3 posts from January 2008
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On January 19th and 20th of 2008 the band Upstate Escape drove down from Ithaca to record a couple of tunes. I'm often asked the question of how long will it take to record a song, and I always have to answer: it depends. If you're cutting tracks live (all playing together), and not overdubbing, the process is usually much faster. Say you are a bluegrass band all standing around one mic, going for the best take, you may be able to record an album in a day. If the band is planning to overdub each part separately, you can imagine that the recording will take much longer. I was really excited to hear that Upstate Escape only wanted to record 2 songs that weekend (I've come to think that at Dryhill one song a day is a solid goal.) The band is a three piece with John Norwood playing guitar
and singing, Chris Bentley playing bass, and Ryan Silvernail playing drums. They recorded each song by overdubbing each part for a keeper. It began with Ryan playing drums, while John was in the listening room laying down a scratch guitar and vocal track. Ryan brought in a DW kit which we got set up and miced in about an hour and a half. We started with Beyerdynamic m160s for overheads, running into the Sytek.
The Kick sound was a bit too flabby for me, so we took the tent away, and stuck with the beta52 up close, running into the HHB Radius 40 pre, with just a bit of 250hz down on the eq. I also threw up the AEA R92 as a room mic.
After getting keeper drum tracks we moved Johns Vox AC30 into the live room, and miced it with a Shure SM57, the AEA R92, and the M149 as a room mic. I loved the sound that John was getting out of his amp, and having the 149 up gave us options with how closely we wanted to place the guitar in the mix.
Once in a while I get to play some music myself, and one evening this past October I invited 2 friends to come by the studio to play some music. The following track is a result of that evening
The track was a live improvisation, originally about 8 minutes long, here edited down to about 3 minutes.
Seth Bulkin was playing acoustic bass, miced with a Neumann M149 (placed about 3' above the ground, and about 2' in front of the bass) and amplified with the tl audio pre.
Gerrit Gibbs was playing a mix of our Gretsch kit and the Slingerland, with dowel sticks. The micing was minimal, 2 Beyerdynamic m160s as overheads, shure sm57 under the snare, and a shure beta 52 on the kick.
And the rhodes was run through a electro harmonix qtron pedal, and into a countryman d.i. (with a little echofarm tape delay added in pro tools.)
It was a fun night, and I appreciated the chance to get to record a bit myself.
"Lazarus, Gin, Mercy and Sin" was
recorded at Dryhill on April 27th, 28th, and 29th 2006. We decided to record
all the basic tracks to the 8 track Otari reel to reel with a tape speed of 7.5
i.p.s., quantegy 456 tape, and no noise reduction. Eliminating the computer during tracking created a totally different atmosphere that brought more focus to capturing the right performance (I also enjoyed not having to look at a monitor.)
After tracking guitar, drums, bass, and vocals, we transferred the tracks to
pro tools for editing and additional overdubs. Most of the tracks on the album
were recorded live, with some songs receiving minimal overdubs.
Mike was playing his Fender acoustic on most tunes, typically miced with a shure sm57 going through the tl audio tube mic pre. His vocals were recorded with a couple of different mics, but most often it was the shure sm7 into the Sytek mic pre (both mics can be seen in the picture below.)
Bryon's bass was a combination of a
countryman d.i. and a LDC on an Ampeg SB-12 bass amp (Bryon had a great reverb pedal that really added to the amp sound.) Andy played a stripped down
kit that was miced with Earthworks QT1's in X/Y over the set, and an audio technica 4050 on the kick, and shure57 on the snare (in the picture below the overheads were pulled away from the kit for backup vocals.)
The third track on the album (best of luck), started out a bit differently than other songs on the album. I found a drum loop on the optigan keyboard at the studio that fit the song and Mike recorded vocals and acoustic guitar to the loop. Then Bryon and Andy came in halfway through the song, the real drums replacing the loop. In the picture below you can see me at the optigan recording the loop, and below I posted an mp3 of the song.
We were all pretty out of it after tracking was done (and our foray into a pack of steel reserve that ranks up there with one of the worst beers I have ever had.) So we all took a walk in Neawah park to catch up on some sunlight.
