Throwing Heads

This past Friday and Saturday saw six of the ten songs on the upcoming CD mixed to completion.  Another day of mixing with maybe a half-day for mastering and this thing will be in the can and ready for consumption.

We’re off to the studio this morning to record as much of the CD as possible. We played through the material last night and we’re feeling good. We plan on tweeting some pics from the studio if possible. As always, thanks for your support!

We’ve booked some time next month at Invisible Sound Studios in Baltimore to record our debut album. We’ll post more information here soon.

Things are moving a little slow at the moment. But as we go along, things keep sounding better and better. We’re all learning a lot and Ryan is getting very good at using the tools he has to get a good sound. I left our last session feeling unhappy with everything I played that night. After a few days away from it and listening back this morning to what we recorded, the parts I played are sounding a lot better to me. So here’s hoping we can finish up the overdubs and move on to another song asap!

Tonight I am heading over to Ryan’s to officially setup my drums. The birch Mapex drums do their job very well and I do appreciate not having to haul my kit back and forth every week for rehearsal. But my Pork Pie kit didn’t cost $3k just to look pretty. I miss my instrument and NEED to be playing it. So we’re going to set it all up and get some sounds this evening. I can’t wait!

-James

I took some better photos with a much better camera and with better lighting. It’s just better all around… and so is the drum sound now that we actually spent some time trying different mics and “getting sounds” rather just blindly pointing them at a drum.

I spent the weekend cleaning up the room where we practice.  Said room also doubles as our studio.  Eric helped me last night to vacuum and move out some of the bigger trash (such as the TURTLE.)

Since the clean probably won’t last long, here are some photos of the current state of things:

1. Do not use a Presonus Firepod as a microphone preamp. Instead, burn it and use less microphones. You’ll be happier in the long run.
2. Turn off tube microphones when you’re done with them. Tubes don’t last very long in a hot little metal tube – especially if they’re left on for three days straight.
3. If you have a 2-year-old, or other small child, and some piece of gear won’t turn on – or even worse – it lights up but doesn’t actually DO anything… check to see if the voltage selector is set to the voltage which is actually used in your country.

So with those points in mind, here’s a rundown of how things are working on the technical side. This is more for my benefit than anything else, but somebody somewhere might find it interesting.

Microphones/Inputs for Basic Tracking

Drums (which I usually put up from the top down):

• Overheads – Stereo pair of Peavey PVM 160 small-diaphragm condenser mics. Into channels 1 & 2 of my modified SMPro Audio PR8 mic pre.
• Toms (10″, 12″ & 16″ Mapex M-Birch kit) – Sennheiser e604 mics clipped to the rims. Channels 3, & 5 of the SMPro Audio PR8 mic pre. 12″ Tom which should be on #4 is actually going through a little Yamaha mixer because channel 4 is acting up on the PR8.
• Snare (Loud, little white Pork Pie thing) – Audix D6 on top. I’m not sure if it rejects as much high-hat as my Beta57. We’ll have to experiment with that. Snare into Channel 6 on the PR8.
• Kick (22″ Mapex M-Birch) – Shure Beta 52. Always my first choice on any kick drum, but we’re gonna do a shootout with James’ Audix D6 for the next batch of songs. Kick into Channel 7 on the PR8. Kick & mic are covered with a blue moving blanket to cut down on leakage from cymbals and other stuff.
• Room mic – MXL V69ME Tube mic. This is on a stand about chest height sitting maybe six feet from the drums. May or may not actually be pointed at the drums. This is running into Channel 1 on a Presonus Firepod (see warning above.)

Bass:

Fender Precision bass through Ampeg SVT head & 4×10 cabinet – Shitty CAD large-diaphragm condenser pretty much dead-center on the upper right speaker, as close to the grill as the shock-mount allows. Into Channel 8 on the PR8.

Guitar:

Les Paul through 5150-II with 5150 4×12 cabinet – Shure SM57. MIc is on top left speaker off axis pointing at the seam where the dust cap meets the cone. Very close to the grill cloth. Mic is plugged into a Chameleon Labs 7602 mic pre. EQ is disengaged.

Live Vocals:

Ryan is on a beat-up SM58 going into Channel 2 on the presonus (not a mortal sin, cuz the chance of keeping any of the live vocals is super-slim.) Eric is on another SM58 (I think) going into channel 3 on the presonus.

How does it get in there?

Somehow this stuff has to get into the computer. My main interface is a MOTU 2408Mk3. I also have a MOTU 1224 slaved to that, and an Apogee Rosetta AD which also serves as my master clock.

Channels 1-8 of the SMPro Audio PR8 go directly into channels 1-8 on the MOTU 2408. This includes the lone Yamaha channel which is doing back-up for the broken channel 4.

The Chameleon Labs pre goes into the left input of the Apogee Rosetta. This in turn feeds the SPDIF input on the 2408.

The rest (this time being three channels of gritty Presonus garbage) go into the corresponding channels on the 1224.

Since all of the audio routes through the MOTU system, I can use the CueMix software to get headphone mixes going. I use all eight outputs on the 1224 to feed a Behringer headphone amp. The main mix goes to the main input of the headphone amp. The four stereo pairs from the 1224 go to each of the four AUX ins on the headphone amp. This allows me to mix straight microphone signal in with the playback from the computer. This is beneficial because the CueMix doesnt’t let you adjust the level of the audio that you’ve already recorded – only what’s going into the computer, so you usually end up either not being able to hear yourself sing or else your guitar is 700X louder than what you’re trying to put a solo on.

What’s missing?

1. Compressors – While it’s totally possible to record without them, there are certain things I know from the get-go. I’m gonna compress the kick and the snare. I’m gonna compress the bass. With something decent on the live vocal channels some that might even be able to make the cut. I’d love to be able to compress some or all of that stuff going into the computer, but since it’s a miracle that I have as much gear as I do I don’t foresee any compressors showing up at my place any time soon.

2. Thought – If I had thought about it, I would have run the bass mic through the 7602 pre. I don’t see much chance of me keeping a live guitar track when I’m also concentrating on running the recorder and singing my parts at the same time. I also have four mic preamps on that little Yamaha board which would have negated the use of the Presonus at all. It’s just tricky to wire it up since it doesn’t have any submix outputs.

Overdu(m)bs

• Guitars: Attempt 1 – This soon-to-be aborted attempt involved using the same randomly placed microphone on the 5150 cabinet that had been used for basic tracking. While not readily apparent as a single-track, stacking up four of them made it clear that the mic wasn’t getting any of the high sizzly stuff that I love the 5150 for. It also made my other amp sound like an old cardboard box. I put down four rhythm guitars with this setup. 2x through the 5150 and 2x through the Windsor head. All through the same cabinet. These can be heard on the first batch of rough mixes which no one outside of the band is gonna hear any time soon.
• Guitars: Attempt 2 – Still without a 2nd Engineer (usually known better as “drummer” or “bass player”) to help me with getting a proper guitar sound, I devised a make-shift plan. I recorded clean guitar into the DI on the 7602 preamp. This raw, dry, guitar track was then routed to an output on the 2408 and plugged straight into the 5150. I then looped the playback and went about my normal operation of getting a guitar sound. This involves arming whatever microphone I’m currently checking in the CueMix console and then routing it to GarageHeadphones. I then stick the headphones (which are cranked to the max to try to get them louder than the deafening guitar stacks) on and go about moving the microphone in front of the speakers. Straight on, off axis, on the dust-cap, on the cone, near the surround, right up close, farther back, how about a different speaker… There’s always a spot that sounds best -that has MY guitar sound. But it’s never the same spot. That process is then repeated for the other head and cabinet.
• Vocals – Attempt 1: MXL V69ME. Same setup from basic tracks. Bad idea.
• Guitars – Attempt 3: For attempt 2, one cabinet was in the garage on the floor. The other was in the studio room on the floor. For this attempt, both amps are in the garage and are up on chairs to get them decoupled from the concrete. Same pattern as before to get sounds. Add a 2nd step to compare both mics together to find that dirty, sort of phase-y grind that I love and which I got totally by accident on the first Stryder CD. Add a 3rd step (and microphone) by putting the other MXL V69ME (which was set to work @ 240V by persons who will go unnamed) about 18 or 20 inches out from the cabinets, kinda centered between the two, with the diaphragm actually pointing into the space between the two cabinets. Adding this mic to the headphone mix is very much like having your own personal “Too Fast For Love” tone button. One second it’s not there and the next it would take an army to wipe the grin off your face. Maybe I should also mention – the 5150 mic is always feeding the 7602 preamp. The others go into the PR8. The only thing recorded thus far with this setup was a quick rough pass through Bring It On so Eric could lay down his vocals.
• Bass: Attempt 2 – We slowed down the basic track to Bring it On and the drums actually sounded A-OK. We did it by stretching the space between the samples, so the pitch of everything is unchanged. All the same, we didn’t want to keep the stretched-out bass, so Eric quickly played through the song one time with the setup from basic tracking (cheap CAD mic through the PR8) although we did go through the headphone/mic-moving check to get a proper sound.
• Vocals: Attempt 2 – Eric came by last night to do his vocals on three or four songs. We started out the same as with my Camel’s Back vocals – MXL V96ME into the PR8. After he’d done all of his vocals on Camel’s Back I remembered that I wanted to try vocals through the 7602, so we repatched and he did one of the choruses again. For just two tracks, it’s not really a world of difference – but there IS an audible difference. Eric described it as being “kinda more analog, if that even makes sense.” And it does make sense to me, so it’ll be what we use for vocals, bass, or whatever other overdubs are needed. I know from experience that as you stack up more tracks with it you get a sort of build-up in certain frequency ranges which just happen to all be in the right spots. Must be why I paid six times more for its single-channel than I did for all 8 channels of the PR8.
• Guitars: Attempt 3a – As it was late last night when I wanted to try to mix some of the stuff Eric had put vocals on, I had to use my PodXT when the inspiration struck to put some leads on Camel’s Back. I then put two extra rhythm guitars on Bring it On to go with the dual-amp single take I had done earlier. One of the Pod rhythms was done with a JCM-800 model and the other with the 5150-II model. I panned the Pod guitars to one side and the real guitars to the other side. Today, I can’t remember which is which and I can’t tell except for when it hits the solo and I know that I bunged a bend on the real amps. Kinda sad considering that the money for the PodXT wouldn’t even buy all three microphones I’m using for the real guitar setup.

- Ryan