8.20.07 - drum miking

I should like to add that in the last couple of sessions I have worked on with TJ, we have used more microphones on the drums than I have ever used in any other session. They also end up sounding totally awesome. An audix D6 and shure KSM 32 on the resonant side of the kick, behringer B1 on the beater side, shure SM7 on top of snare, 57 underneath, tom mics (i forget), KM84's on cymbals, and SM69 on overhead room. whoa. 14-16 tracks of drums. And it sounded GREAT. weird.

wanli/this car up, 8/07

I've been busy lately.

I've finished some work with a band called Wanli that I tracked a couple of weeks ago. They took the basic tracks home with them to do overdubs, and came back to mix with me at silver sonya. Two days for five songs. I think they came out really well. The guitars ended up being really dark and had all been recorded with a close mic as well as a room mic, so there was a lot of decision making when it came to mix time about what would stay and what would go. I ended up using almost exclusively the close-mic'd tracks. Some eq with those neve and ssl plugins at silver sonya managed to breathe some life into them. The bass, which had to be re-tracked by them (there was a problem where the clocking signal from the computer bled into the bias frequency of the tape machine, the same thing happened with aloha), sounded awesome. I'm not sure when it will be out but i know they want to have it to sell at shows when they start playing out again in winter time. So that was the wednesday and thursday before last weekend. Then my band played a show at a school in Arlington with our friends Slumber and the Epochs. that kicked ass. Then sunday i started a tracking session for an indie pop band from boston called This Car Up. We spent sunday through wednesday in the big room, then got everything transferred and worked in silver sonya and its inspiration chamber (isolation booth) from that point on. It's the first time i've kind of bonded with clients, and it made the job even more enjoyable for me. They're nice dudes and things were sounding great when i was finished with my part of the job. I think i might go down to check stuff out because their friends from boston were coming down to record horns today. Next weekend i am recording drums, again through silver sonya. Then, i might be tracking for the next Death By Sexy record.

8.2.07 - aloha

This was a pretty monumental experience for me. It was the first project I've ever worked on that label money paid for. The band had two days scheduled to track at inner ear before they had to catch a plane to Singapore this afternoon. They are working on an EP to be released on polyvinyl sometime in November. We tracked five songs to the 2 inch and i transferred them to DP at the end of our time last night. I'd say over all things went extraordinarily smoothly, especially given that the band lives in all different states and can only get together to tour and record, which means most of these songs had never been played by the band as a unit. Tony brought in a cd of demos he had made at his place in rochester and everyone would kind of sit down and work away at it until there was a song there, and then i would record. I think if it were any other band or a group of less talented musicians, this formula would never work, but success in their work process has been proven by their last two records, and i can't wait to hear what overdubs and mixing will do with this already awesome music.