Recording The Stamps

If you've had a chance to listen to the Stamps album, GREAT! (If not, http://tinyurl.com/iTunesTheStamps!).

 We took a lot of time getting Guitar Tones because, well, I (robbie) am a guitar-tone fanatic. I like "classic but new" tones - tones that allow the playing to shine through without masking the performance but that, at the same time, ring out as new and interesting in their own right as an instrument.

It's difficult to achieve guitar sounds that are genuinely unusual or new - especially while working within a genre-specific overall framework on the well-worn "rock guitar".

 Anyway, NOT speaking for Jeff Stanley, I, Robbie, use "weird pickup configurations" and "strange guitars" through "strange recording devices and amplifiers" with "oddball microphone and pre-amp choices" - sometimes doubling-trippling-and-quadrupling a part to get -just that right oddball thing. This note and picture is kind of a description and narrative of some of those tones for those that are interested in geeky guitar-tone stuff. If you're not interested in this stuff, completely understandable too :).

 Most of the songs, e.g. Dance Monkey Dance, have two-or-three guitars going at the same time. Usually a rhythm guitar, an "ambient" guitar and a lead/rhythm guitar (because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing).

In the case of Dance Monkey Dance, I used a '63 Silvertone acoustic guitar with a piezo pickup through UA pre-amps and close-and-room microphoned in a small room with an AKG 414 and a little-known but really nice ribbon microphone close on the fingerboard.) This gave the guitar a bit of a "trashy but clean" very present middle-rangey sound so it doesn't interfere with everything else that's going on in that track. On top of that there's one of my "Stratocaster Compatible" monster creations (pictured in the picture) - in this case with a combination of Carvin and DiMarzio pickups that Steve Spalding wired up for me. There's light use of the standard strat tremolo on it to give it that "loose tuning" sound.

The electric guitar was played through a relatively new VoX AC4TV in 1Watt mode stereo with another ''63 sears item - the Kay amplifier (the old Brown Thing near the back on top of the couch in the picture). These were microphoned close , facing apart at opposite sides of the rooms with tube mic's from Blue and Aphex (little known, but kinda fun if you want that dirty-tube-mic-sound). The Akg 414 set in the middle high in the room in OMNI mode provides the small amount of reverb used.

 Jeff took the lead on this one with his humbucker-in-the-bridge strat in an in-between setting which gives it that nice belly tone, through the Texas Red Deluxe amp pictured (the big red amp) at ear-piercing volume (sitting outside the studio door) into a Neumann microphone through UA pre-amps and compressors for that super-compressed tight sound.

 Dance monkey dance was -relatively simple- compared to, e.g. Jackson County Fair or Space horse. 

One of the, I think, interesting things about the recording is that almost throughout there is an Epiphone Les Paul Junior modified with a TV Jones FutureTron (probably discontinued :( ) going through a variety of effects units including an original RAT pedal that has a really nasty but thoroughly awesome jangle-crunch that I personally loved.

 K, enough guitar-geeking-out. The drum recording was relatively straightforward but also -interesting-. We used a discontinued drum set (REMO made a kit for like a year, and this is it) with old heads and some trashy (and some nice) cymbals. The room was treated with mild sound reducing material (so there was -some- reflectivity in the room but not a lot). Miking was very standard - We used the Audix D7 on the kick, an sm57 on the snare, two blue mics overhead, an audix d6 on the floor tom. For the percussion we used a remo Cajon and a remo Djembe as well as some cheap maracas, a stick-hit-able tambourine and some other "stuff". In the case of "Rabbits" (the bonus track) - the percussion was done in four different layers for a "drum circle" feel toward the outro-jam, one of my favorite moments on the whole thing.

 We recorded "live to a click track" with the whole band (in three different rooms...). In most cases the takes were first-takes and/or combinations of first-takes and comping tracks. Robin Mink was kind enough to assist with the engineering during tracking.

 I hope you enjoy listening to what's going on, producing it was extremely fun and the next one should be even more so.

The Studio

I planned to build an "affordable to record in" studio - capable of producing broadcast quality recording - but reasonable enough for doing any-old-recording.

There are lots of places you can record, your bathroom being a good spot #1.

But at some point you want to sound really good and getting those little edges right can be tricky without a controlled environment and some specific pieces of gear.

Here are the most important ones:

The Right Mics

Pro studios have a couple of -really good vocal mics- around because not everybody's voice is captured correctly with an sm58. In fact, almost nobody. The highest quality microphones are made by Neumann, AKG, Rode, Avantone and Blue. Each microphone will sound different. Sometimes solid state microphones are right for the application, sometimes tubes, sometimes large-diaphragm, sometimes small, sometimes ribbons, sometimes condensers, sometimes dynamic, etc. It just depends. So listening to options in context is critical. If you're going for the vintage vibe, you're going to want to use what they were using, AKG's and Neumanns. If you're going for something more modern, you may STILL want to go for the old-mics with different pre-amps and eq settings, etc. The options are infinite.

I landed on Neumann, AKG, Rode, Avantone and Apex as well as some standards (shure, sony, etc.) as "the ones to have around". I know one will work right for the application.

The Right Pre-Amps

The truth here is that there really are just a few good options. Universal Audio simply makes the best microphone pre-amps for any application, solid-state or tube, modern or vintage, they've got the right sound. There are a few options in the line. But, for instance, for drum overheads, they're not always the right choice, a simple completely transparent one is needed. I landed on Mackie's because they have the best clean solid state pre-amps available with the highest quality digital-analog converters available alongside the shortest signal path. I've got a few "other things" for playing with if I really want something strange, but those are the ones for -the sound your probably gonna want- like if you want to sound like anything from Muddy Waters to the Beatles to Marilyn Manson or Miley Cyrus.

The Right Recording Software/Hardware

I like Pro-Tools - it's a standard. It does 7.1 surround, has a nice collection of plug-ins and is relatively straightforward to work in. It can product 192khz digital recordings and has nice automation.

I like Logic Pro too, it's the upcoming standard, I think it will surpass protools soon because of the quality of its built-in plug-ins, ease of use, stability and compatibility. It's right there with protools for producing high quality audio and even available for doing some mastering work.

It's important obviously to have enough channels to record in - 16 with an option on 24 - as well as good midi integration and a "flying faders" control surface for people who can't look at monitors (are there any more of these?).

The Right Rooms

Room Size, Shape and Sound Proofing and Reflectivity control are extremely important. The ability to contour a room is especially important for recording bass, electric guitar, vocals and drums, with the ability to tune those rooms on the fly, so a configurable sound-proof environment is required. At the same time, it's not convenient to keep a cathedral around if you're looking for that cathedral sound which is almost certainly done better remotely anyway. So I'm preparing three different controlled isolated rooms with different configurations and the ability to tune the rooms on the fly with movable baffling and reflectivity control.

A Good Monitoring Environment

A mix should sound good on a cheap pair of headphones, a super-cheesy computer speaker, a very nice car stereo, a 7.1 surround THX system and -anything else you plan to have your recording heard on- and that means having a good test environment. It should also sound good at all of the levels you're planning to play it at. This means managing harmonic and sub-harmonic distortion very carefully. My control room has four sets of monitoring systems to allow for just this kind of testing at all volumes, as well as to allow for audio-for-video production. It also means having a tuned room and tuned speaker system for that particular room.

A Comfortable Environment

Nobody likes recording in a pig-sty. But sometimes even your own house won't have the right vibe, you need to find a vibe that works for you. Sometimes you want to record with the lights out, sometimes with them on, sometimes with a Dread Zeppellin poster hanging there next to a lava lamp, it's all about everyone being comfortable with what's happening but leaving that little rush that gives a performance sparkle, the "showtime" rush.

Those are the factors that have gone into my studio-design decisions.

So I figured I'd build a studio

I've been seeing a lot of great music out there recently and not much of it well recorded or productized.

Dear Musicians - in order to survive in this cruel world you will have to make money. To make that money you will have to have something to sell, and that will be your music.

People may not buy your CD's, they may only download your music, and they may be unwilling to pay for it. Too bad, that's the lead-cost of being a musician in the post-mp3 era. This doesn't mean you can't make money, it just means that making a record is just a price of entry.

You're gonna need something to send the club owner/promoter/agent/manager who wants to book you to explain to them what you do without listing your influences and sounding ridiculous.

Sometimes you can wander in with a guitar and give them a few numbers, sometimes that won't do.

And if you EVER want to get radio play, you will need a high quality recording prepared for radio.

And record companies seldom do that for you anymore unless you're already a super-star. This doesn't mean you can't get radio play, just that you need to be able to produce a record worth playing on the radio. That's both artistically and technically.

In short, if you want to get to first-base with music, you're gonna need to record.

The good news is, it's really fun, and the tascam porta-studio is a great place to start. Practicing recording is a great idea, just like practicing performing is a great idea and both get sharpened by the effort.

It is not, however, a great place to try to finish. A -very few albums- have made it to airplay from a porta-studio, and even fewer to critical success, and even if they were using a porta-studio for recording, they weren't using crappy mics and crappy sounding instruments in crappy sounding rooms. Notable's - Springsteen's Nebraska (portastudio with a neumann mic's and universal audio preamps and vintage martin guitar CAN sound really good!), Primus's first album, John Frusciante's first two albums. But that's it, really. Nobody else, really.

Another piece of good news - recording high quality stuff is not impossible, at least in Ashland now, for a reasonable amount of money, that's why I'm starting this studio.

Ashland Studios

Over the years I've collected a nice patch of equipment and experience doing recordings - quick, easy, good recordings.

The trick is always quality - how can you get the best quality for the right amount of effort.

That I've figured out now.

Here's the very simple stuff:

a) artists - know your stuff - no matter how good a studio you enter, if you don't know your material or can't perform it, it's gonna take forever to get it recorded. This takes WORK - that's the difference between musicians and everybody else, they practice until they do it right.

b) artists - like your sounds - if you don't like your voice or your guitar tone or your percussion sounds or your horns, etc., you're not gonna like them recorded either. It's one of the harder things to do to be objective about the tones you're getting. Sometimes another ear is in order, sometimes you have to go with your guts. Don't be overconfident either, seek constructive criticism and be prepared to go fix things that are wrong.

c) engineers - talk about the vibe and the tone and the instrumentation and how they're supposed to be related. Jug music is not punk rock (unless it's jug punk!), country is not hip hop, the same kinds of mixes and recording methods don't apply to all kinds of music.

d) engineers - have good equipment. It's definitely possible to make a cheap recording on a tascam portastudio with an sm58 in your bathroom. It will definitely not sound as good as a high quality digital recording with correct microphones and pre-amps and eq and compression in the right rooms with the right reverbs.

e) engineers/musicians - go for a live sound. It has the energy. Yes, click-tracks are great and overdubbing can be useful for cleaning up messes, but that tends to be expensive and also tends to lose the vibe. This means a cooperative effort between engineer and musician - musicians all need to be able to finish their songs with the energy they're looking for. Engineers need to understand best how to capture that energy.

f) engineers/musicians - remember that this is ART - it's fun, you're supposed to play with it, the more you play, the more ideas you get, the more good ideas you get, the more good ideas you capture, etc. This goes at every stage of the process from writing to mic placement to mastering.

g) musicians - have a plan for marketing your music - GIG, Be Cool, Internet!, Social Network!, just keep it out there. This will take TIME. Without a product to sell though, it will take longer. Better to be prepared because you'll just have to do it again with the product if you do it without product.

That's post 1, next we'll talk about the studio.


Aloha!

Robbie L