Shearwater “Rook” recording, days 1 - 3
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10:10:37 am on November 3, 2007 | # |
Day 1, Oct 31: We spent most of the day setting up, moving equipment around, placing microphones, and listening to sounds. Once the drums were done, we started focusing on the piano, trying a variety of approaches and microphones. We started with Crown GLM 200’s spaced over the hammers, then a pair of Stapes omni’s in the same position before settling on KM84’s.
Final drum mic choices were:
- Kick: D112 on resonant side, GLM 200 on batter side (through an RNC, with the snare mic in he sidechain)
- Snare: KSM 141 on top, Beta 98 on bottom
- Toms: ATM 450 top and bottom
- Overheads: Sony C17’s, spaced and 39″ from the snare
- Ambient mics: Stapes, 8′ equilateral triangle.
- Gag mic: TC40k
Tape (at this point) is RMGI Emtec SM 900. 2″ 24-track. 15 ips. CCIR EQ. No N/R. +6/250 nWb/m. 3.5 db overbias @ 10k.
I missed Dokadema Doa’s reunion show at Cool Bean’s. I was not Fat Rollins for Halloween.
Day 2, Nov 1: After tweaking the piano sound a bit, we started takes on “The Snow Leopard”. After the first couple of takes, the band asked for a click and did four more takes before deciding on one for a master.
I missed Nebula (with Katey’s old friend Rob on drums) at Rubber Gloves.
Day 3, Nov 2: On the drive home, I started fretting more and more about the instability of the RMGI Emtec tape we’re using. Pence told me that on a recent 3 week-long record, he did transfers at the beginning and end of the session, and the recordings definitely deteriorated by the end. This blows so much, I started writing haiku:
This tape sheds like dogs!
Will recordings still exist
when winter has come?Like sinner in church
I am now grasping for the
GP9 of pastThe next morning I decided to abandon ship on the RMGI stock and pulled every spare reel of Quantegy GP9 out of the closet. (Most of these were rental reels, used once or twice by bands who can’t/won’t purchase 2″ tape for their sessions.) I dumped the master of “The Snow Leopard” from the RMGI stock into Cubase at 24 bits, 96 kHz, then copied it back to the 1st reel of GP9. Then I sent a worried, stern email to my tape vendor.
Finally we were rolling again by 3:30 or so. The band got comfortable and started working on the second song, working title of “Alemeyhu”. It’s based on a song by Ethiopian singer Alemeyhu Eshete, a personal favorite of mine. I highly recommend his (and all other) compilations in the Ethiopiques series.
The band ran through maybe 6 takes in total, trying a variety of different feels and accents, before finally settling on the intro, first verse, and chorus from take 5 and the rest of the song from take 4, requiring a tape edit on the 2″ master. Before doing the edit on the multitrack, I tested it by rough mixing the song to our 1/2″ stereo machine and performing the edit there. It sounded good, so I spliced the two sections together on the 2″ and we were off again.
“On The Death Of The Waters” was next, and we tracked guitar (in the room with the drums and piano) and vocals live with the band. Howard’s guitar (Harmony Rocket through a Princeton) was miced with a Sony C48p. Jonathan’s vocal was a Soundelux ELA M251, which sounded beautiful. 6 takes later, we decided to call it a night. I gave Jonathan a CD of rough mixes of the two “contender” takes, and will decide on those today.
All in all, despite the hassles of setup and bad tape, things have been going very well. Everyone is in good spirits and we’re on schedule. I hope to get a little ahead today by knocking out masters for two or three songs, but I won’t fret if that doesn’t happen. We have plenty of time to do things right and not rush. The result, I hope, will be a stellar album.
I missed Jay Reatard at Rubber Gloves.
