tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-246100932009-02-23T02:54:42.686-08:00Tips and tricks for creating your own one-day punk opusGreat Magnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18084007589299392470noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24610093.post-1143137157667925562006-03-23T09:44:00.000-08:002006-08-30T14:04:34.273-07:00<a href="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com" target="_blank">Go to Great Magnet Recording's Official Website</a><br><a href="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/01_music/10%20Psycho%20Girl.mp3" target="_blank">Check Out a Sample of The Showoffs' Music</a><br><a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=2691190" target="_blank">Go to The Showoffs' MySpace Page</a><br><br>The Showoffs are a <i>mostly</i> Berkeley-based punk band, though their drummer Steve lives up in my neck 'o' the woods and he found me on Craig's List.<br><img src="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/00_images/showoffs/steveondrumsrear.jpg"><br><i>Steve rockin' the kit</i><br><br>They had some limited financial resources, but since they were tight and it's punk rock I thought it would be great to record them live-in-the-studio and basically make an entire LP-length record in one day.<br><img src="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/00_images/showoffs/livetracking3.jpg"><br><i>The string section</i><br><br><br><img src="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/00_images/showoffs/menudo.jpg"><br><i>The combination of one green t-shirt, one purple guitar, and a vintage Menudo poster creates a nexxus of mystical rock power that can melt diamonds from several miles away.</i><br><br>We <i>mostly</i> succeeded as well, although as it turned out there was a bit of mixing backlash as a result.<br><br>The problem was, lacking a dedicated vocal booth adjoining the live room, I had Jess sing his parts right there in the same room with Steve raging away on his drum kit, and the bleed into the vocal mic kinda fucked up the mix later on down the road.<br><img src="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/00_images/showoffs/vocaltracking.jpg"><br><i>Jess rips into the vocal phatness on the SM7</i><br><br>It was a cardioid dynamic vocal mic—the mighty, mighty Sure SM7B—, which usually yields a pretty decent amount of off-axis rejection, but this mic in particular really does hear a lot of what's going on <i>behind</i> it...in this case the drums. It really is an amazing-sounding mic for punk vocals though.<br><img src="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/00_images/showoffs/livetracking1.jpg"><br><i>View from the SkyCam</i><br><br>Sometimes using the bleed that gets into microphones as part of "the sound" actually works really well in a mix, but in this case it just turned everything to mush and created a bunch of phase issues. Some of the tracks we re-did the vocals in a second overdub session (as well as some additional guitar solos), and invariably those tracks came out a good bit better in the final mix.<br><img src="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/00_images/showoffs/mixing1.jpg"><br><i>Mixing hi-larity</i><br><br>Curently the Showoffs are sitting on this little experiment and figuring out if they wanna re-cut the vocals at my place or with somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing instead.<br><img src="http://www.greatmagnetrecording.com/00_images/showoffs/chickslippers.jpg"><br><i>Mixing Secret #1: your girlfriend's Hello Kitty Slippers</i><br><br><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/24610093-114313715766792556?l=theshowoffs.blogspot.com'/></div>Great Magnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18084007589299392470noreply@blogger.com0