The Slips – Session Report
| Recorded at Trevecca Studios – January 2009.……………….
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Six songs were recorded over two marathon days in January of 2008 at Trevecca Studios on the campus of Trevecca Nazarene University. They have a fantastic recording studio at the school even though some may see it as modest. You will not find an Solid State Logic or Trident console, 24 track two inch machines, or even a ProTools HD rig. However, you will find a very well planned and cost effective compliment of equipment. Simply put, the gear selection is down right smart.
One of the smartest things about Trevecca studios, and what manager Blake has done with the place, is the selection of seriously high quality preamps and converters. Available outboard preamps where API 500 series, Vintech, Drawmer, and AEA amongst others. The console is Mackie 32×8 which is used strictly for monitoring. His studio there is based on a DIGI002 system, however, Blake has armed the control room with an Appogee Rosetta 800 converters. For these sessions we brought in a DIGI003 because it has wordclock I/O, allowing us to take advantage of the Rosetta’s more stable wordclock. Of course, on a 002 you could clock to the ADAT from the Rosetta. None the less, why not use the latest and greatest if you have it.
Chuck in the tracking room.
The crowning jewel of the studio is the space itself. The main tracking room is small but sports floating hardwood floors, adjustable acoustic paneling (diffusive / absorptive), and there are wood surfaces everywhere. Over all the sound of the room is fantastic even though most of surfaces are highly reflective. This hyper reflectiveness can be toned down a bit with the adjustable paneling but the room still sounds larger than it actually is. I found this contributed greatly towards getting a big drum sound.
In fact – why don’t we go ahead and talk drums.
First and foremost, and the most important part of getting a great drum sound, is great sounding drums. Rocket Surgery – I know. Still, this aspect if often overlooked by many. Here is drummer Chuck and myself micing up the kit which sounded fantastic.
All of the microphones we used on the drum kit are fairly standard issue. On the kick we used a D112 and on the snare top and bottom we used SM57s. On the toms we used Sennheiser e609’s and the overheads where Neumann KM184’s. Like I said, pretty standard drum tracking fair, however, we did employ one additional technique. We placed a pair of AEA R92 ribbon microphones, very haphazardly and almost at random, in the room kind of pointed at the drums. We just wanted one room mic on each side and a little in front of the kit. We then ran the R92s to a pair of AEA ribbon pres and then squashed the beejezzus out of the the signals with a tube compressor, the model of which I cannot remember.
When we mix the overall drum sound with the super compressed room sounds the result is kind of like parallel compression except that the two sources signals do not match exactly. In the end you are mixing the close mic’d drums with a hyperized room sound giving you a degree of control over the amount of room sound that is in the mix and therefore adding a great degree of depth, in my opinion. In the final mixes we had no need to use any reverbs or other time based processors on the drums and the less processing the better.
One more thing that contributed to the fantastic drum sounds that we got….
Drummer Chuck played his ass off. As a side note, The Slips usual drummer was MIA at the time of the session and Chuck stepped up and nailed the parts even though he had never played them before. As I understand, he learned most of the tunes in the car during their trip to Nashville. I look forward to the opportunity to buy this man a beer.
What we usually think of next is the Bass, but unfortunately there is nothing to special about how we recorded the bass guitar. All we did was record it direct though a Vintech preamp, which was rather nice. The electric guitar sound, however, where are personal best. Here is half the cause….
This is a Dr. Z Carmen Ghia. As you can see, it has a plug, volume and tone knobs, a little blue light, and a switch. It is 15 watts of raw power and a thing of immense beauty. We tried several really nice microphones on the amp, including some seriously expensive ones, but finally settled on this Sennheiser e609. We dropped the mic on the speaker old school style, and ran it into a Drawmer 1960 tube preamp / compressor. At first it sounded pretty damn wimpy but we found that the more we cranked the amp, and the more we let the Drawmer do its thing, the sound got better and better.
Recording with compression on the way in is usually a very big no no because capturing raw unprocessed sound for later manipulation leaves all your options open. However, I don’t see the logic behind putting down a bad sound for any reason, especially a fear of commitment. So in dialing in the guitar sound I abandoned all needles and meters except the guitar track’s input meter. At this point there are two goals. One to get a great sound and the second to not clip the input of the guitar track.
The louder we got the Dr. Z and the harder we drove the preamp, the better the sound got. Just for fun we took an SPL reading in the room once we got it dialed in and measured 125dB SPL. Not bad for 15 watts!
When we did decided to see what the meters (input, output, and gain reduction) on the preamp/compressor were doing we found that all where just about buried anyway. You zoomed out on the waveform for the guitar it looked like a solid bold line, and zooming in a bit revealed a visual representation of the compressors time attributes. Normally this might not be a good thing but the ears are king, and this sound would clearly work for us.. The lesson? – Sometimes abandoning convention and theory, especially when it is not getting you were you need to go, works to your favor.
Dave Harper
To record mandolin and resonator for a couple of the tracks we use the “Mid-side” technique. For the side we used and R92 and the mid we used a KM184. The resulting sound was very articulate yet smooth and warm. The R92’s frequency response is not the same on both sides of the ribbon and each side has its own unique color of sound. The difference is subtle but is very noticeable especially over time and I would say that one side of the mic sounds a bit brighter than the other. This variation of color makes for a compelling sound on the M/S decode – blend to taste.
Vocals. We used a variety of microphones on vocals and the decisions where largely dictated by the track at hand.
Rob Davis
Rob Davis ladies and gentlemen! He’s cutting vocals through one of those AEA R92s’ – Dig it on the vocals for the acoustic tunes we recorded.
We also used a U87 and a Rode Classic through a Vintech pre.
Rob and the U87
The Mix
One of the greatest things about modern recording technology is the ability to do alot of work outside the studio. All of the Slips stuff we recorded were edited and ruffed mixed largely at home. For final mixes we chose to employ a hybrid digital/analog setup that yeilded the full power of both worlds. At least where mixing is concerned anyway.
MTSU Studio C
We mixed the songs at MTSU’s studio C for the most part, with the exception of Cinderella Blues which was mixed at MTSU’s studio B. Studio C has a ProTools HD rig, SSL AWS900 console, and a nice compliment of outbard compressors and reverbs. In the box we grouped the instraments in a familiar fasion and bussed the group outputs to the SSL. Tracks that we wanted to insert a piece of outboard gear into were also sent to the SSL as individual channel. When the SSL is in analog focus we have mixture of stereo busses, e.g Drum, Gtrs, and VOX, and inividual channels like “Bass guitar”, and Lead VOX on the faders. In DAW focus the faders represent the individual tracks in ProTools. Once we have everything balanced we mixed down the song to a stereo track back into ProTools. The greatest benifits where the analog summing, the use of the outbard EL distressor on the lead vocal, and the SSL Bus compressor, which really kicked things up a knotch.
And in the end…
So how did we manage to do basic tracks and overdubs for six songs in less than 48hrs? First, everyone involved had an excelent work ethinc and attitude. Reguardless of how the recordings turned out, which I am very pleased with, we had a great time. Second was the fact that the band was well seasoned enough, and as prepared as they could be, to nail everything in just a couple of takes. Finally, the studio itself functioned near flawlessly.