great Black Keys quote…

chris — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:32:53 +0000

whether or not you’re a fan, I think that people who love the Black Keys love the vintage aspect of their sound. People make a lot of assumptions about sound and the art making process in general.. but as Dan explains… it’s never what it totally seems…

“We’re going through all of these tubes and transformers, so tape is not as necessary. We’ve gone through a lot of gear: you find out what works for you, what gets those sounds. But it has less to do with tape then it does with miking techniques and the arrangements.”

Dan Auerbach in Electronic musician…

I couldn’t have said it better myself…

making the most of opportunities

chris — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:03:05 +0000

I’m sure most people who don’t work on records might feel that it’s all fun with a little bit of work, unfortunately, most of the time it’s a little bit of fun with a lot of work. But every now and then you really get an opportunity to rethink the ways you do things. I recently had the opportunity of working with Ryan Monroe. Ryan Monroe is an exceptional musician who plays in the band Band of Horses. He asked me to make his first solo record and I happily accepted. I wasn’t really sure what was in store but I was about to find out when we finally met up on the first day. I had a general idea of how I would go about things based on the material that I heard and the studio and the situation of Ryan playing everything on his own (overdubbing), but things changed as soon as we both sat down together at the console on day 1. I’m not exactly sure what Ryan said but it was basically like… “Dude… do whatever you want… no rules.. let’s just have a ton of fun!!”… I’ve heard these words before and I’ve learned to approach them with some skepticism but this situation seemed different. So I said “fuck it”. I thought to myself that I’d be a fool to be handed an opportunity like this and not take advantage of it. These opportunities don’t come up every day in a world where fast and cheap are the norm. So I instantly thought back to the very first recordings I did when I knew nothing. If I wanted to mic an instrument I put a mic in front of it and turned up the mic pre. I figured that was a good place to start. After awhile of setting things up and just listening I realized that was also a good place to end. Even though I was in a nice studio with tons of options that doesn’t mean that options = better. Simple is good. Some people stay on simple and never leave (the Ramones) and for some it takes years to come back to simple. I decided that I didn’t need any eq or compression. I was happy with what I was hearing. That’s usually a good place to leave things. It forced me to spend a bit more time getting the source sound as good as possible, picking the appropriate mic, and putting that mic in the proper place. As we kept moving on with our setup process (Ryan was playing every instrument on this record and singing. I decided that the best way to do things was to set up every chain and get basic sounds.) I realized that I could benefit from recording everything in one room. Since the entire record was going to be recorded one instrument at a time this was possible. Also, I could keep all the best quality microphones plugged up in the same room and just use any chain for any instrument. Once I got everything going and I finally got to the patch bay in the control room I started to think a bit differently about that as well. I thought, since everything can be used for anything, I might as well start bringing things up on the console in a way that reflected that. So I started patching things up on the console in order or what I perceived to be general tonal quality… a big full hi fi bright sound down to smaller, lo-fi ribbony sound. Kind of like a Crayola box of sound. It took the gear out of the equation and just focused on the sound color. The final step was setting up my Pro Tools session. Since everything was different at this point I kept going. I didn’t drastically change the way I do things but I did just start labeling things with more adjectives rather than nouns. It seemed more appropriate and fit into the overall thought process. Again, all of these things were a possibility because I knew I’d be the only one involved from beginning to end. That really left the door wide open to try things that I had never done before. Making a record can be an extremely technical process for the person making it and any opportunity to inject as much artistic thought into the building block process is always a good thing.

As the record continued to the mix stage things came together into the process that I’ve had for awhile… but it was nice to know that they started off in a much different place. It can be easy to surprise yourself but sometimes, especially within a collaboration, the opportunity needs to be there first. Once that is there, then it’s up to you to do the same old same old or challenge yourself. I’m glad I got the opportunity to walk through the door.

Insightful Eric Valentine quote….

chris — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:06:21 +0000

It seems like everyone has an opinion on digital recording…I read this quote by Eric Valentine (if you don’t know who he is and you make records then… ) and it was such a perfect way of describing exactly how I feel that I felt I needed to post it… I couldn’t have said it any better… it’s never the tools… it’s the skills..

“It is easy to get caught up in the idea that “if only had this converter or that clock or did this at a higher sample rate my mix would be sounding bigger, clearer, wider, better image, just better….etc” I have definitely caught myself making those excuses for myself at times. I believe they are just excuses though. Especially in the digital domain, I believe 99.99% of the end result comes from how things are recorded, how they are EQ’d, compressed and balanced. And of those 4 things EQing is by far the most important. I call it “voicing”. The voicing of a mix has the most significant impact on how clear, punchy, big, open, wide things sound. I have to remind myself this all the time, but if I am struggling with a mix it is not the equipment’s fault it is my fault.”

Chris Testa

great Black Keys quote…

making the most of opportunities

Insightful Eric Valentine quote….