Jon Nolan wrote:scott man, if you dig this stuff man, you should hear this band I know called Club, D'E...... oh wait. (inside joke).
i told tronzo that story yesterday, he was laughing.
ok setup details...we only had a few hours to work with so i used that as an excuse to do it all live in one room, as its so much easier and quicker to set that up than to get into isolation and headphones and blah. the boss was more than a little wary of not having separation, as he is a perfectionist who likes to tweak things (and he is very good at it) but he rolled with it. of course the real reason i wanted to do it all live was, well duh you know the reason. musicians like that, c'mon. but i was also definitely trying to limit mike's options for later, and i'm sure he knew it. does that make me a bad engineer?
anyway as far as mics and stuff, the drums were
D112 outside the kick->DAV pre-fatso
409 on the snare->DAV->fatso
ksm141s in cardioid glyn johns->DAV->1960 eq, set flat
earthworks on the floor behind the drums, right in front of the tape shelf->sytek
AT4040 on the auxillary snares->sytek->distressor at 1:1, simply so i could gain it down as it was almost peaking the converters
bass thru mike's radial DI (which says "phase coherent" in big letters on it. wtf does that mean? it's one signal.) into one channel of the 1969, sm7 on the amp into the other channel. no compression.
m160 on tronzo->isa428
all tracked to sonar 44/24, drums through the lavrys, everything else through the focusrites.
erik played my drums except for his battery of snares, so i spent most of friday tuning the drums, cleaning the place up, and getting all the mics and everything all set up. basically i wanted them to be able to walk in, set up their amps, and start playing. and i knew the first thing they played was going to be good, so i prepared like a mofo to be able to catch it.
the thing that was most interesting to me...besides erik's cast of characters...was that they would do a take...there was one tune in particular where the first take...tronzo played all this stuff that had me falling out of my chair laughing it was so nuts. and mike and erik were stellar as well. it finished and i was just about to get on the talkback with "holyshityouguysthatwasfuckingunbelievable" but i could hear them talking in the room mics and man, they were ALL BIZ. like, totally quiet, mike saying stuff like "ok, so yeah the A section should be 8 instead of 6, and the B section needs to build more, i think if bla bla bla..."
and i was like damn, these dudes aren't even gonna acknowledge the crazy shit they just did. so i just shut up. and yunno, i usually try to be pretty invisible, but as soon as i figured out the vibe yesterday i tried to be REALLY invisible.
the sintir is a morrocan instrument...i dunno much about it except it sounds awesome. 3 strings, the middle one is shorter, banjo-style. i think it's tuned like root, fourth, octave, but it might be root, fourth, root...
