Day Three: 7th Kind Drum and Bass Tracking
OK. I live on the north side of Chicago right on the border of Uptown and Lakeview, and 7th Kind's rehersal space where I'm recording this project is in the Ukranian Village, on the near west side. Last time I went down to "the space," I took a bus downtown and transferred to a bus headed west. This took about 45 min. so I was interested in a different route. I was clued in to a different route that avoided downtown, but it ended up being 1 & a half hours of travel. On top of that I was carrying a backpack full of mics, cables, and a few thick manuals, and a rack case with my mic pre's in it. Damn a car would be nice (sometimes).
The important stuff: This time I was determined to figure out "the headphone problem," which in truth was an "engineer not knowing his audio program form a hole in the ground." I had borrowed the manuals and did some reading online and had a better idea of what to do going into the situation. I decided to show up about 7 hours early and totally explore this program. Well, a mile or so walk lost in industrial park hell to find Fiore's Italian Deli, one italian beef sandwich, some windblown grease to my new t-shirt, and an amazing chocolate canoli later, I figured it out (kinda).
COMPUTER AUDIO GEEK MOMENT -
I was forced to lower the buffer to dangerous levels so there was no delay on the monitor (headphones). I thought there would be an easier and more graceful way, but the MOTU interfaces can only send 2 channels of direct audio through for monitoring purposes. We are going with 11 channels here, so ignoring any of those inputs was out of the question. So there was a slight delay on the playback, but the musicians said it was damn near un-noticeable. Tyson (7th Kind drums) said it just sounded like a chorus effect or something, so we went with it.
We started tracking bass (John) and drums together for both 7th Kind's songs, "Space Vacation" and "Job 40:8," and all those inputs simultaniously really killed the computer's processor. So there were a few glitch noises here and there. We decided to keep what we had and track drums seperatly from bass. If necessary, we will re-track the bass parts alone once we've recorded all the other instruments for these songs.
We had Tyson at his kit in the usual place they keep it for rehersals. He is against the side wall slightly off-center facing at an angle toward the front door of the room. John was playing his bass in the room, but his cabinet was in the front entrance room, mic'ed with a Beyer M-88. The sound was nice and full, but also tight and it seemed to sit in with the kick drum just right.
The important stuff: This time I was determined to figure out "the headphone problem," which in truth was an "engineer not knowing his audio program form a hole in the ground." I had borrowed the manuals and did some reading online and had a better idea of what to do going into the situation. I decided to show up about 7 hours early and totally explore this program. Well, a mile or so walk lost in industrial park hell to find Fiore's Italian Deli, one italian beef sandwich, some windblown grease to my new t-shirt, and an amazing chocolate canoli later, I figured it out (kinda).
COMPUTER AUDIO GEEK MOMENT -
I was forced to lower the buffer to dangerous levels so there was no delay on the monitor (headphones). I thought there would be an easier and more graceful way, but the MOTU interfaces can only send 2 channels of direct audio through for monitoring purposes. We are going with 11 channels here, so ignoring any of those inputs was out of the question. So there was a slight delay on the playback, but the musicians said it was damn near un-noticeable. Tyson (7th Kind drums) said it just sounded like a chorus effect or something, so we went with it.
We started tracking bass (John) and drums together for both 7th Kind's songs, "Space Vacation" and "Job 40:8," and all those inputs simultaniously really killed the computer's processor. So there were a few glitch noises here and there. We decided to keep what we had and track drums seperatly from bass. If necessary, we will re-track the bass parts alone once we've recorded all the other instruments for these songs.
We had Tyson at his kit in the usual place they keep it for rehersals. He is against the side wall slightly off-center facing at an angle toward the front door of the room. John was playing his bass in the room, but his cabinet was in the front entrance room, mic'ed with a Beyer M-88. The sound was nice and full, but also tight and it seemed to sit in with the kick drum just right.
posted by MWM at 1:54 PM
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