Recording Peep
by Leigh Marble
From May until December of 2003, I tracked my album Peep at Fishboy Studios, which is in my basement in Portland, OR. I engineered everything myself on this project, and played nearly all the instruments as well. For reference, a list of the gear used is provided at the bottom of the page.
The Drums
Peep
was the first start-to-finish project in my new studio space. As such,
there was still a lot to learn about its limitations. The first challenge
was tracking the drums, with drummer Scott Garvey. From May until August
I tried out different mic setups for the drums. After some early test
sessions, I wound up hanging futons from the ceiling joists (thanks Kira!),
in order to cut down on the drums' sound reflecting off the concrete walls.
That helped improve the sound in the room. Then I tracked the drums for
the album over three multi-day sessions, using two different mic setups.
These setups and the gear
used are detailed below.
I should note that the Tape Op omni mic was not the best idea for a close snare mic (see setup A). Even micing the drum shell, as opposed to the head, was too loud for the mic and caused it to distort on loud hits. Fortunately, the AM40 overhead was picking up plenty of nice snare sound, so the takes could be used without any huge issue.
So by September, I had finished the drum tracking, which had produced multiple takes for each of the twenty songs being considered for the album. In retrospect, I wish I had narrowed down the choice of material earlier. But the plan was to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, and that's what we did.
I began weeding through the takes, looking for the really good stuff. Because we had tracked so much stuff, this took weeks of listening and editing, editing and listening, in a (seemingly) endless, maddening loop. Pro Tools allows for a lot of options. Sometimes it's best not to use all of them. That's all I wanna say about that.
Acoustic Guitar
Acoustic
guitar was the next stage of the recording. Next to the drums, this was
going to be the trickiest thing to self-engineer. Many of the songs had
the acoustic guitar as their backbone, so they were going to be recorded
in stereo. This means two mics, plus sometimes a third signal from the
guitar's built-in pickup. The AM40 was used as one of the acoustic guitar
mics on almost every track. At first I paired it with another condenser
mic, like the CM-700, and even sometimes with a dynamic like the Beyer
M201. Later in the recording process, when I got ahold of a Soundelux
U195, I found that it made a good stereo pair with the AM40. On the song
"Five Years," that's two different acoustic guitars (Yamaha
/ Harmony), each recorded in mono with the U195 (into the RNP) and panned
out in stereo. It was the quickest acoustic guitar micing on the album,
and is one of my favorite sounds. The U195 rocks.
Only the Yamaha acoustic had a pickup in it, a Fishman piezo with no onboard preamp. Not to be trusted by itself, it was tracked when extra presence or bass was needed, to be added under the mic tracks in a mix. Because the pickup had no built-in electronics, I ran it to the preamp section of the SWR amp, and took a line out of that into Pro Tools. The SWR does a decent job of balancing the tone of the pickup, minimizing the magnetic "zing" of a raw piezo output, but these DI tracks were nonetheless used sparingly.
Arranging and Overdubs
As I was working on the basic tracks, I had already begun gathering ideas for the other instruments I'd be adding. I made a stack of index cards, one for each song. At the top I'd write the title and the beats-per-minute, and then everytime I got an idea for an instrument, a specific musical part, or even a visual description (e.g. "foggy and dense"), I'd add it to the card. When I felt like blowing off steam from the precision of working on the rhythm tracks, I'd flip through the cards and pick an idea to play with. Plug in a keyboard, grab a shaker, throw a mic on an organ real quick, and just improvise along with the track. Sometimes I'd have no clue about what I was going to play, and just go for it. Often these takes would produce an appealing idea or two that I could later expand on. Occasionally the whole take would work with the song, and it was just kept as-is.
Around
this time it began to dawn on me that I was over my head in tracks and
ideas, without the mixing skills to make them all fit sonically. As sole
arranger, producer, engineer, etc, I was fast losing perspective on the
whole project. It was time to enlist some outside help. I was going to
want someone else to mix the album, and wanted to get their input before
I went any further in possibly troublesome directions. So I contacted
Jeff Stuart Saltzman, a Portland producer/engineer who
had worked on some albums I really liked the sound of (most recently,
at that point, The
Standard's August). We met in early October, and I brought
over a few songs in unmixed form (copied the Pro Tools sessions onto a
portable hard drive). Jeff listened to them, soloed some individual tracks,
gave me a few pointers, and told me I was on the right track. That brief
meeting gave me confidence, especially in the less-than-pro drum sounds,
which helped me move forward more boldly. Jeff and I also set up some
tentative mixing dates for early December, which gave me a firmer timeline
for my recording.
Back
at home, I continued overdubs, and as I saw the songs coming together
(or not) started making decisions about which songs to focus on, and which
to abandon for now. I also started recording vocals in earnest. The quieter
songs were cut with the U195 on vocals. On louder songs I'd also try out
dynamic mics like the EV 664 (see photo), an SM
57, or a 58 with the windscreen ball removed and an external pop filter.
The mics would usually be plugged into the RNP, but sometimes for layering
or distorting parts I would plug them into the VTB-1 running into the
red. Because my basement studio has low ceilings, I would try and cut
as many vocals in the upstairs living room as possible. I'd run a homemade
snake (just a breakout box with 2 XLRs and a 1/4" jack) up the stairs,
set up Pro Tools to loop record, and then run up the stairs to cut a half-dozen
takes in a row.
As the timing was getting tighter, I also scheduled recording time in October/November with a few players for parts I wanted but couldn't play myself (like the double bass).
There's a lot I could detail here ad nauseum about every micing setup for every overdub. I'm happy to answer any questions, but for now I'll refrain from delivering a litany of technical info.
Mixing, Mastering
The December mixing dates came soon enough. I had talked with Jeff about mixing in a studio, but for cost, convenience, and flexibility, he suggested trying mixing at his place first. This meant mixing "in the box" (within Pro Tools), with only a pair of NS-10's for monitors. Though I was skeptical at first, I wound up being very glad we went that route. Jeff knows those monitors, and has such excellent ears, the results were great. And the flexibility factor (including the instant mix recall of working in Pro Tools) was a huge help. As will happen, I was still working on many of the vocal tracks when we started mixing. So with a couple songs, Jeff would start the mix one day, and then later in the week I'd bring in the finished vocal track, he'd bring the mix up and finish it with the real vocals.
On many of the songs, we did wind up using outboard compressors in the mix. Often, the drums would be submixed through a Neve limiter, and the vocals sent out through an 1176. In the version of Pro Tools we were using, using outboard inserts was a pain in the ass, requiring time-shifting the audio so that, once it had suffered the time delay (latency) of being sent out and back through the DA and AD converters, the newly processed audio would line up where it was supposed to. Supposedly, the new Pro Tools versions do this latency compensation automatically. Here's hoping it works.
In all, Jeff and I mixed about five days in December, and then three more days in January. So for a twelve song album, that's about two songs a day, a decent pace. The quality of the mixes still amaze me – I feel like I delivered a pile of tracks and ideas, roughly stacked on each other, and Jeff applied the glue and sharpened up the edges.
After coming up with the song order, I sent the mixes to John Fischbach at Piety St. Recording in New Orleans for mastering. I didn't know what to expect, how much of a change there would be. To my surprise, the bass frequencies came back sounding fuller and more balanced than I could've imagined. There was also a clarifying of the midrange, and quite a fair dose of top end added. It was clear he knew how to help the sound of a project recorded with lower end equipment. John is also quite affordable, and I would encourage those in similar situations to give him a call.
I learned a million things recording Peep by myself. Plenty of pitfalls I stepped right in, but in time I learned how to find my way out of them. Already planning how to make the next album even better!
Jeff Stuart Saltzman can be reached at www.jeffsaltzman.com
John Fischbach can be reached through Piety
St. Recording
Drum Micing Setups
Each mic is listed with its position, and the mic pre used is listed in parentheses. You may want to refer to the complete gear list below if you're unfamiliar with the names.
Drum Setup A (see photo)
Kick: EV 664 close on front to (RNP); speaker
mic 6" in front (Spirit)
Snare: Tape Op omni on side shell (Spirit)
Floor Tom/Ride: ADK A-51 (JoeMeek)
Overhead: AM40 pointing down, over drummer's right shoulder (RNP)
Room: PZM on an easel about 3' out from the front of the kit (Spirit)
Drum Setup B
Kick: EV 664 close on front (Spirit)
Front: AM40, 18" out from the kick, aimed at the edge of the kick
and looking under the rack tom at the snare (RNP)
Snare: Beyer M201 pointing down at rim (RNP)
Side: CM-700 looking across ride (JoeMeek)
Room: Tape Op omni pointing inside clothes dryer 12' away (Spirit)
The Gear
back to topI've listed here only my gear, not other players' instruments or Jeff's gear used in mixing.
Pro Tools LE 5.2.1 on a 733 MHz Mac G4
Digidesign 001
the mic pres:
FMR Audio Really Nice Preamp (RNP 8380)
Spirit M12 Mixing Board
JoeMeek VC3 Pro Channel
Studio Projects VTB-1
the mics:
Soundelux U195
Groove Tubes / Alesis AM40
EV 664
Beyer M201
ADK A-51 (w/Scott Dorsey mod)
Crown CM-700
12"
speaker mic (8 ohm paper cone speaker wired as a mic, mounted on an
extra snare stand)
Tape
Op Omni's (2)
Shure SM57 & SM58
Wollensak carbon mic
Radio Shack PZM
instruments:
Yamaha FG acoustic
Harmony Sovereign acoustic
Harmony archtop electric
Fender Mustang
Fender Pbass
Sequential Circuits MAX
Propellerhead Reason
Yamaha alto saxophone
egg shaker, bean pod shaker, tambourine
no-name accordion
Frankenstein drumkit
amps:
SWR California Blonde
Vox Pathfinder 15
no-name tube amp
miscellaneous:
Stedman pop filter
FMR Audio Really Nice Compressor (RNC 1773)