how it is

i'm not even going to pretend like i'm some young 19 year old kid playing guitar, posting über awesome shots from the stage. i mean, i've done that before and looking back, it's not that awesome. i think my time is much better spent making fun of myself. and of course, real life is funnier than fiction.....actually i think the expression uses "stranger" instead of "funnier", but you get my drift. in that spirit, here's an awesomely horrible shot of me playing a show last week.

what else what else...oh ya. spending every free second recording. that's right. i just finished tracking a project for a band called Captions from Pensacola, FL. they're a 6 piece that's got a big sound and have enlisted me to do a bunch of programming on the record as well so i'm pretty pumped about that. and of course, whenever i track in nashville i do everything i can to work at www.DarkhorseRecording.com. so last project i was on a Neve VR 72 and for this one i was on the Trident Series 80 desk.

the two consoles are complete opposites of each other in the sense that the neve is an in-line console where the mutitrack send fader and the return fader are all on the same channel. there's all sorts of cool tricks you can do with faders swaps and surround mixing that i never learned. i just figured out how to make it record awesome stuff and kept moving. the trident is not in-line meaning that one channel is used to send the signal to the multitrack and another channel is used to for the return monitoring. the in-line console is handy, but is unnecessary if you have loads of legit outboard mic pre's - and darkhorse has plenty.

and of course compressors:

for outboard pre's i used the vintech x81's which have been a favorite of mine lately, the brent averill 1073's, the api 512s as well as a few of the console pre's. for compression i used the distressors and the alan smart c2 which is basically the bus compressor from an SSL 4000 console.

here's my drum setup:

most of my pictures turned out blurry because of low light, but i was excited to try a couple microtech gefell tube mics about 20 feet off the ground up on a ledge on the far end of the recording room. i usually work out of the Cabin at darkhorse but this time we were in the Lodge and these were probably the best sounds i've gotten out of the lodge. and most of it had to do with the room mics.

one other thing to mention is my micing of the hi hat and ride. one thing that bugs me about drum kits is that they are inherently asymmetrical. the snare is a little to the left, the toms a little to the right and the hat way left. but in a mix we put the snare dead center, the toms panned evenly and yet we still put the hat a little to the left. so drum mixes by nature are off balance. so in an effort to correct this, i've been experimenting with treating the ride cymbal and the hi hat as a stereo pair. i mic them with a matched pair of mics that are pointed at the same angle and same height - even if that mean the mic is closer to one of the two cymbals. i'm still working on it, but i've definitely got a good start.

ok, that's all for now. i'll be sure to post some music once this project is done.