Interviews
By John Baccigaluppi
I first met John Tchicai when I recorded his 1995 album, Love is Touching. I was several days into the project when I learned that, among others, he had played with John Lennon, Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, playing on the latter's landmark recording, Ascension. At that point I was mostly retired...
Interviews
The debut album from New York's Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights, was one of the most successful independent rock albums in...
Article
Dave Mattacks is arguably one of the world's best drummers. His recording credits include: Joan Armatrading, Mary Chapin-Carpen...
Interviews
Interviews
The adage "garbage in garbage out" takes on added meaning when it comes to recording drums. An out of tune drum can ruin any recording session. Unfortunately, very few people know the basics of drum tuning — including drummers! Many studio sessions involve drum heads that are covered with muffles and drenched in reverb, resulting in a sound evocative of cardboard boxes being hit with spoons. Although I've been playing drums for a long time, it was only in the past several years that I've gotten a proficient handle on tuning. The following provides a primer aimed at anyone who wants to capture better drum sounds without taking years of trial and error. Since the topic of drum tuning can quickly expand to materials, construction designs, and physics, I've tried to limit the scope of this discussion to a recording situation. I've listed a few resources at the end of this piece for those wishing additional detail.
The Icelandic group Múm started off as a four piece mixing inventive but orthodox electronica with acoustic instruments. Now they're a three-piece, and their music — neither wholly electronic nor acoustic — has become startlingly unique. For live shows they augment PowerBook grooves with guitars, banjo, accordion, melodicas, bells, xylophone, trumpet, strings, and musical saw. Their recently-released third album, Summer Make Good, adds harp, Stroh violin, and North Atlantic gales to this mix, and it should be required listening for anyone looking to create and capture hitherto unheard sounds in any genre of music. I spoke to Örvar Smárason from the group about the making of the album, which was conceived in Berlin, recorded in an old lighthouse keeper's house by Orri Jonson of Slowblow and mixed in Sundlaugin, Sigur Rós' swimming pool studio.
John Schumann makes crazy pedals. He makes them 10 to 12 hours a day, every day, in a shop at the back of Main Drag Music, a great independent store near Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Schumann walked in the very first day Carl Myers opened the store six years ago with a Two Face Fuzz in his hand and asked if they would carry it. They did. Soon after that he got a call from Scott Minor (of Sparklehorse) who had seen the pedal at Main Drag. Minor has become a huge supporter of Schumann Electronics and helped spread the word overseas to several influential bands, including Portishead and Radiohead. You can hear the Two Face Fuzz signature on Radiohead's latest, Hail to the Thief. These days the Schumann Line is in high demand and he can barely keep on top of the orders. Now he builds the craziest pedal of all: The PLL.
The Green Bullet, as you likely know, is designed as a mic for harmonica players. You plug it into a guitar amp, and there's your classic blues harp sound. I don't play harmonica or even know anyone who does, but I bought one anyway because I had a feeling it'd be just the thing for some...
I've been wanting a couple channels of API preamps for a while, but put off by the "commitment" API's frame system represents to me, I've never done so. However, Andy Hong steered a pair of API's 7600 input strips in my direction, and I don't know how much longer I can hold out. I don't have the...
This mic is a miniature condenser intended as a lapel mic for broadcasting. When I was a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, there were a lot of these microphones floating around for use with the video cameras in the film department. All of us music recording kids used to use...
Loops, loops and more loops. The Essential Rhythm DVD sample set crams in 322 drum loops in addition to another 200 rhythm combo, acoustic guitar, bass, percussion, and one-shot samples. Riding on the fame of Dishwalla drummer George Pendergast, this disc offers 24-bit Acid/Ableton Live ready...
Until a couple of years ago, I did nearly all my mixing using headphones. My reason for this approach was almost entirely economics-driven; usually one to maximize the bang/buck equation, I, like many budget home-recordists, determined that it made more sense to use a really good pair of 'phones...
Leave it to Hosa, the audio industry's clear leader in coming up with innovative ways to mold plastic around wire, to come up with this family of ingenious products: short IEC power cables with a variety of male and female connectors. If you're frustrated with coils of overly long IEC power cables...
I first became interested in the KMS 105 condenser mic at TapeOpCon 2004 in New Orleans when both Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and The Evens along with Don Zientara of Inner Ear studios, mentioned it as one of their favorite vocal mics. Ian mentioned that he likes to cut vocals listening to the studio...
Just when you think that life couldn't get any sweeter, along comes Peavey to put the Pro into its groundbreaking Kosmos boom box, creating the next wave of over-the-top and under-the-bottom bass generation. And that's not all. The high frequencies are not only enhanced, as Peavey modestly puts it,...
I have to admit, I wanted to hate this unit. I realized that my prejudice came from my experience with a market that makes outrageous claims every day, and rarely does a unit come along that lives up to these lofty claims. I wanted to hate the soft-keys on the face of this box, and I wanted to hate...
Attending the yearly Winter NAMM show in Anaheim is like walking into the largest music store in the world... times 10. The whole convention center is full of musical instruments, recording gear, accessories, and people. With all the new products being shown, you'd think a gear geek like me would...
I'll just say this right up front, there's no doubt in my mind that the PMD670 is the next generation portable recorder. The PMD670 records directly to Compact Flash in WAV, Broadcast WAV, MP2 or MP3 formats at 32k, 44.1k or 48k sample rates, with bitrates for MP2 up to 384k stereo. The PMD670...
The T.C. Electronic System 6000 is as high-end as it gets. Regardless of whether it's a piece of gear that is appropriate for your particular recording set up, there are several innovations that are worth learning about. I'm sure you'll start finding them both in other pieces of T.C. gear and other...
A few colleagues of mine had mentioned using the ART Pro VLA compressors for getting crunchy drum sounds, so when I heard ART had a new compressor coming out, I wanted to give it a review. This two- channel, 1RU compressor features the standard front- panel controls plus a DI, VU gain-reduction...
The TG Channel is yet another great piece in the Chandler TG series. It is a single channel, one rack space unit with the same mic pre found in the Chandler TG-2 pre, combined with a three-band EQ. The EQ is a passive, 100% discrete transistor circuit and all inductor-based. While there are many...
The human throat, unlike many instruments in the studio, is usually the one that gets the least amount of care and can end up taking the most abuse. Many times I've seen people blow their throat out during vocal sessions due to poor technique, allergies or recent colds. And of course, smoking seems...
When one hears the name SSL, the first thing that comes to mind is a big bucks console. Now that there is some kind of rackmount version of every other large format console's mic pres or channel strips, it makes sense that SSL would bring various parts of their famed products out as standalone...