Tuning Helps

After recording Saturday, we realized and learned something very important...

Mark, being the more technical part of Shutterwax, has always had trouble finding space for the bass when mixing. We really like a big drum sound and have been happy to date with the drum sounds we were getting, but have had to wrestle with getting the bass heard without it overtaking the entire mix.

I tried something novel... I tuned my drums. I previously enjoyed a bombastic drum sound and left the tuning very deep. My kick drum outer head was completely slack while the inner head was barely taught. I enjoyed that marching drum sound. Unfortunately that sound was also taking up every available frequency for the bass hence rendered the bass inaudible.

I'm a bit embarrassed at this revelation as I would never go into the studio and play an untuned guitar (although I can't say it's never happened), so why wouldn't I bother to tune my drums? Not being my main instrument, the drums always end up as an afterthought which can happen no more!

I went crazy before our session on Saturday and decided to tune the drums up a bit, matching the inner and outer heads of each drum and bringing the kick drum up close to an E below middle C. This made an incredible difference. The kit doesn't necessarily sound great alone but it fits in perfectly with what Mark and I are playing on guitars and bass. The definition is there where it wasn't previously. We are very pleased to say the least.

Now we have to rethink the recordings of the previous songs and we may revisit them with our newly learned tuning/recording techniques...

The latest recording is for a song entitled The Feminine Mystaque. We have the rhythm tracks down but I'm now rethinking the arrangement of the song. I'll be thinking about it all week and will hopefully have a solution before the next recording session on Saturday... Perhaps I'll record acoustic demos of each and post them on the site for your input.

Thanks for reading!
Jeff

The Open Source music journey begins for real

I'm almost done mixing Monkey Gone to Heaven. The open source music journey has been eventful so far, discovering new tools, debugging some tools, finding older tools that work really well...meeting some cool new people in these efforts of debugging (I just report broken stuff...no programming skills here!) and finding out more about open source music.

So I tried a new audio distribution called av linux (http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html) and the creator, Glen (Gmaq) has done an awesome job, it feels really good to use and is organized well. He is also really supportive in answering questions. In addition, I am loving the linuxdsp plugins (linuxdsp.co.uk), the developer, Mike, has also been really responsive to requests for help. It's tools like this and people like this that are going to make this all work.

One interesting aspect of open source programs in general is that it is all technically "free." However, over the past few weeks, I have become more aware of the importance of donating to people who put in the hard work to develop these tools, even if it is only a little but that you can afford. My cool donation story? I sold off some of the plugins I was using on windows, and the ilok authorization key I used with them), and that is the money that got donated. It wasn't enough, but it's a start. And never again will I deal with crap like I did from waves, needing to fork over a nice hefty payment to bring my plugin bundle "up to date" in order to sell them. Or ilok, with the million and ten rules in transferring things over. Kudos to the developers at psp audioware, who gave no issues at all in transferring the licenses of their plugins. Too bad they don't write for linux.

Anyway, it has become a reality to use open source tools now, and I love being able to interact with the developers of the software and with the community of users. The journey continues...

Open Source Journey, part 1- from Mark

Hello everyone, We have officially begun our open source music journey. What does that mean you ask? We are using linux, a free and open source operating system, meaning that any source code (the code that the program is written in) is freely available to anyone who wants it. Windows and Mac are both closed source, meaning Apple and Microsoft protect their code from those who are not employees. There are a lot of advantages to using open source software, the main one being that it is free, both in cost and in freedom (I can distribute the program to anyone else without fear of doing anything illegal). Developers rely on donations from people that use the programs, but it is not required.

We are using ardour, an open source recording program similar to Protools (but not a clone of it), along with effects that are also free and open source (FOSS- free open source software). Ardour is a great program and as I finally force myself to mix in it, I am finding how deep it really is. Open source music software is developing quickly, and while it may never reach the same level of fame as commercial applications backed by big budgets (and pricetags), there is some really solid stuff out there. I haven't really bought into the hype about plugins- for me a compressor is pretty much a compressor, and EQ is an EQ, and if you learn how to use those tools any plugin that doesn't add noise to the signal (unintentionally) can work just fine. I have no need to spend $600 on waves models of Jack Joseph Puig's prized LA-2A's...

So I am mixing our cover of the Pixies "Monkey Gone to Heaven" that we did in Jeff's garage about 2 years ago and revisited a few months ago to redo and add some vocal tracks. We did this as a warmup in the same session as"For What it's Worth." It is taking me a little longer to mix on ardour than it used to on Reaper just because I am familiarizing myself with some new tools, but it is coming along and should be ready for release sometime in the next couple of days.

One of the cool tools that is new is my Korg Nanokontrol, a miniature fader control surface. I got it for $60 today and am having fun controlling my onscreen fader moves, mutes, solos, and pans from real tactile objects (faders, knobs and buttons). The korg was immediately supported in linux when I plugged it in, and I spent about an hour making a template in ardour and the korg template to output various parameters (the buttons on this can do some cool things, like auto fade ins and outs using the switches as momentary switches.) Cool! I'll say it again, yes I'm a nerd, but sometimes it's the small details in life that give you some pleasure.

In the next few weeks, I am also going to try to put together, in writing, the steps taken to get the open source music thing together, because it took some tweaking of the computer and operating system to get it smooth, but if I can do it, anyone can! Using that info, it is easy for anyone to pick up an inexpensive laptop (I got a used IBM in a trade, very solid, 2 year or so old computer, quite powerful on linux) and with really no extra software cost beyond what you feel compelled to donate to different developers, build a smooth, solid audio workstation.

If you understood none of that, sorry!

Mediocre is coming out again!

We just finished mixing Mediocre, it will be posted shortly. This mix was pretty simple to do, not a ton of effects used. When I went crazy on it the other day, luckily the program crashed due to a rogue reverb plugin, so when I redid the mix it was much simpler and much better. Just a bit of delay and a plate reverb (breverb audiomidi edition- got it for $5 the other day!), a little eq, some compression, some filtering, bing bang boom.

Since I got my new laptop (a 2 year old IBM T60) last week it has been much easier to mix, with a lot of it being done in dressing rooms, in the van on a ride to a gig, etc.

Paid his Passage is next, we did some fun background vocal sessions Friday night.

Enjoy the music!- Mark

My New Ears

I just picked up some new studio monitors. I had to give Mark's back... as I was borrowing them for the past nine months and he needed them to mix our stuff. Until two days ago, he was mixing everything on headphones (that's the genius of Mark).

Good monitors are very important as they reveal all the musical inadequacies of the tracks, such as my out-of-time shaker on one of the latest tracks... Oof! that was embarrassing, so I'll be promptly deleting that track when enter the basement musical lair this evening. I will be rerecording all the vocal tracks for Mediocre this evening and we'll hopefully have that song back out for you shortly.

So back to the monitors... good monitors also help us mix the songs properly so there isn't too much bass, or drums, etc.  Every song is a learning experience as far as mixing goes.  Quite often, parts I thought would be fantastic and really creative often become painfully unflattering and borderline strident at best after entering the overall mix.  Occasionally there are some nice surprises which originate as mistakes or impromptu performances and work perfectly.

Now again, I must admit I'm a true greenhorn in a studio environment. I'd always left the engineering up to other people, but as budgets tighten and available time diminishes, I must take the lead on some of these tasks... which sometimes incur disastrous results but often reveal that I'm not as dumb as I thought I was.

Jeff

--
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." - Henry Chinaski

Laying the Foundation

We've been working on a new song which we originally planned to release en tandem with Greyer Than (which we just released 30 minutes ago!). It is entitled The Feminine Mystaque. We wrote this four days ago and recorded all the tracks very quickly. We are very excited about this song and think you will be too, though there are a few issues that need addressing;

Because Mark and I have opposing schedules, much of our recording is done solo as we then send tracks to each other to incorporate into the project. Often, I'll begin a song with just guitar to a click to get the meter and feel of the song going. We'll build upon that. I'm finding more often than not that we end up having to rerecord most of each song as we introduce parts. Some parts change the feel of the song and if we have a guitar part that is slightly ahead of the beat, there are no problems if the whole song is ahead of the beat, but when the drums are behind and the guitars are ahead, the tension is not good and makes for a sloppy sounding recording. We discovered this whilst mixing The Feminine Mystaque. So far I've rerecorded all acoustic guitar parts and will subsequently rerecord all vocal parts... This song, being very percussive, requires the tempos be solid for all parts.

We are adamant about adhering to authentic and honest reproduction of our music. We don't use Autotune, or any other fancy studio techniques to enhance our talents. We rely on exactly what we're able to perform with the equipment we have at hand. Much like a photographer taking the time to set up the perfect composition at the time of exposure versus Photoshopping the hell out of the picture afterward, we take a lot of time to properly mic the room and tune the instruments. We use very few mics (never more than five on the drums) and as few tracks as possible.  All of the tracks are recorded on a Korg d3200 recorder, which in 44.1kHz mode, is a 16 track hard disc recorder. It's a wonderful, no-frills recorder which allows us to quickly get all the sounds we need and share them with each other via the web. Mark uses an open-sourced piece of recording software called Reaper and runs this on Ubuntu Linux. We try to keep it simple, efficient and affordable. It's been working wonderfully to date.

I suppose considering the song was written and recorded in a matter of hours, we could probably afford to spend a day or two making sure all the parts are coherent and cohesive. It's very easy to get caught up in the excitement of releasing a song much to the chagrin of the song itself. We're not doing it any favors by rushing.

I'll be revisiting most of the tracks this weekend and we'll hopefully get this one out next week. Check out Greyer Than and let us know what you think!

Thanks,
Jeff

--
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." - Henry Chinaski

Retooling the Works

Often I write and record a song quickly to get the idea down on tape (hard drive) so I don't lose the idea. These become our demos from which we then work and either rerecord or modify accordingly. There have been a few songs we've released (Mediocre, FWIW, Say When) where we thought they were complete and never listened to again... This sometimes works and other times does not. After listening to these songs again recently, I've realized there are better ways to approach these songs and some parts need reworking. Sometimes it takes me months to come up with perfect revisions in my head. 

I'm going to be rerecording some of the tracks on these songs and Mark will be remixing to fit these into the current 'sound' we have for our latest releases. As Mark will tell you though, there is a fine line drawn between the existing and finished product and overworking the song is easy to do. As with Demantelez, Mark realized after three mixes that the first mix was the best and that's what we released. I would assume most artists go through this but we are trying to keep this as organic as possible, keeping the final versions as close to the original demos and inspiration as possible. Often, reworking a song causes the song to lose its original intent and feeling.

We're going to revisit Mediocre, Say When and FWIW over the next few weeks and will hopefully release the final versions as well as a couple new songs. Stay tuned!

--
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." - Henry Chinaski