All mics; faders @ -6 dB: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/newdrums_sample.mp3

Whumpsnare, overheads, room and spot mics: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/drumtest.mp3

Snare top, snare shell, snare top, bottom and shell summed. Overhead pair, center room mic, far room pair, ceiling pair, trash mic, hat and ride spot mics.

MIcs:

Kick in- AKG D112, about halfway in, aiming at the beater. Distressed with a Distressor.
Kick sub- Yamaha NS10 woofer jury-rigged onto a mic stand.
Snare top- Audix i5. We brought one because, well, anything to brighten that snare. Hit with a Retro 176.
Snare shell- EV RE20. I like this one.
Snare bottom- Sennheiser MD441. Really tight pattern on this. Pretty much all bottom snare and nothing else. 176 again for compression.
Toms- Sennheiser MD421s.
OHs- Telefunken M16s
Hats and ride- AKG 451s. Hat mic is angled away from the rest of the kit. Ride mic is placed underneath the ride.
Center room- Neumann M149 in figure-8, aimed perpendicular to the kit. Height is roughly around the top of the kick drum. Smashed with a big ol' Federal tube compressor.
Far room pair- Neumann KM184s. SPL Transient Designer (hardware) --> Neve 33609 comp.
Ceiling- Sennheiser MKH40 omni condensers. SPL again --> Alan Smart C2 comp.
Trash mic- Shure Green Bullet, roughly head high in the middle of the room.
Tambourine- Sennheiser MD421, now with more anger.

Far room and ceiling pair sound soooo gooood.

I've found that actually, the i5 also brings a lot of low end to a snare. A big chunk in the frequency that makes a small-ish PC speaker go 'thud'. Pretty cool as a standalone snare mic as it gets the body and highs covered at once.

I think it's because that room is awesome. I like how the overheads and room sound progressively wider the farther out you get, even panned hard L and R. You can totally change the perceived size/width of the drums with those.

Noted on the i5. Whumpsnare is whumpy, but I figured it was mostly 'cause, well... I am really liking this shell mic thing. It seems to capture what I think the snare should actually sound like. It doesn't have the impact of the top mic though. We'll see what happens when they actually get mixed.

I did a couple guitar overdubs yesterday over a really rough mix of drums: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Hugo_test.mp3

I wound up doing my parts for the whole song, not knowing if I like or don't like my studio performances yet. (Haven't got to them, honestly.) I had to overdub a couple things I didn't have time to do last week, so I figured "screw it" and did the whole thing just to be safe.

Main riff is Strat neck --> Eventide, clean is Strat neck, dirty is Tele bridge. AC30 normal channel, high gain input. OCD for a bit more dirt. I used Chris's Marshall cab with Weber Blues and Silvers. NTK --> ART DMPA with Sylvania on the Blue, RSM-4 --> AMEK channel strip (for the EQ) --> line in on ART with Mullard on the Silver, and NT5 --> AMEK channel strip about ten feet back, aimed roughly at the center of the cab.

That snare really is a whumpy bastard. I feel like I like it more once you guys have really smashed the fuck out of it and probably EQ'd the balls out of it. It is so goddamn anti-snare in terms of what I think a snare should sound like/the purposes that a more proper would hold, which is to be bright and cutty. Is the head of the snare pretty loose, or is that just the physical size of that bigass drum at work with moderate tuning?

Also, center room mic sounds fucking dank. I could see myself using that sound alone as an OH. Sounds like a real proper representation or atleast, a real good representation of what those drums in that room sounds like. I am sure once all the different brass oriented tracks are sorted out and smashed and put in their proper place it will sound noice as a collaborative whole, but the M149 sounds awful nice were I to pick a favorite. Makes me think I'll use my ribbon today when I record one of the non-guitar+drumslivethrowdown sections of one of these songs. I'm sure it's largely that specifically gnar mic, but maybe the figure 8 element might be a part of that.

A little from column A and a little from column B. It's a big, deep drum, and it's tuned pretty low. It's not the most responsive drum in the world for ghost notes, I'll put it that way, but it's not as bad as the attempts I've seen to get big, deep snare sounds out of a lesser drum. It turns into a snare from Disintegration or Floodland or Mechanical Animals (I remember the snare being very thuddy on that) with very little doing. The snare bus, solo-ed, plus an impulse of the nonlin2 patch from an AMS RMX16 blended around 40% is instant '80s.

With the center room mic, I think a big part of it is that it's facing the walls, not the kit, though I can't confirm this. It would definitely sound different were it aimed at the kit.

A thing I whipped up fairly quickly earlier featuring the guitars I did yesterday: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Hugo_test_2.mp3 I grabbed a random take of Chris's guitars, and it's, er, well, not a keeper. But I was more concerned with... Not even the tones, just the character of the tones. And the answer is yes. I can live with this as what I have to work with, and make it rock.

We used an SVT (the 7-Pro rack head) on the bass this time, in conjunction with a Sansamp feeding an Avalon tube DI box. The bass tones are a lot dirtier to start with, where they were pretty clean last time. The amp is pretty overdriven. I am really digging that so far.

Okay, this is a lot better: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Hugo_test_3.mp3

I have no idea why I've been mixing this, to be honest. There's a ton of live electronic drums that still need to be recorded 'cause our drummer's sampler was having issues in the studio (it has since been fix'd). And they go throughout the entire song. I suppose I should probably, y'know, give him a rough mix to track them to tomorrow, though, so...

I've just realized, in all the cases I have seen you use your NT5s they are always room mic oriented with your LDCS or ribbon doing closeup stuff on with guitars (and as stereo room mics on drums), and it just brought to mind Steve Albini, as he says he likes SDCs for ambient mics best. It doesn"t quite sound that obvious a choice, my brain would probably think the opposite. Is that real common/traditional, or a little more unique? I suppose their ability to create a wider stereo spread due to it's tighter pickup pattern (and ability mic a more specific space) they could be advantageous?

I like mine close up on a cab but I don't use it much, they're a little too... polishy? They seem to break up or something and squish the sound a little bit.

...and around the 12th fret of acoustic guitars, too. My reasoning isn't about the pickup pattern, it's about the sound of the mic- they're brighter than the big condensers, to say nothing of ribbons, and don't have the same kind of bottom end. As a room mic on guitars, I'm using them to augment or in place of artificial reverb, which isn't an application where I usually want a lot of low end come mix time, but do want a fair bit of brightness for perceived "air".

On drums, it's because I have a pair of them. I originally got them to use as drum overheads years ago, and they work well enough for that. (Also, hand percussion, and on top of a snare drum, which I see you're using your Oktava for.)

For rock guitars, it's probably a bit of an unusual application- LDCs seem to be the go-tos here- but I think my reasoning as stated above is solid. I get more of what I want and less of what I'm probably going to EQ out anyhow. SDCs are all over the Garda drum recordings as distant mics, including a pair that seems to be a semi-permanent install in that room hanging from the ceiling. Which is probably the most traditional application of small-diaphragm condensers: recording things from far away in large rooms. Orchestral recording tends to use lots of SDCs, omnis especially. It also uses mics that almost never show up on rock records- Schoeps, B&K/DPA, Earthworks, etc. and I'm actually curious how mics like that would behave recording loud rockthings. There was a review of an Earthworks mic I remember reading in some magazine or other a few years ago, and there was a brief addendum to the review in the same issue stating the reviewer's perceived lack of low end was the mic's complete lack of any proximity effect at all; it was basically a measurement mic. Totally flat response. But I digress; point being there's a whole world of SDCs really meant for distant micing things, and you almost never run into them in the rock world.

I did record something a few years ago where I used one of the NT5s up close on a guitar cab, and was really pleased with the tone, but I have no idea where the clip wandered off to. It was surprisingly warm in the mids.

Kick is by far my favorite bit of these, perfect largeness for slow tunes.

Between the shell and top, you should have what you need i think. The shell is sharp but thin, the top has all of the whuuump body of the thing. Between the two you should have a big ass snare sound. I don't know that with such a whumpy snare you really want/need a bottom mic at all, as it, in my experience will do more to grab unwanted hi-hat than do much else. I find that with really low/thud snares, the snares actually come across as a prime portion of the topside mic. Which makes sense, as the top head really isn't doing much at all as far as projecting or resonating. Kind of the same effect as using tea towels, IMO.

Mainly what i hear here, is that i might want to experiment with speakermicrophones for hot kickboom action.

Everything sounds good though. As much as i hate it, that snare sounds solid for the porpoise. A little drum machine synth-style shitsnare never hurt nobody in these sorts of tunez.

Seconded... I see it as, the bottom head is the tighter one so it's going to be heard anyway, due to the nature of higher pitched sounds. Snare tunings where the batter is tighter thusly come off a lot less wirey.

The bottom mic is less useful with the shell mic going on. If I really want to get serious about tampering with the snare, I'll treat the top/bottom pair and the shell mic as totally different entities, as if I was layering samples. The bottom mic in this case is mostly devoid of anything but bottom snare, due entirely to the mic used. I can see why people like the 441 in this application- it's really bright for a dynamic (overly bright; I hated it on guitar cabs when one was foisted upon me years ago- I found it very harsh) and extraneous hats are a non-issue; very tight.

By the last clip I posted late last night, the woofer mic on the kick is really making its presence felt, I think. Solid bottom end on that.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Texas_drumtest.mp3

I did a naughty thing. There's a sample in there. But it's not for the bulk of the snare sound, just the ring. I wanted a snare with some ring here, so I found one. And ducked it with a Valley People Dynamite to kill the attack; the attack is all real snare. Much of the initial punch is really more hot Dynamite action, only in the opposite role, going all Hulk Smash! in limit mode on a send with a seriously gated top snare mic. Such a nasty sounding compressor. So useful.

Well it sounds awesome.

Aww! Thanks Geoff!

My bandmates may hate this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Texas_synthtest.mp3

I will find a way to sneak Chris's guitar back in there. I'll probably dispense with mine entirely, or just hit a couple power chords in the chorus. Do the whole thing up with vocals. Then pitch the idea. There are no synths in this normally. Some electronic drum samples played live in the bridge, and that's it; 's all guitars/drums/bass.

But dammit, it sounded like it could be a synthpop song to me, and it's sort of an odd one out for us. But we recorded it anyhow.

We'll see.

I don't know if i like how bouncy/light that makes it. I personally might prefer it with toothier/more industrial sorts of synth/bass treatments. Particularly for the melody line, though i freely admit that this is another one of these 'sort of things which i am generally simply predisposed to hate on', here, specifically: that FM Synth/80's Modulated Clav sort of sound.

I like the main fatsynth though, especially where it is doing that "oyup" sort of gliss/portamento thing on the bits right before it comes back the start of the loop again.

That's a Prophet on the melody line. I suppose what winds up being done there is entirely dependent on what I wind up doing about the whole guitar problem. I'm sort of going for here, though, so... Even still, the bass guitar should probably grow a thick pelt of fur.

More Prophet for the sound you liked as well. It's really good for those sorts of things, nasty thick fat lead sounds that behave strangely; we use that synth on pretty much everything. (Only the left hand side here; the right is actually playing a slightly different part, and it's Native Instruments FM8.)

Demo'd the thing up with some vocals. Still needs the guitars added back in (well, one of them): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Texas_synth_voxtest.mp3

I should probably tweak the synths a bit, and drop in the vocals for everything after the bridge, but it's close to 6 AM and I can't be arsed at the moment.

I do like that Rode NTK a whole lot. It makes my vocals shiny. These could be usable if I actually compressed/EQed them properly instead of just slamming them and twiddling some (virtual) knobs.

Sounds a whooole fucklot different as a guitar song: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Texas_GTRs_voxtest.mp3

Another late-night headphone mix, so who knows what this really sounds like? But it sounds pretty swell in the cans after a few hours of my ears being beaten on. Drums sound pretty hefty.

EDIT: Actually works with guitars and synth: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Texas_GTR_synth_voxtest.mp3

Guitar probably needs to be retracked with a different tone (or tones) to really pull it off, but I think the idea is sound. Just a random take of one of Chris's parts plus my harmonics in the intro, too. The part doesn't even need to be changed.

That's a lot of vocal layers!

I was thinking it'd be kind of cool as a guitar AND synth song. Like it could veer more to one or the other throughout the song. But that's just me...

The both mix you have there is mighty cool. Yes, more all the time is a fine approach.