|
|
FOR MUSICIANS ONLYHurricane Sessions -- Final ThoughtsDecember 10, 2008 -- It is less than three weeks since I went to record the Hurricane. If you read through the process, I'm pretty sure that anyone in a suit will tell you that this is absolutely the wrong fucking way to go about making recordings. If you work in a studio, you probably laughed a lot. But I didn't write this for you. I wrote it for the average musician who is just trying to put together a decent recording without spending a year and a half million dollars. In terms of hard cost, we spent $20 for an ADAT tape, $25 in gas money to get me there and back, and maybe $30 in food and etc. to feed me for 3 days. Less than $100. For that we got a about half of an album of public domain songs, a religious album, and 2/3 of a rock album. Oh yeah, there were some acoustic songs on Friday, too. Four days, about 25 good recordings, less than $100. And we did it wrong. We recorded rock songs in a shed, with a portable studio in a road case that we set up on the sidewalk. I didn't pay enough attention to microphone model numbers or make note of enough technical details. I used a cardioid mic for an overhead. We lost the hi-hat for one song. The band ran through the songs one after the other, as did everyone else I recorded. There was no listening back between songs, everything was recorded flat, with no EQ, compression or limiting. It ought to sound like it was recorded in a shed. Just listening back to the Phase 4 version of "Cry," the mp3 exaggerated the vocal effects and did a few other annoying things, like make it sound too "studio" already. If anything, I'm going to go put some of the shed back in because the song is like, too perfect already. Not in the sense of being flawless, as much as in the sense that, for instance, the vocals are too smooth. Because I used it for an example, this one is in danger of being ruined by too much attention to audio detail. Sometimes messy is good. More rules to be broken. And that is the point of this whole exercise. There is no "right" way to record an album. There is no wrong way. Isolate everyone completely in a perfect studio environment or cram them all into a shed. For every rule someone can tell you, I can probably come up with five hit songs that violate it, and "Louie, Louie" is always my go-to song for first choice because, from a recording perspective, this song is terrible on so many levels. I mean, if the FBI conducts an investigation and can't figure out what the lyrics to your song are, your sound guy might need a few pointers on vocal clarity. But there's no denying that "Louie, Louie" always has been and always will be a great song, especially if the audience is drinking heavily. In that light, here is some of the logic behind some of the choices that were made. Hopefully, this will also serve a guide for the band as to how we can make our future sessions even more productive. FocusAs I explained at the outset, this band is aptly named, as everyone, including Cara, is bursting with ideas and new songs, new approaches, website ideas, song placement theories, and then there's video... The amount of content they have just waiting in line to be recorded is overwhelming. When Tim, Cara and Carl get in the same room with me, it's like a whirlwind. They're all so eager to get to work, but everyone is thinking in different directions, and I can't even follow them all. When it came to recording the band, they were very organized and focused. As soon as every channel was hitting either the ADAT or ProTools, they were ready to go, then went through the songs, boom, boom, boom, with one take each. We stopped once to change guitars, once to take care of the hi-hat mic. They may have even done a second take of something. They were ready and nailed everything. This is a very good thing, but I sacrificed many, many things for the sake of speed. That was the primary reason I went for all flat inputs. It would have been nice to take some time, go through the drums, dial in all their sweet spots, get an even better initial drum sound instead of correcting it after the fact. The electronics in the Behringer mixer are amazing, with compression, limiting, effects, EQ and other goodies for every channel, with the ability to save the mix and call it back up whenever needed. We made no use of any of that. Part of the reason is that I know how annoying it is when you're ready to play and we're all waiting around waiting for the drums, asking you to hit the same one for five minutes, followed by "Okay, the next one..." So I skipped that part and let them play. As it turns out, simply capturing what's going on is the most important part. The flat, raw tracks are strong. It would have saved later time to have the kick and snare recorded with better tone, but having to deal with it for each recorded track separately, lets you try things in a different order or from a different perspective that would have already been ruled out by the mix settings. Unless you want the kick drum to sound exactly the same in every song and this is it. I had never heard most of the songs so I didn't know what they needed to sound like. I think that, even though it was a choice I arrived at for expediency, recording the drums flat opens up a lot of options because you can always go back to that point and start over, with any individual drum. When I started writing this page, I was going to say how the next trip, we need to spend that extra time and use the electronics in the Behringer. The greater point was that when the Hurricane gets going, they need to slow down a little and give me more of an opportunity to focus and consider options. And yet... That actually worked out real well. The Shred Shed, with a studio in a box on a sidewalk, turned out to be a damn fine recording studio. New drumheads would be good, though. |
|