Matthew J Barnhart

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Shearwater “Rook” mixing update

11:52 am on December 24, 2007 | 0 | # |

Due to scheduling crunches and other constraints, I’ve started mixing Rook on my partner Dave’s Cubase system. Dave and I mix the songs, then send references to the band. They make notes, and I make modifications to the mixes and send more references. This goes back-and-forth until everyone is happy and confident in the final result. In January, Jonathan will come up and we’ll spend 5 days in The Echo Lab, running the mixes through our console and outboard gear and onto 1/2″ analog stereo tape.

This process is convoluted, but for a record as complex as Rook (so many harp overdubs!) and with so many logistical constraints (people in 3 different cities, a completely packed studio calendar) it makes sense. It gives the band members time to become comfortable with the mixes before signing off on them.

Typically, I prefer to record and mix records fully analog, tracking to 2″ and mixing to either 1/2″ or 1/4″ stereo tape. (Which format to mix to is usually a question of budget.) Since most records I make take between 3 and 5 days, and are basically documents of a band’s live sound, this is a really efficient way to work.

Rook is a different beast. Because the band is spread out across 3 cities, they only practice before tours. Of the 14 songs we initially tracked, they had played maybe 5 of them as a band before. Arrangement decisions were being made in the studio, rather than during practice. Lots of overdubs were added to fill out songs. It’s very much a studio creation, rather than a document of a living band. Because of this, mixing is more complex and requires a lot back-and-forth to find the right mix.
Shearwater “Rook” recording, day whatever

11:37 pm on December 4, 2007 | 0 | # |
Quickies:
- Been knocking out vocals. Soundelux 251 is ruling for the croony stuff.
- “Century Eyes” now sounds like Suicide meets The Ex meets Yo La Tengo, sorta. Still waiting for the Half Machine Lip Moves moment, but oh yes, it will come.
- “Jolene” by Dolly Parton sounds INCREDIBLE vari-speeded down two and a half steps. Unreal. Definitely releasing this into the wild.
Shearwater “Rook” recording, day 20-something

12:43 pm on December 2, 2007 | 0 | # |

Friday night, Howard and I went out to the studio to go over the existing takes, talk about overdub ideas, and free up tracks to make room for said overdubs. This involved erasing unwanted takes (extra vocals, misguided cowbells) and sub-mixing some drum tracks. (The original drum recording used separate tracks for the toms and cymbal microphones. These 4 tracks were mixed down to 2 new tracks, then the originals were erased, leaving us with 2 more free tracks.)

On Saturday, Thor and Elaine (the harpist) arrived around 11:30, and we got started on harp overdubs. We tried a few different microphones in various positions before settling on two Avenson Audio omnis taped to the soundboard of the harp and an Audio-Technica Pro37r about 10′ away for ambiance. (Steve Albini used a similar technique on Joanna Newsome’s Ys album, but used four Crown GLM-100 mics up and down the soundboard for increased detail.) These were all run through John Hardy mic preamps and bussed through our Manley ELOP limiter to a single track.

Elaine ran through 7 songs in a matter of hours. A really wonderful experience for me, this being my first harp recording and all.

After we finished the harp overdubs, she packed up and we headed for dinner. 5 bowls of curry later, Howard and I returned and started in on his large list of overdub ideas. For the first time in my life, I recorded a flanged tambourine. (I feel liberated, honestly). We did a lot of extra guitar and organ bass pedals before calling it a night at 3:30 AM.
After a nice rest…

2:15 pm on November 30, 2007 | 0 | # |

I’m ready to get back into working on “Rook”. Jonathan, Thor, and the harpist are driving up tonight, and we’ll commence overdubs tomorrow morning.

During the break, Jonathan and Mark Sonnabaum (our string/woodwinds arranger) have been piling on the arrangements, and our to-do list of overdubs has become, shall we say, ambitious. We are recording through the 9th and reconvening for final mixing in January. Dave Willingham is going to assist me with mixing, which will provide some much-needed perspective and oversight after spending more than 4 weeks in the studio working on these songs.

Last night, Bubba Kadane came up and we did some guitar overdubs on The New Year’s new record. In between our mixing sessions in September and October, he and Matt went back to Electrical Audio for three days w/ Albini and tracked 4 more songs. Matt will be in Texas for Christmas break, when we’ll do his vocals and extra guitars, and start mixing the remaining songs. All told, we’ll have spent maybe 15 days in the studio just mixing and recording overdubs.

I’m very excited for 2008: both Shearwater and The New Year will release these new albums, and hopefully I’ll be along with them both for the tours to follow. On top of that, I’m doing new records for Deep Snapper, The Great Tyrant, and American Werewolf Academy — all great bands I’ve recorded before, and all of the records much shorter affairs than The New Year and Shearwater, much to my relief.

Howard and Bryan both have new Tre Orsi songs in the pipeline, which we’ll work on tonight. We’ll start recording in March or April, w/ Bubba wearing the producer’s shades again.
Shearwater “Rook” recording, day 19

5:04 pm on November 18, 2007 | 0 | # |

Today is our last day in the studio for a little while. We’ve been steadily knocking out remaining overdubs, some planned and others made up on a whim. Jonathan has turned in some great vocal performances so far, but we still have quite a few lead vocal tracks to go. Howard and I are going to pack him up and send him back home to his lovely girlfriend for some well-deserved time off. (He’s spent most of this year on the road with Okkervil River and Bill Callahan.)

We’ll reconvene on Dec 1st to do strings, woodwinds, brass, and any remaining overdubs. Then we mix and put it to bed. In the interim I’ll be doing a little more work on the new The New Year album. And sleeping.
Shearwater “Rook” recording, days. . . uhh. . .

10:04 pm on November 15, 2007 | 1 | # |

We are now firmly in overdub-ville on the Shearwater record. Kim finished up her parts and flew home on Monday, and Thor stuck around another day to add a few percussion parts before the lure of Austin became too great. Now it’s just Jonathan, Howard and I doing vocals, guitars, piano, and whatever else comes to mind.

With fewer people in the studio, it’s more tempting (and easier) to experiment with sounds, mic technique, and effects. The Ibanez AD-230 analog delay is playing a big, but subtle role on this record, which is common for me. We got it years ago for cheap from Erik Woffard, and I haven’t made a record in the last five years without it. It distorts beautifully, and creates the most wonderful, wooly slapback and doubling.

Most overdubs so far have been pretty typical, technique-wise, save for some backwards piano added to “Rooks”. (In true “great minds think alike” fashion, Howard and I came up with the idea for this independent of one another.) The Studer A827 24-track can playback and record in reverse, so this was pretty easy to do, except for the last hit of the song — because the drums had stopped by that point, Howard had no way of knowing exactly when to play. We got around this by recording the part (which was late on recording, and therefore ahead of the beat on playback), then using a delay to put the part in time with the song. I then bounced the delayed piano to another track and erased the original.

I dunno if any of that is interesting to anyone else, but it just means that’s one fewer thing that won’t be done w/ a computer. So far, we’re stayed completely analog (save for making safety copies of some takes in Cubase), including all edits and effects, and my goal is to keep it that way.
Shearwater “Rook” recording, days 6 - 8

3:03 pm on November 8, 2007 | 0 | # |

My, how the time has gotten away from my blogging. I feel like my writing on these things isn’t quite up to par, but I’d rather it be lackluster and out of my head, rather than sitting upstairs fermenting for years, driving me crazy.

These three days kind of blazed by — we got a lot done, but I’ll need to revisit my notes to remember exactly what we finished and when. My memories are a haze of beer and fire.

On Monday, we did an alternate take of “The Lost Boys” with acoustic guitar instead of electric. Thor tried various drum parts before settling on a simple kick and snare pattern, with no cymbals. The rest of the night was spent watching this video:

Tuesday night, our pal Margaret come out to hang with us, and she took some scandalous photos. The band tried several takes of “Rooks” before calling it a night, thinking they would try it again the next day. The next morning the band decided that the previous night’s takes were actually perfect, they had just been too wiped out to embrace their beauty or something. I dunno, I was making coffee and watching Star Wars: Episode II while they discussed it.

The rest of Wednesday was spent trying some alternate electric guitar and bass sounds for “Rooks”. We switched between Jonathan’s main Princeton amp and his old one, which he sold to the studio a while ago. We tried some takes with the amp in the iso booth before moving it out into the large playing room, where I recorded two close amp mics (a Sony C48 and a Beyer M26), as well as an AKG C414 for room ambience.

We called a halt for the day at 6:00 PM so that the band could pack up and head to Austin for tonight’s show at UT. Normally I would be in tow to run sound, but I haven’t seen my wife in 10 days, so. . .

We’ll resume Friday night around 7:00 PM or so. In the meantime, I’m going to get on the phone with this guy from RMG and talk about exciting things like the chemical makeup of their tape and why it isn’t holding onto the oxide. Poo poo.
Shearwater “Rook” recording, day 5

3:18 pm on November 5, 2007 | 0 | # |

Now today was more like it — very productive and fun. We finished three master takes today, “5/4″ (working title), “The Lost Boys”, and “Home Life”. “Home Life”, a 7-minute long, monotonous (in a good way) epic was especially uplifting, because everyone was convinced we would spend days trying to nail it. Instead, the band nailed it on the first take. We did a second take, but it was no better so we stayed with the first.

Both “5/4″ and “The Lost Boys” were done w/ Jonathan playing guitar in the room w/ the drums. I used a Sony C48 and a Beyer M260 through Wunder Audio mic pres. The Sony has a fuller low-end, while the M260 provides midrange detail and clearer top-end. Mixing the two signals will allow us place the guitar in the mix without using a ton of EQ.

Jonathan plays “Home Life” on acoustic guitar, so I moved him into the iso booth with Kim and moved the KM84’s from the piano to his guitar, one on the neck and another on the lower right of the body. I left them patched into the Daking pres and the Manley ELOP limiter, and the result was a nice present sound with plenty of detail and clarity.

Not much else to say!
Shearwater “Rook” recording, day 4

2:03 pm on November 4, 2007 | 0 | # |

Not the most productive day in the studio, which had me a little stressed at the end of the night. To start the day, we listened to various edits for “On The Death Of The Waters”, deciding exactly where to splice the two takes. Again, we tested all of these edits on the 1/2″ machine first before I actually cut the multi-track master.

Once the edit was done, we tried a take of “Century Eyes”, but abandoned it thinking that the drums need a radically different treatment to be effective.

We moved on to piano, where Jonathan laid down a solo take of “The Hunter’s Star” to a click track. For this recording, we opened the lid, raised the mics a little, and added an ambient (Earthworks TC40k) mic 6 feet from the end of the piano. After the piano was done, Thor played through the song four or five times before nailing a performance.

The rest of the evening was spent trying “Leviathan” at a variety of tempos, but none of the takes felt right. The band gathered in the live room and played through different arrangement ideas, while I called it a night and headed to Rubber Gloves to see Celebration, who were incredible.
Shearwater “Rook” recording, days 1 - 3

10:10 am on November 3, 2007 | 0 | # |
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 past

The 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.

Recording, live sound, mastering engineer, tour manager, and amateur janitor based in Denton, Texas.

Co-owner of The Echo Lab recording studio. Member of Tre Orsi and other notable social networks. More info available on the About Me page and on my resumé.
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© 2008 Matthew J Barnhart
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