Before I have to get in another bar conversation that follows the lines of "you wouldn't go into a 7-Eleven and steal a candy bar would you?" I wish we could all at least get on the same page:
If it floats your boat, you can donate to the project at their website.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Guerrilla Recording: El Cheapo Mic Review
In our last installment, we resurrected some live guerrilla recordings from the vault and released the results for free download.
Download: Follow the link, click "continue," and click "download file" for free download.
Dies Irae, Live at the Ranger, 3/24/07
3 Songs, 192 kbps, 21 MB
As I mentioned before, we didn't have our usual trusty supply of gear that night, but we came up with enough gear to record a minimalist setup. We ended up with 7 inputs separately tracked to our DAW, recorded with a flat EQ and no real-time processing so we could tweak the tracks during mixdown. As for our microphones, we were forced to go with what we could find or borrow in true guerrilla fashion. For the drum mics we acquired from a local band the surviving pieces of a CAD Pro-7 Mic Kit: a kick & snare mic and two tiny overhead condensers. For the guitar we found an Audix I-5 dynamic mic, and the bass was recorded through a DI box because the bass cabinet had a rattle and we were short a decent bass mic. The vocalist had his own SM58 which topped out our minimalist track list at number 7.
We weren't expecting spectacular results from this borrowed equipment, and well, the raw tracks at the end of the night confirmed our expectations.
First off, lest anyone be misled by the model name of the drum mics, rest assured there's nothing "pro" about those CAD microphones. Tracking drums for Dies Irae should have been a cakewalk-- the drum set was beautifully tuned and the drummer's a solid player, but these microphones couldn't keep up. The CAD kick and snare mics had no usable definition regardless of placement. There was so much excessive bleed between the CAD mics that EQing each to sound reasonable was a real chore, because for example, boosting the snare mic to get that "crack" meant that some other part of the drums would emerge with unnatural emphasis and mess everything up. No amount of EQ to the kick mic could make the "thwack" come out (although the bleeding snare became more apparent and even more awful sounding). Judging from the raw tracks, I'd suspect that both microphones have a frequency response similar to string & can telephone acoustics.
To make matters worse, the CAD CM217 overhead microphones proved completely worthless and crumbled under the decibels the drummer delivered that night. Even though the pad switch on the mic was engaged and the mic preamps were purring with plenty of headroom, the CAD overheads delivered audio that sounded like a truck dragging sheet metal down a gravel road. Check it out:
The final word is that this line of CAD mics officially suck and should be avoided for all recording purposes, unless you're absolutely desperate for drum coverage and flat broke (in which case check garage sales and pawn shop dumpsters). If you're at all interested in fidelity in your recording, you won't find it with these cheapie drum mics. (Studio gear elitists can emit a big "duh" here-- hey, we're just clarifyin') There are better alternatives for mic'ing drums on a budget, and these ain't it.
For the guitar, we ended up using an Audix I-5 dynamic microphone, even though we had access to a trusty SM57. At this point, the whole recording was turning out to be a microphone experiment any way, so we decided to check out the Audix mic first-hand. The I-5 has a reputation for having a brighter sound than a 57, and sure enough, the guitar tracks we got were lightbulb bright, and Brillo-Pad harsh. To be fair to the Audix, the guitarist was using a Mesa Boogey dual 12" combo with its settings unchanged from a recent jazz gig, so the rig was already a bit bright, but the I-5 seemed unable to translate any of the beefy end regardless of mic placement, even though the I-5 also has a reputation for a warmer low end. While this microphone might be suitable for other guitar tones, amp/speaker characteristics, or genres of music, using the I-5 on this occasion left our guitar without any warmth in the low-mid end of the spectrum. We wanted Dimebag, and all we got was a nickel.
Recording the bass was about a simple as it could get. The bass patched directly into a DI Box and fed parallel signals to his amplifier and our mixing board. Even though the bass was thick and full for the live audience, the signal we received was nothing more than what the instrument pickups delivered. Without the amp and speakers to shape the instrument's sound, the bass was expectedly naked and thin. We knew going into the live recording that in order to get a good bass sound we would either have to re-amp the bass track afterwards, or emulate a bass cabinet with an appropriate emulation plugin.
Here's a snippet of all the raw audio; first the bass, then guitar, drums and vocals:
After inspecting the raw audio, it would be totally forgivable for an audio purist to write off any hope for salvaging this experimental recording; after all, the overheads are massively clipping and the instruments don't sound as good as they did live.
Still, since guerrilla recording is all about doing the best with what you have, CHiTT set out to show that the darkest hour is just before post-processing. In the world of digital audio, nothing is completely lost, and with enough knowledge, the right tools, and a little hocus pocus, you can clean up anything. Here's the same audio snippet after a couple of hours of tweaking in the studio (with all tracks up at once):
In our final installment in this series, we'll cover exactly what we did to fix the tracks to the best of our ability and arrive at a fan-worthy bootleg despite using cheapo microphones.
Download: Follow the link, click "continue," and click "download file" for free download.
Dies Irae, Live at the Ranger, 3/24/07
3 Songs, 192 kbps, 21 MB
As I mentioned before, we didn't have our usual trusty supply of gear that night, but we came up with enough gear to record a minimalist setup. We ended up with 7 inputs separately tracked to our DAW, recorded with a flat EQ and no real-time processing so we could tweak the tracks during mixdown. As for our microphones, we were forced to go with what we could find or borrow in true guerrilla fashion. For the drum mics we acquired from a local band the surviving pieces of a CAD Pro-7 Mic Kit: a kick & snare mic and two tiny overhead condensers. For the guitar we found an Audix I-5 dynamic mic, and the bass was recorded through a DI box because the bass cabinet had a rattle and we were short a decent bass mic. The vocalist had his own SM58 which topped out our minimalist track list at number 7.
We weren't expecting spectacular results from this borrowed equipment, and well, the raw tracks at the end of the night confirmed our expectations.
First off, lest anyone be misled by the model name of the drum mics, rest assured there's nothing "pro" about those CAD microphones. Tracking drums for Dies Irae should have been a cakewalk-- the drum set was beautifully tuned and the drummer's a solid player, but these microphones couldn't keep up. The CAD kick and snare mics had no usable definition regardless of placement. There was so much excessive bleed between the CAD mics that EQing each to sound reasonable was a real chore, because for example, boosting the snare mic to get that "crack" meant that some other part of the drums would emerge with unnatural emphasis and mess everything up. No amount of EQ to the kick mic could make the "thwack" come out (although the bleeding snare became more apparent and even more awful sounding). Judging from the raw tracks, I'd suspect that both microphones have a frequency response similar to string & can telephone acoustics.To make matters worse, the CAD CM217 overhead microphones proved completely worthless and crumbled under the decibels the drummer delivered that night. Even though the pad switch on the mic was engaged and the mic preamps were purring with plenty of headroom, the CAD overheads delivered audio that sounded like a truck dragging sheet metal down a gravel road. Check it out:
The final word is that this line of CAD mics officially suck and should be avoided for all recording purposes, unless you're absolutely desperate for drum coverage and flat broke (in which case check garage sales and pawn shop dumpsters). If you're at all interested in fidelity in your recording, you won't find it with these cheapie drum mics. (Studio gear elitists can emit a big "duh" here-- hey, we're just clarifyin') There are better alternatives for mic'ing drums on a budget, and these ain't it.
For the guitar, we ended up using an Audix I-5 dynamic microphone, even though we had access to a trusty SM57. At this point, the whole recording was turning out to be a microphone experiment any way, so we decided to check out the Audix mic first-hand. The I-5 has a reputation for having a brighter sound than a 57, and sure enough, the guitar tracks we got were lightbulb bright, and Brillo-Pad harsh. To be fair to the Audix, the guitarist was using a Mesa Boogey dual 12" combo with its settings unchanged from a recent jazz gig, so the rig was already a bit bright, but the I-5 seemed unable to translate any of the beefy end regardless of mic placement, even though the I-5 also has a reputation for a warmer low end. While this microphone might be suitable for other guitar tones, amp/speaker characteristics, or genres of music, using the I-5 on this occasion left our guitar without any warmth in the low-mid end of the spectrum. We wanted Dimebag, and all we got was a nickel.Recording the bass was about a simple as it could get. The bass patched directly into a DI Box and fed parallel signals to his amplifier and our mixing board. Even though the bass was thick and full for the live audience, the signal we received was nothing more than what the instrument pickups delivered. Without the amp and speakers to shape the instrument's sound, the bass was expectedly naked and thin. We knew going into the live recording that in order to get a good bass sound we would either have to re-amp the bass track afterwards, or emulate a bass cabinet with an appropriate emulation plugin.
Here's a snippet of all the raw audio; first the bass, then guitar, drums and vocals:
After inspecting the raw audio, it would be totally forgivable for an audio purist to write off any hope for salvaging this experimental recording; after all, the overheads are massively clipping and the instruments don't sound as good as they did live.
Still, since guerrilla recording is all about doing the best with what you have, CHiTT set out to show that the darkest hour is just before post-processing. In the world of digital audio, nothing is completely lost, and with enough knowledge, the right tools, and a little hocus pocus, you can clean up anything. Here's the same audio snippet after a couple of hours of tweaking in the studio (with all tracks up at once):
In our final installment in this series, we'll cover exactly what we did to fix the tracks to the best of our ability and arrive at a fan-worthy bootleg despite using cheapo microphones.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Free Guerrilla Recording From the Vault: Dies Irae at the Ranger
It's not quite spring yet, but the time has come to clear some space off our hard drives to make room for upcoming recording projects. As I was backing up sessions to DVD I came across a CHiTT guerrilla recording of Laramie metal band Dies Irae captured live at the Ranger Bar last year.We rolled in to record that night as kind of a last minute decision. We were short our usual selection of microphones and hardware (which were probably snowed in somewhere across the state) but we cobbled together what spare microphones, cables and hardware we could find and decided to let the tape roll anyway. Dies Irae always draws a rowdy crowd, and at the very least we just wanted to capture the energy of the evening, even if nothing usable turned out from the recordings. In the end, as we expected, neither the band nor CHiTT Productions thought the material stood up to our expectations for an official release, so we decided to scrap the tracks and go with stronger material.
Still, we find it a shame to let good efforts go to waste, so before I made the final purge from my hard drive we selected three tracks to release for free download. Even though we felt the recording and performance weren't top tier that night, it was an intense evening and we thought we'd offer this brief snapshot of the energy released that night (read: heavy metal umlaut). Even more, it's an argument for the hypothesis that you don't have to own elite gear or have bourgeois audio attitudes to produce decent recordings, and this is a good example of how even the worst recording conditions can produce solid, fan-worthy tracks in the end. Remember would be naysayers: the digital age is also a revolution.
Download: Follow the link, click "continue," and click "download file" for free download.
Dies Irae, Live at the Ranger, 3/24/07
3 Songs, 192 kbps, 21 MB
In the next post, we'll give a complete rundown of the recording setup we used that night including scathing reviews of the sub-par gear we used, and what we did later to clean things up.
Here's to independent artists and other malcontents...
Change is in the air. 2008 is upon us and we look forward to the future and all the new opportunities it will bring. Raise your glasses high and let's toast to 2008 being a productive, creative, and inspiring new year. Get your battle plans ready and meet us at the rendezvous point.
Special thanks to all the cool cats we work with. We look forward to doing more with you in the future.
CHiTT Productions
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Neo-Nostalgics live at the Buckhorn
Here's some video of the Neo-Nostalgics show at the historic (and uniquely aromatic) Buckhorn Bar on December 14th, 2007. CHiTT productions was there providing sound reinforcement and recording all the bands on the bill that night. Thanks in part to a rotating radio promo the bar was packed late into the night-- the best turn out in Laramie in a while, especially considering that finals were over and a lot of students were gone. Also on the bill that night were the Ghosts of Predators Past and Driftwood. Check back soon for a compilation album of the bands on the bill that night and more videos as they surface.
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