So I finally finished mixing our four songs. I got all the levels just right, did some funky EQ and compression to get a really full guitar sound. But it was all for nothing it seems. Guitarist and drummer (and I agree) decided that we need to start all over by recording the drums first, followed by bass, guitar, then vocals. We had previously started with guitar and vocals to give drummer the cues he normally gets while playing live. This almost works. The big issue is that guitarist has trouble keeping perfectly to the click track. We end up with guitar tracks that sound great but fluctuate as far as timing is concerned. Not so easy for drummer to play to. The work we've done sounds pretty good but lacks the polish that would really set it apart from a basic demo.
Also, it seems that for promotional purposes, we will probably be making our first few singles/demos available for free download online. I hadn't really thought about it but as a band startup, it makes some sense for us to buid a name/get our music heard. Once we start to build some popularity, we start charging for our music.
In other news, our free rehearsal space is going away. Drummer's dad can no longer afford to pay for a big ol' shop he isn't using. Since we can't afford to pay for a rehearsal space... we'll be exploring other free options. Guitarist has a spare bedroom we can keep the drums in. Since it is in a residential area, noise will be an issue. If we can play with brushes and/or mutes, the drums may not be too loud for the neighbors. We'll have to see how it goes and roll with the punches.
1.22.2008
Mixology
We have now completed principle recording on three songs with a fourth nearly finished. I have tried and tried to mix them in a way that sounds good and professional. I put together what sounds like a great mix, then put it into my iTunes (we are running an Apple based recording process) next to a real song in a similar vein and it sounds like total crap. I like to think that on a good day, we sound similar to Weezer, but you wouldn't know it by listening to our most finished product. I am starting to get really frustrated and I don't know how to fix it. I have tried EQ, compression, ducking, etc. I am hoping that we can get together as a band and come up with something. I refuse to believe that I am asking too much of my software (GarageBand).
I guess it doesn't help that I have a full-time job as well as a full-time school schedule. I can see how being a recording artist can be a full-time job. Spending months in the studio for hours on end crafting an album, followed by months of mixing, fixing and producing, followed by live shows and tours. It is looking less and less like an easy life. I don't mean to sound discouraged. In fact I feel like this would be a great job to have. I really hope that this works out for us!
1.17.2008
Location, Location, Location
The first rule of real estate is also an important consideration for a band. Playing loud music at all hours of the day and night is, in most neighborhoods, frowned upon to say the least. Well, we've been lucky in that respect. Drummer's dad rents space in an industrial park. It has been nice to have a free place to practice and record, but the dad hasn't been using the space for his business lately and is looking at closing/downsizing to reduce costs. Basically, we now have a deadline we didn't have before. We'll have access to the shop for at least January '08 and probably through the end of February too. Anything after that is up for grabs.
Guitarist and I took most of last Saturday to clean up and fix up our space. It was a functioning industrial shop in the not too distant past. Lately it has been a big mess with a drum set in the corner. It is looking quite snappy after several hours work. We swept and shop-vac'd, cleaned and wiped. Now all of the metal shavings that were all over the floor are in the dumpster. We have a sort of orchestra shell made out of plywood behind the drum kit. We have a makeshift vocal booth (based on the ideas from the Mac Idol article). We've got a sort of control room set up behind the vocal booth. That night guitarist, drummer, bassist and I inaugurated the new set up with a play through of all of our original material. Not necessarily the last time we will all play together, but bassist has now made it clear that he isn't really interested in writing or recording as bassist. He has expressed interest in being our part-time, substitute recording engineer. Since I am the current recording engineer (as well as vocalist, co-songwriter, and part-time second guitarist), I will be glad to offload some of my recording duties when I can.
Now for something a little different...
Can sound be upside-down? The answer is yes and no. If you have a single mic picking up a sound source, you have nothing to worry about. The sound wave will be changed from sound to electronic signal and then back again when going through a speaker. The problem is if you have multiple mics picking up a single sound source and one of them is upside-down, the upside-down mic will be picking up the signal upside-down from the others. When you blend the sound waves together in your mixing program, they will be out of phase with each other and actually cancel out the fullness of the sound. You end up with a thin, unprofessional sounding mix. Kind of an ironic result when you are specifically adding mics to get a better sound. The key to all this is to reverse the phase on the signal coming from the upside-down mic. If your mixer has this handy switch, then you're sitting pretty. If, like us, your mixer is without said switch, you need to purchase an adapter like this one. We have yet to buy and try and there are no ratings on Amazon. I'll be sure to post an update when we test this out. Until then...
Guitarist and I took most of last Saturday to clean up and fix up our space. It was a functioning industrial shop in the not too distant past. Lately it has been a big mess with a drum set in the corner. It is looking quite snappy after several hours work. We swept and shop-vac'd, cleaned and wiped. Now all of the metal shavings that were all over the floor are in the dumpster. We have a sort of orchestra shell made out of plywood behind the drum kit. We have a makeshift vocal booth (based on the ideas from the Mac Idol article). We've got a sort of control room set up behind the vocal booth. That night guitarist, drummer, bassist and I inaugurated the new set up with a play through of all of our original material. Not necessarily the last time we will all play together, but bassist has now made it clear that he isn't really interested in writing or recording as bassist. He has expressed interest in being our part-time, substitute recording engineer. Since I am the current recording engineer (as well as vocalist, co-songwriter, and part-time second guitarist), I will be glad to offload some of my recording duties when I can.
Now for something a little different...
Can sound be upside-down? The answer is yes and no. If you have a single mic picking up a sound source, you have nothing to worry about. The sound wave will be changed from sound to electronic signal and then back again when going through a speaker. The problem is if you have multiple mics picking up a single sound source and one of them is upside-down, the upside-down mic will be picking up the signal upside-down from the others. When you blend the sound waves together in your mixing program, they will be out of phase with each other and actually cancel out the fullness of the sound. You end up with a thin, unprofessional sounding mix. Kind of an ironic result when you are specifically adding mics to get a better sound. The key to all this is to reverse the phase on the signal coming from the upside-down mic. If your mixer has this handy switch, then you're sitting pretty. If, like us, your mixer is without said switch, you need to purchase an adapter like this one. We have yet to buy and try and there are no ratings on Amazon. I'll be sure to post an update when we test this out. Until then...
1.16.2008
The Story (...part 2)
So going into the Christmas season, there was a general level of discontent with our equipment. Guitarist was basically without amplification, drummer couldn't be effectively recorded, and I was unhappy with the tone of the vocal mic. As it turns out, bassist was unhappy also but more on a general level.
Guitarist ended up fixing his amp rig and selling it off. The VOX AC30 CC (with the AlNiCo Celestion Blue speakers) is it's replacement. This thing is seriously top of the line! Great tone, doesn't get muddy in the low end even when distorted. He was also gifted a neat pedalboard for Christmas.
I looked around and found a great article on Mac Idol about recording vocals in a home studio. The recommended mic was the Audio Technica AT2020. I looked around and was able to locate one on eBay for around $50. Testing it out was another story, you see condenser mics require phantom power, which we did not have at the time. We imposed briefly on my wife's cousin to make sure it is in working condition when it arrived. All is now well on the vocal front and the difference is noticeable.
Drummer's issue was a little harder solved. He found a set of drum mics that got great reviews and his folks even offered to get them for Christmas. The next issue is how to get multiple mics into multiple tracks on GB. We searched around and found the best solution for the money: the Alesis Multimix 16 w/firewire. It has eight dedicated XLR inputs and sends the whole signal to the MacBook for processing. GarageBand and Alesis play very well together. Set up was easy and gratifying. Next issue was the cables to connect multiple mics to the mixer...
After some lucky happenstance and a impatient trips to Radio Shack, we have enough XLR cables to do what we need to do. We will probably be getting more cables from Monster soon so we can use the mixer as a PA base station for live situations also.
That pretty much brings us up to date on equipment. Stay tuned for "studio set-up" and "sound can be upside-down?"
Guitarist ended up fixing his amp rig and selling it off. The VOX AC30 CC (with the AlNiCo Celestion Blue speakers) is it's replacement. This thing is seriously top of the line! Great tone, doesn't get muddy in the low end even when distorted. He was also gifted a neat pedalboard for Christmas.
I looked around and found a great article on Mac Idol about recording vocals in a home studio. The recommended mic was the Audio Technica AT2020. I looked around and was able to locate one on eBay for around $50. Testing it out was another story, you see condenser mics require phantom power, which we did not have at the time. We imposed briefly on my wife's cousin to make sure it is in working condition when it arrived. All is now well on the vocal front and the difference is noticeable.
Drummer's issue was a little harder solved. He found a set of drum mics that got great reviews and his folks even offered to get them for Christmas. The next issue is how to get multiple mics into multiple tracks on GB. We searched around and found the best solution for the money: the Alesis Multimix 16 w/firewire. It has eight dedicated XLR inputs and sends the whole signal to the MacBook for processing. GarageBand and Alesis play very well together. Set up was easy and gratifying. Next issue was the cables to connect multiple mics to the mixer...
After some lucky happenstance and a impatient trips to Radio Shack, we have enough XLR cables to do what we need to do. We will probably be getting more cables from Monster soon so we can use the mixer as a PA base station for live situations also.
That pretty much brings us up to date on equipment. Stay tuned for "studio set-up" and "sound can be upside-down?"
The Story (...so far)
I thought before diving in to current news and issues, a brief history of the up-and-coming, as-yet-unnamed band would be in order. I'm going to avoid using names, as I don't know how the other guys feel about that kind of thing. I think it is also worth noting that this is my take on the situation and that unless otherwise stated, I am speaking only for myself.
Drummer, guitarist and bassist were jamming fairly regularly with second guitarist. College semester ends and I am invited to come in to try out as singer. That very night, before even playing, second guitarist decides to quit. In a sort of informal, non-audition process consisting of jamming and playing through covers of some of our favorite songs taking place over a few evenings, I was unceremoniously a member of the band. It didn't hurt that guitarist and I had written a few original songs together during the off days. It also didn't hurt that I have a MacBook with Garage Band for getting a basic demo together.
We played together once a week for the Fall '07 semester and wrote around a dozen songs. Some time in November, guitarist's amp started acting up. (Marshall head running through a Mesa 4x12 cab.) If I remember right there was a short in one of the cables and it needed a tube replacement. He decided to get rid of it in favor of something smaller and more maneuverable.
We also recorded quite a bit of our new material onto the MacBook. At this point we were somewhat limited by our equipment, however. I was singing through a Shure SM 58 (with no pre-amp), which is a great dynamic mic but my ears (and all the literature I could find online) told me it wasn't quite right for a studio situation.
Drum recording (as any home recordist will tell you) is not an intuitive process. The best we could manage was running an old, cheap Radio Shack mic paired with the SM 58 into a Tascam Porta-Stutio MKII, then running the stereo mix out to a single track on GB. With significant EQ adjustment, it was a fairly workable solution but not anything approaching high quality.
I think that brings everything up to our pre-Christmas situation. I'll break here to keep post length manageable. Pick up the continuing saga... after the break.
Drummer, guitarist and bassist were jamming fairly regularly with second guitarist. College semester ends and I am invited to come in to try out as singer. That very night, before even playing, second guitarist decides to quit. In a sort of informal, non-audition process consisting of jamming and playing through covers of some of our favorite songs taking place over a few evenings, I was unceremoniously a member of the band. It didn't hurt that guitarist and I had written a few original songs together during the off days. It also didn't hurt that I have a MacBook with Garage Band for getting a basic demo together.
We played together once a week for the Fall '07 semester and wrote around a dozen songs. Some time in November, guitarist's amp started acting up. (Marshall head running through a Mesa 4x12 cab.) If I remember right there was a short in one of the cables and it needed a tube replacement. He decided to get rid of it in favor of something smaller and more maneuverable.
We also recorded quite a bit of our new material onto the MacBook. At this point we were somewhat limited by our equipment, however. I was singing through a Shure SM 58 (with no pre-amp), which is a great dynamic mic but my ears (and all the literature I could find online) told me it wasn't quite right for a studio situation.
Drum recording (as any home recordist will tell you) is not an intuitive process. The best we could manage was running an old, cheap Radio Shack mic paired with the SM 58 into a Tascam Porta-Stutio MKII, then running the stereo mix out to a single track on GB. With significant EQ adjustment, it was a fairly workable solution but not anything approaching high quality.
I think that brings everything up to our pre-Christmas situation. I'll break here to keep post length manageable. Pick up the continuing saga... after the break.
By way of explanation
So a few months ago I started blogging for the first time, I decided to invite my wife to post as well so we could have an easy place to keep friends and family aprised of our comings and goings. As time went on, I found that most of my posts centered around the band that I am helping get off the ground. I decided today that I should start a new blog just for band news, musings, updates, etc. There is a lot happening with the band recently and I want to do it justice...
More news to come soon.
More news to come soon.
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