The Studio this weekend

[hephiroth]

So, this weekend was our first full band recording session with legendary producer Gary Katz (http://www.aezra.com/about.php?id=28). It was SO f*cking intense and awesome. We finished tracking all the drums for the album (9 of the 12 songs--3 were done already) and some of the bass (5 tracks). But this guy pays more attention to detail than I've EVER seen. And it's awesome.

For example, it took them 6 hours to set up the drums and get the mics sounding how they wanted. They changed the snare head basically everyday (as well as start the session with fresh heads on all the drums).

Also, the way he records is so awesome. He'll have the band play with a click and do about 3-5 takes of the song. Then, he'll sit in the studio w/ the engineer and find a perfectly played part for each of the drum parts and then copy/paste it everywhere it happens. Like, if a verse pattern happens 4 times, he'll find one good time through the pattern and that's for every time. He has SUCH an ear for detail, too...and it's so funny cuz he's this little 62 year old jewish guy from NYC and he wants everything more rocking and understands our music probably better than we do.

We're doing the keys next session, Dec. 3-5, and I'll be using a Yamaha C7 Grand Piano, a Hammond B3 organ, and possibly a Wurly and a Rhodes, as well as my Korg Triton ProX, and I think it's gonna be really awesome.

Anyway, I don't mean to ramble, it was just so cool working with a producer like that that I thought some of you might like to hear what it was like. Anyway, exciting stuff.

-jeff-

[Over The Edge]

Hey congrats dude. It's always a great feeling
to knock 'em down and achieve successful results.
Keep it up! 8)



FL
www.franklucas.net

[hephiroth]

thanks, man! ...i know not many people here probably care that much, but it's just really exciting for me and i wanted to share. but always nice to hear an encouraging word 8)

-jeff-

[Phred]

Jeff,

Please keep posting Clips, updates etc... I truly like your band. I am anxious to hear what a big league producer can do with it...

I am surprized to hear that he is cutting a pasting the drum lines around the song like that. Does it "Sterilze" the sound?

Do you imaginer we will use this technique for everyone or just the drummer?

Anyway, keep up the good work.

P.S - those video clips are really good. Keys could be louder though ;)

[lighthouse]

That`s soooo cool man!, do you recall how they put the mics on the drums? (recording freak question)....good luck with your parts, that`ll be awesome to record with all those real instruments like the hammond and the wurli, and not just to use our common samples!


Juan Pablo

[hephiroth]

@phred-

no, the cutting/pasting of drums, when done right, isn't noticeable, because they're taking measures, not individual notes. Sometimes, they'll loop like a one measure phrase, but a lot of the time, they might get 2 or 4 measure phrases, or sometimes even more than that, and they might just have to move a kick drum a little bit to get it to line up with the click. also, they pay close attention to make sure that the drums have the right "ambience" ...like, if they want to loop a measure, but a cymbal was hit on beat 4 of the previous measure, it won't work because you'll hear the residual ringing of the cymbal bleeding into the rest of the drum mics. so it's a tricky process, but you end up with a really solid drum beat (without the use of electronic drums or something).

and they do use this technique with everything. well...i'm not sure how much they'll use it with piano, but i know they DEFINITELY use it on vocals. like...take choruses, for example. since everything is recorded to a click track, once they get one good chorus with the main line and the harmonies, etc, then they can "fly" that over every time the chorus repeats. they also like to use it on bass parts. i think it's a little trickier with guitar and keys simply because those parts tend to repeat less, but depending on the part, i'm sure that technique gets used some.

@lighthouse-

well...i know that on the drums, they initially were getting too much of the room sound or something, so they got 3 carpet covered boards and set them up around the outside of the drum set to absorb of some of that sound. they also took the back of the bass drum off. they used a D12 mic on that. they used a lot of sennheiser 421's on the toms, two fancy condenser mics for the overheads (i forget what kind, but i could find out if you really wanna know...they're like the $4,000 ones with with the little string cradles or whatever like they use on vocals a lot). The snare was mic-ed from the top and bottom. The cymbals were all just on the overheads, but our drummer uses one flat ride, and that got its own mic. They paid very close attention to the snare sound, making sure that it had a really nice "ping" to it. They would either make our drummer adjust the tuning when it wasn't sounding good, or just replace the head entirely (keep in mind this was for like 3 days of recording...so they were REALLY picky about that). I could get more details, and maybe a picture, so i'll try to find and post that if you're curious. I know our guitarist would know every mic on that thing.

As for placement...they really just placed the tom mics towards the top of the drum...the snare like i said had 2 mics on it.....i mean, really, nothing looked too unusual, but they just played with them and tweaked it til they got it sounding good. another thing that also made a difference was that they had some really nice preamps brought in...an API and two LA2A's and two other ones that i forgot, but all professional equipment and really nice mics. hope that helps!

-jeff-