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Roman
Arms Session Notes
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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