Day Two - Creepy guitar noises

Today was a short session. We added some final touches on the first song.  Highlights included percussion, acoustic guitars and a really crazy electric guitar effect (as depicted below).

Andy sent his Telecaster through a his Line 6 Verbzilla set to "Octo" mode.  The mix was set to 100% wet, and the signal was split into two amps; a Fender DeVille and a Valvetech Hayseed 30.   On the way to the DeVille the there was a tremolo pedal set to a slow-shallow pulse.

The result was a lush creeping noise that complimented the acoustic guitar parts nicely.



To capture this super strange sound we placed a partition between the amps and on the Hayseed mic'ed with an AKG 414 set to cardioid pattern slightly off-axis (to help reduce high frequencies).  The DeVille was mic'ed with the MXL 990 also set off-axis.  On headphones the sound dances back and forth.  Lots of fun.


A lot of guitar pedals sport stereo outputs.  But as many of you guitar players know all too well, they're rarely used.  Like it or not it's just not realistic to take two amps to a gig (as much as most guitar players would love this).  Not only that, but in a venue the audience will NEVER be able to hear the stereo effect.  The studio is a whole different ballgame.  By recording multiple amps to separate tracks and panning them hard left and right come mix time you can create all kinds of swirly tones.  Don't worry too much if you don't have two of the same amp.  The whole idea is to make an interesting sound, not a perfectly uniform one.

This trick also works with delays, phasers, flangers, tremolos and just about any other pedal with a stereo out.  For extra credit try piping something OTHER than a guitar to the stereo effects (keyboards, vocals, accordion..... hmmm..... now there's an idea....)   

Till next time,
- Charlie

Side note:  I'm listening to a lot of Lhasa de Sela right now, it's some of the best creepy-type music I've ever heard.  Like a multilingual female Tom Waits.

Studio Mascot

Day Uno

Last night we finally started proper tracking.  We're using a borrowed studio space that belongs to a friend of ours.  It took several days of moving stuff in, but the space is really shaping up.  There are now drums, amps, and keyboards as far as the eye can see. The room is really live, but not overly bright.  It reminds me of my old studio where we tracked The Guest.  I think it's really going to compliment the songs.

So far it's been really nice having a place separate from my studio to go work in.  I may not know where everything is all the time, and some stuff may not work right, but recording is about working around limitations and finding creative solutions so no complaints.

Speaking of things not working though, we spent a good deal of time sorting out the studio's wiring before we could even get started.  I have a feeling we'll be doing a bit of soldering before the session is wrapped up.  I'm looking forward to burnt fingertips.

One thing that's a little different is on this first day of tracking we used the onboard preamps from the Steinberg  MR816CSX interfaces at the studio.  I wasn't really sure how this was going to go, I'm used to API and Neve style preamps on all my important tracks.  But I vowed to never be a gear snob, if it sounds good it IS good.  Sure enough, the onboard pres sounded really great on these basic tracks.  I was beyond surprised.  I still plan on schlepping over my external pres for vocals and a few other things but I'm fairly certain we could track the entire record with these and it would sound fantastic.

The highlight of the evening had to be Andy playing a BRIGHT neon-yellow/green 80's guitar for one of his overdubs.  It was lying around the studio and probably was hidden in a closet since the Reagan administration.  Keep rockin'.

Here is a listing of all the mics we used last night.  The studio had an Audix drum mic pack already, and seeing as how the i5 is amazing on just about everything, we thought we'd give them a try.  That D6 is crazy-deep sounding.  The monitors were bouncing like a low-rider every time the kick drum played. We also tried a LDC on snare drum instead of the standard SM57.  I don't like to do this usually, not because it sounds bad, but because drummers tend to hit the mic... and it's an expensive mic. Fortunately, if it got hit this time I had nobody to blame but myself.


Drums:
Custom Ludwig maple kit w/ Pork Pie Black Beauty snare (leather wallet dampener) . 20" and 22" Dream Cymbals and Zildjian 14" new beat hi hats.

Outside Kick - Audix D6
Beater-side Kick - Audix i5
Snare Top - AKG C414-TL
Snare Bottom - Shure SM57
Rack Tom - Beyerdynamic M201
Floor Tom - Sennhieser MD421
Overheads - Oktava MC012 (Oktavamodded w/ cardiod capsules)
Hi-hats - Audix ADX-51
Mono Room - MXL 990

Guitars:
MiM Telecaster > Line 6 Verbzilla > Amp > Beyerdynamic M201 / AKG C414-TL/ MXL 990 (room)
Dannelectro > 3 distortion pedals >  Line 6 Verbzilla > Amp > Beyerdynamic M201 / AKG C414-TL/ MXL 990 (room)
Neon Yellow 80's Shredder Guitar > Distortion > Boss DD-3 Digital Delay > Amp > Beyerdynamic M201 / AKG C414-TL/ MXL 990 (room)

Acoustic Guitar > Oktava MC012

Bass:
Fender P-Bass into a DI (I plan on reamping later)

So that was it for our first night, we wrapped up around 3am. One more thing, since we're still playing with formatting and all that good stuff, if you have suggestions or ideas to make the blog more interesting, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.  We would love to hear from you.  Thanks for reading.
-Charlie

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