The Wilburland Blog

A short video of Will Russell & Electric Wilburland

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:18:00 +0000

The Flies Are Back!

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:11:00 +0000

I did 2 HorseFlies gigs recently and wow. Just wow. Thursday 11/20 they played at The Corning Museum of Glass, and Saturday 11/22 at the wonderful Elk Creek Cafe in Millheim, PA.

The Corning gig was a hi tech extravaganza with a full light and video show. I got to mix the band on a new Yamaha digital console. But better than all that The HorseFlies played a great set.

But that was apparently just a set up for the stunning performance they did on Saturday night at the Elk Creek Cafe in Millheim, PA. The Elk Creek Cafe is a very cool cafe and micro-brewery kinda in the middle of nowhere, 25 miles from State College. The drive there was nice, the food delicious, and we stayed in a nice bed and breakfast. All really nice. BUT, the Flies freakin rocked! The room was sold out with folks young and old moving and churning to the HorseFlies grooves, and the band rallied, burning through fiddle/banjo grooves driven by Jeff's relentless uke, Taki's percolating world rhythms, Ricks pumping accordion and smoothly supported by Jay's awesome bass lines. Holy crap you guys! DO NOT MISS THE HORSEFLIES AT CASTAWAYS ON SAT DEC 13! THIS BAND IS ON FIRE!

Martin Simpson In Concert

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:08:00 +0000

On Friday 11/21 I has the supreme pleasure of seeing my dear friend Martin Simpson play at the Unitarian church here in Ithaca. I will tell you straight up that if you were not there, you blew it. He was stunning.

I first met Martin in the early 90s when he was living here in Ithaca. He came to Wilburland to record a CD called When I Was On Horseback, which included the talents of cellist Hank Roberts, violinist Eric Aceto and bassist Doug Robinson. One of the best recording I've done. I also did another more blues oriented CD with him called Smoke and Mirrors.

The show was classic Martin Simpson. He played a perfect combination of instrumental fingerstyle, slide and vocal tunes, intermixed with wonderful stories. Martin was a stunning player when I met him and he has gotten even better. An amazing evening was had by all.

Rock Happens!

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:09:00 +0000

Busy busy.

Wow, uh, ok, WAY too long since my last post. Here's what I've been up to.
I am continuing work with Pamela Goddard on what is turning out to be a wonderful follow up to her first CD "As Time Draws Near". Joining her are the sweet voices of Glass Of Water, fiddle and guitar from Kitchen Chair and other vocals from Jim Blake and even a cut with Diamonds In The Rough.

In contrast, the recent theme at Wilburland has been ROCK GUITARS! The Rochester band Hadlock has brought me tracks recorded in LA by Bob Kulick (know for his with with Kiss, etc) to finish recording and mix. Singer/guiratist Kris Hadlock has come down a a few sessions to record better lead vocal performances. Guitarist Richie Roccisano is replacing all the guitar leads in his home studio in Interkaken and then I get to mix it all! Yee Ha!

Richie's brother Michael has a cool heavy band called Seventh Son who recorded with Richie and brought the tracks for me to mix. The song Gone Forever came out great and can currently be heard on their myspace site (and mine) and on Sirrius Radio. I'll me mixing a few more for them soon.

Recording Mignarda

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Yesterday at Wilburland I had the supreme pleasure of spending the day with Ron Andrico and Donna Stewart of the duo Mignarda. They are wonderful folks and fine musicians, and we recorded a song with lute and voice. For those of you who don't know what a lute is, it is a guitarish looking stringed instrument with a deep round back and a sharply angled headstock. It is often associated with music from the early renaissance to late baroque periods. These folks have got an amazing thing going on. Ron plays with great dynamics and finesse and Donna's voice sounds, well, perfect!

We recorded the lute and voice together in one room hoping to record not only a natural sound but also to capture the natural dynamics of 2 people playing together, the connection that happens with two people in the same space. The challenge of course was to get the right balance of blend and separation between the two. I had Ron and Donna sit facing each other about 15 feet apart so they could see each other, but also so that the mics were facing away from the undesired sound, ie lute mics facing the lute and 180 degrees away from the voice. Of course in a reverberant space like Wilburland, which I made even more live by rolling up the rugs, there is both lute and voice reverberating in the room and a bit of this leaked into each mic helping to blend the 2 sounds on the recording. I initially had a tad more of Donna's voice in the lute mics than I wanted so I created a non reflecting wall behind Ron to stop her voice from bouncing off the wall behind and into the lute mic. Perfect!

For the lute I chose 2 old Neumann KM86 mics in a stereo configuration about 5 feet away from the instrument, and I miked Donna with a Klaus Heyne modified Neumann U87 about 18" away and slightly above her. All the mics went through Pendulum Audio MDP-1 tube mic preamps which I chose for their balance of articulation and richness. The resultant recording was just what we hoped for. I can't wait for you to hear it!

Mixing Big Leg Emma, Food Clothes and Shelter and The Sim Redmond Band

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:01:00 +0000

Thursday night I went to the Rochester Armory to mix a favorite band of mine Big Leg Emma. I've been mixing these Jamestown roots rockers off and on now for several years and I had the pleasure of recording and producing a wonderful CD for them called The Color Of Wind several years back. They opened to another band of old friends Rusted Root who I worked with for several years in the mid 90s. It was really sweet to see Patrick, Michael and Liz after many years and of course Big Leg Emma rocked the house with their usual positive driving style.

Then I was back in Rochester at the Water Street Music Hall for a classic ITown event with ITown founder Kevin Kinsella The Sim Redmond Band. In case you haven't heard yet, Kevin knows how to put together a band and Food Clothes and Shelter just gets better each time I see them. and his kickin new band Food Clothes and Shelter, opening for Ithaca favorites

I do love mixing the The Sim Redmond Band, for all the reasons you all love to see them. Sweet folks making sweet music. Their positive vibe is totally infectious. Gentle afro/reggae grooves that just make you feel good and I get the same feeling when I mix them. They played a strong set mixing old and new songs to a full house. It's amazing how many people in the audience were singing along as they danced. That's love for ya!

Working with Littlewheel

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:53:00 +0000

On wednesday at Wilburland I had the pleasure of doing a session with Art Godin and Joanna Green of the acoustic duo Littlewheel. These two play a kind of down home jazzy sort of music with thoughtful progressive lyrics played with acoustic guitar, fiddle and 2 wonderful voices. This session's agenda was to record basic guitar and vocal tracks for 2 songs. Their intention was to be able to add percussion and bass at a later time so playing to click track was essential to maintain a steady tempo to make the overdubs easier. Art came in a with nice preamp/EQ for his acoustic/electric guitar which we recorded through a Pendulum MDP-1 tube preamp, just the guitar and the click. We recorded the song on guitar 3 times beginning to end and then made a composite take of the best bits of the three. This is a very natural and intuitive way to get a really nice final take while maintaining the flow and emotion of the song. Then Art and Joanna recorded the vocals together using Neumann U87s through and Avalon 2022 mic preamp and a UREI 1178 compressor to help manage the transients. They sang the song twice and we again made a composite take of what parts best conveyed the emotion of the lyrics.

What we ended up with were 2 really solid and natural sounding basic tracks for them to build on. I will probably stop by their home recording setup soon to assess and advise them on how to do some of the overdubs on their own equipment. When all the tracks are recorded, we will mix them all here at Wilburland.

IthacaMusic.com

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:25:00 +0000

Hi,

I just wanted to tell you all that I now have a regular spot on IthacaMusic.com where I will will be writing about what I'm doing at Wilburland, who I'm mixing live and adding tidbits of recording wisdom for all you home recording enthusiasts. Check it out!

Mixing The Pines at Castaways

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:27:00 +0000

Wow.

What an amazing night! My friend Richie Stearns who plays with The HorseFlies called me up this week and asked me if I could please do sound for a band he was opening for at a local club called Castaways. He told me they were called The Pines and that they had played at another club a year ago and he fell in love with them. Now I know why.

The best description of them can be found on their website: "Composed of Iowa natives David Huckfelt and Benson Ramsey, The Pines combine roots, blues and indie-rock to create a raw, haunting sound that is inventive and compelling."

They played 2 amazing sets, each time playing for awhile and then inviting Richie to join them and the combination was perfect. I will remember this performance for a long time.

back from dance camp

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:34:00 +0000

So I'm back in the studio after 2 blissful weeks at DNE dance camp in Poland Spring, Maine. My family is part of a group called Dance New England. Each year 450 folks form a kind of intentional community focusing on a common love dance. As you can imagine, where there is dance, there is MUSIC!

At dance camp I get exposed to a lot of music that I don't often see at Wilburland. Each evening at camp there is a big freestyle dance, with excellent DJs from various major New England cities spinning amazing dance and club tunes. Some of the stuff they play is pretty awesome and they can spin a room full of dancers into a frenzy or lay them on the floor depending on how and when they play various tunes. A good DJ will "read the floor" and really tune into the dancers, and they in turn feed the DJ...it becomes a big symbiotic relationship and is cool to watch.

Well that's all for now. More soon!

Grassroots is here!

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:48:00 +0000

So begins the 18th annual FingerLakes Grassroots festival! I love working at this festival for so many reasons. It is a gathering of so many wonderful musician and other folks, all together to celebrate music. Amazing bands from all over the world mixed with our own incredible local talent, playing for 10000 music fans of all ages, colors, nationalities. The energy at this festival is organic and positive, like no other I've been to. if you haven't been, now is the time to go.

I also love the work part of this gig. I get to work with a team of both enthusiastic volunteers and seasoned pros, and we lock together and do amazing things. It is teamwork at it's finest and I love it!

I'll be mixing a lot at the Grandstand stage, and wherever The Horse Flies and the Sim Redmond Band are playing. Come say hi!

Recording lute

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:35:00 +0000

Hi,

One of my favorite things is recording rare or interesting instruments. A week ago I had the opportunity to record Ron Andrico of Mignarda playing an old guitar like instrument called the lute. It sounds sort of like a classical guitar, only the sound is much more complex due to the fact that the lute has many courses of strings while the guitar has 2 single strings.

I approached the lute recording in a classical style, incorporating the room sound as part of the recording. Usually I would use Earthworks QTC1 omnidirectional mics but for our application we found them to be too noisy so we instead used two Neumann KM86 mics in figure 8, through a Pendulum tube mic pre. The sound was wonderful...

Recording The Sim Redmond Band

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:36:00 +0000

This past weekend I had the wonderful, long awaited opportunity to record basic track for The Sim Redmond Band! I've been mixing these guys live for many years, and I mixed a recent CD called "Each New Day", but I've always wanted to setup and do basic tracks with this band.

So we set up in the usual Wilburland fashion, where vibe and energy rule over technical things. The band wanted to setup in a circle so they could feed off each other and boy was it the right thing to do. We got great sounds and with the positive vibe in the room we got 2 day of really sweet tracks! I can alway tell which Wilburland projects are going to be winners by how things sound while tracking. SRB sounded like a finished CD while they were tracking. They are onto something special with this CD.

Like many bands these days they will take the tracks we layed down together home and overdub additional parts and vocals and then bring it all back to be here at Wilburland to mix. I can't wait!

Dance Flurry 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:34:00 +0000

Hi,

This past weekend I worked at the Dance Flurry in Saratoga Springs. On this weekend in the dead cold of February 4000 dancers descend on the downtown City Center where there are 10 simultaneous dances in various conference rooms and local theatres. It is quite a scene.

I mixed the main hall where there is mostly contra dancing. I mixed acoustic rhythm bands through a D&B line array system for up to 700 dancers! For you tech geeks I was mixing on a Midas Heritage 1000 console.

The bands I mixed were extraordinary! Nightingale, Tidal Wave, Big Bandemonium, Notorious, and Laurie Hart were the some of the bands I mixed.

I had a blast!

Live music

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:28:00 +0000

Hi,

Last week I had a potent reminder of the power of a live musical performance. On Monday I traveled to the German House in Rochester to see my longtime hero Todd Rundgren. I've seen Todd many times in many different band configurations and thay all have been great. Last Monday was no exception. Prairie Prince on drums, Kasim Sulton on bass, Jesse Gress and Todd on guitar. The show was a rock show, with deep and wonderful picks from the back catalog. A totally great show.

Last Wednesday I saw another longtime hero Richard Thompson, playing with songstress Judith Owen and percussionist Debra Dobkin doing "1000 Years of Popular Music at the State Theatre. Richard is always great, and his accomplices were terrific as well. After these 2 shows I was feeling like I'd had a pretty special week.

On Friday I mixed the Sim Redmond Band playing at the State Theatre for a "Barack The Vote" event. SRB's positive energy was the perfect match for the hopful vibe in the crown and they played really well. I love mixing this band!

As if that was not enough, Saturday night I went to see Ani DiFranco, also at the State Theatre. Ani and her band, that included drummer Allison Miller (with whom I went to Telluride with the Horseflies in 2003) was perfect for a very mature performance of great songs.

So it's the following week and I'm kind of floating in a post concert bliss. Live music is a truly powerful thing, capable of transforming our lives in positive ways.

The Death Of High Fidelity

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:51:00 +0000

The Death of High Fidelity
Appeared on Rolling Stone issue 1042/1043 (Dec. 27, 2007 - Jan. 10, 2008), the following is an article I agree with completely.

The Death of High Fidelity
In the age of MP3s, sound quality is worse than ever
By Robert Levine
David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he’s not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud.
Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered -almost always for the worse. “They make it loud to get [listeners’] attention,” Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue.
“I think most everything is mastered a little too loud,” Bendeth says. “The industry decided that it’s a volume contest.” Producers and engineers call this “the loudness war,” and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn’t the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today’s listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. “With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse,” says Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. “God is in the details. But there are no details anymore.”
The idea that engineers make albums louder might seem strange: Isn’t volume controlled by that knob on the stereo? Yes, but every setting on that dial delivers a range of loudness, from a hushed vocal to a kick drum - and pushing sounds toward the top of that range makes music seem louder. It’s the same technique used to make television commercials stand out from shows. And it does grab listeners’ attention - but at a price. Last year, Bob Dylan told ROLLING STONE that modern albums “have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like - static.” In 2004, Jeff Buckley’s mom, Mary Guibert, listened to the original 3/4″ tape of her son’s recordings as she was preparing the tenth-anniversary reissue of Grace. “We were hearing instruments you’ve never heard on that album, like finger cymbals and the sound of viola strings being plucked,” she remembers. “It blew me away because it was exactly what he heard in the studio.”
To Guibert’s disappointment, the remastered 2004 version failed to capture these details. So last year, when Guibert assembled the best-of collection So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley, she insisted on an independent A&R consultant to oversee the reissue process and a mastering engineer who would reproduce the sound Buckley made in the studio. “You can hear the distinct instruments and the sound of the room,” she says of the new release. “Compression smudges things together.” Too much compression can be heard as musical clutter; on the Arctic Monkeys’ debut, the band never seems to pause to catch its breath. By maintaining constant intensity, the album flattens out the emotional peaks that usually stand out in a song. “You lose the power of the chorus, because it’s not louder than the verses,” Bendeth says. “You lose emotion.” The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness, says Daniel Levitin, a professor of music and neuroscience at McGill University and author of ‘This Is Your Brain on Music: ‘The Science of a Human Obsession. Human brains have evolved to pay particular attention to loud nQises, so compressed sounds initially seem more exciting. But the effect doesn’t last. “The excitement in music comes from variation in rhythm, timbre, pitch and loudness,” Levitin says. “If you hold one of those constant, it can seem monotonous.” After a few minutes, research shows, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song. “If you limit range, it’s just an assault on the body,” says Tom Coyne, a mastering engineer who has worked with Mary J. Blige and Nas. “When you’re fifteen, it’s the greatest thing - you’re being hammered. But do you want that on a whole album?”
To an average listener, a wide dynamic range creates a sense of spaciousness and makes it easier to pick out individual instruments - as you can hear on recent albums such as Dylan’s Modern Times and Norah Jones’ Not Too Late. “When people have the courage and the vision to do a record that way, it sets them apart,” says Joe Boyd, who produced albums by Richard Thompson and R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction. “It sounds warm, it sounds three-dimensional, it sounds different. Analog sound to me is more emotionally affecting.”
Rock and Pop producers have always used compression to balance the sounds of different instruments and to make music sound more exciting, and radio stations apply compression for technical reasons. In the days of vinyl records, there was a physical limit to how high the bass levels could go before the needle skipped a groove. CDs can handle higher levels of loudness, although they, too, have a limit that engineers call “digital zero dB,” above which sounds begin to distort. Pop albums rarely got close to the zero-dB mark until the mid- 1990’s, when digital compressors and limiters, which cut off the peaks of sound waves, made it easier to manipulate loudness levels. Intensely compressed albums like Oasis’ 1995 (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? set a new bar for loudness; the songs were well-suited for bars, cars and other noisy environments. “In the Seventies and Eighties, you were expected to pay attention,” says Matt Serletic, the former chief executive of Virgin Records USA, who also produced albums by Matchbox Twenty and Collective Soul. “Modern music should be able to get your attention.” Adds Rob Cavallo, who produced Green Day’s American Idiot and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade, “It’s a style that started post-grunge, to get that intensity. The idea was to slam someone’s face against the wall. You can set your CD to stun.” It’s not just new music that’s too loud. Many remastered recordings suffer the same problem as engineers apply compression to bring them into line with modern tastes. The new Led Zeppelin collection, Mothership, is louder than the band’s original albums, and Bendeth, who mixed Elvis Presley’s 30 #1 Hits, says that the album was mastered too loud for his taste. “A lot of audiophiles hate that record,” he says, “but people can play it in the car and it’s competitive with the new Foo Fighters record.”
Just as CDs supplanted vinyl and cassettes, MP3 and other digital music formats are quickly replacing CDs as the most popular way to listen to music. That means more convenience but worse sound. To create an MP3, a computer samples the music on a CD and compresses it into a smaller file by excluding the musical information that the human ear is less likely to notice.
Much of the information left out is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Cavallo says that MP3s don’t reproduce reverb well, and the lack of high-end detail makes them sound brittle. Without enough low end, he says, “you don’t get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a power chord.” But not all digital music files are created equal. Levitin says that most people find MP3s ripped at a rate above 224 kbps virtually indistinguishable from CDs. (iTunes sells music as either 128 or 256 kbps AAC files -AAC is slightly superior to MP3 at an equivalent bit rate. Amazon sells MP3s at 256 kbps.) Still, “it’s like going to the Louvre and instead of the Mona Lisa there’s a 10 megapixel image of it,” he says. “I always want to listen to music the way the artists wanted me to hear it. I wouldn’t look at a Kandinsky painting with sunglasses on.” Producers also now alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. “You have to be aware of how people will hear music, and pretty much everyone is listening to MP3,” says producer Butch Vig, a member of Garbage and the producer of Nirvana’s Nevermind. “Some of the effects get lost. So you sometimes have to over-exaggerate things.”
Other producers believe that intensely compressed CDs make for better MP3s, since the loudness of the music will compensate for the flatness of the digital format. As technological shifts have changed the way sounds are recorded, they have encouraged an artificial perfection in music itself. Analog tape has been replaced in most studios by Pro Tools, making edits that once required splicing tape together easily done with the click of a mouse. Programs like Auto-Tune can make weak singers sound pitch-perfect, and Beat Detective does the same thing for wobbly drummers. “You can make anyone sound professional,” says Mitchell Froom, a producer who’s worked with Elvis Costello and Los Lobos, among others. “But the problem is that you have something that’s professional, but it’s not distinctive. I was talking to a session drummer, and I said, ‘When’s the last time you could tell who the drummer is?’ You can tell Keith Moon or John Bonham, but now they all sound the same.”
So is music doomed to keep sounding worse? Awareness of the problem is growing. The South by Southwest music festival recently featured a panel titled “Why Does Today’s Music Sound Like Shit?” In August, a group of producers and engineers founded an organization called Turn Me Up!, which proposes to put stickers on CDs that meet high sonic standards. But even most CD listeners have lost interest in high-end stereos as surround-sound home theater systems have become more popular, and superior-quality disc formats like DVD-Audio and SACD flopped. Bendeth and other producers worry that young listeners have grown so used to dynamically compressed music and the thin sound of MP3s that the battle has already been lost. “CDs sound better, but no one’s buying them,” he says. “The age of the audiophile is over.”
Get the Most of your iPod.
1. Increase the bit rate: Higher bit rates = better sound. Set your iTunes to rip at 192 kbps, or better - we recommend jacking it all the way to 320. (AustinVegas recommends always 320 for MP3 but you can always rip straight to WMA)
2. Ditch the white earbuds: For an upgrade. try higher-end earphones from Shure. Ultimate Ears or Etymotic. Bonus; fewer muggings! (AV says true that on the muggings!)
3. Don’t re-rip!!! Morality aside, it’s a bad idea to re-rip a CD burned from MP3s - the sound will be noticeably worse. (AV says: Did you ever make a copy of someone elses copy of a cassette tape? Yeah with this is the same concept)
4. Upgrade from MP3: Use iTunes’ AAC format or windows Media Audio . (AV says SKIP! the AAC, it’s proprietary and if you don’t plan on using iPod for life, don’t get stuck with this format, use WMA instead).

Fall 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:09:00 +0000

Holy Smokes! Another long wait for a blog entry! I've been pretty busy. I have been working lately with Sophia and Emily from Glass Of Water working on a wonderful folk A Capella CD. There women can sing! Producer Rich DePaolo was in a bunch working with local Tamar Haviv working on vocals for a CD that includes Jerry Marotta on drums and Sara Lee and Tony Levin on bass! I'm continuing work with Joe Crookston on what is turning pout to be an amazing collection of fine songs. Joe invited to of my favorite local players Molly MacMillian and Doug Robinson to track piano and bass on a few tracks.
I have also been out on the road with the Sim Redmond Band opening for Donna The Buffalo and having big fun!!

This Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 12:17:00 +0000

Hi all,

This weekend should be fun. I work today recording piano and vocals with Tamar Haviv, then it's off to Castaways for an evening with The HorseFlies!

Tomorrow I will work with Joe Crookston tracking new songs with Molly MacMillian on piano and Doug Robinson on bass!

Heading Into Fall

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:29:00 +0000

Hey there,
It's monday morning and I'm reflecting on my past week. I've started on a new project with songwriter Joe Crookston. Joe was voted as one of the top three showcase artists at this summer's Falconridge Folk Festival and I'm excited to be working with him. I met him a while ago when he was interviewed at Wilburland by Tracey Craig for the Rootabaga Roadhouse radio program and was impressed by his playing and singing and thoughtful lyrics. This CD should be wonderful if our first sessions are any indication.

This weekend I worked with a wonderful A Capella duo named Glass Of Water. Sophia Smith-Savedoff and Emily Hurst are 2 cornell students who discovered each other about 4 years ago and have been singing together ever since. We had a fun weekend full recording about 15 songs. There is something so pure about a cappella voice...

Mixing punk with The Berettas!

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:27:00 +0000

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the day with The Berettas, a fine punk band from Trumansburg, NY. This trio have been together for three years and have apparently been practicing because the tracks that they brought to me to mix were tight and well played. Like many bands these days, The Berettas saved some money and did the recording at a cheaper studio with a young engineer, and then turned to me and my experience to sort it all out in the mix. The young engineer at the other studio did an admirable job as most tracks sounded pretty good. The only issue was that there was more snare in the kick drum mic than kick drum, but, whatever, I made it work anyway.
For these mixes I decided to build a virtual analog console using Waves' fine API Collection console plugins, in particular, the API 550b equalizer. I put this plugin on every track and even without using the eq the tracks seem to glue together like a real analog console. These eqs also have a well deserved reputation for their sweet musical sound and their sonic signature lent itself well to this punk band. We mixed and mastered 5 songs in 7 hours and it sounds pretty great!

Digidesign, Boynton Pro Audio, and Wilburland

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:27:00 +0000

Last night Wilburland was host to a Digidesign/BoyntonProAudio sales presentation. Regional Digidesign rep Brian Doser gave a short presentation of the ProTools product line and Bill Scranton from Boynton Pro Audio presented the Digidesign's new PMC designed RM2 powered monitors and the Digidesign D-Command control surface. While I didn't have the opportunity to A/B test the new monitors against my trusted Genelec 1031As, I can say thet these new RM2s sound pretty detailed and have an extended and tight low end response. A few folks in the room asked me If I had my sub on. As for the D-Command, I'm pretty impressed in first contact and look forward to kickin it's tires in the next week.

Today I look forward to doing mix touchups and mastering on Jay Mankita's upcoming CD. Who knows, maybe I'll listen to the new RM2s and touch up with the D-Command!

Catching up

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:21:00 +0000

Whoa. Over a month since my last blog! Well, I have apparently been busy!

So, uh, let's see. In the middle of August I was busy mixing tunes for the upcoming HorseFlies CD! Then me and the family went to Dance New England dance camp in Poland Springs, Maine for 2 weeks. A well needed vacation!

I arrived home after labor day and hit the ground running with more HorseFlies mixing and mixing for Zion Fellowship. These projects present totally different challenges. With the HorseFlies, we are trying to blend the ideas of alt rock and old time together, sweating tiny balances and paying focused attention to rhythm and "feel". It's all about the groove. With the Zion Fellowship project, I am managing a bunch of midi based virtual instruments provided by Native Instruments Miroslav Philharmonik and SampleTank2, as well as Propellorheads Reason. Here the challenges are presenting this "inspirational instrumental" music with sampled sounds that hopefully sound realistic. I have discovered that a lot of the secret of making sampled sound work is tweaking attack and release parameters to make up for the fact that trumpet or string sounds are being played with a keyboard.

Both of these mixing projects are benefiting from the use of some new plugins from Waves. I have recently aquired the Waves V Series, API and SSL console bundles. For the first time I can now set up ProTools with plugins that actually sound and respond like a true analog console. These new plugins have met with high praise from industry veterans who have spent years working on the "real thing". All I know is that I can now totally emulate analog recording and mixing within the digital realm with no compromise. Finally!!!!

My life in a busy studio

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:09:00 +0000

Wow. My last post was 2 weeks ago! Oops! So, let's see, what has Will been up to? Well, last Wed and Thurs evening I had the pleasure ow working with a talented young man named Abe Roberts, who came on to record a collections of his songs on piano and voice. When folks call up for sessions like this you never know who will walk in the door. Abe turned out to have a bunch or very nice songs that he played well and sang to beautifully. Abe has a voice that will make young girls swoon and think about marriage, and his heartfelt performance and sensitive lyrics only make it worse! I suspect he'll be back...

Last week I also had the wonderful opportunity to work with one of my favorite singer/songwriters Jay Mankita. For a long time I have admired Jay's songwriting and delivery, blending sharp humor with a a keen insight to life as a human. We worked together on a mixing a song for a compilation of kids's music relating to good nutrition and health. Jay made the topic fun and intersting in his music. Looks like Jay will be back in the fall to mix his upcoming CD with me. Yay!

Over the weekend I worked again with an amazing modern percussion duo called the Marassa Duo. Jim Armstrong and Nick Papadour rolled in once again with marimba, vibes, bata drums, pans and congas. We spent the weekend recording and mixing a 12 minute piece called Marassa 2. For this session we rolled up the carpets in the big room to make a more reverberant environment to create more of an "event in a space" feel. I love working with these guys not only because they are great guys but also because the compositions are interesting and the recording is a fun challenge. Most of the time for me percussion is something you add to an existing track, rather than the entire focus of the project, so I have to think about the instruments differently.

So that's all I have time to write this morning. I'm off to Wilburland to mix the upcoming HorseFlies CD!!!!

Mamadou Diabate

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:36:00 +0000

Some days I am simply a service provider, and some days I am part of a truly amazing musical experience. On Monday night I had the supreme pleasure of working again with kora master Mamadou Diabate here at Wilburland. He recorded all 12 songs for his upcoming solo CD in a single evening! Mamadou and I form a good team; he is comfortable with my energy and advice and I can deliver him the best kora sound he has heard. I in turn get to be in the presence of a true master musician. Who knows, maybe this one will win a Grammy! (Mamadou's last solo cd was nominated for one)

For you recording geeks out there, I record Mamadou primarily with 2 Earthworks QTC1 mics on a Jecklin Disk right above the instrument, with a Neumann U87 1 ft above the sound hole for shaping the bass notes. The recordings have no reverb added and very little eq.

The Fingerlakes Grassroots Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Wilburguy) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:28:00 +0000

It's been a busy time for me and I've been negligent in my blogging! Well, anyone local knows that this past weekend was the annual Fingerlakes Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance, held just north of Ithaca in Trumansburg, NY. This massive festival has 80 bands on 4 stages for 4 days and is just amazing! The vibe is positive and the music that you can see and hear is jaw dropping.

Like the Great Blue Heron festival, I work for Calf Audio at Grassroots, who supplies the systems in the Dance Tent and the Grandstand stage. I was the primary FOH (front of house) engineer for the weekend and got to mix regular favorites like The HorseFlies, Sim Redmond Band, Samite of Uganda as well as my new friends The Greencards. In my opinion the Grandstand stage is the best sounding stage, and it is a fun privilege to be able to mix there. The only band I mixed that was not on the grandstand Stage was another favorite band, SloMo, who I fired out of the Cabaret Hall like a cannon. This band hails from Philly and truly needs to be experienced to be believed. They totally deserve a bigger stage.

So now I am very tired, but still smiling!