It’s been a busy summer here in Portland.  Despite the abundant sunshine over the past few months, I’ve found myself spending a great deal of time inside the studio here at Badlands.  Even when temperatures crept into the 90′s and the studio air grew thick with heat, it wasn’t enough to keep me (along with my musical partners in crime) from spending good portions of the day inside.  Luckily we’re blessed with some natural light and a big door we can open to catch a breeze.

June began with a mixing project for LA-based singer/songwriter Andrew Webb.  I recorded Andrew’s full-length at Bedrock Studios in March, just before I left for Portland.  He patiently waited while we built out the studio here, and we were finally able to send off the mixes for mastering in June.  Immediately I began working on mixing the latest Hip Hatchet record, title Joy and Better Days.  Gravitation Records (Tallest Man on Earth) just re-released Philippe’s first full length (get it here or here or here), and details on the new album release will be available soon.  I’m very excited for this release, and will definitely post about it here as the project progresses.

Recording The Early

July’s focus was all Badlands for me.  We had two awesome shows and met a ton of new music friends that we’re planning future projects with.  I also got to experiment with live recording in the studio quite a bit.  As my involvement with The Early resumed and we began recording our rehearsals, I learned the best spots in the room for amps, drums, mics, and our moveable acoustic baffles.  We even got to do a fun session with our friend Nick of Port St. Willow.

In August, there seemed to be no time for anything but music.  We started it off with a trip to Pickathon, which may have been the most relaxed and enjoyable music festival I’ve ever been too.  I got to see Califone, Wye Oak, Mavis Staples, Fruit Bats, Bill Callahan, and a slew of other artists in intimate settings.  My favorite show of the festival was Black Mountain, which I was lucky enough to be in the front row for.  They dropped one of the tightest and heaviest performances I’ve ever experienced.  Immediately after Pickathon, we had Liz De Lise into the studio for recording a short EP.  It was a pleasure recording her powerful voice and guitar playing live, with just two mics.  The result is a natural, organic sound that suits her songs perfectly.

Youth taking a break in the yard

We’re just barely halfway through September, but it’s been a packed two weeks!  Jake and I designed and built a burly isolation cabinet for the studio, so we can have loud amps blaring while recording drums at the same time. (Pictures and details here.)  We put it through its paces during our recent session with Portland band Youth (read an interview here), and it passed with flying colors.  Youth’s infectious guitar melodies shine right along side tight, punchy drums.  What a fun session.  We’re currently planning some more dates with these guys, and I can’t wait to work with them again.

It already feels like fall now, with the leaves changing color and some rain on the weather report.  While I’ll miss summer , I won’t have much time to think about it with all of our plans for fall.  We’ve got two Badlands residencies coming up, featuring The Shade in October and Ben Seretan in November.  I’m also planning several exciting additions to the studio’s gear list, and we’re already working on an additional isolation cabinet for maximum flexibility.

To stay up to date with Badlands-related news, follow us on Tumblr or Twitter.  For news pertaining to The Early, check out our Twitter.  And of course, please share your thoughts, comments, or criticisms in the comments below!

For most of my life, I have never been able to remember song lyrics very well.  While I can sing along with many of my favorite songs, in general lyrics just don’t stick with me as they seem to with other people.  This is likely due to how I listen to music.  Growing up, as a pianist and then guitarist, my ear was drawn first to those what those instruments were playing in a song.  I tried to imagine what the musicians looked like as they played their parts, and how I might play it.  I heard and recognized the lyrics, but rarely were they the focal point of my listening experience.

Recently I met some friends outside the Doug Fir, after a Hayes Carll show.  They were sharing a table with another pair of fans, and talking about how much they loved the performance.  One of the fans, named Dave, pulled out his cellphone and started playing his favorite Hayes Carll song.  The rest of us kind of groaned, and someone pointed out that after a killer live performance in a great sounding venue, listening to one of his songs through a crappy cellphone speaker was sure to be a letdown.  Dave obliged and put his phone away, but then said something very interesting:

“When I listen to Hayes, I don’t care what it sounds like.  I just want to hear those lyrics.”

The earnestness in Dave’s voice  struck a chord with me.  As a recording engineer, I spend a great deal of time crafting sonic landscapes for songs to inhabit, but here’s this guy who could care less about hard-panned guitars or drum compression.  He just wants to hear the lyrics, because that’s what resonates with him and gives him goosebumps.

Of course I’m aware that in most contemporary music the vocals are considered the main element, and that they usually take front and center in a mix.  I keep this in mind throughout the production process, but as a music listener I rarely focus on the vocals much more than I do the rest of the instruments.  But Dave’s comment has led me to think differently about vocals and lyrics.  They are the center of the mix because they are the most human element in music.  When we hear a rock band, we hear drums, bass, and guitars and know that (most of the time) humans played them.  But we’re not actually hearing other people, just objects manipulated by people.  Vocals are other people speaking directly to us.  Vocals are stories, confessions, demands, and questions.  For many listeners, they’re all that matters.  They don’t care about tiny strings vibrating or electrical waveforms, but they care about lyrics.

This realization has led me to think differently about the role of vocals in recording and mixing, but it’s also changed the way I listen to music for pleasure.  I try to listen to them first in a new piece of music, before the other instrumentation.  My attention often wavers towards a particularly intricate guitar part or super-tight groove, but I find that placing more focus on the lyrics reveals another dimension to my listening experience.  The lyrics give meaning and context back to the instruments, and change how I hear them.  I’m sure that many of you already listen to music this way, but it’s new to me and I’m loving it.

I’d love to hear about how you all listen to the vocal parts in your favorite songs.  Are they more important for some songs than others?  Do you barely even notice the other instruments.  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

With all the great progress on building acoustic treatment for the Badlands recording studio, I decided that a serious gear upgrade was in order.  After researching all the different options, I decided that I could get really excellent equipment and keep costs down by ordering directly from the manufacturers.  This turned out to be great not just for low prices, but also for getting excellent customer service.

Great Experience #1 – OktavaMod

My first priority in stepping up my gear game was microphones.  As one of the of the earliest components of the signal chain (coming after musician, instrument, and room), the importance of quality microphones is difficult to undervalue.  After learning from Raymond Richards at Red Rockets Glare that great microphones don’t have to come with prestigious brand names or high price tags attached to them, I focused my search on modified mics.  This quickly led me to Michael Joly of OktavaMod, whose reputation among the mod set appears to have no equal.  I settled on the Cascade Gomez, which wasn’t actually modified but was co-designed by Joly, and the modded Apex 460.  A quality ribbon mic and a multi-pattern tube condenser were just what I needed to expand the sonic palette of my microphone collection.  Michael and his wife Meryl were very responsive to my questions about ordering the mics, and were very prompt in their responses to

my billing questions.  The only downside to my interaction to them is that I have to wait until July to get the 460 (the Gomez showed up almost immediately), but the fact that Joly’s skills are in such high demand definitely bodes well for the quality of this mic!

Great Experience #2 – Hamptone

After I had my mics sorted out, I turned to the question of preamps.  For a while I’d been thinking of getting a 500-series Lunchbox and filling it with preamp modules, but while I was touring Jackpot Recording Studio, the studio manager told me that Scott Hampton of Hamptone has space next door.  I had heard great things about Hamptone preamps, and was into the idea of buying local (I am in Portland, after all.)  I decided on an assembled HVTP2, and once again got excellent customer service.  Scott was very responsive to my many emails, and allowed me to come by the shop to pick up the pres and avoid shipping charges!  He was super friendly and helpful while he explained how to check for worn out tubes and that if I ever had any trouble with the pres to bring them right back so he could take a look at them.

I was already impressed with the great level of service from Hamptone, when I found out that Josh Powell, one of the owners of The Map Room, worked at Hamptone.  I was using a bunch of the Hamptone pres on a pair of dates for the upcoming Hip Hatchet record, and mentioned to Josh that I was getting one for myself, and he said he’d probably be the one to build it.  Awesome!  I love that someone working at the company making my preamps is a successful studio owner, and stands behind the company’s products enough to use them all the time!

Support The Little Guys!

I’m really happy that I went with the mics and pres that I did, instead of going the Vintage King or Mercenary Audio route.  I have nothing against those companies and am glad they exist, but ordering directly from the manufacturer was a great experience in every way possible.  I received high quality, wonderful sounding equipment at a low price, got excellent customer service directly from the people who designed the equipment, and am supporting small businesses.  I will definitely keep these companies in mind for my future gear purchases, and recommend others do the same.

Links

• OktavaMod – http://www.oktavamod.com/
• Hamptone – http://hamptone.com/

After some serious deep thinking, a bunch of meetings, a hectic few weeks in LA, and a long rainy drive in a truck through California and Oregon, I’ve finally arrived in my new home in Portland, OR.  I’m sad to leave Los Angeles behind, but after being in PDX for only a week I can already tell it’s the right place for me to be.

I’ve already started planning the next Hip Hatchet record with Philippe Bronchtein, and we’ve been looking at studios since my second day in town.  I’m hoping to nail down the right place today, because after a great show at Jade Lounge last night I’m really excited to record his new songs.

I’m also excited to get started creating a small studio and performance space in my house here.  I’ll be working with the talented minds of Alex Lewis and Jake Nussbaum (both longtime friends and fellow members in The Early), and there are already some awesome ideas floating around.  Sunday brunch shows, anyone?

I hope to post regular updates here of the Hip Hatchet sessions, as well as photos of any performance or studio buildouts in the new space.  I have high hopes for the coming months, and am excited to share everything that develops.

It’s safe to say that most recording engineers are musicians.  Or at least were at some point.  How does one end up with a career devoted to documenting musical performances if not through their own experiences creating music?   I’m sure that there are some engineers out there with no musical background, but I’m sure most folks behind the boards these days started off playing in a band or recording themselves.  This is probably not surprising to any of you, but what happens when an engineer’s work conflicts with his or her identity as a musician?

A special sonic experience.

First, some back story.  Way back in 2009, my good friend (and fellow Early alum) Alex Lewis and I played guitar in an incredible and unique performance.  We, along with 198 other guitarists, sixteen bassists, and a lone hi-hatter, gathered in Damrosch Park in New York to perform Rhys Chatham’s A Crimson Grail for the Wordless Music Series. The setup was unlike anything any of us had ever experienced (unless you count the rehearsals and cancellation of the same piece the year before): 200 electric guitars with 200 amps, surrounding the audience in a giant U shape, with four sections conducted by rad music dudes like Seth Olinsky (Akron/Family) and Ned Sublette, all coming together to produce a nearly hour-long piece of music.  Yeah, a minimalist composer writing for 200 guitars, I know.

As a guitar player, this was a lot of fun.  But by this point I thought of myself more as an engineer than a guitarist.  As an engineer, it was an incredible learning experience because it raised some questions that forced me to think about sound in entirely new ways.  How can 200 guitar amps work together to create a single, cohesive sound?  In such a large and open space, how do reflections and time delays factor into the aural experience of the audience and performers?  How will the positioning of the players and seating factor into how each audience member hears the performance?  Despite the joy of being a performer, my mind couldn’t help but ponder these distinctly engineer-y thoughts.

That was the last time I played guitar in a live setting for over a year, until recently.

A new perspective.

Last week I had the opportunity to perform live with longtime friend and musical partner Hip Hatchet, the nom de plume of Philippe Bronchtein.  Nothing much, just a few songs backing him up on acoustic guitar while he commanded the attention of a diverse crowd at a show near USC.  What I didn’t count on was my guitar skills being so rusty!  For some reason, I hadn’t had the time (or found the time, or made the time) to play guitar much at all over the past few months.  Sure, I’d been busy working on a number of projects, but that excuse doesn’t hold any water once you look at folks like Joel Hamilton, who is a highly in-demand engineer yet still plays in Book of Knots, or Raymond Richards, who balances production and touring well.

In the time between A Crimson Grail and performing with Phil, I had somehow become accustomed to taking a break from making music outside of work-related projects.  While I was in school, playing guitar was an escape from all the non-musical work I was doing.  Now, I am fortunate to have a job in which I am constantly surrounded by music, but that means that guitar is no longer much of an escape.  After listening and working on music in the studio all day, once I get home I am often too tired to pick up the guitar, and want to rest my body and ears.

Yesterday I realized how important it is to maintain an active musical life outside the studio.  I finally received my copy of the Crimson Grail recording, and upon listening to it immediately found myself imagining how the engineer approached capturing that unconventional performance and translating it to a stereo mix.  Being a participant in the performance had given me a more intimate knowledge of the music than had I just been in the audience, and that caused me to think about the recording differently.  As soon as I realized this, I decided to get back to playing guitar regularly, and hopefully performing more often as well.

Share your thoughts.

What about you?  Are you a musician who is just getting into recording yourself, or a longtime engineer who got your start making demos for your band?  Or perhaps you’re solely a musician, choosing to leave the recording process to others?  No matter your role in creating music, it no doubt informs how you think about recording and the production process.  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

If you’re like most folks with a steady gig as a full-time employee, the answer to this question is pretty clear: “No way!”  You wake up early every morning, commute to work, spend 8 or so hours at the office/firm/agency/store, and you expect to be compensated fairly for your time and effort.  Pretty simple, right?

That all changes in the world of freelancing and independent contractors.  It seems that as soon as a skilled worker (usually in a creative field like music or graphic design) goes off on his or her own to contract directly with clients, the idea that their time is worth paying for flies right out the window.  Perhaps it’s the less tangible nature of artistic work like composing a jingle for a commercial or drafting a killer website layout, or maybe it’s the fact that many freelancers don’t have an “office” in the traditional sense of the word.  Whatever the reason, there seems to be a clear tendency for clients to expect free or discounted services from independent contractors that, if from an “actual” company, would unquestionably command a fee.

This is why I was delighted to stumble across this handy flowchart, via the FlowingData blog (colorful-language-free version here.)  Designer Jessica Hische knocks it out of the park with a beautiful flowchart that is at once hilarious (for freelancers at least) and accurate.

It pays to be free (sometimes)

Now, I have worked for free many times in the past and will surely do so again in the future.  As a young recording engineer in the crowded musical landscape that is Los Angeles, there were many opportunities to make connections, learn a new skill, or just gain experience that offered little or no pay.  Fortunately I’ve moved beyond much of that, but there are still times when donating my services or working on spec is entirely appropriate, and even enjoyable.  Long-time friends, family, mentors, and of course my old band are all important to me, and thus may not be charged much or anything at all.  While I may not get much financial compensation from these gigs, it feels good to help someone close to me or someone who has helped me in a similar manner in the past.

Even though spec work is sometimes appropriate, the vast majority of the time when people ask for free work and promise “exposure” or “great portfolio material” they are just looking to keep more money in their pockets.  Why some people expect certain creative workers to spend hours on a project without pay just because they are self-employed is a bit confusing, but it is a reality of the modern world nonetheless.  I’ve heard ideas on the Tape Op Message Board of framing the above flowchart and hanging it in the studio for potential clients to read, but that may be a bit much.  I think some people are just going to expect free work no matter how illogical it may be, and in each situation it’s up to the freelancer to decide what the right move is.  At least now there’s a bit of a roadmap.

What about you?

I’m sure there are plenty of freelancers who work for free all time, just as I’m sure there those that never give away their services.  I’d love for you to share your stories here.  Perhaps you agreed to help out a close friend with a small spec project that ballooned into a time-consuming giant headache.  Or maybe you took a risk and donated time to a new client that turned into a regular provider of paying work.  Whatever it is, please share your experiences in the comments below.

With Christmas coming up, that means New Years is right around the corner. Of course, this means every website, blog, Tumblr, Twitter feed, and online magazine will soon publish an onslaught of “Best ______ of 2010.” I usually love these things, especially the music ones since they provide an opportunity to discover some great albums that I missed when they first came out. This year, however, I did a pretty good job of keeping on top of new releases, so I think I’ll be staying away from the usual suspects (NPR Music, Pitchfork).

That said, I’d like to share one list that I found noteworthy, mainly because an album I worked on is near the top!  We Listen For You posted their Top 25 Albums of 2010, and Hip Hatchet’s Men Who Share My Name is chilling at #5.  Exciting!  Phil is in good company with Sharon Van Etten and Tallest Man on Earth on either side of him, and Morning Benders, Avi Buffalo, and Henry Clay People elsewhere on the list.

Who am I kidding?  I love this stuff.  With Pitchfork just starting on their Honorable Mentions for best albums of the year, and NPR putting up some rad lists already, I’m going to be plenty busy checking out new jams while I’m home for the holidays.

CMJ and AES are both not in the cards this year, unfortunately.  But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping up with what’s going down at these things.  If you find yourself in New York next week, here are a few of the things I’d be going to if I were in your shoes:

• Tuesday: Lawrence Arabia
• Wednesday: Earthless
• Thursday: Anni Rossi
• Friday: Fake Problems and College Battle of the Band Regional + National Winners! – via KamranV
• Saturday: Royal Bangs
• Sunday (yes, Sunday.  Bonus!): We Listen For You Party – Featuring my boy Hip Hatchet.

And if I could get away from LA for even a day I’d drive up  to AES to check out these bits of gear:

• Burl B2 Bomber.  These things have been getting many nice things said of them recently.
• Chandler Little Devils: I’ve been eyeing these 500 series units for a while.  Hear good things about them, just haven’t heard them.
• Radial Workhorse: Seems like a good way to solve many problems at once.  The inclusion of summing is awesome, if it sounds good!

Man, missing these really is no fun.  Oh well, there’s always that other music thing in March, somewhere in the middle of the country.  Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

While I was letting digital dust collect on this here blog, I was actually keeping busy with plenty of other projects, musical and otherwise. The first is the integration of my old WordPress.com blog and my actual website. While before I had you jumping every which way between sites, now everything’s all under one roof, thanks to the magic of Thesis. For any of you using WordPress, I highly recommend it, both for its power but also its ease of use.

Onward to the stuff that matters.  Since I last posted in May, (so much for posting more often, heh) I’ve had the opportunity to work with a great bunch of musicians, in a wide range of styles.  June began with some tracking for Kaz Murphy and his Royal Heirs of King Pleasure.  This was tracked entirely live at Bedrock with phenomenal bunch of musicians.  They were able to bust out incredibly tight performances with minimal rehearsal time.  Great fun.

Later in the month I headed up into the Valley for a unique opportunity at the home studio of Peter Malick.  The fine folks at Propellerhead were in town shooting a video for their very cool Record software.  I didn’t get to dive as deep into to it as I wanted to, but watching Peter use it was enough to see how much thought they put into the workflow.  That, and a dedicated EQ and Dynamics section on every channel of their SSL-inspired software mixer, was enough to make me want to see more.  While I doubt Record will be challenging our friends at Avid for the de-facto DAW, it’s an impressive piece of software for project and home studios.  Expect a post with the final video once it’s all done.

I’ll be back within a week to finish up the rest of my summer happenings.  Promise.

I read a terrific essay last week by Allen Farmelo, a New York-based engineer and contributor to Tape Op, about Sonic Varnish.  I highly recommend reading the entire thing if you’re at all into recording, but I’ll offer a brief synopsis here.

Allen describes the process by which old recordings developed a unique and often elusive character as they passed through numerous pieces of analog gear.  Each piece of equipment imparted its own sonic signature to the recorded material that was often too subtle to make any difference on its own, but over the course of overdubbing, bouncing, mixing, and mastering, these individual signatures added up create a distinct “sonic varnish.”  This is part of why many people believe old recordings to sound so good.  Many modern recordings (and nearly all songs produced in home studios) are processed almost entirely within the digital realm, and so don’t have the chance to pick up as many sonic signatures.  As a result, they lack the varnish that many find so desirable.

Varnish For The Rest Of Us

This idea of incremental layers gradually adding depth, liveliness, or warmth to a sound is not new, but the clear manner in which Allen described it got me thinking.  As an engineer without a “professional” level gear collection, I am always looking for ways to maximize the resources I do have, and sonic varnish seemed like it could be a huge asset.  Allen describes a few ways budget-minded  engineers can make use of the concept of sonic varnish, and they’re definitely great starting points.  It can sometimes be difficult to actually start using a new technique like this, so I thought I would share my recent experience in which subtle layering produced concretely produced the best results I’ve gotten using the tools I have.

This particular project was like nothing I had ever worked on before; it was a sort of hybrid between an orchestral composition and a post-rock jam.  Cool stuff for sure, but the lead guitar line in the finale was causing some trouble for the client and me.  The part in question was a steady, fast-picked tremolo high up on the neck, and was just not sitting right.  After a few back and forth revisions, the client sent me an Explosions in the Sky tune (“The Birth and Death of the Day”) that had guitar sounds similar to what he was hearing in his head.  This helped a lot in terms of knowing what to shoot for, but now I was faced with the task of getting the recorded guitar sound, which was thin and dry, to sound rich, dense, and shimmery.  That’s where the varnish came in.

Less is More

The first clear step was to add some sort of distortion.  I reached for the Blue Tubes Analog Trackbox plugin (a gift from Peter Malick), which has a tube simulation section.  I’ve gotten good results with this plugin in the past, but when I increased the amount of “tube” coloration on this track, it immediately sounded like a fizzy mess.  Same thing with the AIR Fuzz-Wah plugin.  Before I reached the desired amount of breakup, the hissy nature of the distortion made the sound unusable.  Clearly I needed another approach.

I knew from Allen’s post that layering was the key to a nice sonic varnish job, so I decided to spread the task of thickening up the guitar over multiple plugins.  My new chain was the Blue Tubes into the AIR Fuzz into Massey’s (free!) TapeHead into another instance of the Blue Tubes and ending with Soundhack’s +delay.  Instead of cranking any single plugin, I used each one to slightly dirty up the guitar, with the hopes that the cumulative effect would be rich and natural.

But how to accomplish this?  I knew that I liked the high end in the Blue Tubes’s distortion more, so I set the Color on the first instance to accentuate that a bit, while turning the Tone on the AIR Fuzz-Wah towards the lower end.  I left the TapeHead’s tone switch on Normal (as opposed to Bright), and set the Color on the second Blue Tubes instance towards the high end, though slightly lower than the first one.  The idea was to have each plugin work in its own frequency range, which would avoid buildup of harsh overtones.  All of the plugs have some sort of “Amount” control, and I left all of them in the lowest 10% of their range, so they were only slightly affecting the signal.

At this point I had no idea how it would sound, since I dialed in all the settings using just the idea of sonic varnish as a guide.  Excited to hear the results, I pressed play…and was immediately rewarded.  Not with a totally killer guitar tone necessarily, but with a sound that was head and shoulders above anything else I’d ever gotten using these plugins.  Instead of harsh, crackly tone that is often the hallmark of digital distortion plugins, the guitar had a deep, complex grit that was much more interesting and compelling at the front of the mix.  I was impressed; this sonic varnish stuff really did work.

Of course, the new tone needed some adjusting to fully fit into the mix.  I tweaked some settings and ended up swapping out the TapeHead for another AIR Fuzz instance because I needed more tonal control.  After a few minutes of changes, I was done.  I bounced the track and sent it to the client, who completely loved it.  After almost a dozen revisions going back and forth on the tone, all it took was a few coats of varnish and everything was exactly as he wanted it.

My Favorite New Technique

Since then, I’ve experimented with the concept of sonic varnish on a number of different projects, and each time I’ve been impressed with how effective it is.  None of the plug-ins I have on my home setup are all that remarkable.  But when I use them to subtly add a hint of color, they open up countless new possibilities in my sonic palette.  Like many young engineers, I aim towards building a collection of high end musical tools, both digital and analog.  But in the meantime, sonic varnish is a technique that allows me to make the most of what I have right now, and it’s a concept that I will always be thinking about as I approach any new project.

What about you? I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on the idea of sonic varnish, and if you’ve read Allen’s article, what you thought of it.  Please share your thoughts in the comment section.