You'd be a fool not to score gear right now...

If you don't have AT LEAST the MXR mic deal or the equivalent to that in your possession by the 25th (or the 29th) you have passed the best time to buy brand new mics or pre's.

Seriously, don't be stupid. This is by far the best online deal that I've seen for brand new anything. Usually I'm pretty wary about MF since my local recording shops usually can meet and beat the price... but honestly, if you walked into your local shop and said "hey, you got that MXL mic deal where you're selling it for practically wholesale cost?" you'd be laughed out of the place and probably upsold on Sennheiser's e815s 2-for-1 deal (sadly, MF even has THAT deal beat as well).  These aren't the highest quality (the 991 is somewhat "nasely" and the 990 is very room sensitive) but someone said once that blaming your quality on what you got is like a carpenter blaming his tools on a shitty job. 

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/MXL-MXL-990MXL-991-Recording-Microphone-Package?sku=273166

Did I ever met how much I liked AKG? Oh, I have? A million times you say? That's because there's a lot of bang for the buck in these guys, and when a $450.00 mic is being sold for $200.00, usually you don't hesitate to buy this thing. The C-2000 has all the right reasons to be in EVERY studio. It's full, it's rich, and it's priced great even when not on sale. I've had zero problems with AKG mics and the C-2000's only con to me is that it's overlooked when you're working with Rode or Shure or Neumann... but usually if you're working with Rode, Shure, or Neumann you don't need to go on MF to look for discounted prices on already-cheap mics.....

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/AKG-C-2000-BH100-Microphone-with-Shockmount?sku=271241

And for the "Costco" shopper... this comes out to about $30 per brand new mic + 20 cable. Now, obviously the cable is going to be shit, and the D4400 isn't necessarily the cleanest mic, but it's 6 of these mics!!! And I don't care where you get your brand new 20 ft. cables, 20 ft. cables are usually at least $15, usually $20. Plus, if you've got a dirty sound, these mics are perfectly fine for your sound. They get dirty when you get them dirty. They get lightly dusty when you want a clean sound.... but your Rat and Tube Screamers will sound good! Now only if you could cut that stupid hiss sound... oh wait, you can. Because you're not an idiot. 

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/AKG-D4400-Mic-Six-Pack-With-Cables-Mic-Bag?sku=501358

In a few weeks, I'll be reporting from Shedaluma and the new session of madness starring Tamborski and company!

A. Lenarsky Sessions: Day 5

Day 5 -- Awesome.

It's been a few weeks since that session but it's still vibrant in my mind. We ended up bringing the drums in for this one to lay down on a few tracks. I'll write more about this in a bit. Right now I'm at Maxi's listening to Shane do spoken word to a person's facebook "note", to whom which we will remain nameless. Anyway, this message will be bazeeted soon. :D

BKB/SOF Pre Production part 2

Yamaha O2R. Digital console.
A 20 ft. green screen.
8 cameras on Vicon MCS.
1 hour to do our set. our special hour set.

So, this Yamaha O2R console is really nice. It's meant for live recordings in particular, and has a built in DAW for strictly on-the-fly mixing. Needless to say, this thing puts out some nice high quality mixes, this console in particular doesn't run through anything else but it's own console and the racks upon racks of pre's this hall has. No PT, no RADAR, no GarageBand or Sony Acid. I guess that's really all you need when you're taking a "Live Recording" class at a digital media school.

Speaking of which, a class of students will be mixing our songs. I'm pretty excited about this because this will be the first time in a very long time someone I don't know personally will be touching our tracks. Usually, Maxi, Tambo, or myself do mixing and mastering on our own... but now we got 10 - 20 soon-to-be sound techs doing our mix downs.

It's Monday. Last Saturday we had an explosion of songs come out of our hands and minds... four new songs on the table, almost all finished now. Don't know what got into us Saturday, but we're pretty much all but done with the instrumentation for not only our split but a full length at the end of the Summer.

Frankie, Brett, and myself found out that we can split our session on Wednesday (it's so soon!) into two sessions playing the same songs, so we're opting for that instead of our original plan of all our songs and choosing the best played four.

We are playing these 5 songs first:
Winner Tambo
Loser Schau
Friend Like Family
Swimming to Drown
Dracula

and we will have these two songs on reserve if we feel we played very well on two of the past songs:
Stranger Stages
Can You Dance to Redemption?

Priority wise, Winner Tambo and Loser Schau are the two songs we're definitely aiming to be gold. Friend Like Family is Frankie's choice, Swimming to Drown was my choice, and Dracula was Brett's choice in some weird way that I believe is kind of correct. The option for Stranger Stages and Can You Dance... as "side deck" songs was a group idea, because there is a (high) possibility we play two songs (Winner Tambo and Dracula probably) very very well.

And that's it for preproduction on this one... Wednesday: Doomsday. See you then!

BKB/SOF Pre Production part 1

Wow, no wonder why no one was commenting on the preproduction stuff for this record... it didn't get posted for some reason! Anyway, it's up now... and here's the second installment!

BKB:
We've secured our recording session. It's just that, a session. One session. Why? I don't know... but we're recording at Ex'pressions College in Emeryville, CA (a tad south of Berkeley) and it'll be a live take of all our songs. This includes some songs we haven't even played live before... aka "Bumper Stickers Make it Easier for Me to Judge You" and our untitled new song. We're going into it with about 30 people on the guest list and hopefully we'll come out with at least 4 songs that sound phenomenal. I mean... we've got 10 songs. Two of which we're hesitant about putting on the CD (Stranger Stages and Friend Like Family)... but we got another 8, and we don't suck live (at least, I would like to think so) so we're hoping for a good session!

Personally, I'd like these four songs on the CD:
Winner Tambo, Loser Schau, Can You Dance to Redemption?, and Swimming to Drown

However, that list changes between me and the mates every day. And we won't know what's going on the CD until we start listening to the tracks and rock, paper, scissoring our fucking lives away until we agree upon 4 songs.

This recording session will be on July 2nd. Meaning, if all goes well, then this CD should be out and about by the end of July if all the pieces fall into place.

PS if things don't work out here, we'll run back to Shedaluma and The Shed and throw some shit down and you'll love it.

PPS PopSmear wants us to record there. But their rates were $$$. Even with the deal. :(


SOF:

They've discussed two recording spots
Portrait Recording Studios - http://www.myspace.com/portraitrecordingstudios
Delicate Studios - http://www.myspace.com/baseballrockmusic

I believe Eddie said they're leaning more towards Delicate Studios... which is probably a more economical move since Portrait Recs does a lot of work for bigger bands so they are probably looking for bigger band prices. Delicate is decked out with a Digidesign rig, meaning they aren't analog'ing any recording. There isn't even an ADAT option at this place from what I can tell. Just some stacks of PT HD3's. Which... I have my gripe about... but industry standards are industry standards. You can't argue with the most used professional industry software of all time.

They're picking out four songs as well. I don't have a clue what they've been talking about, so that'll just be another day.

Until we meet again

Bare Knuckle Boxing + Skies on Fire going into Pre-Production!

After I've talked Eddie Cuddy through some chemistry exams, and after he thought NWN - IFHYP1 was the hit of the year, we decided we might cross paths musically in a serious realm.

Eddie Cuddy has been in and out of bands, some successful some not, for a few years strong now. I also have had this same blessing/curse. However, now, it seems that we are in two stable bands that aren't all about breakdowns or overly offensive topics, so what better way to start "crossing the country" than with a split!

Now, if you haven't heard Skies on Fire yet, make sure you hear their demo. Much less, make sure you hear the Bare Knuckle Boxing demo as well.

For pre-production, we've decided we're going to choose 4 songs each for this CD. BKB will be treating this release as the predecessor to our hopeful full length at the end of the Summer. We are not sure whether or not we will put our "different" versions of songs on this CD or if we will just put possible b-sides on this CD, but whichever our decision might be I believe it will be a very good release.

The name of this split will be called "Nationwide Broadcast". This CD will also be the hype machine that will hopefully allow both of our bands to tour either side of the coast a little easier.

Since recording isn't taking place at the same studios, BKB being local to The TriShed Area (The Shed, Shedaluma, and Shedbastopol [or "Maxi's" for short], and SoF being local to the PDL Studios area (however, it is unconfirmed whether or not they are using PDL again), we have both decided to master everything here at The Shed. This CD will be flying the 402 Productions label flag, however we do not know what it will be flying from SoF's camp... whether they will promote PDL's label (Lynch Recordings) or if they will choose to release under the 402 Productions camp name as well.

As for album art, we are on the fence from the BKB camp as to whom will take this challenge this time. We are always open to new artists, but Megan Kondrasky (she did the artwork for our demo) is always a top choice. Another prospect would be Matt Jehly, who has been working on our July show flyers, which would be fantastic as well. We haven't heard anything from the SoF camp on people doing artwork, so I guess when we get it all in we'll figure it out. It might be a "collect them all!" cover battle. Possibly an East Coast and a West Coast cover... most likely reversible. Who knows.

Anyway, here are the songs we're choosing from, with the top songs being the most looked at:

Winner Tambo
Loser Schau
Can You Dance to Redemption
Swimming to Drown
Dracula
Gus
Bumper Stickers Make it Easier For Me to Judge You
Stranger Stages
Friend Like Family

and since this is also the pre-production for our first full length, you can bet your sweet cent that all of these songs will be recorded and out for the public by the end of the Summer (hopefullyhopefullyhopefully fingers crossed!!).

A. Lenarsky Sessions: Day 4

Tambo, A. Lizzy (it's definitely shorter than Ariana Lenarsky), and myself decided that it'd be a good idea to set a due date for this project when we last met. We said June 22nd. We'd be lucky to finish this thing by June. That includes the recent exclusion of the song Sneaky Vegetables.

Oh yeah, before I continue...
Turns out, that Audio Technica mic we were using for some guitar tracks that I couldn't figure out was actually an MXL mic. A 603S to be specific. This mic is very very similar to my AT PRO24, except this is a higher quality cond. mic. Great for high attacking tones from brighter instruments!

We worked on two songs Saturday, Moon Lullaby and Nonsense. I think we worked on Nonsense... I'm not very good with names. Ask Shahin Shane Sultin Abdaaq Maaqmaar Kalantari.

We were very focused on getting all rhythm tracks done with. That mostly meant percussion. Actually, I think it was only percussion. For Nonsense, Tambo brought out most of all the percussions, covering everything from hand claps to fistfuls of shakers and a tambourine under his foot at the same time. The only thing I helped add to that track was the verse and outro percussions, which was nothing more than hand claps and tambourine hits on every three-beat. However, the Beatles-esque hand clap outro was my idea as well... and I always love that for an outro if possible.

For Moon Lullaby, Tambo again brought some beast of a percussion to the table, almost giving off this very hard rock almost Mars Volta-y percussion layer to it, using this stupid wood block instrument thing we've always had trouble using, as well as a fistful of a shakers, a djembe, and finger cymbals. I had the lovely task of lap snare and tambourine. We've had our sights on this song for awhile, and A Lizzy said this would be a "production masterpiece". So far, we're very happy with both tracks on the percussion side, so it might be headed in that direction.

Next week, One Fish Two Fish hopefully...

A. Lenarsky Sessions: Day 1, 2, and 3

I should have brought my laptop down with me to Shedaluma.

Ariana Lenarsky, http://www.myspace.com/arianalenarsky, is a girl who you might not believe sings and writes incredible music if you high fived her at a party.
Tambo met her through some random alleyway-grapevine way of friends... shortly after she asked what are rates were, followed by Tambo's nervous laughter since we usually don't charge for friends, we set a date to enter Shedaluma for a weekend.

Pre-production was pretty quick. Usually, I really like taking a good day or so to just talk some stuff out. I don't usually like just jumping into a project thinking we can solve all our later problems with time, filters, and post production techniques, so I usually like taking a day to hang out and talk out some things... what kind of feel the artist is going for, what they think they want from the session, what they don't want, what they like and don't like, if they like coffee or tea at Aroma Roasters, etcetcetc. Since Tambo was pressed for time, as was Ariana, we couldn't take that day to just hang. I assumed Tambo hung out already since it was two weeks before he took the trek up to the North Bay.

Ariana wanted to record 7 songs at this session, with no real solid intention as to which ones will make the final cut, much less no real idea where these songs will inevitably end up (since she went back to Portland after this weekend).

Since we were pressed for time, we couldn't really map out each song to the fullest extent we'd like to, so we were thrown up against this wall of mostly gray, recording guitar and vocals first. Then we'll be doing a mixture of bass, second guitar, and percussion second, and then kit drums inevitably last... this is almost 100% backwards from our usually take on recording, especially since there was no click track involved on these recordings at all (and there won't be) so recording the rest of these instruments will really be an experiment and trial by fire. Which isn't bad at all, it's just harder for the artist to put her two cents in since she's far away from us by this point and we're kind of left to do what we do best: produce the shit out of these songs.

So, without knowledge of percussion or bass, and without a direction of what we want on any song at all, Tambo and I decided to just record every single song as good as possible as if it were just her vocals, one guitar (or mandolin), and some extra vocals for some kick. Honestly though, it sounded pretty solid after those takes... almost to the point where extra stuff might just not be what we need but rather really really solid subtle stuff (solid drums, solid bass, solid perc., solid saw+bow...)


We switched back and forth between two different mics for the most part. Turns out, what I thought was a AKG C2000 was actually a Rode NT1, a similar mic by a different company.
This mic definitely is a tender mic. It was used on a whole slew of different tracks... percussions, back up vocals, gang vocals, vocalvocals... very versatile. For guitar, we stuck it out with the AKG C1000, as well as an Audio Technica mic I once again can't remember for the life of me...
We also used the C1000 for some vocal tracks, as shown here... Ariana is doing her "wtftambo" face.

As you can see from the last picture, there is a marimba within the premises. We will definitely be using that on the recordings. We're looking at a pretty full-court-press when it comes to this album. I don't think any rock will be left unturned, so to say, since there is a lot of elements in these songs that can bring to life some of the things, techniques and otherwise, that Tambo and myself have been wanting to do for awhile.

For this record, we do have an pseudoallstar line up of guests to record with... aside from Tambo on percussion/vox, and myself on guitar/bass/drums, Stephen Tamborski (www.area707.com ; yes, he's related to Ryan Tamborski) on washtub bass and electric bass, Maxi Maksutovic on piano/keyboard, and a slew of other unconfirmed but most likely possibles (we'll leave those up to your imagination for now).

We're also trying to be conscience about our tracking this time around. We've been cursed with already taking up 4 of the 8 analog tracks available to us already. Our two options, both plausable and doable, are either fill out 8 tracks, digitize them, save them, sync them, then re-record over them with newer tracks... or, maximize the amount of stuff we're doing on each track, making all percussion on one track, minimizing drums, etc. I'm a "more tracks, the better" type, so hopefully we can go forth and digitize all those tracks we've done before moving on... post-production is going to be a bitch.

Til next time!

Rupert Neve please

So, I've been mindlessly (and heartlessly) shopping for a new board. I've been using a shitty version of the Korg D3200 lined through Cakewalk and I've been meaning to switch myself over to something more lively. First off, this isn't about DAW vs AWS shit, I don't really like DAW stuff but it's a space saver, so I throw everything through one of those Apogee things everyone has and mix down in Cakewalk (or if we're at Maxi's place, we'll mix down on Logic). Anyway, long story short, I'll be switching over to RADAR soon enough. Unless I can convince Lauren to do all my sound engineering stuff for me, then we might stick it out with PT since she supposedly knows that (yay FIDM).

Anyway,

So, I was ebaying (duh, who buys music equipment new anymore?) and came across this weird 10 track neve board for $3000. Since then, I've been trying to find me either an 8 or a 16 track Neve (or Amek) console for some time now. So far, people have been trying to upsell me an Amek 9098i... it seems quite decent, but I don't know how "Neve'd" out it really is. The price I got on a used one (this model is fairly new too) was $20k, so that didn't work out too well. I'm looking at around $6k. At most. Preferably less.

An Amek BCIII was selling for a little less than $4k, but was a little too modded out for my taste. There was an Amek Einstein 24 track was selling for $4k I think as well... too bad I have no room for 24 tracks of Amek glory. :(

There is always an Otari MX70. I don't think that 1/4" tape has a FireWire out though. :D

Anyway, it seems that the popularity of a 16 track recorder is going out of style. Maybe people are a/d'ing way faster than enjoying the taste of your board. Fucking DAW shit... ugh. What happened to the glory when you maxed out all 36 tracks and had to move to Room B to finish one song? :(:(:(:(

So if you want to make me a happy early birthday/Christmas, just buy this for me:
http://vintageking.com/New-Brands/Neve-AMS/Neve-Genesys-Recording-Console

Audio Technica wins my heart for now

I thought I was stuck with this POS Audio-Technica PRO24 mic which is seemingly for live sound or usable for possible room or overhead use... but I've been toying around with this beast and if you've got an extra $200 in your prod. account, I wouldn't be opposed to actually recommending two of these guys. They are definitely good overhead mics, but they don't put out much bass. The bass wears thin unfortunately, and the weak excuse for a "stereo" mic kind of makes it cheap-ish, but two of these for simple drum mic'ing is AWESOME for small studios. Pair this with a good kick drum mic, like a Shure Beta 52A or something of that sort, and you got an awesome and cheap drum mic kit. However, if you're opting out for something more... controlled... opt out for the Shure PG56's and pair that with something like a 52A. As always, Shure SM57's... king of the mics... use that thing for the snare. Or if you're awesome, double mic your drums and sum an 11 track drum mix. That's most likely what I'd do, but I also don't have a steady job.

Long story short:
Decent and cheap drum mic set up: AT PRO24 paired with a 52A
Not so cheap: 52A, or whatever you want for your bass mic (I love that 52A deep tone), and a slew of PG56's for your rack, keep those PRO24s as overheads, and drop something like a SM57 on your snare
Not cheap at all: double up on your PG56s and screw those cheap PRO24's and use something like C1000's for overheads. Or SM57s. I'd go with the 57s.

Live production

Live production is something I'd like to start expanding on in my arsenal of production. I'm not talking about like light techs and fog machines and shit but I'm talking about solid pre's for your shit. You're playing in a practice space foamed with high quality sound foam and 4 or 10 sound blankets to boot as well as a room only big enough to fit 10 comfortably or 20 snug. It's going to sound a lot different when you're on a stage projecting out against who knows what the hell... half pipes because the venue is an indoor skate park... non-proofed glass because the place is usually a cafe in the afternoons... high ceilings, cement floors, room made mostly of porcelain, who knows. Live production sound determines who will buy you're CD.

I personally try to stay away from things that add major watts to my set up. No tube pre's, no "sound maximizers", nothing like that at all. That just drives a muddled sound of shit out of your usually nice sounding cabs or speakers. I try to deter myself from heavy beepboopboop shit... no Nord electro pre's or Line 6 rack pods. That stuff also drives your tone to an empty puddle of crap anyway.

I'm almost a "purest" in a sense where going through a gate/comp and an EQ is all you technically need... there are a few other things you might really want but in my opinion,This dbx 166XL is a beast on stage. This compressor will filter you to a really rich clean if you use it right. My rig, I only have one channel on my amp, so this works perfectly... you can rig an A/B or A/B/Y box to these guys and mod your boxes a little so your channel switches to the right 166XL if you are eccentric... but if you're using a one channel amp (especially these old Fender's) this is essential for live sound as well as:

dbx 231 might be overkill for some people, but the advantage to a 31-band EQ... you have 31 bands of EQ and not 15. I have to admit, I am pretty set on using my Alesis DEQ-230, but again... 31 band EQ is not essential. ESPECIALLY a dual channel 30-band EQ like I have... but it can be practical and very useful if you're limited to a minimal amp (like me :D). EQ's are necessary.

There are only a few other things I'd venture out to try. Although I said I don't really enjoy "sound maximizers", there are a few that filter you through a super light chorus or phaser so your notes have a very very distinct clean pinch to them that you can only get when you're back in your own proverbial "shed". I can't think of one off the top of my head... but you can kind of get the same effect by stacking enough comp/gates and limiters on each other if you're lucky. Or we can all cash out on a UA 1176 and take that on the road with us......... cough cough.

Erik Schau and his slew of songs

I don't know exactly when Schau started recording his demos at Shedaluma, sometime between the time he got back from his semester abroad and his next quarter at UCSB, but he brought Tambo and myself, the 402 Production team, a slew of songs that weren't exactly finished by our standards. His myspace account, www.myspace.com/erikschau, depicts a few songs as to which he has recorded and some songs we have recorded with him.

Tambo has this organic rhythm appeal towards most songs. Kind of funny coming from a beatmaker and mash up artist like himself, but it almost makes complete sense seeing as he is techincally making beats and adding more beats on top of beats for songs. We usually take a driving percussion stance on acoustic tracks to fill out the outside emptiness solo acoustic tracks sometimes bring.

On Schau's latest track, 'Julia', we opted out for a few things we haven't set forth on Schau's songs before. On his first two demo'd tracks he brought us, 'Dreams of Driftwood' and 'Most of All', we took a very simple straight forward approach to those songs and tried to maximize on backing vocals and guitars and lingered on percussion and bass. The option to leave 'Julia' bassless was actually almost a mistake since that didn't cross my mind til... now. However, we maxed out all the tracks as usual so I guess it wasn't extremely necessary to include a low tone track like that... however, testing as many waters as possible is what makes for the best sound.

For 'Julia', Schau was using his Taylor for the guitar track recording through a Shure SM57 I believe and singing through that AKG C2000 (I think it was a C2000...). For the second acoustic guitar, we opted for a baby Taylor through that same C2000 with the mic closer to the bridge than the sound hole for that deep raking acoustic sound you hear. During this recording session, my band Bare Knuckle Boxing was actually recording at the same time, so a third electric guitar was used for the solo portion of the song. That was my Ernie Ball Music Man Silhouette Special going through my original Fender Deluxe mic'd with an SM57. The delayed swell-y sounding tremlolead effect was a simple custom delay programed through my first edition Digitech RP200.

Tambo quickly learned how to play the accordion, I believe it's a toy accordion... could just be some toy version of some variant of an accordion, and tracked that going through an AKG C 414. All extra percussions were done going through the C2000 (I'm now thinking that AKG mic could very well be the larger diaphram version of the C 414... I really need to get down there and check it out).

Backing vocals went through both the C2000 and C414. I don't know if it was the mic output from the C414 or Schau's voice, but his "presence", so to say, was greater than that of Tambo's when recording these tracks. That wasn't a bad thing at all, but at the mix down it was hard to work around since cutting the level in half loses intensity of the vocals, so Tambo (he was SE for this one actually) decided to cut the losses and opted for the same intensity at the cost of weird leveling.

Tambo did leveling and pseudomastering through the board (nonautonomous...). That Mackie is the worst leveling board in the world, I've decided. It doesn't kick as much as some boards I've been behind, which makes it kind of not the most awesome workstation already. It's got a few faulty faders that make it almost impossible to do on-the-fly pans or eq's. The non-autonomous thing makes it twice as hard, if not more, to do quick leveling. We started just summing and exporting all the tracks on their own and loading them into a DAW and finishing it off there. I'm not really a fan of DAW stuff... the ability to actually touch the track is an art lost to binary code. Some things, like tape and reels, can be traded for hard drives and digital storage now... that's not a problem... but when you're recording mostly analog, there is a culture of art that seems to be mistaken for work nowadays. Thank god for companies like iZ corp.

The Shed, pictures and all

How Weezer of me:

For a very long time, since I started producing, I've always had this place on the side of my house everyone calls "The Shed". Historically, it was an actual tool shed which we tore down and rebuilt to accommodate a room of studio equipment as well as some other things my parents didn't want to have cluttered around their home. My dad realized he actually might need an actual tool shed to store even more stuff, so he built another shed adjunct to my 'shed'. Due to it's shed-like area, the name stuck. Some call it 'The Shack', which to me, sounds way 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' or creepy snuff/9mm-esque. Anyway, it's a snug hideaway here in Sonoma County. Many have come through to demo or practice and it seems perfect for just that.

Inside the shed there isn't much room for control type stuff... much less, within the home itself (I'll get to that later), but there is one spot that conveniently fits a 12 track board and two 4 racks, along with a top shelf for as many as six 4-racks. Currently, I have a weird old school eq that was laying around as well as a receiver for multipurpose usage. I've hosted a crap load of Korg and M-Audio material for small 4 and 8-track type stuff, as well as a lot of DAW stuff through Logic Pro, Acid, Cubase, and Cakewalk. The con to this is that the "control closet" is located behind the drumset, which is obviously a pain to control unless your engineer or tech is also the drummer. We'll get to physical workarounds to this problem later.
The Shed, like most spaces and studios, has it's rest and relaxation area and cutesy things. A lot of it is just based around me. We used to have an SNES in there, but many days, unpaid and bored, would end with us trying to beat DK Country or having a Street Fighter tournament. We definitely got rid of that beast. There use to be guitar schematics for custom bodies from my old friends' company 'Coranado' (fronted by Jarrett Kemmerly and Mike Stender). Unfortunately, those were stored since they were fading and deteriorating. Some things that have been put up and never taken down is the Nick Wan Wall.
Not many people draw for my wall anymore, but some fun classic people have been Anthony Gilardi (son of a local mayor), Kelly McClellan (awesome artist from what I recall), and Brad Hieser to name a few.

The outdoor area is simple. Trees cast over you and if that's not enough, there's an umbrella and patio deck furniture. There's also a BBQ if you're down for some grill action. And a lawnmower in the actual shed if you're down for some grass action.
Some people who live here aren't in the know of a messy space...

Aside from The Shed, the control room itself is almost just as hilarious.The control room is hugged with less than mediocre stuff. Unfortunately not pictured is a Korg 4 track portable board which is used for some simple summing. The laptop in the shed sends the files over to this HP desktop which tracks it all out onto Cubase or Acid, depending on how intense of a project it is.
Sometimes it's just easier to do guitar tracks in the control room since the shed has a lot of clutter and stuff that doesn't necessarily make the acoustics the best. Hardwood floor, short ceiling, a bed and a computer for interference... that's about all in this room.
Going through a Fender Champ 45 here. Also, I like shoes sometimes... those are Nike Court Forces. Not pictures are some Bape Roadstas. Sony HDV-HC1 is the cam we use for vids and such. An iced tea courtesy of Della Fattoria. Sky Dancers: The Sky's the Limit courtesy Lauren and Remy.
This is also my bedroom. I wake up, I do a little mastering and editing... then I think about taking a shower or something like that. Sometimes my dog taps on the door and steps all over my keyboard and ruins some hours of stuff I've been processing. In any case, that is the tour of The Shed. Sometime soon, Shedaluma. Til then.

Graham Patzner steps into Shedaluma

Graham Patzner, a common friend now between Ryan Tamborski and myself, decided to cut a track at the less-than-infamous Shedaluma. Next time I'm throwing down in that area I'll grab some official pics and specs of this stuff but from what I can remember...

a Mackie 8 going through an Alesis WS, summed into a Tascam CD-RW402. I can't remember pre's, but I think there is one eq pre and one gate/comp... maybe not though. Tambo and I really stick it strong with the fact that we don't filter much out of our tracks because we're more grime and grit and such but that doesn't mean we can't have a little g/c helping us out.

As for mic's, we were using only two... sm58 and some AKG mic (possibly a C 2000... not extremely sure).

Since we haven't had the chance to expand into a larger track'd board (or even an a/d/a converter to either my Cubase PC or Tambo's Mac [I don't know what Tambo would be able to use if we did use his lappy as a DAW but it'd probably be Logic or PT (ew)]) we have been confound to doubling on tracks. This has actually worked out well for almost all our recordings (Giant Octopus, Erik Schau, NWN, BKB, etc) and actually worked out great for Graham's song.

He brought us a guitar and vocals song, so straight out the bat Tambo recorded the guitar (it was his guitar [I want to say it was an Applause guitar... but I could be wrong as usual]) and we did a vocal track. We finally got a chance to double on the vocals and it finally worked out well. The only other time we've double tracked vocals was for NWN - IFHY pt. 1 and it was mixed results. We definitely had amazing results for Graham however. The crackiness and colder first take definitely helped add an edge to the more pronounced second take.

I don't recall the order of the rest of the tracking, but I believe it went percussion > bass > percussion > percussion > violin > backing vocals... I'll describe it in that kind of order.

The first dry run of percussions was mixed. This was actually surprising since the song itself is folky but still very hard and driving rock... you would assume some percussions that could come into play would be a snare, some sort of tambourine (possibly a ride or very light crash), some deep drums like but not limited to a bass drum, floor tom, deep djambe, or even something like a huge Arrowhead water jug or something... you know, folk rock type stuff. Weird enough, a snare (A SIMPLE SNARE AND BRUSHES) didn't work at all. It was too weak and the song definitely wasn't needing weak... it needed beef. We kept the maracas and tambourines but were left finding the right drum to keep the percussions anchored. We all decided on a bass drum... and the first take wasn't amazing. Finally Graham had a great take commanding the bass drum... on the same track, I commanded the maracas and Tambo was insistent on the cow bell. I am very against cow bell... Tambo was definitely in love with it as was his cousin Ally. Graham, saying he wasn't the greatest drummer, started to falter at the end of the track but he decided that it might be cool if there was a 'falling apart' end to the song. We definitely incorporated that into the second and third percussion tracks by including a part where we threw stuff at a pile of percussion stuff we weren't using, including an Orangina bottle and those damn brushes we weren't able to use on that damned snare... grr.

The decision came down to whether we should use a bass guitar or a second guitar for lead or something of that sort. We decided all on a bass guitar to follow the bass drum in the song. We definitely scored hard with the bass track as it is the keystone instrument to the entire song in my opinion. It gives off this very muddy deep vibe that sucks the polish off the song and converts it into raw rock. It's definitely against my own grain to go minimalistic and kind of this "TV on the Radio" minimal rock sound but damn... it sounded so perfect and right.

Tambo proclaimed we needed something high pitched... a lead guitar or something of that sort. Graham, a trained violin player, opted for the violin and we shrieked in perfection. The violin track came practically flawlessly, with us actually wanting to take things out and mute around the violin track because of it's overbearing awesomeness (or I guess... more so it's overbearing on the song itself).

The last track, the backing vocal track, was definitely the most interesting and most fun. I don't know if we explored it as much as we could have... but being only limited to one track for ALL backing vocals we didn't really have a choice to record something and decide later whether or not to keep it or record something else... if it is a good take, and you feel it from your throat to your feet, you can't really go back and recreate history. Not to make it sound more epic than it is, but when you step into a studio and you aren't bringing your A game, the recording session doesn't lie... you can always rerecord suckiness but you can't rerecord awesomeness.

Overall, the tune rocked pretty hard. The sync seems like it'll be a little hard since I am not completely familiar with the song as of right now, but for post we're thinking a frequency pan on the vocals for sure and doubling the backing vocals track and throwing that to each side. I'm not too sure what I want to do with the guitar and bass... whether to keep it centered or possibly double the guitar and freq. pan that for a little variation in each ear... I don't know yet. I definitely want to go balls out mad with the 3 tracks of percussion we have. As for the violin, I want to get some crazy wavy panny shit going during the verse but keep it pretty solid to the left and center for the rest of the track with backing vocals a little to the right to give a side line shouting type vibe to it.

Due to two exams staring me down this coming week I can't feel out the rest of this post until I feel out my cultural anthro notes and my biochem textbook... so I'll have to set this down until, at best, Wednesday.

If Graham says I can, I'll post it on this blog for download in a later post.

COMING SOON:
BKB prod notes
Erik Schau prod notes
GO prod notes
Extravorgasm prod notes

p.s. Shane Kalantari, aka Shahin the Machine, has been confirmed to produce BKB's 7th album. We're stoked.