the hard way

there is a life lesson that, after playing professionally for 6 years, i continue to learn the hard way. over and over again i have the same thing happen to me. i think i've learned from my mistakes and have put procedures in place and yet it still seems to happen and it's all my fault. it's like their are little gremlins or gear gnomes always one step ahead of me. what i talking about is gear problems on stage

here's the thing - at any given show there are a million things that can go wrong. cables can short out, wireless frequencies conflict, guitars get banged up, strings break, fuses blow, etc... and even though that is just a part of life, as a player, it's always YOUR FAULT...or i guess i should say my fault.

when the spotlight comes on and the curtain goes up, i am the one who looks stupid if there's no sound coming from my guitar or even worse - the WRONG sound coming from my guitar. it's really not fair, but it's just how it is. i can have every excuse about how someone else or something else caused this, but at the end of the day it's my fault.

i'll give you a few examples. we fly to shows a lot, and when i check my pedalboard, TSA has a habit of opening it up - which is understandable because on the x-ray all the cords and wires looks suspicious. however, many times they feel the need to unplug cables, twist knobs and even unscrew my George L connectors. so we show up at the venue for sound check and when i plug in i just get a horrible buzzing sound and have to waste 15 minutes of our 20 minute sound check trouble shooting which cable or pedal TSA messed with. and then there's guitar intonation. when you fly with guitars, they inevitably get banged around no matter how good your road case is. and there's nothing more frustrating than knowing your guitar is perfectly in tune, but you still hit a chord and something is out of tune because of the intonation.

sometimes the production company doesn't hook up the power correctly and the power your amp is running through is connected to the lighting system and again, i spend 15 minutes searching for ground lifts and extension cords. and don't get me started on wireless frequencies. every show will have different wireless mics and wireless in-ear packs that conflict with the frequency of my guitar. so i'll spend the time to switch the frequency in sound check, and then when showtime comes, i'll still have problems because another band has their own wireless packs that weren't turned on when i was scanning for an open frequency.

i'm not trying to complain here. this isn't a whining blog. the lesson is that it's up to YOU to put in failsafe systems to deal with this stuff. i always carry a spare cable so that if i have a wireless problem, i can instantly just plug right in and work around it. i carry one or two spare George L cables just in case TSA decides to mess with my pedalboard. i carry mini-screwdrivers with me and adjust intonation all the time to deal with my guitars getting banged around. i always have extra picks and sets of strings.

another issue is monitors and guitar tones. when i fly to shows i only bring guitars and pedal board. the promoter provides the amps, also known as backline. and while our contract rider dictates what types of amps to provide, frequently i get something less than satisfactory. but the fact remains that if my guitar tone sounds bad, it's my fault. i can't blame anyone else. so sometimes (not very often) i have to be a diva and tell them they need to find another amp. this has only happened twice, but there was no other way. and in the last two years i've adjusted my pedalboard with 3 gain stages of distortion so that i can deal with almost any amp in those few situations where the provided amp is no good and there's no way to get something else. i'm not a jerk about it. i try to be very respectful and it's been fine. one time the promoter went to guitar center, bought an amp for me to use and then returned it for a full refund after the show.

the same is true with your monitors. when i first started playing gigs i didn't care too much about what my monitors sounded like. i just didn't want to be a pain. but again, i learned the hard way that if my mix isn't right and it affects my performances, it's nobody's fault but mine. if the guy running monitors isn't very good, it's up to me to keep working with him until it's right. back with TFK we played to tracks and it was important to hear the click track clearly or else i could get off time with the tracks and the rest of the band. the same can also be true for singers - if you can't hear your voice clear enough, it's your responsibility to make sure everything sounds and feels right because in the end, you're the one who looks stupid if you go flat or sharp - regardless of whether or not you can hear yourself. you can't apologize on stage. well, i guess you can, but nobody cares. you look stupid.

there's no way to get around having technical mishaps on stage every now and then. stuff happens. but here's the thing - they don't have to happen twice. my strategy is this: if some sort of technical glitch happens, i figure out a way to install a safeguard so that the problem will never happen a second time. it's reasonable to make mistakes, but only once. after the first time it's up to you to figure out a way to make sure it doesn't happen again. yesterday i played a show and was having trouble with my wireless and couldn't figure out what it was. but i made a mistake and switched the channel and assumed it would be better. when the show started, it wasn't. luckily i used my spare cable and worked around it, but the first couple songs i had serious problems and looked stupid. i broke my own rule - and that is that if it's not sounding right during soundcheck, don't leave soundcheck until is it right. cause nothing magical is going to happen in between check and showtime that will repair your gear.

just remember, no matter how many and how good your excuses are, in the end it's still your responsibility to make sure your gear is working correctly and your responsibility to make sure that you are ready to play.

We'll Do It LIVE

Nowadays there are many ways to put a record together. Sometimes we put them together piece by piece, sometimes we record live and sometimes we do a little of both. The most important part of any recording process is not necessarily recording something that sounds clean and pristine. The most important part of any recording is capturing the energy of the performance. Sometimes that means we keep recording guitar parts over and over and over until we capture something special. And other times we work very hard before hand to create a vibe and to create an environment that's conducive to performance magic. and then of course, we are well prepared to capture that vibe.

A few weeks ago i went back to CRC in Chicago (www.chicagorecording.com) to work with the worship band Before Morning (www.facebook.com/beforemorning)

I've worked with these guys in the past before. And first off, i have to say that i am very proud of them and what they're doing. they're a church based worship band who are working within their own churches and communities but who have also grown and stay pretty busy running around the country playing youth events and camps. they've grown as songwriters and players and it's really cool to see them grow. for this project we decided to go into the studio to do one song in one day - and not just that. our goal was to create a live, in-studio performance to capture the energy when they all play together as opposed to overdubbing each individual part.

this is a picture of our drum setup - except without the Neumann 249s in an X-Y stereo configuration as room mics. stevie, the drummer, was playing his vintage ludwig kit with a classic ludwig black beauty snare. this setup is similar to what i've done in the past, except i experimented with two new things. first is the overhead mic placement. the inherent trouble with recording drums is that we mix drums to be very symmetrical - the snare and kick in the middle, toms and cymbals spread evenly. but look at the picture. the snare is a little to the right, one tom is higher than the other and the cymbals are at different heights as well as being stacked more on the left side than the right. in the past i've viewed the overhead mics as purely a stereo pair that captures the kit, but this time i experimented more with trying to get the cymbals to sound even in the left-right balance as well as the snare being in the middle. notice the overhead mic on the right is a little higher than the one on the left. even though the mics aren't placed symmetrically, we had to get outside the box a bit to get it to sound symmetrical.

the other new thing i tried was with the snare top mic - or i should say, mics. in addition to an sm-57 on the snare top, we took a neumann km-84 and taped it to the 57 so that the capsules of both mics were perfectly aligned to avoid phasing issues. from there, we ran the km84 through a compressor and smashed the crap out of it. when you mix the two mics together, the 57 captures the hard hits well and the 84 really highlights and accentuates the ghost notes and rolls that might normally get lost.

we put the bass and the lead electric guitar in the same room and separated them with studio baffles or gobos. Alex there on the left has a gorgeous Gretsch Tennessean and Sean has a nice Fender P Bass. And yes, i know what you're thinking. yes, there is sound bleeding into the other mics, but that's ok. that's part of what contributes to a more "live" sounding recording. if you go back and study recordings from the 50's and 60's you'll discover that many times it's the bleed from the other instruments that really lights up the recording. that was a magical period before muli-track recording became ubiquitous where everything was recorded live and capturing that performance was the primary objective. this is one of the rules you can break if you know what you're doing.

this here is my buddy @adambarriesmith playing keys. for the live performance he played a soft pad on the nord. we planned on overdubbing some piano but ended up decided that the recording didn't really need it. 

This was our main vocal mic. if you don't recognize it, it's a vintage tube AKG C12. i just checked the internets to see how much these things are going for and i found one on sale on ebay for $14,000. so ya, it's a pretty rare mic. and for good reason - it sounds great. our vocal chain was basically just running this mic through the Neve VR-72 console pre's and then through a Distressor. 

we had mister Josh Blick playing acoustic guitar on a very nice Taylor (sorry, i don't have the model number) and we using a stereo pair of AKG 451's as well as the plugged-in direct signal from the guitar. also, please notice my gut. i am getting fat. BLAH.

for our background vocals and choir vocals, i did them in separate layers. this i think is probably the most important part of a recording like this. the choir vocals really paint the audible picture of a live worship experience, and that's very hard to accurately re-create other than recording a live worship event. the first layer is the lead vocals. that's the obvious part. for the second layer i did what has historically been known as a Group 4 configuration. this technique is actually simple. it's just putting 4 singers in front of a single microphone. of course, nowadays most people would record each person individually and mix it later. but what you miss there is the space. notice how far each person is from the mic. plus, people seem to sing a little differently - sometimes more confidently - when they're with a group of people. the Group 4 method comes from the time of jingle singers and radio singers. when there was a jingle to be sung, they would cram all 4 singers behind a mic - and they would mix themselves by adjusting their own volume of voice and tone as well as how far they are standing from the mic. when it works like it's supposed to, it's super quick and easy. 

the last layer was the full-on choir vocal. remember those neumann 249's that we used as room mics? well we through them up in the drum room for choir mics. the best way to get the sound of a choir is to actually have a choir. so the whole band, as well as their wives, girlfriends and friends went into the studio. the choir vocals and the group 4 vocals were stacked a couple times. from there it's just a matter of panning it out a little, adding some reverb and serve!

we spent a lot of hours in the studio that day and as a result, we were all spent. but we were so happy with how it turned out. i was hoping to find a youtube video link to post so you could hear the final product but i can't find one. instead, you can find it on itunes. the band is Before Morning and the song is called "Awake". here's the link - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/awake-single/id517272582