Yay! Vampire housemates!

My sleepy schedule is completely fuxxored again. I have to 'get normal' by friday, as it marks the beginning of something like three weeks of family visits, and i won't have any choice.

Recoarding laste eve went reasonable well. Aside from the fact that it was scented, to my nasals, somewhat of old human urine, the room they had for recording was quite decent, reasonable big, tall ceilings, pretty okay echo built in.

I didn't have the time or inclination to do anything fancy though, as what was originally "four or five" tunes turned out to be more like errr. .. ten. So i just set up and let them play. Some weird low end reso going on in the room, but whatever. I probably should have had them turn down more, as i think most of it was coming from the bass map, which was just for him to monitor anyhoo, as we went direct from some sort of basspod. Quick and dirty recoarding was quick and dirty.

But anyhow, the list of Thing That I Will Require For Future Recordings continues to grow. I definitely need a headphone map and like three more pairs of phones. Had to improvise a solution to doing backup vocals which, on listening back today, was neither ideal, nor particularly successful. So there will be no backup vocals onnit methinks unless they want to retrack them.

But overall it was good times. I rather enjoy recoarding other folks.

She was still up when I left for work this morning. Something school-related, being basically a professional student. That's what she gets for Science! and Actually Doing Something With Her Life.

Even the shitty cheap Behringer headphonemap is loud enough to drive open-back 'phones over a loudass drummer with headroom to spare. It's downside is that it's noisy. For tracking a band live in the room, doesn't matter. We used it with my metalliband to drive all of our 'phones and we were fine.

Which reminds me- I found a use for Red/Modern on a Dual Rec: bass amp. It is a bitchin' dirty bass amp. (Not surprising, seeing as it's wound up used in bass rigs a whole bunch... the retarded low end combined with the annoying top help it cut through.)

...and this 'puter is being a pain in the gonads. It's the old PC workstation in the back, but I'm stuck here for the time being and the network seems to be fucking up on me. Grumble/groan. Restart, continue posting after restart?

Found a new place to live. Its above a karate dojo so no motherfucker is robbing my shit

Con't.: What's up with the backing vox that they're not salvageable? (If they're important, I'd see if I could coax the relevant d00ds down to retrack 'em. If that's part of their sound and all...)

I do kinda miss the Recording Other People thing, but at the same time I have three projects that are apparently non-shitty, so at least I know I'm dealing with quality when I'm not playing myself. That was something I don't miss. I've recorded some really shitty sounding stuff.

[oldman] I do think there is a bit of craft lost these days with not having to start out by necessity with a four-track, some cassettes you probably shoplifted from the store your friend works at, whatever mics you can scavenge up (a 57/58. the broken 58 your friend stole from the A/V room at school and re-soldered, whatever else you found/was cheap..) and guitar pedals for effects and Make It Work with Real Live Instruments.Reminds me of a conversation I had with my drummer in Garda not too long ago- amp sims and EZDrummer do sound crisp and clear and can be made to sound quite good, but it's still the new "sounds Local". [/oldman]

That'll do it.

Basically it is like the call and response shouty style backups. So the singer is like "throw a curse" and the three doods are like "THROW A CURSE", etc.

The problem starts with: that these are mostly gainfully employed folks and they couldn't really start recoarding anything until about six PM. They had ten songs, right aboot three minutes each. They have three backup vocals, on most of them. I have one headphone out on the mixer. So the option was to do each dood separately wif the headphones on each(which would take about 10songs x 3minuteseach x 2takes x 3doods = three HOURS? no.), or to do something like what we did, which is to run the mix out a speaker(or in this case, cranked Sennheiser HD201s hanging from a mic stand behind the vocal mics ), and do all three at a time into three mics.

Originally, i tried all three doods into one mic, but they didn't think it sounded "big enough". So i ran three separate mics, spaced about a stage's difference apart from each other, then i had them stand back about three feet and shout proper(all MXL condensers). Thinking that the natural echo of the room and a subtle panning of the three mics would make them plenty 'big' for them.

The problem was that without headphones on they all seemed to have trouble matching up to the song, and A LOT of trouble matching up to each other. I felt a little pressed for time(they are definitely not vampires), so we just banged out the takes and closed up shop. Listening back at home, it was obvious that lots of the vocals "missed"(they are all pretty rhythmically oriented almost-shouting patterns) AND that the echo of the room was making things much worse.

They can't really be edited either, because of the manner in which they are off. So i just sort of shrugged, and buried them in the mix, but it was the first thing that the dood mentioned when he heard the mixes. So for now they are muted, and it actually sounds fine. I figure if at some point they want to go back in and just redo the backups it would be pretty easy(and i could bring a lot less shit, not needing the drum mics/accessories). But i will definitely need a headphone map to do it. Ideally, i want to get one of those ones that has like two 'channels'/outputs. So i could like send just a guitar to the drummer, or like everything else to the singer, at the same time.



In troof, i am not 100% into the style of this band, but, i find that i can still enjoy it for some reason, from the perspective of recording nerd. I would probably be less into doing chugcore crunk stuff with stoner kids though. That is when i would be forced to bring out some terrible $30-50/hr rate just to dissuade. "Free for everyone, except you guys".

Actually on that subject, these doods even gave me a couple bucks which was swell. Normally i would have refused it(everyone is self destructive in their own ways) but i am trying to rehabilitate myself on that angle these days. And i definitely DO need the money.



Fucking definitely. The first recording my band ever did, we actually rented a tascam cassette tape four track and four SM57s and cables from Guitar Center(or Daddy's Junky Music, i don't remember). We figured they wouldn't have put all of the lights on the meters if they weren't supposed to be lit, and we ran with that. The results were typically awesome/funny. And it sounded like no one elses shitty first band anywhere(while somewhat feeling vaguely like... all of them?)

The kids these days don't get that.

Of course, the way i am doing it, is not so far off today from the way i started, either. I have a lot more shit, but i am unstoppably lo-fi. Ideally remaining so to some degree, should also work to discourage those aforementioned crunkcore kids.

I.e. Classic Win-Win.

I am going to record my new amp today.

I think I am just going to 1 shot the whole deal to demo it, I have been lazy about recording things lately. I do plan to use it on some actual recordings in the future.

Also there is a chance I might be moving into a big ol' house, which means I could turn things up. That would be awesome.

I have a show on Friday. Originally we were (and billed as) co-headlining, now we're opening and load in at 6. Considering we have Real Jobs: . Seriously, orally service my bunghole, bro. Not like we expect this guy to pay us or anything anyhow. Typical local promoter type, useless fucker. Screw bands, deliver inferior service, pocket all the money, renege on agreements, you know the drill.

Oddly enough, not the same guy who screwed Bile. (And treated Rasputina like queens... perhaps that one got the hint that if you actually take care of your national headliners, they will show up and you will make money.)

We have one more show booked with this fuckknuckle- opening for a national- and after that...

I get to take Amoxicillin for the next 10 days. Fucking sinus infections. (Although it seems to already be helping only 4 hours after the first one I took. But that could've also been the 1 and 1/2 hour nap I semi-unintentionally took. Or the ibuprofen.) And again, the odd thing is it's entirely located on my right side.

Also: which behringermap do you use? The racky one, or one of the little suckers?

I actually really want one of those four tracks. I would have a lot of fun.

Technically, i have one, but i have recently learned that the reason the person to whom i lent it, seemed reluctant to commit to its return, is that he has somehow managed to lose/throw away the bespoke power supply.

So it may in fact be, as i was beginning to suspect, that i will never see that machine again, and will also have to get another.

You can pick them up pretty cheap all around the internets though.

They are however a little more prone to wear and tear(than say digital recorders/gear), and a really heavily used one, often will not work quite right(like sometimes the overdubbed tracks won't be able to synch up to what you are recording them over, or random shit like that).

Whatever the little one is. Belongs to our guitarist; I can ask him the model number. It's small and grey and has like four knobs on it. Drummer in Garda has a half-rack Samson one which I borrowed for the occasion and promptly realized why he's always asking for more click: it sucks. Not much juice, bandwidth-limited, murky and poor stereo imaging. The cheapie little Behringer kicked its ass.

A lot of it also has to do with what the impedance of the output - and the impedance of the specific headphones - is/are. And how efficient the headphones are. The HD201s need to be CRANKED out of this laptop's headphone out. The Sony MDRV6, is way louder out the box. That is a product of both the two phones impedances, and their efficiencies.

But yeah, my original plan for this recoardings was to just DIY a simple mixer/distro box for phones, but when i breadboarded one up i realized that i was going to have to go to a higher degree of circuit complexity than i had time for. Basically, it would need a dual voltage supply for more headroom, and a few other fiddly bits that i didn't have a week to wait for parts for(or the cash to order in the first place )

And then in the overall scheme, the Behringer AMP800 is like $48, AND has two inputs, arranged so that you can send either of the two sources to any one/all of the four headphones. It would probablydefinitely cost more than that for me just to get all the parts together to ghetto my own jobber together.

I get to go for a free light aircraft flight tomorrow Doing some video for a local flying school/airfield and for some of it they want me to go up in a plane to film a stunt flyer doing some barrel rolls and shit as well as flyovers of the airfield. Gonna be awesome though I dunno how good the footage will be since I don't have the right filters'n'shit to get away with no reflections from the cockpit. I've only been up in a helicopter before, this will be fun.

Sorry if I already poasted about this, I'm getting excited and probably won't be able to sleep tonight

2x G12h heritage @ $85 each local seem like a possible profit if not at least a good deal I hate waiting for other people to unoccupy themselves and check their private messages

Devin just reminded me that I owe you people a heavyish clip of teh spicy kitty

Oh awesome. The brakes on the car just let go. That was fun.

Looks like i will be spending some time with jack stands tomorrow.

At least i didn't hit anything. Driving without brakes is interesting though. I generally like to avoid it.

Depending on what is busted this could get pretty shitty with all of the family arriving in a couple weeks, expecting to use said car.

I am a superb goodluck charm.

Time to do it up Flintstone style in the mean time, brother.

Yo, that is how i got back from the grocery store. Shit is tiring though.

You're fucking serious, aren't you?