First time producing a record ...

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bplr
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First time producing a record ...

Post by bplr » Tue Dec 27, 2005 1:55 pm

So I've been lurking in the background of TapeOp world for a few years now without saying much and I've learned a ton from it. I thought I'd share what I've done with the tips, knowledge and ideas you guys have spread. We're getting ready to start a second record.

http://www.bplr.com/bill_patton.html

It was done entirely in my apartment through the Digi002 mostly with cheap mics (Oktava MK012/Studio Projects C1/SM57/Crown PZM etc ...).

Thanks
Justin

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Post by I'm Painting Again » Tue Dec 27, 2005 2:18 pm

sounds absolutely beautiful!

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Post by bplr » Mon Jan 09, 2006 7:03 pm

Yeah, I was surprised, actually, at how good it came out. Since that record, I've acquired a mess of new gear. I modded some Octava MK012s, got a Presonus Eureka, RNC/RNP, just finished building a Hamptone JFET, picked up a Fender Princeton Reverb ... getting excited to see how it'll all fit together. My only real complaint about the finished product is that mastering removed a touch too much low end.
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sigrant
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Mr. Bill

Post by sigrant » Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:26 am

Hi Justin. The tracks sound great. Is this thing actually available somewhere? ...or is Bill just selling 'em at shows?. sg
Last edited by sigrant on Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by will.record.for.food » Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:41 am

Sounds VERY VERY nice!

Very full lush sounds and good musicianship to boot.
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Re: Mr. Bill

Post by bplr » Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:06 pm

sigrant wrote: Is this thing actually available somewhere? ...or is Bill just selling 'em at shows?. sg
Bill just got another small run printed, but they're pretty limited. If anyone is interested in a copy, you can shoot him an email at bill@billpatton.net. Sigrant probably gets one for free because you recorded JW and the DA. Right now he's just selling them at shows. Anyone who wants to talk about a record/distribution deal is likely to get one at a greatly reduced rate.

But I'm just the dude that put the mics up, so you gotta talk to Bill.

Justin
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Post by Osumosan » Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:48 am

I have no problem with the low end myself. Can you tell us about how you mixed this? The Distant sounds are plate-y sounding. Am I wrong?

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Post by jeddypoo » Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:56 pm

wow, that does sound great! Great music, too, not even really my bag, but it's really good.
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Post by bplr » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:50 pm

Osumosan wrote:I have no problem with the low end myself. Can you tell us about how you mixed this? The Distant sounds are plate-y sounding. Am I wrong?
To be honest, I don't really remember much about the actual settings. I'm not a huge fan of plate verbs, personally, but I might have put some on backing electric guitar stuff just to put it on a different plane than everything else (though it was all treated with a little spring verb on the black face Fender Princeton Reverb he was playing through). We met every Monday for about 6 months and worked 8-10 hour days. Everything was mixed in PTLE. I had issues with the bass in his voice getting out of hand because it crossed over with the guitar, especially with his nylon string. At about 140, it would get very boomy. So almost everything has a little notching with a low shelf below that. All the mixing was done with the Renaissance plugs. REQ, RComp, RVerb. We tracked in my bedroom, which doesn't have the greatest sound, so I'd mask it a little bit with a different room sound in RVerb. The whole time I was concerned with doing too much, so after a few months of compressing, verbing, eqing, we sat down and pulled everything back about 50-60% and figured we'd let mastering take care of it.

One of the funny things on the album was our problem with busses going by at 2-3pm every day. I live across the street from an elementary school. There was a lot of chopping and mousework done on the songs with multiple harmonies, like the cover of 'Fairies Wear Boots'. At one point a bus drove by while we were tracking the super low harmony. It happened to be in key, and we cut it in to handle a super low note that was hard to reach. Maybe we should have given the bus credit for that one note ...

Mixing 'I Put a Spell on You' was probably the most interesting. We brought in a girl that sang a very quiet Medusa-like backup, barely in the mix most of the time. Theres a portable vibraphone and toy piano going on in the background, but the toy piano was in really shitty condition and pretty out of tune on some notes. Plus some keys had to be lifted before pressing down because they wouldn't pop back up. The solution turned out to be running it outboard to a Boss GT3 that I've since gotten rid of. I distorted the crap out of it with one of those cheap digital distortion patches and EQ'd it a bit. Then gave it a long fade to the end.

'Devil Went Down to Georgetown' was almost a disaster. We were almost done when I had one of those nauseous moments when you can't find a track. I was having trouble with PT dropping files in mysterious places and I deleted the main mic track. We had a secondary mic up at the time which was really noisy due to a bad cable. Instead of retracking we just decided to go with it, masking it with verb and filler guitar. Then gave it a little backwards vocals and guitar at the end.

We went to Mel Dettmer to get it mastered. She's a badass, and she definitely softened the highs a bit, brought everything forward a bit and cut back the low end, which I have mixed feelings about. Overall, I think she made nice improvements.

Sorry for the enormous post ... it's fun to recall the details, and only TapeOppers seem to find them interesting.

Justin
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