I can definitely hear lotsa room on everything. Vocals are a bit indistinct mostly, the words at least. You are singing on pitch though and I don't think I'm used to you, y'know, singing singing.

Using the room is a nice trick on vocals if you can get away with it. You don't hear it often, and when you do it's generally something with epic sounding vocals (Bowie, Soundgarden). I've done it before a couple times, and one thing I've liked is using the room mic as a 'verb send. (This works with guitars, etc. too.) If you add any artificial 'verb or eff with the ambience/sense of space in any way, do it on the distant mic track. Or treat it like people treat drum rooms and smash it and make it into a reverb.

I assume this is an original vs. a cover of something I don't recognize?

It is on pitch, most of the time. Which I guess is good enough for me, really. I figure I am still sort of learning how to sing properly.

Yeah, it's an original. It's just the intro to a song, key changes to B after a snare roll with some saucy barre chords and a reprisal of lofi acoustic shiz and some other fun stuff, I am excited to see how this one will turn out.

I think the vocal and guitar need to be miced more 'intimately', ie less of the room. Closer to the mic and like stuff. And compression. And EQ so it's real unnatural. And then you can just bring up the fader on the room sound to taste, all saucy-like...

I think I am going to keep it super roomy, mang. The EQ thing is a good idea though. I suppose what I could do is copy a summed up track and distort it and narrow it out with the EQ and mix the two to taste. I actually enjoy the fluctuation in volume of the vocals, it is sort of jarring and unpleasant.

Having only just now listened back on my homie's band's cuts in headphones with fresh ears, I gotta say: I love this room so much. I already knew that, but damn-zo. Bass and guitar mics were both quite distant. 18" out on the guitar, probably 30" on the bass cab. Additional details inside. As I have stated previously, the lack of a dedicated OH is kind of a bummer as the drums besides kick and snare a kinda distant sounding, but I think it's gotta good vibe to it for this kind of music.

http://soundcloud.com/cameron-heck/curt ... cameron-is

...And there's ways to bring the kick and snare tracks as forward as you'd like. There's ways. Depending on how the room/OH sounds, creative compression could be your friend here too. You can make the drums seem more forward in the room. (There's no real set recipe for this. It's all fiddling with attack/release times dependent on the levels feeding the compressor. It could be a high ratio or a low one.)

I see you mic'd the snare shell here... How are you liking that vs. micing the top of the snare? It really is a totally different vibe.

I'm fond of the bass tone, too. What was the bass rig here? You can get away with micing the bass from quite a ways out and not have it sound obviously distant. I feel sometimes you almost have to to really capture the thing. I'm partial to a ribbon 3-6 feet out for that, as I think I've mentioned in the past.

An aside: try the bass through that mic pre of yours, especially with the input gain up a bit. Mic the amp, too. I'm fond of a plain old Boss tuner as a splitter.

I pretty much always mic the shell now when I record snare. The top mic is kinda cool, but I feel like it it too much SMACK! and not enough ringing shell/snare wire. I would probably use a top mic in conjunction for serious stuff given there's enough channels, because I do feel I would love to be able to bring up the initial attacky nastiness of the head.

Bass rig was a big Peavey somethingorother combo. Sounded nice in the room for sure, I'd say there's a lot of "in room sound" accuracy for both the guitar and bass sounds. Neutral-ish mics quite a ways back would do that, I suppose. Concerning the bass, it is the bass player who I am friends with, I have jammed his J-bass and it is definitely pretty kickass. Sounds and plays real nice, it's some jazz bassist' sig model or something, IIRC. I know he got it for crazy deals on CL, though. Good shit.


I should really probably get to mixing this thing, but I am busy doing things like smoking weed in my house. Parents just left, thus begins the jamming.

The shell does seem to me like it gives the most natural representation of what the drum actually sounds like. That being said, I've liked the tracks I've gotten from you where you mic'd the top of the snare. Granted, you pulled the mic back a fair ways, which is key to making the top mic unlike when soloed.

That being said, a top mic pretty close in does allow you to really, really change how the snare sits in the track depending on what you do with it. The bottom mic, which sounds like soloed, is, of course, there because the top mic sounds like soloed.

And this is, of course, entirely dependent on how much of your overall drum sound (and thus snare sound) is coming from the overheads & room.

That you'd like the shell mic doesn't surprise me at all given what I perceive as your tendency toward really naturalistic recordings. Which is not a bad way to be, especially if you can pull good drum sounds. (I recall no less an authority on the subject than Alan Parsons mentioning "back in the day" that being considered the test of an engineer. Also, something Chris said a long while back, perhaps even on an earlier incarnation of Maps, holds true re: people's perception of recording quality being largely due to drum fidelity. Not a bad reputation to acquire, the guy who gets good drum sounds.)

Marcus Miller ring a bell? Re: Jazz bassists with signature Jazz Basses...

Things that might be relephant to your interest now that you have a decent mic collection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone_practice#Various_methods_of_stereo_recording Technically you need a matched pair of figure 8s to do true Blumlein (Throwing up any old figure 8s wouldn't quite get the same effect, but no one is stopping you from doing it) but I do think you have everything else covered.

Mid/Side, by the way, is very easy to work with in a DAW. Just duplicate the side track, and flip the phase. Done. Manipulate levels (and, obviously, pan) as necessary.

I definitely think I prefer the sound of mostly unfuckedwith recordings, so I would say you're right. My favorite productions are pretty much never dry, some stuff like that where it is not being used because it makes for a cool effect is really grating on my ears. Especially guitar sounds without any 'verb to them, that is what I fucking hate about hearing modern punk/rock bands being produced by studios who churn out really polished nice sounding things. It just doesn't sound natural, I can think of a particular Alkaline Trio album where the whole thing is like that. The guitar tone is dry and has this really ugly narrow bandwidth high frequency thing going on, fucking awful. I have come to think that I also do not like the sound of REALLY high frequencies, like whatever the fuck people do to modern recordings to give them "presence", boosting that shit like crazy (I get a little bit, but shit is cray). It is also all over DM stuff. That sort of mastering is not desirable to me. High fidelity is one thing, accentuating (mostly) unnatural frequencies shit is going to sound kinda off. If that is your intention, COOL! But I don't think that's what they're going for..

Also, I think that mostly applies to high frequencies it seems. You can abuse the fuck out of low end dominate sound sources and it seems to work out much better for that range of sound, or atleast that's what it looks like to me. I quite honestly don't much like touching the EQ, I'll fuck with it a little bit and a little bit and before I realize it I don't really remember what I was trying to achieve or if I have even managed so. If it's an obvious thing like, "Oh man, the bass and kick are really fighting here" or something has got way too much of something going on then that is obvious and I will fuck address, but I don't know how much of a difference I can make or even want to make if what's happening in the room is working. Smashing the fuck out of it with character based stuff sounds like good fun though, those things have distinct inherent properties and are "gear" all their own to me, just like a guitar, amp or pedal. It imparts an obvious, or maybe more subtle though noticable trait (and most importantly, unique) to the production. That makes more sense to me than spending a bunch of time trying to tweak this perfectionist final picture deal.

It's just, as I have paid attention to what was going on with a lot of my favorite sounding recordings, it is just a great room with great sounding gear recorded well with proper microphones, with maybe some minimal nipping or tucking here and there (and possibly some crushing of things and some crustying up). But the point is, a lot of it is like.. Hi-fi lo-fi. I like compression a good lot, but the thing that people do with EQ is mainly my beef with the way a lot of things sound these days.

AH, man. Rant.

I think it just might be a Marcus Miller bass! ALSO: Didn't know you could do that with M/S! I will definitely have to try that.

I do believe I've used that term in reference to many of my recordings as well. Though a bit different take on it (fairly shiny recordings of intentionally ugly sounds- though still fairly naturalistic recordings when not intentionally damaged).

I also agree on the high frequencies. I do have a tendency to boost really high frequencies on some things- my love of the 20khz band on the API 550B is pretty well known. I've been liking the Maag EQ4 lately too for the top end. But these are quirky EQs and I'm actually boosting above the audible spectrum for what the curve of the thing does when it extends down into what you can actually hear to bring out the space something is sitting in. I find this a lot less harsh than cranking up, say, 8 or 10k, which is really grating. I've noted this on the modern metal recordings as well, to a fairly extreme extent, and it's been going on for a while. Hats and cymbals turn into a total mess; with the frequencies that give them definition and body gone, they're just a wash of white noise. One of the better tricks I've learned from modern recordings, though, is highpassing things and then boosting the low band below the highpass filter- sort of the converse of what I've taken to doing with the top end, for how that EQ curve effects the low end. I don't go for the extreme highpassing things, though, actually filtering out above the fundamental frequencies of guitars and basses. I can't understand for the life of me why you'd highpass a 5-string bass at 80hz? The bottom octave and a half of the thing is just gone at that point. (And really hot mastering basically forces you to cut low end pretty severely, too- no wonder a lot of these things sound like they have no real bass to me when you put them up against older records.)

There's a pretty great quote from Slipperman's Distorted Guitars From Hell, "everything is EQ" (and its corresponding "the fucking pick matters") and it's totally true- change the source, change the mic, change the placement- that's all EQ; get it right at the source. It's a great read, by the way, and loaded with profanity. It's specifically about recording heavy guitars, but the concepts in there are broadly applicable across a lot of things. He's a rather iconoclastic and semi-anonymous (not too hard to find out who he is or some of his discography, or his studio, but it would be rude to actually say in public) engineer who still does big dirty guitarthings to analog. Speaking of EQing guitars, and metal, there was a great post some years back by Colin Richardson on Andy Sneap's forum talking about EQ, and he has some unconventional ideas- and they totally work, and not just for metal. He does odd things, to frequencies you wouldn't expect, to shape guitars with additive EQ. My precious API 550B (of which I use the Waves version at home) is actually really good for this trick.

Also, totally agreed about "character" stuff- note the things I talk about using on my recordings. It has a sound of its own. They can be recognizable if you've spent some time with them, too- very cool.* And you can beat up on things a lot more than you'd expect and still have them sound natural. EQs especially; old-school EQs with fixed frequency points and weird (fixed) Qs are often just the ticket, same with compressors with a precious few knobs and labels like "1-10" that don't have controls for everything. It's pretty surprising what you can do with an 1176 or LA2A or the digital versions thereof. It can sound less compressed at 20:1 than it does at 4:1. All in the way the controls interact and how you don't have specific control over some things.

*- since you have a nice mic pre kicking about, try it on dirty guitars, turning the input gain up 'til you hear it start to obviously distort. Then back it off just a little, unless it's blending really well with the top end of the guitars and doesn't just sound like something's clipping occasionally. You've heard this a thousand times. It's a good sound. Easiest to do close-micing though. A plain old 57/58 is actually sort of ideal for this, and the impedance thing Geoff mentions is totally true. If you don't have appropriate impedance on a preamp, you can whip it up with a cable and some really cheap components from Radio Shack.

So yeah, rant on my part too. Yours was a good rant, though- you have a clear idea of what you want to do and how to get there, and have made gear choices that aren't just good in general, but are appropriate to those specific ends.

Oh, and yeah, you can totally do that with mid/side, and it works. Used it on the early Garda drum recordings (pre-big studio) and some of the metal stuff I did a few years back. Room gets bigger, room gets smaller, room gets bigger, room gets smaller... Compress/EQ the mid and sides separately, and you can warp reality that much more.

Does the bass bleed onto other tracks much? Because the guy is falling behind a lot... if it were mine to mix I'd probably end up editing the fucking out of that bass.

Ha! Or I could just never do that sort of thing, ever.

I honestly don't want to want to have anything to do with that kind of music making for the most, 'tis why I don't have any desire to play DM as a non-vocalist anymore (besides the fact I'm an awful, sloppy metal guitarist). I am not going to bother to do that for someone, to be honest. I am doing this shit fo' freez so I figure fuck that. I've edited things together before of my own music (though never moving something around like THAT, that seems like even more evil), so it's not like I am immune, I just don't really want to bother with that anymore. If I (or someone else) can't play something perfectly then that is unfortunate, I guess. I mean, if they want someone else to do that kind of shit, cool. I give no fucks, but I ain't gonna be caught doing that shit.

Yeah I figured you'd feel that way. That kind of work really takes the fun out of recording. But you might record some musicians who expect you to make it sound like they play as well as they think they do, and they'll blame you if you don't... Which is quite the dilemma if you are trying to make a business out of recording, because then you can't afford to be honest with them unless your skills are really in demand.

Such is often the case for me.

It does take the fun out of it. But I know how to do it. And I do do it, though not to the absolute extremes that people often go.

It is as tedious a task as you think and then some. Especially drums. Drums are a horrorshow. Even a good drum track, if there are valid stylistic reasons for doing it (ie. programming it has to line up completely or it'll sound like a flam) is still a pain.

Shockingly, editing is a frequently outsourced task, at least on the bigger studio level. No one actually likes it. Specifically the timing/tuning stuff.

I do a fair bit of editing, but most of what I do is just assembling things from different takes, which isn't so obnoxious. I try not to re-use things, I don't like looping live instrumentation, I'm not above moving something or replacing it if that's what needs to be done, but I also have the luxuries of working in styles where I have a lot of leeway to manipulate acceptably- more than I actually do, and also have players good enough I have solid performances. I also try and cover my tracks as much as possible; for what I do genre-wise, the end result with the live instrumentation is pretty organic, I think. I don't have a heavy hand with it, and I'm not making an obvious massacre of the tracks.

I'm also much more the studio-as-an-instrument type vs. being a documentarian recordist. I do have an affection for real sounds in real spaces (and quality playing)- I love that for the sonics of it. My manipulations of things are probably coming from a different place than most, though, and see above re: players. That being said, I'm a mercenary and if you wanted me to grid-align and tune and whatnot yer tracks I can, I would, and I can do it well enough to bury the evidence. (I will also find a way to bill for this. It's perhaps the most time-consuming thing you can do to a recording.) Don't ask me to like it though; you know I'd rather sonically break something than fix it.

The mixes I did for them:

http://soundcloud.com/cameron-heck/curt ... -final-mix

http://soundcloud.com/cameron-heck/curt ... -final-mix

Nuffin' but compression.

Currently eating this.

http://soundcloud.com/cameron-heck/shit ... s-bit-sans

Complies to Geoff's mic experiment idea, all CAD M179. Beware: Ridiculous bullshit inside.

Speaking of that experiment, sometime around Christmas I intend to do said experiment with SM57s. Because I have three.

If I have free time maybe I'll do it again with my three ATOM tom mics. Which would be more for novelty since come on, recording everything with tom mics?

Cam your room sounds gorgeous but do you think you could get a more up-front element to the instruments also?

But that Beach Boys thing was the greatest thing I've heard all week.

That's gonna be dope. I will also have to do a dual PR40 test, as I have two now.. I have for a few weeks. Got it on a good deal. I think they will make superswell tom mics when I am not running any bass cab, which would call for one of them. I have a lot of things to fuck with now, it is kind of an exciting thing..!

Yeah, next time I am going to have a mic closer up on the cab, but the mic was overloading with up close (990) with the gain turned off, I might need to get (or make) pads and the drums were just the RSM-5 as a room mic/OH. My condensers were not working at the time, they will be coming back to record soon though.

Thank ya, man! It is not quite done, it's gonna have a main vocal and those yelling things are going to be modified/denserified and turned down lower in the mix. I also have to record the kick part that will go over all of it. It might get treated with other instruments too, I would like an organ or something..