studioporn

Post Method is in the studio working on their album. Seeing as how I've been very unhappy with the drum sounds on the past few projects I've worked on, I decided to reevaluate my mic, placement, and preamp choices. This led to me finally breaking down and getting an API 3124 preamp:

This thing is sweet on drums. I can't wait to try it out on electric guitars next week.

Some new (primarily) drum mics:

CAD M179 x2. I haven't used these yet as much as I would have liked. I've been thinking about trying them on overheads, but I wanted to try out my Audio Technica ATM450s on that job first (which they did really well at). I ended up using 1 M179 as a room mic. It worked ok, but I wasn't overly thrilled with the way the top end sounded--cymbals came out really sloshy. Not a big deal in this case since I'll be slapping a low-pass filter on that track anyway. But I do need to spend some more time experimenting with this mic on overheads and in other applications to see where it works best.

Audix I5 (for snare). I really like the sound of this guy on snare, and it has great off-axis rejection so hihat bleed isn't as big an issue as it is with some other mics. Lots of crispness in the sound and no low-end mud.

Audix D6 (for inside kick). This gives more of that "modern" kick sound with the scooped mids. Placement is very easy. Only thing is, the kick sound is kind of incomplete if you just use this mic, so I've been using a second mic outside the kit (I've been using a Shure SM7B) to pick up a little bit more of the full shell character and some of the mids/highs that the D6 doesn't pick up. I'm really digging the combination of the two.

Last but not least, I ordered a Peterson StroboRack tuner last night. I can't wait until this puppy arrives so I can try it out on guitar.

Posted by Len at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

after getting the whole-house dehumidifier installed last year, i've been kind of dragging my ass on buying/installing a whole-house humidifier. i finally bought one about a month ago but didn't get around to installing it until this past week when temperatures dropped and the humidity in the studio got as low as 26% (ack!).

the humidifier i got isn't anything terribly special...just one of those whole-house drum humidifiers you can pick up at home depot. the unit itself is pretty decent, but it was a pain in the ass to install and the whole process was kind of kludgy. it took a little while for it to start working its magic, but after about 3 days the humidity levels are pretty stably about 10% higher throughout the house. i still need to tweak things to get the studio a few % points higher, but overall things are looking good.

my goal is to have the humidity in the house be between 40-50% year round. for the studio this is mainly to help wood instruments behave well, but i also want the humidity controlled in the rest of the house for comfort/health reasons. nothing i hate more than waking up in the middle of the night in the winter feeling like every drop of moisture has been sucked out of me.

when springtime rolls around i'm going to confront the dehumidifier situation again. i'm still really pissed at the way they installed this thing and i believe it's running very inefficiently as a result. in places with both heating and air conditioning, you're always supposed to do any dehumidification before the evaporator coil and any humidification after the furnace. the reason for doing humidification after the furnace is that the increased temperature enables the air to hold more moisture, and the very process of passing air through the furnace drops the relative humidity significantly.

as for dehumidifying before the evaporator coil, i've learned the hard way why this is important. dehumidifiers are self-contained refrigeration cycles--air passes over an evaporator coil where it is cooled significantly, which causes excess moisture to condense and get drained out. then it passes through a condensor coil, which causes it to heat back up. i discovered this summer that the air coming out of our dehumidifier is actually several degrees warmer than the air going in, and since the output of the dehumidifier was tapped into the supply line, that warmer air was just circulating through the house and making the a/c work harder. when spring comes around i'm going to switch it over to the return so that all of the output from the dehumidifier passes through the a/c evaporator coil before going anywhere else. that should also provide better dispersion of the dehumidified air throughout the house--in the current set up, because of where the dehumidifier is tapped into the supply trunk, one end of the house and part of the studio barely get any direct delivery of dehumidified air.

Posted by Len at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

thought i'd update everyone on the cool sexy gear i've been buying lately:

microphones

sennheiser 421. this thing is great on guitar amps. i like it a lot better than sm57s for this purpose--it has a smoother, warmer sound. it's also great on snare, although positioning it can be a bit awkward sometimes since it's a bit bigger than other commonly-used snare mics.

shure sm7b. rapidly becoming one of my favorite vocal mics. great for rock singers, great for taming harsh singers, great for taming singers with crazy dynamics. several times now i've put it up for a singer along with 3 other mics costing 2-4 times as much and it wins out by a pretty wide margin.

royer sf1. my first ribbon mic, this thing became my #1 choice for several things as soon as i heard it. it sounds INCREDIBLE on violin. absolutely amazing. it sounds pretty amazing on acoustic guitar too. i just went through a long period of being very depressed at the acoustic guitar recordings i was getting with my mics, and this thing was a complete godsend. on playback now i'm finally hearing guitars the way i want to be hearing them. i've been using it on vocals a bit, too. it wouldn't be one of my "go-to" mics, but it works amazingly well in the right context.

shure 520dx, aka green bullet, aka harmonica microphone. i have no idea when i might need to record harmonica, but i got this to use for a vocal track i was doing. it sounds horrible, distrorted, midrangy--I LOVE IT! it was perfect for giving just that right kind of lo-fi sound i needed. i've worked on a few songs in the past where i really wished i had one of these, so i'm glad i finally picked one up to have around. it's the kind of mic i'll probably only use a couple of times a year, but when i need it I REALLY NEED IT.

audio-technica atm450. bought a pair of these for a really great deal but haven't had a chance to try them out yet. i've heard from several people that they're really good as drum overheads and other general-purpose drum mics. i've been really unhappy with the sounds i've been getting from the mics i've been using as overheads, so i'm anxious to try these out.

outboard gear

aea the ribbon pre. ribbon mics and my sm7b are very low-put microphones and require gobs and gobs of gain (65dB or more). this pre has an ultra-minimalist signal path to help give really clean gain at those kinds of levels. i did my first recording with it on sunday and had the gain as high as 75-80dB sometimes, and this thing barely added any noise/hiss. the sound is pretty nice and uncolored and it seems like the highs aren't quite as hyped as on some of my other pres. i'll be playing around this unit more in the coming weeks

hear back headphone distribution system. i got this to replace my old furman distribution system. this system lets you send 8 signals digitally over cat5 to person headphone mixers where people can mix those 8 signals together however they want for their own headphones. mixers can also be mounted on mic stands, which makes it really convenient for singers to adjust levels in the middle of a take. i only have 2 mixers at the moment but i'll be picking up a few more in the next month or two.

computer stuff

universal audio uad-1 dsp card. i've been flirting with buying one of these for several years now, and now that i have one i'm kicking myself for having not purchased one like 3 years ago. this thing ROCKS. they've modelled a bunch of the universal audio hardware (1176, la2a, la3a, etc.) as well as other vintage and newer gear. the 1176 and la2a are my current go-to compressors and this thing has one of my all-time favorite reverbs. i've been using this so much i'm maxing out the card and will need to buy another one soon (you can have up to 4 uad-1 cards in one machine).

Posted by Len at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

finally installed the laminate flooring this weekend. it looks awesome--really adds a lot of warmth to the room:

overall it was pretty easy to install. the only tricky part was the dealing with all the weird wall angles. it was sometimes difficult to accurately measure the angle and transfer it to the piece i was cutting--a couple of pieces i had to do sort of by trial and error and mess up a few cuts until i got it right.

it's amazing how much of a difference the flooring made. it completely changes the vibe of the room and brightens it up a lot since i no longer have that dismal, gray, concrete slab thing going on.

Posted by Len at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

happy new year everyone. i finally have some downtime from recording projects to get back on track with the studio construction and all that. get ready for some up long-overdue updates, y'all....

Posted by Len at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

one of the things i'd like to do with the studio when it gets a little closer to completion is to use it not just as a place to record projects, but also as a place to do other music-related things. here's an idea i emailed to a bunch of folks. if this is something you'd be interested in, shoot me an email.

in all the music-related projects i've been involved with the past few years, i've noticed a recurring set of complaints across a bunch of musicians who write/want to write music (myself included):

-"i should write more music, but {i just can't seem to get motivated,i don't think i'm good enough, i never finish what i start, ....}"

-"i'm stuck in a rut. all my music sounds the same."

-"i think i've hit some sort of plateau. i feel like i should be getting better but i'm not."

-"i wish i could bounce my ideas of off people and get help with ideas and suggestions"

this has been on my mind a lot lately and i've been reading a lot of books on this topic. one thing i'm seeing mentioned again and again is this idea of music lodges, which appear to be pretty popular out on the west coast. they're basically just a regular gathering of musicians who are looking to find ways to think outside the box and expand their songwriting chops. it's also a good way for the group to give itself projects to work on as homework and the regular meeting structure provides deadlines to motivate those of us who can never quite seem to start/finish writing a song.

i'm pondering doing a monthly (for starters) music lodge project and helping facilitate whatever might need to be facilitated logistics-wise. this email is a feeler to gauge the level of interest in this sort of thing. here are some ideas for music-immersion projects (i can't take credit for any of these):

-the hat. everyone puts an idea for a song on a piece of paper and sticks it in a hat. we pass the hat around and everyone picks an idea out of the hat. write this song and present it at the next get-together.

-20 songs. this is a weekend-long competition which begins on saturday morning. the purpose of the competition is to see who can write the most songs in 24 hours. finish up sunday morning, catch up on sleep sunday afternoon, and we get together sunday evening and play what everyone came up with and find out who the winner is.

-worst song contest. write the worst song you possibly can. we'll take a vote to see who wins the coveted "worst song" award.

-jam sessions with ideas borrowed from improv comedy. for instance, 2 or 3 members jam for the rest of the group. the non-playing folks will periodically shout out instructions which the improvers must follow. or an adaptation of the standard setting/relationship/task improv games for songwriting (e.g. subject/instrument(s)/genre).

-lyric-writing exercises. automatic writing, freewriting, etc. maybe a series of timed exercises followed by going around the room and sharing our results with the group.

those are just some possible ideas--there are tons of others out there. the main goal is to come up with fun and challenging exercises that would be beneficial to all musicians, regardless of their music style(s) or level of talent. it's also a great opportunity for folks to interact with other musicians and exchange ideas.

let me know if you're interested. if you know of anyone else who might be interested, feel free to pass this along to them. if i hear back from enough peeps, i'll see about getting something started in a month or so.

Posted by Len at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

god, i've been horrible about keeping this thing updated. sorry about that--work's been kicking my ass and i've been knee-deep in 2 production projects for several weeks.

nothing new to report on the construction front...everything's still in a holding pattern there until i finish these current projects. i have made a few gear purchases the past few weeks. for mics i got a sennheiser 421 (great on snare) and a shure sm7 (haven't tried it yet, but lots of people say it's great for singers with harsh high-ends and/or crazy dynamics). yesterday i picked up a sansamp bass driver. i'm still by and large unhappy with the bass sounds i get when it comes to recording, so i'm hoping the sansamp will at the very least give me a few more options.

i've been talking with a lot of different people about a lot of different facets of music lately, which has me revisiting the idea of creating a "forbidden phrases" list, similar to the "no stairway to heaven" sign in wayne's world. i've been wanting to do this for a long time now. current candidates for the list:

• but it's my style
• indie rock
• but rush did it
• i want that john bonham drum sound

but it's my style. this is the musician equivalent of parents saying "because i said so." i tell people time and time again to think of their songs as their children. sure, you provide the seed for a song and have an idea of where you want to take it, but as the song begins to take shape it takes on a life of its own and it may decide it wants or needs to do certain things which are at odds with what you wanted it to do. people who defend their musical stylings too ridigly and emotionally by and large do so as a crutch to avoid actually listening to what the song is saying. it's very easy to become too attached to the words you write and the notes you play, which can lead to not seeing the forest for the trees. words, phrasings, notes, tempos, song structures, orchestration...none of that is sacred. let the song dictate those things, not the other way around.

indie rock. i'm so sick of this phrase. it has lost all meaning, and as a result everyone throws it around with their own weirdly-self-serving interpretation. indie does not mean "i don't have to practice." indie does not mean "i don't have to write good songs." indie does not mean "i don't have to make my voice/gear sound good." indie does not mean "all i have to do is say 'indie' in my description and each and every member of the indie community will become a fan of my music." indie does not mean "any suggestions for improving my music are part of the corporate music world trying to make me sterile." there's "i don't want to be like those fake, plastic supermodels, so i'm not going to buy into superficial notions of beauty," and then there's "i don't want to be like those supermodels, so i'm not going to bathe anymore."

but rush did it. you are not rush. you will (hopefully) never be rush. as soon as you start to come even close, rush fans will pee on you for daring to plagiarize their gods. most people listening to your music these days weren't even around yet when rush was making good music. putting a rush riff, fill, lick, or any other reference/homage to them into your songs will not increase your chances of getting laid. unless you like sleeping with chicks named juno. until you decide to write an album entitled "music for LARPing," chances are high that rush-isms have very little place in your music.

i want that john bonham drum sound. if i had a dollar for every time someone said this to me, i'd have enough money to reanimate bonham's corpse and hire him to play on each project which requests his sound. which, incidentally, is the only real way to get that sound. john was a big man with big arms who hit big drums with big sticks and made big sounds. not only that, he had an incredible sense of dynamics, meticulously tuned his drums, and knew his drums and his playing intimately enough so that he could adjust his playing to the recording environment rather than the other way around. no engineering technique can take the place of these things.

i don't know why so many drummers speak as if bonham was the only drummer who ever existed. yes, he was a great drummer and had a great sound, but there are other great drummers and other great sounds out there. not to mention other genres. unless you're a zeppelin tribute band or write music very much in that style, spend some time finding drummers and drum sounds you like in genres close to your own.

Posted by Len at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)