I just watched this interview with Mastering Engineer Greg Calbi on the subject of the Loudness Wars. It turns to a bit of a rant but he makes a lot of sense. I think my own mastering skills just improved having watched this.
If you have the time, spend some time on YouTube and watch some more of the interviews with him.
.
.
Maybeshewill is one of my favorite post-rock bands and they’ve started working on their third LP. They’ve posted a few updates on their site (read part 1, and part 2) but there hasn’t been much info for a while and nothing specific about the gear and techniques. I decided to give Jamie Ward (Bass, Engineer, Producer) a little poke to find out what’s going on behind the scenes on the new record.
Hi Jamie
I was wondering if you could share some info from the production side of things on the new record. What’s the progress?
We’re still at a writing stage in the record but we’re not too far off now. We’ve had two recording sessions so far. One for drums for a few tracks at a studio called Seamus Wong where I do some engineering and one for guitars for the single we’re putting out (To the skies from a hillside) at my home studio. On previous albums before I joined the band Maybeshewill have recorded everything themselves with whatever gear they could get their hands on and wherever they could. These sessions have been a bit of an explorative venture. I can record drums fine at my home studio but it’s pretty dry so tracking in a larger room was a bit of a no-brainer.
We’re doing more recording sessions in September. I think I’ll try a few more room mics on the drums this time see if I can bring out even more ambience.
.
.
What’s the guitar tracking signal chain?
For the single we used mostly used John’s Gibson 335 into my friends Marshall JVM, into our toured-to-death Marshall AX cab. I miked it up with 2 (Shure) Beta 57′s one into my TLA C1 and one into my SSL X Logic Alpha Channel. One of these has much crisper high end and one has much fatter low end, no prizes for guessing which one’s which.
In the past the band have used distortion pedals into a Plexi and also Guitar Rig so the sound is a bit of a departure form the previous album’s guitar sounds. At the time I just thought “Lets get the best gear we have together and make it sound as rad as possible”, the tone is slicker but perhaps not as punk, a less gritty aesthetic than the pedal distortion on albums previous. We only had one day to get it done so there was no time for indecision. I don’t take D.I’s either, I like to make commitments.
read the rest of the interview
If you haven’t yet heard of Joey Sturgis, you might be too old you will soon. He is very quickly becoming the CLA of my generation and the go-to guy for modern hard rock. His success has earned him a lot of fans and even more critics. Recently he started releasing drum and cymbal sample libraries from some of the records he’s done. Over the weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing Joey via email.
When did you start recording and producing?
I started recording when I was about 19 years old (2004). I played drums in several bands around that time and it came time for us to create a demo, so I learned what was necessary to do it on my own. My friend had a make shift recording studio in his garage and he lent me the key.
What gear were you using back then?
We had a custom built pc running Windows 98SE, the interface was an Aardvark Q10 (PCI based). We had Behringer preamps and a Behringer mixer. It was the worst of the worst.
Wow, that’s pretty ghetto even for 2004, ha ha. You must have been doing something right though because it wasn’t long before you were making records for Rise Records, producing The Devil Wears Prada, Miss May I, and Attack Attack! among others.
Yeah after The Devil Wears Prada got signed from the EP I made for them, the label owner caught wind of me and took some interest. Prada came back to me for the full length. The album was successful and then i went on to do a few more projects on my own before helping to realizing the creation of before their eyes with a few members of past bands I had done demos with prior.
Soon after that, they were signed by rise and once again Craig was seeing my name. At this point I think he saw real potential in me and decided to give me a call. He suggested managing my schedule and helping me get bigger better projects. I was hesitant at first but decided to go for it. The first email i sent him was this list I had fathomed up, almost as a joke, of demands I wanted from him. Things like “I want to do a Metal Blade cd, I want to work with Adam D” etc. I knew those things would never happen but somehow Craig helped make every single thing on that list happen. So for that I am extremely grateful.
This is a guest post from Geoffrey Granka of Fresh Produce Productions. Find him online at www.freshaudio.ca and @gmgranka on twitter.
You might not know Relic the Oddity, but if you like Canadian Hip Hop (read: good hip hop), you’ve heard his work already. Fresh off his work in Shad’s TSOL (an album that Eye Weekly calls “infinitely playable”), he had some time to answer my nagging questions.
Since this picture, Relic has relocated to a more traditional home studio.
What are some of your most successful projects that people would know you for?
The work I’ve done with Shad is where people may recognize me from: (When This Is Over – production; The Old Prince – production, mixing, feature emcee; TSOL- production, mixing, feature emcee). I’ve also done work with Sev Statik, Braille, Surreal, Fresh I.E., and Manafest to name a few. (more…)
This week I came across this great interview with Producer/Engineer John Agnello over at FreqControl.com.
On the topic of the difference between mixing analog and mixing ITB he sums it up nicely: Size, Depth, and Clarity.
Now obviously this is just one dude’s opinion, and mixing all analog isn’t really an option for most of us, it is an interesting and entertaining interview nonetheless. Check out the rest (7 parts) of the interview here.
FreqControl has a bunch more cool interviews on making records on the site.
