The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

what's your take on high tech vs. Old School recording gear & methods?

well, the safe answer for me would be that Old School gear sounds better, and newer tools are easier to edit with, but I asked because I'm curious about how someone who records a lot applies both

I can't fully buy into the "gear" thing because these days there's a lot of new gear that's just as good as the old stuff. You won't find it at GuiTarget and the rest of the pro-sumer dealers... but it's out there from dealers like Mercenary and Vintage King.

In the last 20-odd years, the biggest change has been the move from analog to digital recording. Drums are drums, guitars are guitars... but now instead of being limited to 16 or 24 tracks, it's unlimited. Go ahead and DO 40 takes of a solo, figure it out later. Everyone gets lazier. The worst is drum replacment... IMO it's no excuse for getting "bad" sounds in tracking... "Yeah, it's not great. We'll replace it later..." It's removed any need to commit.

With advent of tools like AutoTune & beat detective they get used on everything automatically just because they can. One listen to modern rock radio shows that... I flip it on and can hear Waves preset #46 and snare sample "X". Now it's easy to sit there for hours & polish a turd... create a performance, or suck all the vibe and life out of one. That's why I like keeping things on tape. Sounds great, and it keeps that whole pandoras box of limitless editing closed. Keeps people focused on the big picture... the playing.

On the flip side, I'm really not opposed to using digital for what it IS good at.

If there's an amazing take but the drummer botched a few bars, it's easy to fly stuff around or tune just a few less-then steller notes in an otherwise flawless & great vocal take. Tape sounds great but a 2" deck is basically a 600 pound hot dog cart. Not exactly portable where's I can fit my 32 I/O DAW rig with a bunch of racks & mics in my car and set up anywhere.

Good analog, or good digital. Either one costs a fair bit of coin. And it's all in how it's used. People were tuning vocals and flying stuff around back in the '70s...

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

What is the most common mistake people make when they first start recording stuff?

From the engineers perspective? Not having good monitors and a listening environment. Not taking enough chances and playing it safe.

From the musicians angle, I'd say under-budgeting and not keeping realistic expectations. Though, maybe the latter could be applied to the engineers side as well!

What's the best single piece of advice you could give to the home recordist?

Define it's purpose. Why are you recording? Are you writing songs and using it as a sketchpad? Is it to make demos? If so, who's going to hear them? Are you aiming to make fully-finished "masters" at your home studio? As in, a real record for commercial release that's competitive with others?

Figuring those out will lead to other answers. How to equip, how good the gear needs to be. If it's the latter thing, shooting for release quality, well... would you rather be engineering or playing?

Recording a perfect moment, or the perfect solo on stage, what would you choose?

I see those as being similar, if not the same. Great performance always trumps great tone. Always.

Where and when did you have your greatest onstage moment?

Hmmm...

I'd have to say that performing at Yankee Stadium was up there. I was filling in a friends cover band. Their guitarist had broken his wrist or hand or something... The drummer and bass player were/are NYC cops in the Bronx and they had some kinda 'policemans' day at the park. We played early on, before the game as people were coming in.

Sadly, I've kinda gotten away from gigging. Too busy recording others to have time for a band project but I've been chewing on that again & writing a bit... I've been playing and "ghosting" guitar, bass & percussion on lots of things in the meantime...

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

What is you opinion on groupies in the studio?

Bad.

It's never any good.

Same goes for wives & girlfriends, husbands...etc.

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

So you never let your husband in the studio?

I try not to...

[JustWendell]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

If you could have one super power, what would it be?

favorite super hero or super villain?

favorite character?

I'm very new to home recording--is there a book or website out there that has a good rundown of the basics to make a decent sounding recording?

know of any tricks to make entry level recording gear sound less cheap?

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

Every engineer knows where the bodies are buried. Got any good stories about interesting studio practices that you've seen or heard about?

Too many! Be a little more specific... lol

-What are your favorite mics and approaches to micing for guitars?

I don't have a "set" approach for anything. Makes it boring and cookie-cutter, I'd rather make "real" money working in a cubicle at that point...

Anyway. It all depends on the sound coming out of the amp and what the song is dictating, what the artist wants to hear. On "brighter" amps I have consistently good luck with the Blue Baby Bottles and Royer R121's when paired with another mic to capture more articulation, like a 421. I hear the new Baby Bottles are brighter then first issues, I have #47 and #48 or something...

The combo of a 421 and 57 with the capsules aligned is tried & true. I've also used 414's & TLM 103's; pencil mics like AKG 451/460; KM84's... EV RE20's...

Sometimes I'll use the close/far thing and really compress the room mic. Sometimes just one mic a few feet back like the Neumann M147. I generally don't jam the mic into the grille, back it up maybe 2-3" so it has room to breathe. Going a foot away even with a 57 isn't uncommon.

I almost never spend hours dialing it in too... do it quick. If the amp is putting a good tone into the room but it sounds bad I'll swap the mic if it doesn't drastically improve with a few sweeps around the speaker...

-what advice would you give to a band looking to track completely live?

Preparation is key! Get 'yer parts worked out. Be prepared to live with some bleed... good, to even great isolation can be achieved but there's always some weird 'ghosts' in there when underdubbing.

-do you do much work with tape anymore? if not, do you miss it?

Yeah! I still love tape. I only sold my MCI 2" deck because I closed down the big commercial room and it wasn't practical to keep it or let it rot in storage. The record I've been working on for the last year or so, with Swampadelica... almost all the songs were cut on tape then transferred to a DAW for some mild editing and overdubs. Besides the tone, and even smell of tape... I love the performance aspect. I treat the DAW as a tape machine... it's just a mindset.

-what are your favorite compressors and mic pres?

Reference the Jonser $200k question! Besides all the old 1176's and API stuff, I'll send drums through a Dynacomp... anything to get a sound!

-i find carrot sticks and celery are great to have around in the studio. How do you roll in terms of keeping healthy during long, intense sessions?

What's this now? Hea...He...Hel, healthy? heheheh

Drink water. Rest when needed. Taking a 15 or 20 minute break and getting out of the building for fresh air or just getting out of the room and into silence can do wonders. Avoid "heavy" greasy foods. Pizza is a staple, but it's also an energy vortex. Chow down & 20 minutes later it's nap time... I stick to salads and wraps... Don't work too many hours in a day. After 8-10 hours most people hit the point of diminishing returns...

-what's your policy on alcohol and drug use in the studio?

Tough one.

One guy I assisted long ago has a rule on his productions called "sober 'till 6" meaning, everyones sober until 6pm and then the "party favors" can come out. Now for him, he figures if a guy normally wakes up and does two shots of Jack Daniels and three bong hits, that's his "sober" state for 11am...



While I might have a puff or three and the occasional drink, I rather like the idea of having control when I'm in the "control room" ya know? Plus, generally speaking there's thousands of dollars on the line and I have to account for it all to someone... Like Nigel said, there's a fine line between clever and stupid. If things get to the point where you can't play/sing anymore and it's spiraling out of control, then the session is done. If it's a daily thing then I'll walk. Anything more then some tweed kicking around and I don't want to see it, or even know about it. Thankfully I've never had any truly bad scenes but I have seen some rather sketchy stuff during my assisting days & at gigs...

-If you had a choice between Ed Van Halen's pink parachute pants and Dave roth's buttless chaps, what would you wear?

The parachute pants!

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

What did the Noodles Incident consist of?

Someone who didn't have their parts worked out and was otherwise boiling over with half-baked musical ideas!

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

What's the silliest/strangest thing you've ever done to get an effect/take?

(ie: a band I was in once recorded the vocal lines in a bathtub because the reverb went down)

Vinny from the Lifeguards... we cut a lot of his vocals on "Dive" with him holding a 58 in front of a megaphone, just like he would at a show. Some of those takes were printed with delay and other FX so it was "done". Nothing to reconstruct while mixing...

http://www.thelifeguardband.com/

Great stuff there. Especially the notes on the songs/recording of Dive... heh heh. Top link to SJSLCB...


I've done things like put a 57 in the center of the drum kit, maybe on the snare and feed that into a Champ or something that's in the same room as the drums so the overheads & room mics pick it up. Record acoustic guitar with a hyper-compressed Green Bullet on the otherside of the room... lots of "unconventional" stuff for sure...

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

BTW...how was it working with/around Joe Baressi??

Killer. Education & forming.

I was young & green... it was a short booking for a stoner rock thing... maybe a week or 10 days? I had dropped out of music school a few months before and he was doing some fairly unconventional things...

Chaining two compressors together on a source... two micamps in series, all wound up and having the drummer barely tap a head for an overdub... Putting a dozen pedals in a row with a little practice amp on the other end and having the guitarist just "GO" for a solo. Jamming bass or drums through stompboxes while mixing.

That kind of thing. I had never seen or heard of it before. The fearlessness to try something, anything, and say... well, schit. That didn't work! Lets try this instead...

Also, I was instilled with the ideas of working fast and not wasting time. Always be "ready". Try to be a step ahead of the musicians. He'd listen to an amp in the room, then literally plop down a mic and walk into the control room to listen.

Totally different then some of the guys who spent hours aligning mics in fractions of an inch with pink noise blasting through the cab.

I asked him... WHY? Why spend so little time on placing the mic?

Why not?!?! It might suck, or it might rock. Who knows. Why obsess over the placement before you've even listened to it? Plunk it down, go listen. Does it sound like a guitar? Is it offensive? Fuk it. Move on! If it's unpleasing, then you move the mic or swamp the guitar... the amp...pedals... etc. and find something that suits the song.

Go on that journey...

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

If you could have one super power, what would it be?

Never much thought about it... I always thought Plastic Man was kinda cool!

favorite super hero or super villain?

Villain... Lex Luther. Hero? Maybe Batman.

favorite character?

Mr. Potatohead. Does he count?

I'm very new to home recording--is there a book or website out there that has a good rundown of the basics to make a decent sounding recording?

Not sure which books are good or not for that kinda thing...

Go to http://tapeop.com/ and get a subscription. It's FREE. There's no good reason to not have one!

know of any tricks to make entry level recording gear sound less cheap?

Ummmm... listen. Get some really solid monitors that you can listen to and feel like you have a magnifying glass into the recordings you like. Compare recording you make to ones you like. Be able to separate the music from the sonics... be critical about it!

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

Tell us about the last time you felt truly, completely and utterly discouraged. How did you manage to get through it? Did you manage to get through it?

- Keith

Not sure I can say much here...

Around this time last year I entered into a partnership with another engineer who I had known for several years... we spent a year firming up the details and I moved out to the midwest in December '06. Not even two months into it, before the paint even dried he folded like a four year old.

I lost over $20k out of pocket and went into my family for even more money... Moved across the country twice inside 60 days. Defaulted on an apartment lease... had liqudated some key pieces of gear like the Trident desk on the front of my website... The whole bit.

I'm still getting through it... mentally & otherwise.

Litigation sucks.

[Hot _Grits]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

Haha, I was looking for 'controversial' stuff. Feel free to change names to protect the innocent...

Hey, this is a great Well. Lots to learn for the recording player...

[J Moose]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

Haha, I was looking for 'controversial' stuff. Feel free to change names to protect the innocent...

Hey, this is a great Well. Lots to learn for the recording player...

Controversial eh?

I can do that... so long as it doesn't get me banned!

Ok...

Someone asked about awkard moments & Grits inquired on "interesting studio practices..."

I was recording this band. This average band you've never heard of and would never care to...

Got through basics... we're setting up to do vocals. They've been in the studio for, I dunno, three days maybe?

The singer is a girl. Young girl...has some natural ability and is fairly attractive in a way... but kinda dirty lol. We have a scratch vocal, but it's gotta be redone. I set her up in the booth... get two mics up so I can pick one that suits her voice best, go into the control room & patch it all together... bring up the fader and there's a lotta noise on both channels. Horrible sounds.

Unusable.

I start patching stuff around... this micamp... that compressor. Still lots of noise. I figure it's a bad cable from the mic to the patch panel or maybe even the mic...

Walk out, open the door to the booth...

And I hear the noise... the buzz!

It's in the room!!!

WTF is that?!?

I ask her...

Turns out she had a vibe going...

Helps her to "relax" while singing!!!!

BUWAHAHAHAHAHA



No. I didn't hook up with her...

[Curly]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

I guess it helped her hit the high notes.

[Hot _Grits]

Re: The Well ~ Lucky #13. Cavefish spills all

Controversial eh?

I can do that... so long as it doesn't get me banned!

Ok...

Someone asked about awkard moments & Grits inquired on "interesting studio practices..."

I was recording this band. This average band you've never heard of and would never care to...

Got through basics... we're setting up to do vocals. They've been in the studio for, I dunno, three days maybe?

The singer is a girl. Young girl...has some natural ability and is fairly attractive in a way... but kinda dirty lol. We have a scratch vocal, but it's gotta be redone. I set her up in the booth... get two mics up so I can pick one that suits her voice best, go into the control room & patch it all together... bring up the fader and there's a lotta noise on both channels. Horrible sounds.

Unusable.

I start patching stuff around... this micamp... that compressor. Still lots of noise. I figure it's a bad cable from the mic to the patch panel or maybe even the mic...

Walk out, open the door to the booth...

And I hear the noise... the buzz!

It's in the room!!!

WTF is that?!?

I ask her...

Turns out she had a vibe going...

Helps her to "relax" while singing!!!!

BUWAHAHAHAHAHA



No. I didn't hook up with her...

Haha, awesome!