Tenth of April, 2013

Samanas recording April 10.
First big thing we did was record using the Tascam DR-680. As I pointed out the Tascam behaved exactly the way I'd expected. The direct outputs worked. The line level inputs had good and appropriate headroom. And the unit just recorded the way one would want it to.
We used our standard input list of three mics on drums. We had the pair of Edwina mics by Ear Trumpet Labs on overheads.

David Wolfe at the drums with a pair of Edwinas overhead. It's probably difficult to understand the mics overhead unless you already know what they look like.

The overheads are in an X/Y-ish pattern which is mostly because the microphone bar would slip and make the mics touch. So, okay, fine, more phase coherence. Those mics fed a pair of Neve 1272 preamps.
The Rode NT1 was on the kick backed off about a foot and went through one of the Lindell preamps with a bit of EQ. I don't remember what I did -- I just boosted, flipped through some frequencies, found a frequency I liked, and then reduced the boost until it sound better than no boost but not so much that it was stinkin' up the joint.

The rack of Avalons is not ours. Don't get any ideas.

The real trick is what we did with bass guitar. Lily played directly into the high impedance input of a Neve 1272. As I expected, I needed to roll off a bit of low end (I did a very low frequency high pass filter plus a bit of a scoop at about 500 Hz. There's also a tiny bit of compression followed by a larger bit of compression on many of the tracks.
Note that, for instance, "Eyes of the Vole" is by no means a finished performance. The point of these things is a proof of concept of recording. That being said, some of the finished jams are very album-able. Like for instance "In Apprehension How Like A God. This was just a jam Lily and I did before Dave got there. There may be a bit of Greg in that track. And eventually there may be some voices or some Hammond organ on that track. Otherwise I think it to be very groovy and usable as a final and actual song on a record. That's me. Thinking.
Now, the guitars. My guitar went through an SM58 and into a Neve. But Greg's guitar went through an SM58 and a Lindell. Again, at some point in the evening I fiddled with the EQ on the Lindell to make whatever I thought was "better" to be, you know, better.
The short answer here is that I feel confident we can record and get a groovy sound which I'd be proud to put on an album. Moving the kick drum mic back a bit gives us a nice "poof" on the kick. Plugging the bass into the world's most expensive direct box sounds great. As far as I'm concerned, recording guitars is easy and a no-brainer. If the guitar sounds good and you get a microphone near the speaker, you're in good shape. Your mileage on that advice, as always, may vary.

So click on through to the recording.

There are two recordings here which I think will eventually be for public consumption once edited and possibly massaged a bit in the mix and then mastered. "In Apprehension How Like A God" and "Thus Slept the Drunken Gods" (I'm on a "god" kick apparently, I blame Game of Thrones) are both improvised songs which I think are going to end up on some album somewhere. The rest of the tunes are strictly for band use -- listening to rehearsals that is.

Greg Bartus with the Rock and Roll.

Oh. And I did a real test of cymbals and bells with Dave playing and I recorded at 48kHz and at 96kHz. I seriously cannot tell the difference on playback. So I do not care about 96kHz any more.