gonzo's garage records: guerilla recording session-FOLLOW UP

Nice Report!

I make a large part of my income doing 'gonzo garage (or basement) guerilla recording'. One day record, on an Onyx 1640 FW into Sonar on a lappy,
one day mix.
Last week it was this band. This Sunday it's a string quartet. Never a dull moment!

I can't see the pictures!!!

Just a red X inside a box, inside another box.

link to first of 8 songs from the kettlefish session, all mixed in SONAR 6 PE:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1608646


the kettlefish session original thread:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1489467&mpage=1&key=�

well, since there's no traction on this topic, maybe i'll throw some TECHNIQUE'y things in here:


let's see, details.......
that'd be mostly from memory, and my memory is not the best these days..

ok, round one.



mixing-
routing, i typically don't send anything to the 'MASTER' buss, i create new stereo sub mix busses, and break everything out to those, and those get routed to the MASTER, and the MASTER gets routed to the MAINS.

reason:
i do all my automation on mixdown (every track gets a volume envelope, plus i do moving pans, so i place pan envelopes on key tracks, such as electric solos and keyboard solos).
if i paint myself in a corner with levels, and don't want to go back to edit 28 volume envelopes (!!!! LOL, it happens)--
then i can go to my sub mix busses, apply grouping control, and pull the whole lot down fractions of DB's, til i get my master level where i want it (typically -5db max on peaks) very easily, without changing the mix very much at all.

it's so nice, to have the guys come in near the end, listen to my mix, say 'not enough drums', and i just pull all the submixes down except the drums, and have instant mix fixes!


in general, overheads getted their own buss, the rest of the drums get routed to a buss, acoustic guitars to a buss, vox to a buss, bass and electric guitars and keys (and anything else i need) to a single 'music' buss, then there are typically 3 effects busses, one for drums, one for vox, one for guitars. all these busses, are routed to the mains.

each buss except effects busses, gets a compressor, settings vary wildly, but typically, it's subtle.

effects are always send/return for reverbs and delays, and get routed to a individualized effects buss.

individual channels get appropriate EQ, ala sonitus (my favorites still), compression if required, in the effects bin (again, i favor the sonitus effects), and effects sends for reverb/delay/whatever to the effects busses. i blend in what i need from there.

DRUMS:
i can say that, in general, after the first session, and getting drum tracks, i spent quite a bit of time 'cleaning up' the drum tracks for bleed thru-
it made a HUGE improvement in the sound, getting rid of ambient bleed off the tracks.

all drums, get routed to a DRUM BUSS.
the two overheads, got routed to their very own OVERHEAD BUSS, as well, so i could compress it seperately of the rest of the kit.


since we didn't have any gates available when capturing the raw tracks, we relied on close micing, and low signals, to reduce the bleed thru...

i used the noise removal processing from the track menu in sonar, to get rid of a lot of the obvious bleed-thru between hits on the snare, kick, and toms, but left the overheads and hi hats alone.
i did spot removal on those tracks where it was appropriate, but it becomes obvious when you cut audio out of the overheads and hi hats, because you hear the drop out of the noise floor, it's just weird sounding.

in noisy sections, i could pull certain things out, and you wouldn't notice, i did that on a situation by situation decision.

on mixdown, i applied gating, compression, eq, sometimes reverb on the snare, sometimes dry, sometimes reverb on the overheads, and almost always compression on the overheads.

panning was typically closer to center with the left to right toms and overheads, than hard left and right, tho on a couple of songs, i spread it out quite a bit.


ACOUSTICS:
i ran two acoustic tracks for each performance:
one direct via LL Baggs bridge pickup, and one live mic (at4033).
i blended these different on every song-
typically i throw them both either left or right, but sometimes spread them out left and right.
effects varied from song to song. the DI track was eq'd heavily to get rid of the Piezo quack, and the live mic eq'd to get rid of boom.


Electrics:
variation here, but primarily a Epiphone Les Paul or a USACG custom TELE into a Fender Supersonic combo, or my own rig, a Mesa Boogie mark2b thru a Avatar vintage 112 cab.
the Fender was miced at volume, using a 57, and also a Palmer PDI-09 was used to capture a direct line as well.
those two tracks were blended together at mixdown, sometimes paired up, sometimes panned opposite.

Bass:
Fender jazz active 5 string, thru a sansamp bass di, split to a Boss Bass pedal, one of those GT varieties, and those two were blended and centered.
lots of eq and compression schemes were used on these tracks, it varied from song to song.
the strange vocodor effect on "One Horse Town", all came directly from the bass pedal, driven by the bass track.


Keys-
these were recorded direct, at the keyboard player's studio, so i wasn't really involved in any of those 'captures'.
i had to do significant eq on these tracks, they came to me 'dark', and not very hot.
i re-gained a few of these tracks, and brightened them up a bit. on certain synth parts, i doubled the tracks, split them left and right, pulled the cloned track off a few milliseconds, just to fatten them up. i did this sparingly.

vox-
ok, we auditioned 6 microphones on vox, and the one we ended up using was the Shure KSM44.
excellent mic, especially since the singer Chad, can peel paint off the wall with his voice. ::

we built a vocal booth out of 4" polyiso, lined it with auralex panels, and stuck a lava lamp in there for good measure!
LOL
vox mic was run into several preamps, including the A Designs Audio MP-1, ART DPS, and MAudio ProjectMix I/O.
a dbx compressor was used to gently color the tracking input.
on mixdown, i used the VC-64 on all vocal tracks, and used parallel compression, and parallel eq.
effects varied from song to song.

HEY HAIRY!

here's a good link:

FOLLOW UP THREAD:

I engineered, mixed and produced the new "Kettlefish" album

http://www.myspace.com/kettlefish


also, they've uploaded 192kbps mp3's, available here:
http://kettlefishfarm.com/


sorry about those links, a couple of them went south..
i fixed the ones above, and in the other thread.

the IAC was an early mix, but these links here in this reply, are of the final product.

the myspace player sounds like ASS, and they truncate the songs when they uploaded them, i think the downloadable ones are good to go, and probably sound better....

hairyjamie
thanks for listening..


keys:
i don't know about quantizing of anything....
it's straight recorded, direct from the keyboard into the soundcard, so there's nothing but actual playing being recorded.

the weird synth noise thing, is actually a synth pad being played by the bass player, coming from his Roland floor pedal...
it's a strange lo-fi thing that he programmed specificallyl to sound the way it does..

we didn't double tracks, or do anything studio tricky with this, other than lead overdubs and stuff like that....


we DID use the project mix I/O for some of the tracking....
elec guitar tracks, some vox, a couple of acoustic tracks...
but for the most part, it was single takes into 1 or 2 mics, and 1 or 2 mic preamps, direct to convertor and/or soundcard.

the drums were all captured thru the A & H board, direct to an Alesis HD24, then everybody came back and re-did their parts one by one, overdubbing to the cleaned up drum tracks from the first session.

thanks again for listening!

thanks jamie

yeah, gordon, recording this way was fun for sure, and an excellent method of learning fast!
i call it, trial by fire.