The selfish top 5
Last year I made a typical top ten albums of the year style post. I had no trouble finding ten albums that made the list; hell I even had a list of honourable mentions. This year, a different story. I don't think I even bought ten albums, so picking a list would be difficult. I'm not sure why this is was the case. Probably there were a few issues. I know that I wasn't exposed to as much new good music; for whatever reason the private music exchange ftp site to which I belong couldn't give me transfer rates much faster than dialup thus making it too tedious to use. I was also more hesitant to plunk down a twenty on a band that was new to me without hearing much or any of their music. And what little free change I had I ended up spending on recording gear (although with the exception of upgrade parts for existing gear and a Yamaha channel strip off of e-bay, I didn't exactly spend much money on gear either.)
No big deal though. Even if I had bought music this year, my top ten would have been the same crap on everyone else's top ten. I no doubt would have gushed over Joanna Newsom, thumbs-upped TV On The Radio, and said "fuck yeah!" to the Hold Steady. Then I would have regretted not giving The Fiery Furnaces "Bitter Tea" more of a chance to grow on me, and decisively panned the latest Iron Maiden cd.
So instead, I'll offer you a glimpse into what I was actually listening to: stuff that I recorded myself. I spent way too much time this year (oh wait, no, I spent an excellent amount of time this year) on self-analysis of my own recording skills, making minute changes to levels, eq, compression (none of which probably made things sound better, but that's why I don't get paid the big bucks for being a recording engineer), all in the hopes of making better sounding recordings. To date, whether I have succeeded in that goal is debatable.
Gilbert Switzer. I recorded two tracks for them almost a year ago, a brand new track that from what I understand they had finished writing that afternoon, and a new version of Banks, Airports, Universities. I'm reasonably satisfied with the way it turned out. My main complaint is I fucked up the snare sound pretty bad. There's no snare sizzle to it at all; it may as well have been a rack tom. I know part of this is due to a pretty dead sounding head, but I should have picked up on this and compensated for it. Maybe miking the bottom of the snare as well as (or instead of) the top would have helped it. Using an sm-57 instead of my Senn MD-421 probably would have helped as well. Guitar came out not bad. Derrick/Ash has a very midrangey guitar sound, and I think I managed to keep his sound intact while still making it sound fairly heavy. Double tracking helped a lot here. Vocals were pretty good. I played it safe and used the MD-421 here; it's a pretty standard choice for screamy style vocals and it worked predictably well. I actually made two mixes of both songs for the band to pick from; one had reverb overkill similar to their previous recordings, and one had still very noticable but more balanced reverb levels on the vocals. I'm happy the band picked the latter.
Stolen Minks. So holy crap. They went #1 in the country for a week in November on the earshot campus/community radio charts. As I write this, they've climbed back to #1 again (albeit because of very skewed results arising from strong showings in two of only four reporting stations. Usually close to two dozen stations report their charts weekly.) That's crazy cool and if I was actually trying to make a living as a recording engineer you can bet that I'd be promoting the hell out of the fact that I recorded a #1 album right now. Unfortunately I can't really say it's an example of my best work. I think most of my complaints lie with the guitar sound. I've never really been able to get a sound out of Steffi's amp that I've been truly happy with, which has resulted in me resorting to a number of tricks in the past including double-tracking, compressing the shit out of things, and endless tweaking and swapping out various distortion pedals. This time, I went with triple mic'ing. While it resulted in an okayish sound, I feel that it lacked a tightness and focus that did a disservice to the overall sound of the tracks. Contrast it with Batman and Charles Bronson, both of which were recorded at the Mullet (the only damage I did to those tracks were mixing and rerecording the lead vox for Batman.) Here, the guitar sounds tight and full and just all around good, with (I'm guessing here) one mic a couple of inches off the grill. Dammit! Drums and bass are fine I guess. Comparing them once again to the Mullet tracks, there are strengths and weaknesses to both recordings. Mine are probably a little more low-fi, but I think that works in this case. Keyboards are decent for the most part. Vocals were tricky, and made all the more tricker by the fact that Scrapperton the cat chewed threw the special 7-pin cable that connects to my cheap Chinese tube mic, rendering it unusable for most of the session. So I ended up going with my Oktava ribbon mic for a lot of the vocals and it's way too dark a mic, especially for Rachelle and Erica's vocals. C'est la vie.
Juan Love. Could I have asked for a smoother recording session? Hell no. Load in, set up, nail every song within three takes, and we're done. It helps that everyone in the band is super friendly and cool. Why couldn't I have known Island folks this great when I was still living in PEI? Anyway, they had done most of their album at Soundmarket with Stephan MacLeod, but due to scheduling conflicts came to me to record the bed tracks for the last couple of songs. Pretty much my only complaint with my recording is that I think the guitar sounded kind of ass. Drums, keys and guitar were all recorded at once so I was running low on mics and used my Senn e609 silver, which sounds good maybe 33% of the time. This wasn't one of those times. I suggested that they overdub guitars once they got back to Soundmarket to do vocals, but they didn't. I believe that Stephan ended up using drum samples in place of the recording on the final mix (in part so that it would sound more consistant with the other tracks on the album?), but I was pretty happy with how the drums came out.
Cobrato. So many things are wrong with this recording, and so many things are right with it. It was a pretty rushed session as we were trying to make it in time for the Pop Explosion deadline (meh, it was worth a shot) and schedule it around everyone's summer vacation plans. Given the quick turnaround needed, I'm reasonably satisfied with the results. The snare drum sounds like absolute shit. How did I miss that when we were tracking? Damn. That aside, it's a mostly decent recording. Aesthetic decisions were made at the time that I now half regret. in particular, I did very little eq adjustments. The goal was "warmth", but the result was closer to "dull". I also didn't compress the mix as much as I sometimes do (okay, to qualify that, on mixes like the Stolen Minks, I didn't compress the mix at all because I knew that it was going to get mastered by someone else. I'm inept, but I do get some things right.), as both Robe and I aren't very big fans of the megasquash overcompression techniques that most albums suffer from these days. I may have erred too far on the side of caution, as it is very quiet even compared to some more moderately compressed albums. Guitars I was quite happy with. I used two microphones on the cabinet, a dynamic a foot off the grill, and my oktava ribbon about three feet away. Vocals ended up sounding pretty decent, though not without a bit of fussing with eq and compression. It's unfortunate that this turned out to be Cobrato's only legacy, but life goes on.
Secret Stuff. This is an album of three covers that I recorded for Jade, the love of my life. I'm mostly happy with the way the songs turned out. In many respects I think it's some of the best recording work that I've done. Pity that only friends and family will ever hear it, but too damn bad. All songs were a mix of me actually playing instruments and me sequencing software synthesizers within Sonar. One one extreme is my cover of Bonnie Raitt's So Close, where everything is real and me except for a bit of organ synth in the chorus. On the other is my cover of the Jem theme song (retitled Jade!) where everything but the vocals is sequenced. My cover of Blackalicious's Powers is in the middle, with live but looped drums, live guitar and vocals and sequenced synth bass, synth strings, and synth synth. Jade says she likes my version of Powers better than the original, though I don't want to take too much credit. It's a bit sparser than I would have liked (there's a LOT of layers of stuff on the original), but maybe that's only because I couldn't find a crack team of female soul singers to come play free of charge at the last minute. Lesson learned (1): Bonnie Raitt is a way better singer and guitarist than am I, like for serious. This song sounds deceptively simple, but try singing it as well as Bonnie. You will fail. Lesson learned (2): don't compare yourself to Bonnie Raitt. Lesson learned (3): The Heil PR-40 is the only microphone that I own (a great birthday gift from my parents) that I can stand to use for my own vocals. Maybe some day I'll own a U47. Someday. Lesson learned (4): I can rap if I have to, but I probably shouldn't try it most of the time.
Near Misses.
I had agreed to but ultimately didn't have time to record Matt's band Music Inspired the Film, and my friends Jonathan and Shant's band The Tragedies. It's a shame, because I was looking forward to record both of these bands. On the plus side, Matt was able to get some time in at the Mullet, and got a recording that is probably better than what I would have been able to do in an afternoon. And The Tragedies recorded for free with ex-GCO member Mike. Or was it ex-GCO member James. Frig, I can't remember. Either way, it didn't cost them anything, so everybody wins. Hopefully this year will be just as productive.
No big deal though. Even if I had bought music this year, my top ten would have been the same crap on everyone else's top ten. I no doubt would have gushed over Joanna Newsom, thumbs-upped TV On The Radio, and said "fuck yeah!" to the Hold Steady. Then I would have regretted not giving The Fiery Furnaces "Bitter Tea" more of a chance to grow on me, and decisively panned the latest Iron Maiden cd.
So instead, I'll offer you a glimpse into what I was actually listening to: stuff that I recorded myself. I spent way too much time this year (oh wait, no, I spent an excellent amount of time this year) on self-analysis of my own recording skills, making minute changes to levels, eq, compression (none of which probably made things sound better, but that's why I don't get paid the big bucks for being a recording engineer), all in the hopes of making better sounding recordings. To date, whether I have succeeded in that goal is debatable.
Gilbert Switzer. I recorded two tracks for them almost a year ago, a brand new track that from what I understand they had finished writing that afternoon, and a new version of Banks, Airports, Universities. I'm reasonably satisfied with the way it turned out. My main complaint is I fucked up the snare sound pretty bad. There's no snare sizzle to it at all; it may as well have been a rack tom. I know part of this is due to a pretty dead sounding head, but I should have picked up on this and compensated for it. Maybe miking the bottom of the snare as well as (or instead of) the top would have helped it. Using an sm-57 instead of my Senn MD-421 probably would have helped as well. Guitar came out not bad. Derrick/Ash has a very midrangey guitar sound, and I think I managed to keep his sound intact while still making it sound fairly heavy. Double tracking helped a lot here. Vocals were pretty good. I played it safe and used the MD-421 here; it's a pretty standard choice for screamy style vocals and it worked predictably well. I actually made two mixes of both songs for the band to pick from; one had reverb overkill similar to their previous recordings, and one had still very noticable but more balanced reverb levels on the vocals. I'm happy the band picked the latter.
Stolen Minks. So holy crap. They went #1 in the country for a week in November on the earshot campus/community radio charts. As I write this, they've climbed back to #1 again (albeit because of very skewed results arising from strong showings in two of only four reporting stations. Usually close to two dozen stations report their charts weekly.) That's crazy cool and if I was actually trying to make a living as a recording engineer you can bet that I'd be promoting the hell out of the fact that I recorded a #1 album right now. Unfortunately I can't really say it's an example of my best work. I think most of my complaints lie with the guitar sound. I've never really been able to get a sound out of Steffi's amp that I've been truly happy with, which has resulted in me resorting to a number of tricks in the past including double-tracking, compressing the shit out of things, and endless tweaking and swapping out various distortion pedals. This time, I went with triple mic'ing. While it resulted in an okayish sound, I feel that it lacked a tightness and focus that did a disservice to the overall sound of the tracks. Contrast it with Batman and Charles Bronson, both of which were recorded at the Mullet (the only damage I did to those tracks were mixing and rerecording the lead vox for Batman.) Here, the guitar sounds tight and full and just all around good, with (I'm guessing here) one mic a couple of inches off the grill. Dammit! Drums and bass are fine I guess. Comparing them once again to the Mullet tracks, there are strengths and weaknesses to both recordings. Mine are probably a little more low-fi, but I think that works in this case. Keyboards are decent for the most part. Vocals were tricky, and made all the more tricker by the fact that Scrapperton the cat chewed threw the special 7-pin cable that connects to my cheap Chinese tube mic, rendering it unusable for most of the session. So I ended up going with my Oktava ribbon mic for a lot of the vocals and it's way too dark a mic, especially for Rachelle and Erica's vocals. C'est la vie.
Juan Love. Could I have asked for a smoother recording session? Hell no. Load in, set up, nail every song within three takes, and we're done. It helps that everyone in the band is super friendly and cool. Why couldn't I have known Island folks this great when I was still living in PEI? Anyway, they had done most of their album at Soundmarket with Stephan MacLeod, but due to scheduling conflicts came to me to record the bed tracks for the last couple of songs. Pretty much my only complaint with my recording is that I think the guitar sounded kind of ass. Drums, keys and guitar were all recorded at once so I was running low on mics and used my Senn e609 silver, which sounds good maybe 33% of the time. This wasn't one of those times. I suggested that they overdub guitars once they got back to Soundmarket to do vocals, but they didn't. I believe that Stephan ended up using drum samples in place of the recording on the final mix (in part so that it would sound more consistant with the other tracks on the album?), but I was pretty happy with how the drums came out.
Cobrato. So many things are wrong with this recording, and so many things are right with it. It was a pretty rushed session as we were trying to make it in time for the Pop Explosion deadline (meh, it was worth a shot) and schedule it around everyone's summer vacation plans. Given the quick turnaround needed, I'm reasonably satisfied with the results. The snare drum sounds like absolute shit. How did I miss that when we were tracking? Damn. That aside, it's a mostly decent recording. Aesthetic decisions were made at the time that I now half regret. in particular, I did very little eq adjustments. The goal was "warmth", but the result was closer to "dull". I also didn't compress the mix as much as I sometimes do (okay, to qualify that, on mixes like the Stolen Minks, I didn't compress the mix at all because I knew that it was going to get mastered by someone else. I'm inept, but I do get some things right.), as both Robe and I aren't very big fans of the megasquash overcompression techniques that most albums suffer from these days. I may have erred too far on the side of caution, as it is very quiet even compared to some more moderately compressed albums. Guitars I was quite happy with. I used two microphones on the cabinet, a dynamic a foot off the grill, and my oktava ribbon about three feet away. Vocals ended up sounding pretty decent, though not without a bit of fussing with eq and compression. It's unfortunate that this turned out to be Cobrato's only legacy, but life goes on.
Secret Stuff. This is an album of three covers that I recorded for Jade, the love of my life. I'm mostly happy with the way the songs turned out. In many respects I think it's some of the best recording work that I've done. Pity that only friends and family will ever hear it, but too damn bad. All songs were a mix of me actually playing instruments and me sequencing software synthesizers within Sonar. One one extreme is my cover of Bonnie Raitt's So Close, where everything is real and me except for a bit of organ synth in the chorus. On the other is my cover of the Jem theme song (retitled Jade!) where everything but the vocals is sequenced. My cover of Blackalicious's Powers is in the middle, with live but looped drums, live guitar and vocals and sequenced synth bass, synth strings, and synth synth. Jade says she likes my version of Powers better than the original, though I don't want to take too much credit. It's a bit sparser than I would have liked (there's a LOT of layers of stuff on the original), but maybe that's only because I couldn't find a crack team of female soul singers to come play free of charge at the last minute. Lesson learned (1): Bonnie Raitt is a way better singer and guitarist than am I, like for serious. This song sounds deceptively simple, but try singing it as well as Bonnie. You will fail. Lesson learned (2): don't compare yourself to Bonnie Raitt. Lesson learned (3): The Heil PR-40 is the only microphone that I own (a great birthday gift from my parents) that I can stand to use for my own vocals. Maybe some day I'll own a U47. Someday. Lesson learned (4): I can rap if I have to, but I probably shouldn't try it most of the time.
Near Misses.
I had agreed to but ultimately didn't have time to record Matt's band Music Inspired the Film, and my friends Jonathan and Shant's band The Tragedies. It's a shame, because I was looking forward to record both of these bands. On the plus side, Matt was able to get some time in at the Mullet, and got a recording that is probably better than what I would have been able to do in an afternoon. And The Tragedies recorded for free with ex-GCO member Mike. Or was it ex-GCO member James. Frig, I can't remember. Either way, it didn't cost them anything, so everybody wins. Hopefully this year will be just as productive.