gear for the guitar, and went down a personal rabbit hole of looking for some unique, characterful guitar tones - the kind of stuff that's, like bad for lovers of tone but good for the song. September-December we pretty much stopped altogether other than the odd session here and there because a bunch of gigs came up that we focused on.
Then over Christmas I had a crossroads moment. My dear mate, an Italian songwriter & Guitarist who I've been making music with since 2015, said he wants to do a new album this year. I can't do two projects at once - I've got a full time job and a daughter who deserves a dad that's around and able to give her the family time for evenings playing games and weekends of fun adventures in the car.
I took stock of what we had, and what we'd need to do to get it to the finish line. With my time over the holidays I took a bunch of tracks and went to town adding orchestration, textures, abstractions that pushed them towards sounding like a record, and told the band "here's the list of things still to do. We need to get them done and the songs mixed by mid March because after that, I'm going to be working on a record with my Italian friend."
It'd be fair to say it's focussed minds. Over the last 3 weeks we've got another 7 vocals down, endless backing vocals, successfully re-framed 2 songs, re-tracked some bass... I'm hopeful, and if it carries on this way I think we'll have something a bit magic.
It all went slow for a long time. The singer had some personal stuff to work through that made things go slowly for a while - it felt like he was avoiding vocal recording. Plus, a mental defence mechanism I have; I pretend that it'll take about as many hours to do the guitars and vocals as it takes to do the bass and drum tracks. Because then I can face starting the project - if I really thought about the endless evenings & weekend days stretching out ahead of me, recording, shepherding 4 sets of egos and dreams, writing, re-writing, second guessing, dreaming new things up, editing takes together, playing with sounds... it'd be too much and I'd never want to start a recording project.
The big roadblock we had to get over was an interpersonal one. I'm hyper focused and driven to get results when it comes to recording. I've found it's the only way to really get shit done. I want to get home at night and be able to list off the things that have been accomplished on the road to the finish line. That means I think well ahead of time about what the part is going to be and how it fits into the whole song. It's not that I don't go experimenting and trying new things, it's just that when it comes down to it my instinct is to trust the decisions we made and the things that came naturally to the songs over months or years of writing, rehearsing and playing them live. The singer is not like that. At the drop of a hat, apparently on a whim, he'll chuck out everything he did before and just be like "what if the melody did this?"
And he'll do it for everything. He's got a real irreverence for any part that's already been written, and much prefers the excitement of just trying stuff in the moment. During tracking, and I mean any tracking - bass, guitar, vocals (his own and anyone else's) he'll let you get like half a take in before suggesting something different. Something that changes everything.
There's a golden rule in producing. Never say no to any idea, give it a try. So you give it a try. And you're halfway through giving it a try when the next suggestion comes. So you try that. And he seems to not realise that you've not actually tracked a full take of the first idea yet. Then you realise the new idea rubs badly against the bassline, so that'll need to be changed. Or the guitar part that I egotistically am attached to, a part that I'm proud of, spent 3 hours recording the week before and had honed over a year or playing the song live, suddenly doesn't work any more. And then I realise 2 hours have gone by and I don't have a single workable take.
At that point, I admit I started to say no, to protect past effort and decisions, going back to the original part in order to have *something* and that caused tension. It's taken me many months to start to understand how to navigate it and how our different methods can coexist.
You know what the real twat thing about it all is? The singer is great. He is inspired, and he has a vision. And sometimes following his ideas gets us to a magical place we would have otherwise missed. It just makes it all take so much longer.
So... June and July, we did about 4 tracks worth of lead vocals, bass for every track, and guitars for 12 of them. August, We started down a rabbit hole of re-inventing a few of the tracks, re-balancing them away from the live band vibe in search of something grander & cinematic. I also got an old piece of rack gear for the guitar, and went down a personal rabbit hole of looking for some unique, characterful guitar tones - the kind of stuff that's, like bad for lovers of tone but good for the song. September-December we pretty much stopped altogether other than the odd session here and there because a bunch of gigs came up that we focused on.
Then over Christmas I had a crossroads moment. My dear mate, an Italian songwriter & Guitarist who I've been making music with since 2015, said he wants to do a new album this year. I can't do two projects at once - I've got a full time job and a daughter who deserves a dad that's around and able to give her the family time for evenings playing games and weekends of fun adventures in the car.
I took stock of what we had, and what we'd need to do to get it to the finish line. With my time over the holidays I took a bunch of tracks and went to town adding orchestration, textures, abstractions that pushed them towards sounding like a record, and told the band "here's the list of things still to do. We need to get them done and the songs mixed by mid March because after that, I'm going to be working on a record with my Italian friend."
It'd be fair to say it's focussed minds. Over the last 3 weeks we've got another 7 vocals down, endless backing vocals, successfully re-framed 2 songs, re-tracked some bass... I'm hopeful, and if it carries on this way I think we'll have something a bit magic.
Last edited:
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- 1,245
Sounds like some rough sailin', but at least your sailin'! Good that you put a deadline out there, make them pony up!! Best of luck, I hope it turns out well enough to float your boat ;~))Well, I let this one die didn't I?
It all went slow for a long time. The singer had some personal stuff to work through that made things go slowly for a while - it felt like he was avoiding vocal recording. Plus, a mental defence mechanism I have; I pretend that it'll take about as many hours to do the guitars and vocals as it takes to do the bass and drum tracks. Because then I can face starting the project - if I really thought about the endless evenings & weekend days stretching out ahead of me, recording, shepherding 4 sets of egos and dreams, writing, re-writing, second guessing, dreaming new things up, editing takes together, playing with sounds... it'd be too much and I'd never want to start a recording project.
The big roadblock we had to get over was an interpersonal one. I'm hyper focused and driven to get results when it comes to recording. I've found it's the only way to really get shit done. I want to get home at night and be able to list of the things that have been accomplished on the road to the finish line. That means I think well ahead of time about what the part is going to be and how it fits into the whole song. It's not that I don't go experimenting and trying new things, it's just that when it comes down to it my instinct is to trust the decisions we made and the things that came naturally to the songs over months or years of writing, rehearsing and playing them live. The singer is not like that. At the drop of a hat, apparently on a whim, he'll chuck out everything he did before and just be like "what if the melody did this?"
And he'll do it for everything. He's got a real irreverence for any part that's already been written, and much prefers the excitement of just trying stuff in the moment. During tracking, and I mean any tracking - bass, guitar, vocals (his own and anyone else's) he'll let you get like half a take in before suggesting something different. Something that changes everything.
There's a golden rule in producing. Never say no to any idea, give it a try. So you give it a try. And you're halfway through giving it a try when the next suggestion comes. So you try that. And he seems to not realise that you've not actually tracked a full take of the first idea yet. Then you realise the new idea rubs badly against the bassline, so that'll need to be changed. Or the guitar part that I egotistically am attached to, a part that I'm proud of, spent 3 hours recording the week before and had honed over a year or playing the song live, suddenly doesn't work any more. And then I realise 2 hours have gone by and I don't have a single workable take.
At that point, I admit I started to say no, to protect past effort and decisions, going back to the original part in order to have *somethign* and that caused tension. It's taken me many months to start to understand how to navigate it and how our different methods can coexist.
You know what the real twat thing about it all is? The singer is great. He is inspired, and he has a vision. And sometimes following his ideas gets us to a magical place we would have otherwise missed. It just makes it all take so much longer.
So... June and July, we did about 4 tracks worth of lead vocals, bass for every track, and guitars for 12 of them. August, We started down a rabbit hole of re-inventing a few of the tracks, re-balancing them away from the live band vibe in search of something grander & cinematic. I also got an old piece of rack gear for the guitar, and went down a personal rabbit hole of looking for some unique, characterful guitar tones - the kind of stuff that's, like bad for lovers of tone but good for the song. September-December we pretty much stopped altogether other than the odd session here and there because a bunch of gigs came up that we focused on.
Then over Christmas I had a crossroads moment. My dear mate, an Italian songwriter & Guitarist who I've been making music with since 2015, said he wants to do a new album this year. I can't do two projects at once - I've got a full time job and a daughter who deserves a dad that's around and able to give her the family time for evenings playing games and weekends of fun adventures in the car.
I took stock of what we had, and what we'd need to do to get it to the finish line. With my time over the holidays I took a bunch of tracks and went to town adding orchestration, textures, abstractions that pushed them towards sounding like a record, and told the band "here's the list of things still to do. We need to get them done and the songs mixed by mid March because after that, I'm going to be working on a record with my Italian friend."
It'd be fair to say it's focussed minds. Over the last 3 weeks we've got another 7 vocals down, endless backing vocals, successfully re-framed 2 songs, re-tracked some bass... I'm hopeful, and if it carries on this way I think we'll have something a bit magic.
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- 6,629
I applaud your efforts keeping it all together. It's a tough balance act but you seem to be handling it well. Just based on rough clips I heard in your tweed amp thread, I'm excited to hear (and buy) the finished album.Well, I let this one die didn't I?
It all went slow for a long time. The singer had some personal stuff to work through that made things go slowly for a while - it felt like he was avoiding vocal recording. Plus, a mental defence mechanism I have; I pretend that it'll take about as many hours to do the guitars and vocals as it takes to do the bass and drum tracks. Because then I can face starting the project - if I really thought about the endless evenings & weekend days stretching out ahead of me, recording, shepherding 4 sets of egos and dreams, writing, re-writing, second guessing, dreaming new things up, editing takes together, playing with sounds... it'd be too much and I'd never want to start a recording project.
The big roadblock we had to get over was an interpersonal one. I'm hyper focused and driven to get results when it comes to recording. I've found it's the only way to really get shit done. I want to get home at night and be able to list off the things that have been accomplished on the road to the finish line. That means I think well ahead of time about what the part is going to be and how it fits into the whole song. It's not that I don't go experimenting and trying new things, it's just that when it comes down to it my instinct is to trust the decisions we made and the things that came naturally to the songs over months or years of writing, rehearsing and playing them live. The singer is not like that. At the drop of a hat, apparently on a whim, he'll chuck out everything he did before and just be like "what if the melody did this?"
And he'll do it for everything. He's got a real irreverence for any part that's already been written, and much prefers the excitement of just trying stuff in the moment. During tracking, and I mean any tracking - bass, guitar, vocals (his own and anyone else's) he'll let you get like half a take in before suggesting something different. Something that changes everything.
There's a golden rule in producing. Never say no to any idea, give it a try. So you give it a try. And you're halfway through giving it a try when the next suggestion comes. So you try that. And he seems to not realise that you've not actually tracked a full take of the first idea yet. Then you realise the new idea rubs badly against the bassline, so that'll need to be changed. Or the guitar part that I egotistically am attached to, a part that I'm proud of, spent 3 hours recording the week before and had honed over a year or playing the song live, suddenly doesn't work any more. And then I realise 2 hours have gone by and I don't have a single workable take.
At that point, I admit I started to say no, to protect past effort and decisions, going back to the original part in order to have *something* and that caused tension. It's taken me many months to start to understand how to navigate it and how our different methods can coexist.
You know what the real twat thing about it all is? The singer is great. He is inspired, and he has a vision. And sometimes following his ideas gets us to a magical place we would have otherwise missed. It just makes it all take so much longer.
So... June and July, we did about 4 tracks worth of lead vocals, bass for every track, and guitars for 12 of them. August, We started down a rabbit hole of re-inventing a few of the tracks, re-balancing them away from the live band vibe in search of something grander & cinematic. I also got an old piece of rack gear for the guitar, and went down a personal rabbit hole of looking for some unique, characterful guitar tones - the kind of stuff that's, like bad for lovers of tone but good for the song. September-December we pretty much stopped altogether other than the odd session here and there because a bunch of gigs came up that we focused on.
Then over Christmas I had a crossroads moment. My dear mate, an Italian songwriter & Guitarist who I've been making music with since 2015, said he wants to do a new album this year. I can't do two projects at once - I've got a full time job and a daughter who deserves a dad that's around and able to give her the family time for evenings playing games and weekends of fun adventures in the car.
I took stock of what we had, and what we'd need to do to get it to the finish line. With my time over the holidays I took a bunch of tracks and went to town adding orchestration, textures, abstractions that pushed them towards sounding like a record, and told the band "here's the list of things still to do. We need to get them done and the songs mixed by mid March because after that, I'm going to be working on a record with my Italian friend."
It'd be fair to say it's focussed minds. Over the last 3 weeks we've got another 7 vocals down, endless backing vocals, successfully re-framed 2 songs, re-tracked some bass... I'm hopeful, and if it carries on this way I think we'll have something a bit magic.
- Messages
- 14,741
Well, I let this one die didn't I?
It all went slow for a long time. The singer had some personal stuff to work through that made things go slowly for a while - it felt like he was avoiding vocal recording. Plus, a mental defence mechanism I have; I pretend that it'll take about as many hours to do the guitars and vocals as it takes to do the bass and drum tracks. Because then I can face starting the project - if I really thought about the endless evenings & weekend days stretching out ahead of me, recording, shepherding 4 sets of egos and dreams, writing, re-writing, second guessing, dreaming new things up, editing takes together, playing with sounds... it'd be too much and I'd never want to start a recording project.
The big roadblock we had to get over was an interpersonal one. I'm hyper focused and driven to get results when it comes to recording. I've found it's the only way to really get shit done. I want to get home at night and be able to list off the things that have been accomplished on the road to the finish line. That means I think well ahead of time about what the part is going to be and how it fits into the whole song. It's not that I don't go experimenting and trying new things, it's just that when it comes down to it my instinct is to trust the decisions we made and the things that came naturally to the songs over months or years of writing, rehearsing and playing them live. The singer is not like that. At the drop of a hat, apparently on a whim, he'll chuck out everything he did before and just be like "what if the melody did this?"
And he'll do it for everything. He's got a real irreverence for any part that's already been written, and much prefers the excitement of just trying stuff in the moment. During tracking, and I mean any tracking - bass, guitar, vocals (his own and anyone else's) he'll let you get like half a take in before suggesting something different. Something that changes everything.
There's a golden rule in producing. Never say no to any idea, give it a try. So you give it a try. And you're halfway through giving it a try when the next suggestion comes. So you try that. And he seems to not realise that you've not actually tracked a full take of the first idea yet. Then you realise the new idea rubs badly against the bassline, so that'll need to be changed. Or the guitar part that I egotistically am attached to, a part that I'm proud of, spent 3 hours recording the week before and had honed over a year or playing the song live, suddenly doesn't work any more. And then I realise 2 hours have gone by and I don't have a single workable take.
At that point, I admit I started to say no, to protect past effort and decisions, going back to the original part in order to have *something* and that caused tension. It's taken me many months to start to understand how to navigate it and how our different methods can coexist.
You know what the real twat thing about it all is? The singer is great. He is inspired, and he has a vision. And sometimes following his ideas gets us to a magical place we would have otherwise missed. It just makes it all take so much longer.
So... June and July, we did about 4 tracks worth of lead vocals, bass for every track, and guitars for 12 of them. August, We started down a rabbit hole of re-inventing a few of the tracks, re-balancing them away from the live band vibe in search of something grander & cinematic. I also got an old piece of rack gear for the guitar, and went down a personal rabbit hole of looking for some unique, characterful guitar tones - the kind of stuff that's, like bad for lovers of tone but good for the song. September-December we pretty much stopped altogether other than the odd session here and there because a bunch of gigs came up that we focused on.
Then over Christmas I had a crossroads moment. My dear mate, an Italian songwriter & Guitarist who I've been making music with since 2015, said he wants to do a new album this year. I can't do two projects at once - I've got a full time job and a daughter who deserves a dad that's around and able to give her the family time for evenings playing games and weekends of fun adventures in the car.
I took stock of what we had, and what we'd need to do to get it to the finish line. With my time over the holidays I took a bunch of tracks and went to town adding orchestration, textures, abstractions that pushed them towards sounding like a record, and told the band "here's the list of things still to do. We need to get them done and the songs mixed by mid March because after that, I'm going to be working on a record with my Italian friend."
It'd be fair to say it's focussed minds. Over the last 3 weeks we've got another 7 vocals down, endless backing vocals, successfully re-framed 2 songs, re-tracked some bass... I'm hopeful, and if it carries on this way I think we'll have something a bit magic.
Great update! Thanks for sharing. I can empathize with your interpersonal struggles. That's
like 90% of a band right there. Get that right and it seems everything else will flow better
afterwards.
Also seems to me that the deadline you imposed for getting it done really focused the band.
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- 9,618
These are great to read, @Cirrus! Hopefully in the future you may remember them before starting another project and use them to navigate that project differently, or the same!
I can heavily relate to both you and your singer. My favorite part of all this music stuff is hearing something in my head and making it a reality, the pursuit of that can go to lengths surely most people would find obnoxious, obsessive and/or compulsive or all of the above. Sometimes that thing is right on the tip of my tongue and I'm just not getting it, but there's a pretty big dopamine rush in the chase itself, never mind when you actually get it. And, as you said, sometimes those pursuits lead to great music, which I feel is a tangible result that is worthy of the pursuit - when it's my own time I'm spending.
When it comes to the music part, not the vocals, I'm extremely pragmatic about getting it tracked. I don't waste much time fucking with tones and usually by the time I'm tracking it, it's a couple days after I wrote it and played the scratch guitars so I'm already 'in shape' and blast right through it and have the end goal in mind. I barely make any changes, I actually try to record final takes as soon as possible to prevent demo-itis.
Maybe what I tell myself will help you navigate the singer in the future- when I'm working on a song and I don't capture something I wanted or intended to, I move on regardless. I'll catch it on the next one. If it's the thrill of the chase the singer is into, it would do him good to continuously make new paths to chase on because chasing on the same one makes it worn so much faster.
I can heavily relate to both you and your singer. My favorite part of all this music stuff is hearing something in my head and making it a reality, the pursuit of that can go to lengths surely most people would find obnoxious, obsessive and/or compulsive or all of the above. Sometimes that thing is right on the tip of my tongue and I'm just not getting it, but there's a pretty big dopamine rush in the chase itself, never mind when you actually get it. And, as you said, sometimes those pursuits lead to great music, which I feel is a tangible result that is worthy of the pursuit - when it's my own time I'm spending.
When it comes to the music part, not the vocals, I'm extremely pragmatic about getting it tracked. I don't waste much time fucking with tones and usually by the time I'm tracking it, it's a couple days after I wrote it and played the scratch guitars so I'm already 'in shape' and blast right through it and have the end goal in mind. I barely make any changes, I actually try to record final takes as soon as possible to prevent demo-itis.
Maybe what I tell myself will help you navigate the singer in the future- when I'm working on a song and I don't capture something I wanted or intended to, I move on regardless. I'll catch it on the next one. If it's the thrill of the chase the singer is into, it would do him good to continuously make new paths to chase on because chasing on the same one makes it worn so much faster.
Cirrus
Roadie
- Messages
- 311
The most important piece of equipment in the studio; a pencil.
Singer's got great breath control and he can work a mic, closing in and backing off as needed. We haven't used a pop shield once, and plosives just haven't been an issue at all. For a bunch of the songs we've been using one of the U87 clones I built last year. I really like how it handles the sibilance range - the balance of the dynamic articulation between vowels and consonants up at like 7k, where it sounds clear and detailed without getting spitty. It also balances really well up into the breathy air over 10k, though it's a smooth mic and benefits from 2 or 3dB boosts up at like 15k to bring the air forward. The Pencil's just there as a backup to help deflect the worst of any plosives if they did happen. I've read it also reduces sibilance, but I've not noticed any particular difference in practice over the years.
We also got an Electrovoice RE11 last month. It's pretty cool, I like the RE series mics I've used, this one is no exception. Just a nice dynamic mic sound, bit of a midrange emphasis, more vintage sounding top end. It's not as flat as an RE20 but it's got some of the same gentle, refined air to it. Worked well the couple of times I've popped in on guitar cab, too.
And the rest done on an MD425. Another nice dynamic. Brighter, tighter, smooth through the mids (no big peaks like the SM58 for example), a little bit spitty at times but does really well for the few really busy tracks we've got going on for bringing out aggression.
When we're using the dynamic mics we're quite often tracking with the monitors on and no headphones, because a; I think it generally helps pitching and dynamic control and b; it's just nice to all be hearing the same thing and be able to just talk normally, rather than me wondering how loud the singer's headphones are, if he's hearing a good balance of music and his own voice, how much reverb does he want on his foldback etc etc etc. And often when tracking vocals I've found that over the course of a session, headphones can make a singer start singing louder than they otherwise would - there's a disconnect.
And as for spill from the speakers getting into the vocal mic, it's amazing how little it matters most of the time.
That said, there are always headphones around, and we do use them when we want, or when spill might be an issue. Sometimes the singer wants the intimacy or even the deliberate disconnect that headphones can provide.
Singer's got great breath control and he can work a mic, closing in and backing off as needed. We haven't used a pop shield once, and plosives just haven't been an issue at all. For a bunch of the songs we've been using one of the U87 clones I built last year. I really like how it handles the sibilance range - the balance of the dynamic articulation between vowels and consonants up at like 7k, where it sounds clear and detailed without getting spitty. It also balances really well up into the breathy air over 10k, though it's a smooth mic and benefits from 2 or 3dB boosts up at like 15k to bring the air forward. The Pencil's just there as a backup to help deflect the worst of any plosives if they did happen. I've read it also reduces sibilance, but I've not noticed any particular difference in practice over the years.
We also got an Electrovoice RE11 last month. It's pretty cool, I like the RE series mics I've used, this one is no exception. Just a nice dynamic mic sound, bit of a midrange emphasis, more vintage sounding top end. It's not as flat as an RE20 but it's got some of the same gentle, refined air to it. Worked well the couple of times I've popped in on guitar cab, too.
And the rest done on an MD425. Another nice dynamic. Brighter, tighter, smooth through the mids (no big peaks like the SM58 for example), a little bit spitty at times but does really well for the few really busy tracks we've got going on for bringing out aggression.
When we're using the dynamic mics we're quite often tracking with the monitors on and no headphones, because a; I think it generally helps pitching and dynamic control and b; it's just nice to all be hearing the same thing and be able to just talk normally, rather than me wondering how loud the singer's headphones are, if he's hearing a good balance of music and his own voice, how much reverb does he want on his foldback etc etc etc. And often when tracking vocals I've found that over the course of a session, headphones can make a singer start singing louder than they otherwise would - there's a disconnect.
And as for spill from the speakers getting into the vocal mic, it's amazing how little it matters most of the time.
That said, there are always headphones around, and we do use them when we want, or when spill might be an issue. Sometimes the singer wants the intimacy or even the deliberate disconnect that headphones can provide.
Cirrus
Roadie
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All that said, we're mostly choosing mics based on what we fancy singing through that day. And in the case of the RE11, the singer was excited when it arrived because it's a cool older mic with some mojo, so we used it purely because I wanted to capture the excitement of a new toy. The singer's voice has a great tone and I think any of the mics would have worked for any song - they'd just require different EQ.
Cirrus
Roadie
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- 311
The last post was in Feb. Ok, so to bring this up to speed...
We got the vocals recorded to 11 songs and by the end of Feb, into March, I comped the vocal takes, and then we had a couple of weeks where we listened to the comped vocal, rough mix versions to decide if we were happy with what we had and wanted to start mixing. In early March, the singer dropped the bombshell that he thought we should put strings on 6 or 7 of the tracks, and make them a unified EP rather than an album.
For fuuuuucks sake.
But. He was gonna pay for it, and I've never recorded a Violin before, and fuck it, at this point I'm along for the ride, right? So we got in touch with a great session Violin player, and she came in to a 6 hour session in late March. We only worked on one song. Because we only had a few rough ideas for what violin lines we wanted to start of trying in a few places, it took fully 6 hours of experimenting, getting suggestions from the actual player, and I have to say, it was a really good experience. I'd also just built a lunchbox 500 series pair of AML "neve" 1081 mic preamps, and a FET-47 clone, so it was a great chance to try them out in anger.
We ended up with a violin section of at times 12 parts, various melodies, harmonies, dissonance etc. It really lifted the track but it also changed it, and this was a theme with many of the songs we subsequently added strings on - The singer was right, adding strings was a good move, but it did, because we were approaching each one with no set idea, often lead them in different, unexpected directions.
We did 4 more violin sessions spread out over May, then the Violinist had a bad car crash, hit head on by a drunk driver, and was out of action for nearly two months meaning we didn't finish working with her until the beginning of August.
When I think back now, it seems hard to justify taking half a year to get through this stuff. But there was always more going on, too - gigs happened, regular practices of setlists, then there were the other sessions - the weekend afternoon re-recording guitars that had to adjust to new string parts, hours at home trying to work out what in these ever expanding DAW session files was wheat vs chaff, sessions recording backing vocals or writing new melodies... it just took that long.
We got the vocals recorded to 11 songs and by the end of Feb, into March, I comped the vocal takes, and then we had a couple of weeks where we listened to the comped vocal, rough mix versions to decide if we were happy with what we had and wanted to start mixing. In early March, the singer dropped the bombshell that he thought we should put strings on 6 or 7 of the tracks, and make them a unified EP rather than an album.
For fuuuuucks sake.
But. He was gonna pay for it, and I've never recorded a Violin before, and fuck it, at this point I'm along for the ride, right? So we got in touch with a great session Violin player, and she came in to a 6 hour session in late March. We only worked on one song. Because we only had a few rough ideas for what violin lines we wanted to start of trying in a few places, it took fully 6 hours of experimenting, getting suggestions from the actual player, and I have to say, it was a really good experience. I'd also just built a lunchbox 500 series pair of AML "neve" 1081 mic preamps, and a FET-47 clone, so it was a great chance to try them out in anger.
We ended up with a violin section of at times 12 parts, various melodies, harmonies, dissonance etc. It really lifted the track but it also changed it, and this was a theme with many of the songs we subsequently added strings on - The singer was right, adding strings was a good move, but it did, because we were approaching each one with no set idea, often lead them in different, unexpected directions.
We did 4 more violin sessions spread out over May, then the Violinist had a bad car crash, hit head on by a drunk driver, and was out of action for nearly two months meaning we didn't finish working with her until the beginning of August.
When I think back now, it seems hard to justify taking half a year to get through this stuff. But there was always more going on, too - gigs happened, regular practices of setlists, then there were the other sessions - the weekend afternoon re-recording guitars that had to adjust to new string parts, hours at home trying to work out what in these ever expanding DAW session files was wheat vs chaff, sessions recording backing vocals or writing new melodies... it just took that long.
Cirrus
Roadie
- Messages
- 311
In June, I began consolidating the 18 month old DAW sessions. There were guide recordings from the previous Jan, bunches of guitar takes representing different versions of what the song might be, recorded in disparate sessions over many months, experiments with soft synths/ sample libraries, overdub ideas from that time back before Christmas that our bassist had brought in his Grandad's old Indian "Dhol" drum, etc etc etc. After losing my production hat for a few months to the singer and his romantic Violins, I took it back and began ruthlessly building coherent, focussed arrangements out of these sessions which averaged about 140 tracks and busses.
I knew I'd have to simplify things to be able to effectively mix it all without losing my mind, so I decided that I'd run everything through my new Lunchbox. This is the bit where it's ok to just decide I'm mad. I know I'm mad, I'll accept it. I set up to re-print everything I wanted to keep through the hardware chain of 1081 preamp - SSL style compressor - JLM Pultec style EQ. My goal was to massively lower the track count, get rid of things that were just failed bullshit, and make things sound both cohesive and also kind of decent just by balancing the faders. I padded either side of the 1081 preamps so I could push them to clipping if I wanted, and went for it. I tracked with 2 kick mics. Bussed them both through one chain, balanced them, ran them hot so the peaks were just kissing the top of the 1081's headroom. A couple of DB compression, and the kind of EQ I'd have done during tracking - some sub boost and some click - and printed to one mono track. Same with the two snare mics, all the takes of guitar that were recorded with two mics on the cone, the violins recorded with an overhead and room mic. In every case, I listened to the track, thought "what's the first thing I'd do if I were mixing this?" And did that. Guitars got some rude 1k mid boost (the JLM pultec has many more frequency options than the classic). Vocals got air. Most things got some slight compression, some things got some real squashing, like the room mics.
And while I was at it, I took care to sort out things like polarity on the drum mics, time aligning things, so I'd not have to think about it again.
It took about 4 hours per song if I was really moving, so I did it all over like 6 weeks of evenings. Those 140+ track sessions got pared down into much tighter, more focussed folders of time aligned tracks that could be pulled into fresh DAW sessions for mixing.
And then when it was all done, I felt like I needed time away from it. So I deliberately took my foot off from mid-August through to early October. We had some gigs anyway, and we had a long family weekend away. Also work was really busy, and has been all year. So a factor in this whole process being slow this year is that I've also done about 250 hours of overtime between March and September. I just need more days of the week.
I knew I'd have to simplify things to be able to effectively mix it all without losing my mind, so I decided that I'd run everything through my new Lunchbox. This is the bit where it's ok to just decide I'm mad. I know I'm mad, I'll accept it. I set up to re-print everything I wanted to keep through the hardware chain of 1081 preamp - SSL style compressor - JLM Pultec style EQ. My goal was to massively lower the track count, get rid of things that were just failed bullshit, and make things sound both cohesive and also kind of decent just by balancing the faders. I padded either side of the 1081 preamps so I could push them to clipping if I wanted, and went for it. I tracked with 2 kick mics. Bussed them both through one chain, balanced them, ran them hot so the peaks were just kissing the top of the 1081's headroom. A couple of DB compression, and the kind of EQ I'd have done during tracking - some sub boost and some click - and printed to one mono track. Same with the two snare mics, all the takes of guitar that were recorded with two mics on the cone, the violins recorded with an overhead and room mic. In every case, I listened to the track, thought "what's the first thing I'd do if I were mixing this?" And did that. Guitars got some rude 1k mid boost (the JLM pultec has many more frequency options than the classic). Vocals got air. Most things got some slight compression, some things got some real squashing, like the room mics.
And while I was at it, I took care to sort out things like polarity on the drum mics, time aligning things, so I'd not have to think about it again.
It took about 4 hours per song if I was really moving, so I did it all over like 6 weeks of evenings. Those 140+ track sessions got pared down into much tighter, more focussed folders of time aligned tracks that could be pulled into fresh DAW sessions for mixing.
And then when it was all done, I felt like I needed time away from it. So I deliberately took my foot off from mid-August through to early October. We had some gigs anyway, and we had a long family weekend away. Also work was really busy, and has been all year. So a factor in this whole process being slow this year is that I've also done about 250 hours of overtime between March and September. I just need more days of the week.
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Breaking through deadlines/timelines and going way over budget is vital. Nothing good gets accomplished
apart from doing both of those things.
Appreciate seeing the update, Cirrus. Life has this sneaky way of never really getting out of our way.
Good on you all for sticking to the grind and persevering.
apart from doing both of those things.
Appreciate seeing the update, Cirrus. Life has this sneaky way of never really getting out of our way.
Good on you all for sticking to the grind and persevering.
- Messages
- 1,245
Congrats to staying on track! Hope everyone is satisfied with the final results ;~)) Keep on keepin' on!!!
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