The big secret.

[Comte de St Germain]

Is having a band that comes in fully rehearsed, prepared, energized, tuned, in tune, rocking and excited about the whole process.

13 songs of basic tracks (drums, bass and rhythm guitars) in 16 hours. This includes set up, minor punch fixes and an edit or two.

It's absolutely smoking.

Today we start doing vocals.

The drums are kicking, but then again the drummer is one of my regular session drummers so I knew they would. Two high hats though, panned hard left and right, very strange but effective.

[lebouche]

Its great to be inspired...
maybe you could post some when youre done. Sounds like its going to be exciting.

[Fulcrum]

IIRC that was more or less how The Beatles did their first record for Parlophone in 1962. Vocals occurred at the same time as everything else though.

Keep us posted.

[Comte de St Germain]

It's great to have a band that you've worked with and watched grow into the kind of band who say: "We want to do a document of what we are live" and know they can pull it off. What is lost in the tweezing is hopefully made up for by the way it feels. So far it's going great.
Tonite as i spend the evening cleaning up amp hiss from here and a string thwump for there I noticed that the guitar intro for one of the songs is awesomely augmented by the sound of the acoustic sound of the electric guitar in the left far room mic. That my friends will stay.

[slabrock]

Is having a band that comes in fully rehearsed, prepared, energized, tuned, in tune, rocking and excited about the whole process.

13 songs of basic tracks (drums, bass and rhythm guitars) in 16 hours. This includes set up, minor punch fixes and an edit or two.

I thoroughly agree.

If the band is good and motivated enough, you can even let them play live and forget about the leakage. After all, that was how all of the records were made until Les Paul invented double tracking, and most of the records until late 1960's.

Besides, there's a magical quality in tracking fast and live. Check out Dr. Feelgood's classic Down By The Jetty, one of the records that is more than ten times better than the sum of its parts. At least in my books. The playing is rough, even crude, but the feeling... huh!
:D :D

[malice]

I like two things when recording bands :

1) good band well rehursed and that have experience playing together.

2) good musicians (preferably not "session musicians" per se) that haven't played a lot together and don't know the songs yet.

malice

[eagan]

Reading this, I had a thought. Especially after Malice's last comment.

I was thinking, as fun and entertaining (in a gallows humor kind of way) as the Mixerman Diaries saga of Bitchslap was, the polar opposite would be a beautiful thing. A running narrative of project sessions where really great, cool, intelligent, skillful, creative people get together and just pull magic out of thin air.


JLE

[Comte de St Germain]

Last night was guitar solo night for the "George" of the band. We had a blast, he's a gut player and not as concerned with technique as he is with emotion. At one point we hit a bit of dead air and were chasing a line that didn't quite gel so I fired up iTunes and let some Robert Quine stuff fly into the air.

A few takes later he had it wrapped.


I did notice on one tune the snare signal path had a glitch in it that i will have to fix (after i track down the problem). That's the issue with tracking everything at once is that if something is just a little off it's hard to hear. Tomorrow we are going to reamp a "molded" snare in the hopes we can get back some of what a bad patch connection lost.

Today we finish vocals, Bvox and go on to the "John" lead guitar session after dinner.

[Johnny]

The drums are kicking, but then again the drummer is one of my regular session drummers so I knew they would. Two high hats though, panned hard left and right, very strange but effective.
Does he set up symmetrically a la Mike Mangini? I do something like that--cable hat to the right and small hats to my left. I rarely take that setup to a session because I figure the producer and engineer will be turned off. But I play better open; I hate having to cross my arms for more intricate patterns (I'm not fully ambidextrous--yet). What do y'all think?

[dikledoux]

...But I play better open; I hate having to cross my arms for more intricate patterns (I'm not fully ambidextrous--yet). What do y'all think?

Open-handed is the way to go IMO. It almost forces you to be more ambidextrous and it can be a challenge (unless you wimp out and put your ride cymbal over your hats). But your snare hits become way stronger - more consistent. Seems to be easier to balance the drumset as an instrument.

dik

[Comte de St Germain]

The second HH is to the right and he has it clamped shut. I spent a little time prepping for the mix stage of the project and in one of the tunes the drums just flip over when he does the HH swap. It's cool but weird.

I've got 12 songs to mix and six days to do it.

[malice]

I've got 12 songs to mix and six days to do it.

Is this a problem ?

malice

[John Suitcase]

It's funny how people try tracking 'live' and find that the groove and energy is better. I don't know where the tendecy to record one instrument at a time came from. I think it perhaps has to do with small home studios without enough inputs.

In all my life, as a musician and as an engineer, I've only been involved in a handful of sessions where we tracked the drums, then added bass, guitar, etc. I almost always track the whole band at once. I may go back and overdub a 2nd or 3rd guitar, and we may have to edit takes, etc., but the basics are always done as a group.

If I had only 2 inputs, I would track the drums, then everything else, but if you have even 4, and a little mixer, you can do at least drums, bass and guitar, and it'll sound that much better.

[malice]

It's funny how people try tracking 'live' and find that the groove and energy is better. I don't know where the tendecy to record one instrument at a time came from.


The eighties ?

malice

[Mixerpuppet]

Is this a problem ?

malice

Not on a 4-Track :)



Speaking of Drummers...

Im left handed playing a right handed kit and realized my left foot was overpowering the hihat or the other kik pedal and I though it was because Im left handed...

Come to find out its from having to push the clutch in while stuck in traffic...

Anyhow...

I was reading an article from 1999 on how the Foo Fighters did better recording when they spent less time overthinking and being anal about all the details.

Trying to be more organic in an over processed world...

In addition to the Comte's Big Secret...

I think about how "Studios" take a band and their music and hack it apart into compartments and then try to glue it back together again trying to achieve a natural sound.

Makes as much logical sense as breaking up a family on purpose and expecting them to more functional afterword...

Doesn't work with an orchestra either...

The Comte AFAIK.... doesn't use alot of isolation which tends to capture some "live vibe energy"...

:Thumbsup:

"apparently I was typing slower than a suitcase"

[John Suitcase]

The eighties ?

malice

You're probably right! I remember reading about sessions where the drums were recorded separately, to the point of tracking the kick and snare, then going back to addd tom rolls, then going back to overdub cymbals.

Of course, nowadays, you could just replace the drums etc, I suppose...

[Comte de St Germain]

I can get as much isolation as I want...

In this case we were going for a sound on the drums that were required to be roomy so we threw the amps in the iso rooms and kept everyone out on the floor with headphone mixers. They actually dug the headphones so we went with it.

To me tracking things separate is all about (engineer) control and personally rock and roll isn't about control.

The band I'm working with now is doing their second record, they weren't quite up to it on the first one and we "produced" it a little which set the stage for this record. They are road dogs, they play every single day and although they still have the sloppy punk attitude the rhythm tracks are rocking. This is the record they wanted to make, live, minimalistic and quick.


Is this a problem ?


It wouldn't be if this was all I had to mix. I've been tracking the project for 8 days straight at this point and my last day off was New years day. So, no problem, when I get done on time I get three days of nothing.

[Comte de St Germain]

The mixes were FTPd to NYC for mastering last night.

I'm beat.

13 days for 12 songs.

I like it.

[otek]

I did a record like that about a year and a half ago. 12 songs in 12 days.

Found out yesterday, that this album (which was self-financed at the time), recently got the lads a record deal.

So, now they wanna do the upcoming "label record" with me.

Gotta love those projects. :D

[Stick]

I got to mix an indie pop/rock record (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=201063810&s=143441), 10 tunes in 5 days, then tweaks for a few hours over the weekend. These were big thick arrangements (I also had to do the vocal pitch fixing too)... it was pretty brutal... starting that second tune of the day at 4 or 5 pm was hard. But that feeling after it was done and turned out good was nice. Also helped that Alan Yoshida mastered the next day...

[malice]

I did an Ep like very fast. 6 songs, 3 days, including mixing (the last day)

You realy feel alive when you do that

malice