10.24.2005 CHAOS AT THE BARN

This weekend past I recorded CHAOS at The Barn in Cold Spring, NY. CHAOS a brilliantly brutal four-piece metal band, tracked two original songs, “Betrayed” and “Lost” and also recorded their own version of the classic Black Sabbath tune “Sweet Leaf”. In the day and a half we had to work with at The Barn we completed all the basic tracking, overdubbed solos and we also squeezed in a quick photo shoot at The Stone House on Dennytown Road.

To do the job of multi-tracking I brought my “semi-portable” ProTools rig; Mac G3 “blue & white” Digidesign 001 interface, Behringer ADA8000 “Ultra-gain” 8-Channel Digital Mic Preamp (that I borrowed from Alto Music…thanks Alto!) and my RP-220 Tube Mic Preamp. This gave me a total of 12 channels of microphone inputs to ProTools at once. Made a make-shift control room in the hayloft upstairs, monitoring mostly through headphones, though I also brought my pair of Yamaha NS-10s and a small Crown amp.

The band set up everything in The Barn's main room and tracked all their rhythm parts live. I used just 5 mics on the drum kit: two Sennheiser 421s on the kick drums, a Shure SM57 on the snare, and a pair of Shure BG-4.1s as overheads. On the bass amp I used an AKG D-112 through the Tube Pre and also ran a DI. Each of the two guitar amps got a single SM57. Singer Chris Chaos also had an SM57 for scratch vocals. In addition I used two room mics: a pair of vintage AKG D-12s. A trimmed-down set-up for sure but it got the whole band’s live basic tracking down with just 12 channels.

10.08.05 MIX MAGAZINE REMEMBERS MEDIASOUND

In the October 2005 issue of MIX MAGAZINE photographer and writer Bobby Bank pays tribute to MEDIASOUND, the world class New York recording studio of the 70’s and 80’s and the training-ground where I learned from some of the top names in the recording industry. You can download a pdf file of the article HERE. Pictured left is the live room of studio A, and founders Joe Jorgensen and Harry Hirsch with chief engineer Fred Christie. Photo by Howard Sherman.

10.01.05 ORSUS FINAL MIX AT LEOPARD

Spent a couple of weekends in September doing the final mix tweaks for the upcoming ORSUS full-length debut release "The Pulse of Shadows and Machines". Our last night of mix tweakage ended with me burning last minute CDRs in the car on my laptop as I drove Orsus members Tommy and Gary from Stone Ridge to New Paltz to catch the last midnight bus back to NYC. With the final assembly completed we will soon be toasting a fantastic album. First it's off to mastering, which will no doubt add that critical finishing touch. I've contacted several of my top-choice mastering houses for rates and availability. No point in skimping now! As soon as pressing is under way we'll announce the final release date, and of course the CD release party!