What Did You Work On Today? 11-12-05

[cgarges]

So, what was it?

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[joelpatterson]

Every month in this old mansion in Vermont, there's these week-long piano conference/retreat thingees, where about two dozen people get together to drink, talk, have piano master classes, drink, take lessons, drink, and at the end of it there's a concert, which I record and sell CDs to the drinkers--I mean players.

Tonight was one of those concerts. The same people come back, year after year, so it's kind of like your own private hotel in the Catskills, except it's not in the Catskills and it's not a hotel, but the cameraderie and sense of occasion and familiar faces make it seem like one big celebration. They're called Sonatas (this was the November Sonata) and if you're a full-time CNN junkie you've seen the place profiled.

One of my gigs that I stumbled into at the right time. I suggest everyone get one.

[soundguy]

I finished working on this thing today, took me about two years to build it because Im a retard.



Its an 8x2 mixer with 312's on each channel and 325's on the busses, 1/2 the channels have early 70's api input transformers and half the channels have late 70's api input transformers. Additionally, the input channels are also split into stereo pairs with different types of caps for a different tone, its not 8 identical inputs. The cross talk isnt the best, but its a passive mix buss and this is my first attempt at building a mixer completely from scratch, Im happy with it for now. The api cards, minus the opamp and transformer, were completely gutted and restuffed with an optimized circuit and some of them started life as blank cards that needed %100 population. Each channel has mic/line impedance selection, a -20dB t pad, polarity invert, phantom power, panner, input gain control and buss mute. The busses are fed from each channel's output transformer and each channel also has a direct out. There is an additional meter buffer circuit to properly drive the 500 ohm meters which Im told could date to the 40's (dont know for sure though), they have mondo cool ballistics, totally not VU's at all, closer to PPM's, very fast meters. The metering is fully isolated from the audio path, but it is only setup to meter the busses, not the individual channels. The dual concentric pot under the meter is the master L/R fader. I built it pretty much for tracking and for that I think it will be just fine. Cant wait to try it on a session after thanksgiving.

dave

[junkyardtodd]

goofed around, trying to write some new stuff....given my usual work patterns, i should be back in the attic by summer.

reading tape op, especially stuff like the ethan johns interview, and you all talking about Antony n the Johnsons, has got me really wanting to track more stuff live, and with less loud and obnoxious drums, so i am keeping that in mind during the writing process. especially the idea of recording keeper vox during the tracking, while i play bass.

yes, most of what i do is inside my head.....the actual hands on time is pretty small. unless you ask my wife.

[JGriffin]

--practiced a little for a show next weekend -- I'm adding a Eubie Blake standard called "memories of you" to the set.

--Saw "Good Night and Good Luck" in a theatre where every speaker but the center channel failed during the trailers. Saw lots of cool old mics though.

--Went to closing night of a show (Tony Kushner's "Bright Room Called Day") that I sound-designed, picked up some of my gear they had used. Amazing bit: I was paid the same amount of money the lighting designer was paid. That's pretty huge when a small theatre company "gets" that sound can be just as important to a production as the lights, set, costumes etc.

...the Eubie Blake song is featured in the Kushner play, which is why i'm adding it to the set...some of the cast members will be at the gig. I can be silly that way sometimes.

[Rigsby]

Comped some clarinet and kazoo tracks for one of the tracks from my record, then went down and strimmed the allotment while Mrs Rigs dug some turf and pulled out some awesome parsnips.

[chris harris]

I helped (as much as I could) my brother come to grips with the end of his marriage and the splitting up of his family.

Then, I mixed a show with no touring bands and only 2 locals who decided that since the bill was so small, they'd play an hour and a half each to 35 of their closest friends.

[GLEA]

Spent the day trying to track down a fault in my set up. Turned out to be a couple of bad modules in one of my patch bays. I was afraid it might be a problem with my 2408 or board. All better now. Maybe I can make some music now with out being bugged...

[MASSIVE Mastering]

Helped rip down a false proscenium after a two-week run of "Grease!" then smashed the hell out of a project containing the instructions "Smash the hell out of this."

[mjau]

Soundguy...that thing looks pretty damned spiffy.

I played a little bit with my writing partner, working on some bass and guitar parts for a handful of songs we'll record. Also took a walk in the late afternoon on what has been, for my money, a perfect autumn day.

[Karlos the Jackal]

Continued being unable to play a Dm chord on a Bb banjo.

--K

[blunderfonics]

I spent my weekend retracking guitars on a few songs I tracked a few months back with a punkish metal band. After hearing the tracks I did with their amps they decided that they sounded 'too slick' and 'not gross enough'. We wound up using a little Ampeg J12r and various distortion/fuzz pedals.

We also set up a couple of Rube Goldberg type pedal chains into the Ampeg Jet and a Marshal mini stack and had ourselves a noise freakout for the end fade of a song that needed to end in total disintegration.

[kayagum]

I should have watched a DVD of a show that I'm playing in May (replacing a musician)...

... but instead hiked in the mountains, visiting my brother who lives in Colorado Springs. Much more productive. I think everyone needs to go out in the middle of nowhere to clear the ears.

[MoonPool]

Saturday - I recorded a vocal performance of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem for a compilation of late 19th century dark poetry. The idea for this project is to use members of the local dark music scene and cross pollinate between bands, so singer from band A recites while keyboard player from band B and Guitarist from band C do atmospheric backings. So far, so good.
Sunday - as no one is making any money from the aforementioned project, and since this band travelled a ways to do this session, I recorded an 8 minute piece of theirs. We tracked guide vox, piano and percussion live, then overdubbed some additional percusssion, a lead vocal and a choir of two female vocals on three tracks.
Topped off the night on Sunday by catching the last half of Bauhaus's set at the Orpheum. All in all, a great weekend!

[carlsaff]

Just wrapped up a 6-song EP by an emo-type guitar band and am now transferring the contents of two CDs of stuff that will eventually be released as some kind of comedy record.