I just posted some new recordings of my punk jazz trio.
Recorded in a little 8x17 foot soundproof room I made in my garage, everyone playing together live. Getting a workable setup in such tight quarters has proven to be difficult but I feel like I’m starting to get a handle on it.
DAW is Ardour 2, interface is an M Audio Delta 1010LT being fed the channel outs from a (absolutely on it’s last legs) Soundcraft LX7. Mixed ITB using one instance of the TAP Reverberator on a bus and Steve Harris’ Triple Band Parametric for some corrective EQ on some of the channels. There is no dynamics processing, automation, or editing of any kind. Just 3 dudes in a room playing music together.
I sincerely hope this is the first step towards something grander/bigger/longer. Just getting a guitarist and drummer (I am the bass player on these recordings) who have the skill/time/inclination to deal with my charts has been a long process. We are in the final stages of working up a short but (hopefully) focused and striking set of music. These recordings are being put out there on the occasion of us getting ready to book some shows and kick it around out in the world a bit.
We’ll see how that goes and work from there.
There is a Facebook page, if anyone is interested. You can follow what we are up to here:
Awesome recording. Great sounding drums. Nice bass and guitar. To be honest, i dont think it needs any compression, unless your looking for that punchier sound but i like the dynamics how it is which you might loose a little if you compress the drums and bass.
Its a very dry mix, but it works really well for this style of playing.
this is a clear example of how getting things right at the source can make such a difference a recording. And will make it much easier for any FOH engineer in a live venue (whos good ofcoarse) to mix it well.
Dont be afraid to tell an engineer to not use reverb. some engineers love there reverb and just automatically use it on everything.
Oh wait, i think i can hear some very subbtle reverb on the drums?
Alot of people seem to dis the d112 kick mic, but its actually a very good mic for the price, and what it does it does well. 57 you just cant go wrong with on snares and guitars. The bass tone is very well dialed in, sometimes a Di’d bass can sound, well too direct but its sitting there in the mix very nice and natural.
Those tom mics sounds awesome.
And the overhead is giving the kit a nice breathy sound and capturing the cymbels well.
Thanks a lot for listening, and for the kind words!
There is an instance of the TAP reverberator on a bus, being fed with post-fader aux’s on all the channels. There is it least a little bit of everything in it, to sort of glue the mix together. The space it was recorded in is tiny and dead, without the verb things sounded disconnected. I used just a touch, you can hear it as reverb most clearly on the snare but every channel is sending at least a little bit of signal to it.
We were all playing together live in that room, no gobos or anything. We are able to get away with this because just over half of the wall area is 3.5" deep rigid fiberglass behind carpet and I have a big soft couch serving as a bass trap across one wall. It’s a little dead but remarkably even for such a small space. Really nice room to sit on the couch and listen to an album in.
I’m a jobbing bass player(not so much with this band yet, but lots of other stuff as a sideman), the DI comes out of the same rig I play live with. It goes Peavey Millenium USA -> dbx Driverack PX -> dbx 166 -> split to FOH and a Crest amp (yes, it’s a weird bass rig). On a gig I’ll bring a PA box of whatever size is appropriate for the job for my stage sound, most often an EAW 3 way 15. The sound you are hearing on this recording is what I give to FOH, I don’t even think there is an EQ on that channel. I was playing out of an EAW FR253e cabinet in the room, which is overkill by an absurd amount. It’s in the studio because it’s more cab than I ever need on a job, so it just sits there.
and lastly: I’ll go to bat for the D112 any day. A lot of really good sounding records have been made with those things.
I think thats the first time ive seen a speaker management system being used for a bass Interesting. The dbx 166 xl is really quite a nice compressor. Its a good choice among engineers on bass guitars, or on drum groups.
Small amount of reverb on everything, yeah working in a really dead room just a touch of reverb can really help liven it up a bit and glue things together. ive played about alot with reverb on lots of different albums when setting up pa’s and alot of the time, just a touch of reverb even makes them sound better.