Don’t take that tone with me

I recently was doing a session for the uniquely talented singer/songwriter Katie Howell and learned something new. We hired a buddy of ours, Jonathan Smither, to play bass. Jonathan’s a great player who knows how to groove and has a great sense of tone.
For the session, he brought his custom 5-string which sounds great. We smacked it through my Hamptone tube preamp (which loves bass guitar), but it wasn’t the right tone for the track. It was too bright and clear. It really needed a P-Bass. WARNING: You’ve got to take me with a grain of salt here. I think a P-Bass through an Ampeg is the greatest bass tone know to mankind. Almost every song needs a P-Bass.
Jonathan actually has a beauty P-Bass, but he didn’t have it with him. I mentioned that I wished we could get more of that vintage tone, and he pulled out a trick I’d never seen.
First, grab some Kleenex. Preferably not the kind with lotion in it. Toilet paper works fine. Stuff just enough under the strings down near the bridge, and it creates a fair approximation of that slightly dampened sound I love so much. Kudos to Jonathan for teaching me a new trick!

Bassist Jonathan Smither and his nifty trick!

Detail of bassist Jonathan Smither's trick

I hate to say it, but I completely regret upgrading to Snow Leopard on my main web development laptop. The issues have been pretty horrendous. The issues are so bad, I will either have to downgrade to Leopard or put certain programs on an older machine so I can still use them.

First, Fireworks no longer opens. This is a complete drag, as I use it for alpha transparency in png8 files. It’s a great trick that only Fireworks does (to my knowledge), but now I can’t use it.

If you double-click an .ai file to open the program, Illustrator always crashes. You can work around this by opening Illustrator first and them double clicking the file, but what a pain in the butt.

And now I’ve discovered a new issue. In Flash, many of my fonts are not recognized. I have an xml-driven site I’m developing, and Flash no longer can find an outline of the font I’m using. Therefore, the text no longer displays. So I either downgrade or start over on a client’s site. Arrrrggg!

The upgrade also has caused problems with Microsoft Word (albeit a very old version – Word:Mac version X… but one that was completely working). Old documents will not print. Oh it goes through the motions, but only a blank sheet comes out of the printer. Saving to PDF is also a problem. Once again, it goes through the motions, but sometimes the file just doesn’t show up. If I pull the .doc into Pages (Apple’s word processor), the layout is jacked to the high heavens. That never used to occur.

After quite a bit of reading on the Apple forums, it looks like I’m not the only one having major issues with Apple’s new operating system. It looks like maybe Snow Leopard doesn’t support Postscript Type 1 fonts. You gotta be kidding me. So now we designers might have to repurchase all of our older fonts? This blows.

Apple, you are better than this. Why did you have to go and pull a Vista on us?

On with my thoughts on the Eddie Kramer Experience (after a terribly long hiatus!). So Eddie (or Waves) wouldn’t answer my questions. Frustrating. It kinda seemed like Eddie wanted to talk about it, but the Waves guy clearly vetoed it. So I left feeling empty-handed and kinda cheated.

In hindsight, I should have stopped and talked to Eddie after the event. Perhaps he would have divulged more privately, as he really seemed to be pretty nice. Live and learn.

The next day I called a buddy of mine who used to work at Electric Lady Studios in NY. He had the pleasure of working with Eddie. He said everything was coming from tape into a Neve 1073EQ. Guitars hit an 1176… and sometimes two of them. He uses the SSL 2-buss comp on drums (and a host of other things).
I also figure there’s an LA2A in there on vocals, or maybe a fairchild. Pretty standard stuff (that is, if you have them!). For effects, tape delay is king. 7.5ips or 15ips.

Eddie did share a story about the recently released 40th Anniversary of Woodstock recordings (which he called 3 days of peace, music and hell). Carlos Santana and his band were told they were going to go on at 8pm. So the band dropped acid… only to find out they actually went on at 3pm. So Santana hit the stage completely wasted. On one of the songs, he was so lost and out of tune during the intro that the track was completely unusable. Therefore, it never made it into any of the originally released recordings from the event.

So 40 years later, Eddie has Santana come in and rerecord the intro. Eddie raved about how wonderful it was that we can now hear this historic recording. Hmmmm. While I completely understand the nature of our business and its demand for perfection, it’s tragic that a great live recording like this isn’t really the truth. Then again, I never enjoy having one of my mistakes documented for all time (they are too numerous to mention).

While I was working on Cary Bank’s (of The Maines Brothers fame) record Long Time Since It Rained, he said something I will never forget. “A modern recording is a documentation of an event that never happened.” Wow. There’s a lot of depth in that statement. I’m guilty of it too. We work so hard to edit a recording to perfection that many times we lose the magic (and mistakes) of a live performance.

So me and one of my engineers (Patrick) decided to attend the Eddie Kramer Experience in Frisco, Texas, the night before last. Having engineered 5 albums for Led Zeppelin, all of Jimi Hendix’s major works, not to mention Frampton, the Beatles, Bowie, the Stones, and even the recordings of Woodstock, Eddie is a true legend of rock and roll. The event promised (and I quote):

Join legendary producer/engineer Eddie Kramer for a special event. A true rock insider with dozens of smash hits to his credit, Eddie Kramer will share his vast knowledge of recording techniques, shedding light on yesterday’s analog gear and today’s plug-in models. Eddie will be joined by Waves product specialists, who will be on hand to take an in-depth look at Waves latest plug-ins. So come on down, meet living legend Eddie Kramer, and get experienced!

The part about “sharing his vast knowledge of recording techniques, and shedding light” was definitely what I went for. I, of course, expected a sales pitch from Waves about the new Eddie Kramer plugin series. Waves is a great company who makes many of the plugins we use at the Amusement Park Studio. Unfortunately, the experience was light on “sharing” and almost completely about selling.

Eddie began the event with some opening remarks about his career. He is a likable guy and a capable speaker. The remarks lasted about 3 minutes and then he cut straight to the plugins. They used tracks from 2 bands Eddie had mixed as examples. They would play individual tracks with no processing, then apply the Kramer plugins.

Arguably, the Kramer plugins sound great. They are basically presets that make you sound like Eddie. Complete with tape delay, plate verbs, nice fat compression, and more. Pull up your drum tracks, apply the plugin, and it’s pretty nice sounding. They would be a real time-saver in certain mixing situations.

On a side note: I was shocked to hear massive amounts of autotune on the vocal tracks of the first band. It sucked and I couldn’t believe Eddie would do that. A hero was about to fall. Then he revealed that he did not track them. Thank God.

So we listened for about 2 hours. It was cool to hear individual instruments in a before-and-after situation. And it did reveal a lot to my ears. But where was the vast knowledge he was going to share?

So I asked a question:

Can you tell us specifically what you’re modeling to achieve these sounds? Can you, for instance, discuss your signal chain for drums including what EQs and compressors you prefer?

And he flatly refused.

But he (and Waves) refused.

Those are secrets of my sound. It wouldn’t be fair. We aren’t here to reveal…

So that was sharing his knowledge? Let’s face it, there are really only a few compressors it could have been (1176, LA-2A, Fairchild, etc.) Same with EQs (Pultec, Neve, API…). He could have revealed at least some basic concepts. I guess Eddie and the Waves crew fear losing sales due to openness. It reminds me a lot of what’s going on in other areas of the music industry these days.

As a former educator at the world-renowned South Plains College Creative Arts Department, I’ve been to countless seminars like this. The best ones include tons of information and anecdotal stories that educate and inspire. Once that is achieved, you couple it with a low-pressure sales pitch. And bang, you’ve built new customers and evangelists for your brand.

Unfortunately, the Eddie Kramer Experience was 95% sales pitch and 5% information. Eddie didn’t even really speak about any of the famous sessions he was involved in. No inside stories (other than one about Santana which I will share next time), and almost no cool tips about how he got certain sounds. What a drag.

I actually would have been much more inclined to purchase if the seminar had taught me something. I would have left with a favorable impression of the company. Instead, I felt Waves was stingy and wasted my time. After all, we drove 6 hours to attend.

It wasn’t a total waste, as Eddie is clearly a decent cat who really knows how to lift the energy level of a room. He’s funny and you can tell he would be great to be in session with. And he did share a few limited pieces of information that were helpful. Next time I’ll share those, along with my thoughts on what these plugins are modeling.

Once in a while you find yourself without a necessary tool and you have to improvise. Many of you seasoned engineers are going to laugh at this one… because you’ve done it, too! I’m talking about none other than the pantyhose pop filter!

Amy and I were demoing a song real quickly tonight so we can give it to a drummer. Amy recorded the piano part and then we needed to lay down a scratch vocal. The studio is booked tonight, so we decided to record at the house. I had an Oktava mk219 laying around (which is great on female vox, by the way) and my modded digi002.

When I left the studio I forgot to grab a pop filter. So I had to remember back to the days when I didn’t even own one (and couldn’t afford one!). We made them. Pantyhose and a coat hanger is the trick!

1. Take the leg of the pantyhose and place the coat hanger inside it.

2. Stretch the hose all the way over the entire hanger.

3. Wrap the rest of the hose around the stem of the hanger and insert it in a separate mic clip.

4. There ya go… a pop filter for next to nothing. And it works every bit as well as an expensive one.

By the way, it’s seems to be a good rule of thumb to place the pop filter about 3 inches from the mic. That way the diversion of air has room to disperse away from the mic.

I recently completed a site for Mike Christiansen (mikechristiansen.com). Mike is the head of the Utah State Guitar Program, an amazing player, and a really cool cat. Featured on his new site is a book Mike developed called “My First Guitar Book.” It’s the most innovative teaching book I’ve ever seen for young children. It utilizes a unique color-coded system to help young children make connections between notes and strings.

Because of my long history in guitar education and with the instrument, Mike hired me to lay the book out. It was a challenge, as it it needed to be very clear and easy to read for children. I’m really proud of it and, more importantly, so is Mike!

mikechristiansen.com - developed by FarisWheel Productions

Another milestone for the Amusement Park Studio: I was hired to record all the classical guitar pieces for the Christopher Parkening Method Books, Vol.1 & 2 (Hal Leonard Publishing). David Brandon performed all the pieces and I captured them in Pro Tools.

Chris and David were so pleased with the sound I captured on David’s “Legacy” CD, that they asked me to do the project. I used a stereo matched pair of Schoeps MK4s into an API A2D directly into Pro Tools at 24/96. I mixed it using a few plugins – very subtle eq and compression mainly to handle a peak in David’s Ramirez guitar that centers around A 440 and its related harmonics (his guitar is really prominent in A) along with a couple instances of Altiverb, then summed it out through my Amek console into a TLA semi-parametric tube EQ. We then went back into the A2D analog-to-digital converter into a Masterlink at 24/96. The first CD has a total of 99 tracks!

David felt so strongly about my work that he had it put in the contract that my name had to be printed in every book and on every CD as the recording engineer. Kinda cool.