Hey everyone,
My band's new album is out today - streaming at our bandcamp page. I engineered and mixed the record myself, in a space we "built" from scratch. It was mastered by TW Walsh (David Bazan, Sufjan Stevens, Ra Ra Riot etc...). It's modern / melancholy indie-pop stuff. If you like full-band Elliott Smith stuff, Ambulance LTD, The Zombies, The Morning Benders etc... you might dig this too.
Without further adieu - http://bit.ly/a8HaAK (bandcamp link)
If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear 'em. This board was a great resource when I was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing mixing this thing.
-Josh
New indie-pop album stream (RIYL: Ambulance LTD, Zombies...)
Moderator: cgarges
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grinningidiot
- audio school graduate
- Posts: 24
- Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:14 am
thanks!
we actually did a horrible job documenting the process with photos - here's a video of pre-production rehearsals that will give you an idea of what the rehearsal space / tracking room looks like. unfortunately there's really no shots of the "control room"
http://vimeo.com/8521737
the place was a total wreck when we got it last spring. no drywall / insulation, holes in the subfloor, and no electricity. we fashioned together something "usable" with really no regard for acoustics etc... and were banking on the fact that the room was pretty big to cover us on that front. we got lucky i suppose.
the recording process itself was a total clusterfuck of fits and starts... i'll go over some of that later (at work right now)
we actually did a horrible job documenting the process with photos - here's a video of pre-production rehearsals that will give you an idea of what the rehearsal space / tracking room looks like. unfortunately there's really no shots of the "control room"
http://vimeo.com/8521737
the place was a total wreck when we got it last spring. no drywall / insulation, holes in the subfloor, and no electricity. we fashioned together something "usable" with really no regard for acoustics etc... and were banking on the fact that the room was pretty big to cover us on that front. we got lucky i suppose.
the recording process itself was a total clusterfuck of fits and starts... i'll go over some of that later (at work right now)
-
treble king
- gimme a little kick & snare
- Posts: 85
- Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 2:30 pm
- Location: Too lazy to go to the Twin Cities
- Contact:
Add me
to those who want to hear more about the recording. Great record! I've sent the link out to some pals.
I'm in for two, and I can pay.
-
Nick Sevilla
- on a wing and a prayer
- Posts: 5572
- Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:34 pm
- Location: Lake Arrowhead California USA
- Contact:
Thanks Nick for purchasing it, and thanks everyone for listening. Muchos Gracias.
OK, so as far as the recording goes...
Originally - the plan was to cut the whole album to tape. I had bought Fostex G16S (16 track on 1/2") and a Soundcraft 400b 24 channel machine. We had spent most of December of last year rehearsing the songs and tweaking the arrangements until we felt we were ready to start tracking - which started in late January of last year.
Long story short - things did not go so well. We did drums and scratch tracks for most of the instruments, only to realize the tape was shedding. I baked the tapes in a Snackmaster - transferred them to digital - and then our drummer pointed out that the snare was tuned way to high and we needed to track everything again. So we started over, then a blizzard hit and made getting to and from the studio a mess in and of itself - let alone the freezing temperatures (oh I didn't mention the space was unheated) were taking their toll on our drummers ability to perform. After a pretty frustrating few weeks we got the takes we needed and moved on to bass. That's when we realized the tape machine was playing back at inconsistent speeds. At that point we gave up on tape and did the rest of the album in the box...
Gear wise - there wasn't too much fancy going on - but it wasn't meager either.
Drum setup was basically Earthworks SR77 (same as SR30) overheads, SM57 on snare top / bottom, D112 in the kick, MD421 on floor tom (only used occasionally), and Fatheads for the room mics. The kit was a late 60s ludwig with a rogers snare. These were all going through the Soundcraft preamps.
Bass was split about 50/50 between a Gibson Grabber and a late 70s Ric. Both went through a 70s Bassman 100 into a Sunn 2x15. Mic was almost always a Beyer M88, I think we may have used the d112 once or twice though. This went through the Soundcraft preamps.
The wurlitzer and guitars all went through a bunch of different amps depending on what the part called for. Most of the time the guitars were either a Jazzmaster or Jaguar - although a Casino and a Rickenbacker did see a little use. The amps were mostly late 60s / early 70s fender amps - the amps that got the most use were the Bandmaster, Super-Reverb, Twin Reverb, and Deluxe Reverb. The mic was almost always a FatHead running through an Art Pro VLA preamp.
Vocals were split about 50/50 between a Rode NTK and an AT4050 sometimes going through the Soundcraft with EQ, other times just going to the Pro VLA.
I had just bought a UAD-2 Duo card - so the mixing saw a bunch of the UAD versions of Fatso, LA2A, 1176, and Pultec EQ. We did rent a local studio for a day to use their plate reverb (EMT-140) - and the result was much "better" than the UAD plate (I put better in quotes since every physical plate sound a bit different, this one just sounded more detailed to us than the UAD emulation).
That's about it I guess. If anyone would like me to elaborate on anything let me know.
Again, thanks for listening!
OK, so as far as the recording goes...
Originally - the plan was to cut the whole album to tape. I had bought Fostex G16S (16 track on 1/2") and a Soundcraft 400b 24 channel machine. We had spent most of December of last year rehearsing the songs and tweaking the arrangements until we felt we were ready to start tracking - which started in late January of last year.
Long story short - things did not go so well. We did drums and scratch tracks for most of the instruments, only to realize the tape was shedding. I baked the tapes in a Snackmaster - transferred them to digital - and then our drummer pointed out that the snare was tuned way to high and we needed to track everything again. So we started over, then a blizzard hit and made getting to and from the studio a mess in and of itself - let alone the freezing temperatures (oh I didn't mention the space was unheated) were taking their toll on our drummers ability to perform. After a pretty frustrating few weeks we got the takes we needed and moved on to bass. That's when we realized the tape machine was playing back at inconsistent speeds. At that point we gave up on tape and did the rest of the album in the box...
Gear wise - there wasn't too much fancy going on - but it wasn't meager either.
Drum setup was basically Earthworks SR77 (same as SR30) overheads, SM57 on snare top / bottom, D112 in the kick, MD421 on floor tom (only used occasionally), and Fatheads for the room mics. The kit was a late 60s ludwig with a rogers snare. These were all going through the Soundcraft preamps.
Bass was split about 50/50 between a Gibson Grabber and a late 70s Ric. Both went through a 70s Bassman 100 into a Sunn 2x15. Mic was almost always a Beyer M88, I think we may have used the d112 once or twice though. This went through the Soundcraft preamps.
The wurlitzer and guitars all went through a bunch of different amps depending on what the part called for. Most of the time the guitars were either a Jazzmaster or Jaguar - although a Casino and a Rickenbacker did see a little use. The amps were mostly late 60s / early 70s fender amps - the amps that got the most use were the Bandmaster, Super-Reverb, Twin Reverb, and Deluxe Reverb. The mic was almost always a FatHead running through an Art Pro VLA preamp.
Vocals were split about 50/50 between a Rode NTK and an AT4050 sometimes going through the Soundcraft with EQ, other times just going to the Pro VLA.
I had just bought a UAD-2 Duo card - so the mixing saw a bunch of the UAD versions of Fatso, LA2A, 1176, and Pultec EQ. We did rent a local studio for a day to use their plate reverb (EMT-140) - and the result was much "better" than the UAD plate (I put better in quotes since every physical plate sound a bit different, this one just sounded more detailed to us than the UAD emulation).
That's about it I guess. If anyone would like me to elaborate on anything let me know.
Again, thanks for listening!
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