Day Seven: My Italian Beef with Time stamps
So, this week I made sure to arrive beyond early. I arrived at 7th Kind's space at around 2:30pm and began building some rough headphone mixes for the trumpet/tenor sax and guitar overdubs we were to record.
I also spent some time trying to figure out why the tracks I had been taking from the computer at the space have been misaligned when I import them into Pro Tools on my computer at home. For some reason, if any given take does not begin at 00:00:00:00, then it will be "time stamped" with the wrong time, so when the tracks are played back together, the mix ends up sounding like a band camp nightmare. Of course, I could visually and aurally align the tracks to be in the basic ballpark, but I just can't let that fly when we're recording this thing for real in real-time. I thought I had figured the issue out, and I even wrote down the takes' start times, but when I got home and attempted realigning them, some of them were still off. I have a couple of fail-proof techniques I'll be employing as a last resort, so no real problem there. Just more of a hassle. Whatev.
Just before the boys started showing up, I headed over to Fiore's, the Italian Deli down the block for one of their magical Italian Beef Sangwitchiz, and I managed to pass on the canoli. It was an amazing accomplishment and disappointment.
Eric and Wilson showed up at around 7pm to record some parts that tenor sax and trumpet share. We had been saving these takes since I previously recorded sax separately from trumpets and the guys wanted to maintain the synchronous vibe that can only be obtained by recording the part together. For these takes, I merged my mic techniques from the previous trumpet and sax recording sessions. I used the same spaced pair of the AT-4040 condenser and the Ribbon mic as I had with the trumpets, and I also used the same close micing that I had previously used on the tenor sax (MXLv67g on the lower keys and a SM-81 on the upper keys). I moved the Ribbon and AT4040 around the room a bit to get a good natural volume balance between the two instruments. All went superbly!
After the trumpet and tenor takes, which only took about 20-30 minutes to get down, Eric headed home and Wilson stuck around to punch in some parts he couldn't get to in our earlier sax recordings due to bastard reeds.
After successfully tracking some amazing tenor sax genius, Bill showed up with intentions of recording the guitar parts for 7th Kind's "Job 40:8" and "Space Vacation" in an hour, which i told him was a little bit of a tight time constraint.
We set up his amp in the front room of the space, where Bill's sister maintains one of the locations for her clothing design buisiness, and I mic'ed one of the speakers with an sm-57 (duh), an AKG D1000E (a new one for me, but what's a session without something new?), and my ribbon mic again, placed further out in the room to use in the track if i need some space for the guitar. The AKG D1000E was a sort of random mic that bill had in his mic bag, and it seemed to fit the bill for a guitar amp mic, spec wise, so i gave it a shot. I ended up liking it paired up with the ribbon mic better that the sm-57. For the early mixes I've been working on, i've completely muted the 57.
After some intense discussion about existential matters and the current status of reality, we managed to get some good takes recorded for "Space Vacation," the keeper being one solid take from start to finish, save for some evil crazy compressor-feedback madness we had to capture separately for the closing of the song. We gave "Job" a few go's, but decided to come back to the song later. We had run out of time. Ultimately, Bill also decided he wanted to redo all the guitar takes when we had a solid block of time to really dive into them. Well, we got some practice, at least.
Bill was kind enough to give me a ride home, as many of the other guys have throughout the 7th Kind sessions, and we continued our talk about the existential crisis and the correlation between a person's name and their personality. I learned that apparently anyone with the name Emmet is doomed to a life of ridicule. Sorry to all you Emmet's.
I also spent some time trying to figure out why the tracks I had been taking from the computer at the space have been misaligned when I import them into Pro Tools on my computer at home. For some reason, if any given take does not begin at 00:00:00:00, then it will be "time stamped" with the wrong time, so when the tracks are played back together, the mix ends up sounding like a band camp nightmare. Of course, I could visually and aurally align the tracks to be in the basic ballpark, but I just can't let that fly when we're recording this thing for real in real-time. I thought I had figured the issue out, and I even wrote down the takes' start times, but when I got home and attempted realigning them, some of them were still off. I have a couple of fail-proof techniques I'll be employing as a last resort, so no real problem there. Just more of a hassle. Whatev.
Just before the boys started showing up, I headed over to Fiore's, the Italian Deli down the block for one of their magical Italian Beef Sangwitchiz, and I managed to pass on the canoli. It was an amazing accomplishment and disappointment.
Eric and Wilson showed up at around 7pm to record some parts that tenor sax and trumpet share. We had been saving these takes since I previously recorded sax separately from trumpets and the guys wanted to maintain the synchronous vibe that can only be obtained by recording the part together. For these takes, I merged my mic techniques from the previous trumpet and sax recording sessions. I used the same spaced pair of the AT-4040 condenser and the Ribbon mic as I had with the trumpets, and I also used the same close micing that I had previously used on the tenor sax (MXLv67g on the lower keys and a SM-81 on the upper keys). I moved the Ribbon and AT4040 around the room a bit to get a good natural volume balance between the two instruments. All went superbly!
After the trumpet and tenor takes, which only took about 20-30 minutes to get down, Eric headed home and Wilson stuck around to punch in some parts he couldn't get to in our earlier sax recordings due to bastard reeds.
After successfully tracking some amazing tenor sax genius, Bill showed up with intentions of recording the guitar parts for 7th Kind's "Job 40:8" and "Space Vacation" in an hour, which i told him was a little bit of a tight time constraint.
We set up his amp in the front room of the space, where Bill's sister maintains one of the locations for her clothing design buisiness, and I mic'ed one of the speakers with an sm-57 (duh), an AKG D1000E (a new one for me, but what's a session without something new?), and my ribbon mic again, placed further out in the room to use in the track if i need some space for the guitar. The AKG D1000E was a sort of random mic that bill had in his mic bag, and it seemed to fit the bill for a guitar amp mic, spec wise, so i gave it a shot. I ended up liking it paired up with the ribbon mic better that the sm-57. For the early mixes I've been working on, i've completely muted the 57.
After some intense discussion about existential matters and the current status of reality, we managed to get some good takes recorded for "Space Vacation," the keeper being one solid take from start to finish, save for some evil crazy compressor-feedback madness we had to capture separately for the closing of the song. We gave "Job" a few go's, but decided to come back to the song later. We had run out of time. Ultimately, Bill also decided he wanted to redo all the guitar takes when we had a solid block of time to really dive into them. Well, we got some practice, at least.
Bill was kind enough to give me a ride home, as many of the other guys have throughout the 7th Kind sessions, and we continued our talk about the existential crisis and the correlation between a person's name and their personality. I learned that apparently anyone with the name Emmet is doomed to a life of ridicule. Sorry to all you Emmet's.
posted by MWM at 10:58 PM
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