Hellas Mounds "The Last Ferry to Cydonia"
Session Notes
(photos
by Andrew Weiss)
The
Last Ferry To Cydonia
For this session we
set up at one of the band members' house,
with the band in the tile floored
causeway, and me in the front room. We
went for a basically live approach, using
what is called the 'Invisible Gobo'
technique. Basically, it's an approach
where instruments and amplifiers are
placed in one room with the musicians, but
are mic'd in such a way that other sound
sources are in the null of the mic's
pickup pattern. An example would be the
drums and guitar amps. I set them up on
opposite sides of the room, facing each
other. This way, the drums are in the null
of the guitar mics, and the guitars are in
the null of most of the drum mics. Add to
that the fall-off rate of sound (the sound
level is reduced by half for each doubling
of distance), and you can see that there
is little bleed on most mics. The only
place where bleed is a potential problem
is on the overheads, which I bring in from
the front of the kit, in a semi-unorthodox
placement. Also, any passages where the
drums are not playing, some muting may be
required to lower the amount of snare
rattle. I don't typically try to take ALL
of the rattle out, as I think that sounds
unnatural, but too much becomes
distracting. This approach requires no
headphones during tracking, which most
bands find preferable.
The guitar and bass
setup for Hellas Mounds is quite large,
with each guitarist playing through
multiple heads and cabinets. In order to
get the full picture, I mic'd each cabinet
separately, using different mics on each.
Typically, I like SM57s on large guitar
amps, and large diaphragm condensers on
smaller amps. In this case, I used a
combination. I also took a DI signal from
each guitar and the bass, which was also
mic'd with an RE20, my favorite mic for
bass amps, and also a good choice on
guitar and vocals.
The drums were mic'd in fairly standard
fashion, with Sennheiser e604s on the
toms, 57 on top of the snare, Oktava MC012
under the snare, D112 in the kick, and
Groove Tubes GT44 SDCs up for overheads. I
didn't use a room mic in this situation,
since there was enough bleed on the
overheads to give a sense of space. I used
a packing blanket hanging from two boom
stands behind the drumset to counter some
short reflections that were causing a
little phasiness on the overheads, and
another packing blanket wrapped around the
ceiling fan, which was vibrating with the
bass and guitars.
Vocals were tracked after the basics were
down, using an Oktava MK219. Preamps used
included 4 PM1000 channels (kick, snare,
and primary guitar mics, along with
vocals.) Toms and overheads went through
the Mackie Onyx 800r, as did the other
guitars, bass was through a Yamaha GF16/12
mixer, along with the DI tracks. I had the
'control room' setup in the other half of
the house, with my usual monitoring Event
TR5s. The session was recorded into Cubase
SX 3.
Mixing was done another day, at my house,
with Greg and the guys in attendance.
Hellas Mounds are quite specific about the
sounds they are going for, and mixing was
pretty straightforward, involving a good
bit of level riding on guitars, to
emphasize the different melodic lines they
play. There were a few effects used,
reverb and a bit of delay, again just to
emphasize some parts, as both guitarists
performed through their usual effects
rigs. I generally prefer to record guitars
live, with the players using their regular
setup. In this case, there were no guitar
overdubs whatsoever. There were a few
keyboard notes added afterwards, simply
because they were played by Tyler (drums)
and would have been difficult to track
(though not impossible.)
All in all, a pretty simple session with a
great band, which resulted in a track that
everyone was happy with.
|
