7.15.2005 ORSUS MIX AT LEOPARD

Mixing with ORSUS has commenced and thus far we have completed four of the twelve songs in the project. Three of these mixes will be pre-released as a promotional disc. As always, Leopard Studio has proved to be a great place to work. We expect to complete the project there in August.

Mixing in ProTools is a bit slow without a control surface, but the mixes sound great once they're done. We are still considering the possibillity of running them through a large format console once they are all completed in ProTools, time and dollars permitting.

05.26.2005 LOGS & TAPES & ANALOG TAPES

Spent a couple of days with my folks, transferring some of their reel tapes. They had a company that produced corporate communications events for large corporations. These shows were big multi-media extravaganzas featuring original music, sometimes with a live orchestra, a live cast of actors and sometimes dancers, slide and film projection and of course the requisite corporate talking heads. Their productions won many industry awards and they were a leader in the "industrial shows" industry for decades. It was a wonderful walk down memory lane for us, and we "digitized" a good overview of the best of the company's original songs.

I had not worked with analog tape in quite some time, but I guess it's like riding a bicycle... I was quick to repair the broken splices, and was still adept at cleaning the heads and transport mechanisms, which needed to be done frequently as some of the tapes were so old that they were shedding their oxide. Alas, a few tapes were so badly deteriorated that they couldn't be played, and one which was stored as a "pancake" (sans the reel flanges) had fallen off the hub and was a jumble inside the box. In the end we were able to transfer almost everything that my parents were hoping to save, thanks to well-logged and documented reels and proper climate controlled storage for all these years. Now that we have the music in ProTools I will process and tweak the audio, and burn CDs. As an interesting side note, a local college radio station recently spun a track from one of their productions, which had been pressed to vinyl. The show was for Coca-Cola and the song was called "That Big Bottling Plant Up In The Sky". Look for it in the WFMU archives at this link:

Black Ops Archive

04.30.2005 LIVE RECORDING AT "THE BARN"

I've been doing some live stereo recording at The Barn in Cold Spring NY for IGF ENTERTAINMENT. So far I've recorded sets by MELODROME, a rock trio from the Boston area, and KATHLEEN PEMBLE, a folk-pop singer-songwriter from the Mid Hudson Valley. Both performed excellent sets. For both recordings I used my iBook/Mbox rig and a stereo pair of Oktava MK-012 (s) in an "X-Y" pattern from the "hay loft" above the audience. I set ProTools to record in AIFF format at 16 bit, 44.1khz so that the resulting audio files could be burned strait to CDs for the artists to take home. Kathleen Pemble later asked me to edit and master her recording.

 The Barn is a fabulous acoustic enviroment, and I'm planning on bringing the mobile rig for more live stereo recordings of the acts IGF brings in. The space is very comfortable and there is an office area in the "hay loft" that can serve as a makeshift control room. When appropriate I could also bring a larger ProTools rig for multi-tracking. In addition to the audio recordings, I made some animations with my friends "Loudmouth Bill" and Kane. You can see this and other films and photography on our new multi-media art site at UMOUR.ORG The animation is titled "Where Are The People".

03.11.2005 MORE ORSUS VOCALS

Brought the Mbox and iBook rig to work on Cisco's vocals over at Tommy's house. Also brought a RP-220 Tube Mic Pre-amp, and DBX 160A compressor, and the Rode NTZ tube mic. We set up a makeshift control room in Tommy's spare bedroom, and hung some moving blankets in his living room to create a vocal booth. Cisco did excellent takes of two songs. Except for occasional noise of neighbors coming from the hallway the recording setup seems to work fine. We will be continuing this way until the vocals are completed.

02.28.2005 METRO MUSIC DRUMS AT LEOPARD

Joe Kelly (of Provan) brought in a drum recording session for a commercial music project he is working on with friend Dan McKay. This was truly a drum tracking marathon, as they had 12 songs to record, and there were 3 versions of each song, a full length version, a 30 second version, a 15 second version and a 10 second version. Amazingly we got it all done in just 2 and half days, thanks in large part to the awesome talent of the drummer they brought in. We used several of Joe's mics, and many of the studio's as well, along with both house Mic Pre's and some that Joe likes to bring.

In addition to the close mics on the drums we also set up 2 sets of room mics. The first set were AKG 414s set up in an "X/Y" placement in cardioid pattern (pictured in foreground). The second set of room mics were Joe's Cad Equitec mics, which we placed near the corners of the room and set in omni pattern. The 414s gave a very "true" room sound, sounding much like what you hear standing in the room, and the Cads gave a more distant and ambient sound. For all the takes we tracked both sets of room mics so that we could decide later which one to use in each song.

02.24.2005 SOME FUN OF MY OWN

With the time I had at Leopard Studio between bookings I did some recording of my own. Ever a fan of 60's psychedelic music I endeavored to re-create some of my favorite tunes and tones. Keeping in mind the nature of the technology of the time I limited myself to using a minimum number of tracks and I kept the mic'ing very simple. I used only the available instruments and amps, which Jimmy has at his studio. No EQ either, just amp tone controls.

I used just 2 mics for the drums. One Oktava MK-52 ribbon mic for the kick drum and another for an overhead. I ran these through API Mic Pre-amps. Getting just the right placement of the overhead took quite a bit of trial and error, as I had to record myself playing each time until I got all the drums sounding balanced.

For the bass sound I played Jimmy's very nice Fender Precision bass, which sounded great through Jimmy's Ampeg M-15 (re-issue) bass amp. I used a Sennheiser MD-421 microphone and API Mic Pre-amp. I set the tone controls on the amp so that it sounded very round and fat. Not much high-end at all. I isolated the amp with a single "gobo" in an attempt to simulate what might be done if there was a full complement of musicians playing live in the room. As with all the tracks the signal path was as simple and direct as possible; from source to mic to pre-amp to recorder.

Jimmy has several wonderful guitars and amps. For most of the tracks I played his Dan Electro through the Vox AC-15. The Vox amp does have a pre-amp gain stage for overdrive but for some tracks I opted to use his MXR distortion pedal to get a more "fuzz" tone. The Vox Wah pedal also came in quite handy. So did the "reverse" plug-in in ProTools. OK, some would say that's cheating but I had to reverse some guitar tracks to be true to the psychedelic form and since there were no reels to flip...

In all I recorded basic tracks for 3 songs. The first was "Corporal Clegg" by Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd. Then, using much the same setup, I recorded a song called "Lulu Arfin Nanny" by Kaleidoscope, and finally an original composition based loosely on another Sid Barrett track called "Madcap's Embrace". The experiment was a great success. My tracks really sounded vintage. Many thanks to Jimmy for letting me stay and play!

02.20.2005 ORSUS VOCALS AT LEOPARD

Spent these past 2 weekends working with Cisco and Tommy on vocal tracks. Gary came up too and shot lots of video, which he is posting on their site www.orsusband.com. Cisco sat at the piano and did warm-up exercises before each vocal session. Between takes, to give him a rest, Tommy and Gary also tracked some acoustic guitar and solos. For the vocal tracks I used Leopard’s RODE NTK tube microphone through the Avalon 737 pre-amp. I needed to use quite a bit of compression, as Cisco is a very dynamic singer. Between the 2 weekends we got excellent takes of about half the songs. For the guitar tracks I mic'd the acoustic guitar with an AKG 414 and used my Rolls RP220 tube pre-amp. For some of the solos we used Leopard's Vox AC-15 and Fender Bronco mic'd with a Sennheiser MD-421 through API pre's. All in all it was a very productive block of work. All the music tracks are completely done, and about half the vocals are finished. Some of the songs still need some lyrical tweaks, which the band will be working on over the next week or so. Then we can finish the vocals and move on to the mixing process. I'm excited about how this project is turning out. It's sounding really impressive. All the time and attention to detail is really paying off. Here are some stills. Don't forget to check out the videos.