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Roman Arms
'Like Knives'
This session was done in a part-by-part approach, because of scheduling issues. Also, we used the former Ember Studios in Tempe, as the band rehearses at a Francisco studios location which wouldn't have been very workable (though not impossible.)
We setup the drums in the main room of the facility, and I set up my control room in what was once an actual control room (imagine that!) We put the guitar amp out in the lobby, since it was only for reference. Drums were mic'd using GT44s for overheads, in a ORTF pattern above the drummer's head, Sennheiser e604 mics on 2 toms, and an e609 on the second floor tom. Snare mics were an SM57 on top and the Oktava MC012 underneath. The kick was mic'd with a D112 about 18 in front of the front head (there was no hole), and a Nady dynamic drum mic on the beater side. I find this mic work well there, as it has a pretty tight pattern, and isn't sensitive to high frequency noise from the snare, foot pedals, etc. I used a Shure Green Bullet mic as a room mic, which I often do. The snare and toms went through the PM1000 channels, while the kick and overheads went through the Onyx preamps.
Once we had the drum tracks solid, we added the first guitar track. We used one guitar cabinet, as it sounded quite a bit better than the other cab (the guitar player had two.) I used an SM57 on one speaker, and an RE20 on another speaker, flipping phase to get them close, then adjusting one of them a few milliseconds to get a slightly bigger sound, and avoid any further phase issues.
As usual, I had the Eric use his regular rig, though we did add extra tracks for some flavoring here and there. The next day (when the other members returned from Vegas), we tracked the 2nd guitar, again using two different mics, in this case an SM57 and a Sennheiser e604 (the little drum mic), with the 8 millisecond delay on one.
Guitar overdubs went smoothly, though there was one section with a guitar playing by itself which required a little work, since we didn't use any click tracks. Bass guitar was recorded with an RE20 on the cabinet, and the DI through the GT Brick. All of the guitar and bass mics were tracked through the PM1000 channels. Vocals were tracked in the 'vocal booth', but upon listening back, it was decided that they didn't have the right flavor. We got together at a later date, and retracked the vocals, using the RE20 with the Green Bullet as a room mic (I often use a room mic on vocals.) I processed the vocals while tracking, using the PM1000 preamps eq, and compressing through an FMR RNC set to 'Super Nice' with about 12 dbs on gain reduction on the loudest sections. This helps prevent overs on the way in, and also lets the singer scream without hearing himself overly loudly in the headphones. Next, we set about mixing.
I used my usual tape compression processing (a proprietary process that I designed myself) to give the drums more punch, and processed the room mic through a fuzz pedal plug-in, which gives it a nice grainy tone. Nothing too shocking during mixdown, the usual rides on some parts, and some vocal processing, in which we put a slightly delayed version of the vocal to one side, and the room mic to other, with the dry vocal up the middle. A tiny bit off reverb was used on drums and vocals, to give a little space.
The last thing was placing a few samples, including the one in the middle section of this song. I think it worked great, and the band was happy. All in all, another great session with an awesome band.
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