I Am Not A Website, I Am A Mortal Man

[Packy]

Hey All! This is my first time posting my own stuff on this wing of the forum(jzahos once posted tracks I recorded from my band The Dakota), so I'm rather nervous...

About month ago I had like a 4-day creative explosion and wrote and recorded a 6-song EP in my attic studio (Firepod, Cubase SX, Waves, MXL's, 57s, Apex 210, Hamptone Tube Pre, NI B4, Mr. Tramp [Wurly emu]). Well maybe 5.5 songs, one of them is kinda interlude/filler stuff.

It generally sounds to me like I've been listening to too much Wilco these days. That's not necessarily true(or possible ), but once the project got rolling and it started to go in that sonic direction(acoustic guitars against jacked up lead guitars, muffled drums, mellow vintage keys) I decided to embrace it. I'm rather happy with the EP because I've finally gotten a degree of cohesiveness from track to track. Usually my stuff is all over the place sonically, stylistically, thematically. Perhaps the most important decision I made was to keep the T-shirts taped to the drums at all times

Well here's the link...I know, I know, it's Myspace, but hopefully you'll get the idea. If anyone's interested I'll post higher-quality files. Oh, and yes I'm a generally flat singer. I really do have to work on that.


http://myspace.com/packylundholm


Thanks in advance!!
Packy

[WillMorgan]

They all sound great to me, I like the song writing and am envious of your snare drumming skillz.

I wonder how the leads would sound less distorted, more middle path driven, closer to the acoustics.. or maybe just further back in the mix.

I liked how the drums are spread super wide in "high tonight" in my headphones but then wondered if it would get to start buggin' me after a while.

Nice clear vocals, doubles.

Anyway, good stuff, thanks for sharing!

[b3groover]

The first song sounds really good. The second one, "Part Of Me", I can hear a nice xylophone or glockenspiel part and the lead vocal "dirtied" up a bit to sound more "vintage", like an old Columbia recording. On "The Wolf", the chorus should have some nice "ooooo's" in harmony.

The fourth song, High Tonight, I can hear some really cool Hammond stuff, but you'd need a real Hammond to pull it off... it would involve some serious drawbar manipulation.

Good playing all around. Congrats!

[Smitty]

Perhaps the most important decision I made was to keep the T-shirts taped to the drums at all times

i have been severely digging the sound that such a technique produces.

great sounding stuff... nicely done!

edit: may i ask what your drum mic setup and signal chain was for this? i love the snare sound you're getting on that first track.

[Packy]

Thanks a lot guys! Thanks for the suggestions too; hopefully I can try some out before my buddy takes his half of the studio back--and tragically High Tonight and Same Train are now stuck as they are because while cleaning house I accidentally deleted most of the audio from those two sessions . ...

---------
Smitty, I'll try to recall as much as I can of the drum/mic set-up...

Kit: Yamaha Stage Custom Standard, 22", 12", 14", 18" Ludwig, maple DW 14"x3.5(I think) snare, 20" UFIP ride, 19" Istanbul light crash/ride, cracked 18" Sabian fast crash, some weird borrowed hi-hat combination I can't remember-the bottom was waaaay heavier than the top

The snare was essentially "wearing" the T shirt, if that makes sense. I liked that it was only one layer of shirt, and the tension across the rim limited the amount of shirt that touched the head. Come to think of it, the toms didn't really have any muffling besides a little bit of duct tape on the rack tom.

Mics/signal chain-besides the OH, all used the Firepod's onboard pre's:
OH: MXL 604, Cardioid caps, in half-assed ORTF-ish, pointed mostly at the cymbals, Hamptone tube pre. High-passed, probably somewhere between 250-500 Hz

Kick: Heil PR40, about where the hole would be if my front head had one. Waves MaxxBass, gate, lots of EQ (these days without tons of help my kick sounds like a dribbling basketball)

Toms: MXL 2001 over the rack and one over the two floor toms about where the rims meet; in most of the songs I manually "gated" the toms via editing

Hats: MXL 604, about 3 inches away, pointed more or less straight on, a couple inches in, high-passed

Snare: 57 on top, maybe 50 degree angle to the head, about an inch and a half in. 57 on bottom(the most crucial mic of the whole setup IMO), similarly arranged as the top, pointing at the snares. Bottom is high-passed pretty high, not sure how high though, 1 or 2k? Maybe even higher, I'm not by the recording computer right now...I think both channels have a light downward expander on them, and I think I gave the top mic a boost in the high-end for crispness's sake.

Pretty mild Waves RComp was applied on the whole drum bus, and I think a small dose of Cubase's RoomWorks reverb, on the "smooth room" setting.
------

As for that type of snare sound, I've been most successful with the bottom mic added in. When I've tried the shirt method in the past with just a top mic it seems to lack crispness. It's nice to be able to balance the fat and crunchy elements between the two mics as needed.

Man, I just wrote way too much...Hope this helped some!
Packy

[Smitty]

extremely! thanks for taking the time.

after hearing everybody list the things they'd rather be using on snare than 57's (my personal jury is still out, i suppose), it's good to hear someone getting good results with them.

[joelmoore]

I have an American flag and Christmas lights in my studio too! We should be in the same band maybe? The Christmas Flags? American Lights?

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your music. Keep on rockin' in the free world. And let me know when you are in Nashville.

[Packy]

Let's do it Joel! Christmas In America? American Christmas? Uncle Sam-ta Claus? Whatever the name I think I have a good idea what our backdrop could be

And Smitty, I'm really only using the 57s because that's about all I got...but for now I see little reason not to stick with 'em. Oh, and I just checked the Same Train session-the bottom mic is only rolled off at 198 Hz; I coulda sworn it was a much higher frequency than that.

[joelmoore]

Electric X-Mas and the Patriots?

[Packy]

Electric X-Mas and the Patriots?

I think we got a winner right there.

[joelmoore]

I really enjoy the groovy "Same Train" and it sucks to hear that you lost the masters. Though I personally don't think you need to do anything to the mix.

It sucks though that you can't if you wanted to. It's very weird yours and my coincidences but I just realized that some old sessions of mine that I thought I had backed up safely are also missing some audio files. They're stuck now forever in wav form.

Some files are there but strangely "corrupted?". The only program that will recognize them is the command line in OS X and it of course doesn't know how to make audio sound like audio. I think after this I'm going to buy DAT or something so that I have tape masters. Hard Drives are kind of like hiding money in a mattress. If the house burns down, you're fu@8ed.

Anyway good luck with everything. Send me a PM or MySpace etc. if you're coming to Nashville.

[Packy]

Thanks Joel, actually the only thing I changed about "Same Train" was ducking the bottom snare mic under the kick to eliminate some rattle-but in retrospect I might not have even kept that change. I would have liked to experiment some more with the drum delay panning in 'High Tonight' per Will Morgan's comment above, but alas that's not happening now...

I've got 2 huge projects to finish in the next few days, my first somewhat real "professional" jobs, and they're both only on one hard drive. I know, huge mistake, but I'm just sleeping with my fingers crossed and getting it out the door as fast as possible, getting paid, and buying some drives, tapes, abacuses, anything for backup!

You got a myspace? Or did I already blindly add you, in which case can you link me again? I have no plans as yet to head to Nashville, but at this point anything could happen--if something takes me there I'd love to get in touch!

[joelmoore]

I think I sent you a friend request already but maybe it didn't go through. I've been having major internet connection difficulties for about a week now. It's on, it's off, it works, it doesn't arrgh!

My address is www.myspace.com/visitor

Don't hesitate to drop me a line if you're ever in Nashville.

Tape backup is my next studio purchase. I'm kicking myself forever for having lost 2 irreplaceable sessions. What makes me more angry about it is that I managed to save 10 or more sessions that I could easily throw away and never miss but the two I can't replace are gone forever. !!!*#@!.

All the best.