Overheads on "Blue Letters"

[nico]

Hey Michael,

everytime I listen to the song (and others on the record), I'm seriously impressed by the drum sound... Right after the loop where the cymbal rolls come... Those cymbals sound so huge and absolutely clear and "vibey"... As well as the full kit - just plainly huge and full of soul...

How'd you do it? Besides a great room, what did you sue for overheads on the drums, and which mic'ing technique?

Thanks for shading some light into that

[Michael Messer]

Hi Nico,

Hey good to hear from you!

You know the annoying thing is, I don't remermber all the details, we just tried things and if it worked.....we did it that way.

I will do my best to tell you how that track was recorded....

First of all, the main drum sound...the groove pattern....is a vinyl loop and is in mono right in the middle of the speakers. The drummer, Simon Price, is only playing the cymbal fills and they are wide in the stereo panning. Regarding the drum sound in general on Second Mind, we borrowed a beautiful 1940s drum kit and it just had so much character. When we mastered the album through the valve mastering tool, the drums & cymbals were dramatically effected by the compression and a beautiful drum sound appeared. This was pre-prepared by myself & Keith James. I should also say about Blue Letters, that it took me about 30 hours to mix. I did one after the other until I got what I wanted. I knew what I was looking for, but working only with old style analogue equipment, it took time to perfect my mix-moves! After a few hours sleep I drove back to the studio & got it first time. The desk was set up and ready from the day before. I have all the mixes that lead up to the actual mix - it is a very interesting progression of a dozen or so mixes.

To get the sound we recorded everything with very good mics, the overheads were probably a pair of Neumanns. I really think the compression in the analogue mastering was the magic tool that created the sound you are talking about.

When we mixed the album, we did everything possible to 'Chess' and low-tech the sound. The tape heads were cleaned once before the recording sessions and once before the mixing sessions. At no other time did we clean the heads. This is very unusual! Normally, an analogue recording engineer would clean heads more than once a day. We also used second hand 'used' tape (New tape is too clean!!!). We A/B'd the mixes with old favourite recordings and did all we could to get close to their sound. The amount of reverb required to create some of those sounds was also quite unusual! There was more effect than signal on lots of stuff all over the album. The slide guitar on Blue Letters is pushing the desk/board to its limits and that is when the magic happens. Digital cannot do that, because when it reaches its limits it makes a horrible noise.

I often found that I preferred the drum sound from the piano mics than I did from the main kit mics.....stuff like that hapened a lot in the mixes.

Also on Second Mind - we left in as much amp noise and tape noise as we could. On a few tracks the humming amps and Lesley speaker are noticable and add a lot of atmosphere to the tracks. Along with the crackle of the drum loop, the crackles of the blues samples and a whole lot of energy, that is how we got the sound. It was something I had been working towards for a long time and it nearly killed me getting everything how I wanted it. But in the end, I am very happy and proud of what we did.

Albums that I was influenced by to get studio sounds were - Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street, Robert Nighthawk Live On Maxwell Street, Led Zeppelin 1, Bob Marley & The Wailers Catch A Fire, Muddy Waters Chess recordings and lots of old blues records. (there may have been others, I can't remember).

The simple answer to your question about huge sounds is >ANALOGUE MASTERING!

Shine On Nico,
Michael

[nico]

Great explanation, michael - yes, I see what you mean @analogue mastering... I guess that's what makes the drum "room" sound stand out a little more, as well as the whole high fidelity tube vibe that's going on...

Really good to see that someone still CARES for great sound and knows how to use mastering as another creative process... As opposed to most recent records where the mastering engineer is pushed by the label to make it loud - and the sound goes downhill...

I've always found that even minimal differences in sound can make or break the vibe of a record... Of course the music is and should be first, but personally, I can enjoy great music so much more if the recording quality equals the quality of the music

[Michael Messer]

Hi Nico,

I think we both have the same thoughts about great recordings. I believe that the desk is a musical instrument and that the overall finished recorded sound of a track is as important as the arrangement. So much great music is lost or not noticed because of bad recordings.

I also believe that a 'mix' should be a performance and not a technical exercise in getting every centimetre of music digitally perfect. Sometimes that performance can take time to get right, but at least with analogue mixing each mix is its own performance. "All ten fingers on faders and....GO!"

Shine On,
Michael

[Bill Stig]

I totally agree. I miss all the marks, bits of tape and pencils taped to stereo faders. Sometimes it felt like you were learning a piano concerto when mixing.
The loudness wars are making things impossible. A while ago I recorded an acoustic artist for a compilation album. I couldn't find out what else was going on the compilation album and whether it was to be professionally mastered or not. The recording came out well, all analogue on 1" tape. I faithfully preserved the musicians dynamics with as little compression as possible and was very proud of the results. When the CD came out it consisted of tracks of other well known artists taken from their professionally mastered CDs - the out come was that my recording, though sounding great on its own, was too quiet compared with the other tracks.
The moral is, always leave a large part of your budget for professional mastering. It makes so much difference. And remember, most studios that say that they are able to master your music as well as recording aren't usually up to the job. They use one box digital solutions that often make the track sound louder but also worse!!

My son is currently behind me, mixing some tracks for a local indie band and having to resort to digital clipping to get the loudness - AAHHHGGG!!

Bill

[Michael Messer]

Bill, I agree totally. I would never master a recording at the studio where it was recorded. Mastering is a totally different craft and is absolutely vital to getting a great sounding record. I have put rough mixes & home recordings on albums, properly mastered they can sound amazing. The problem is....that owning Wavelab or a similar program does not give you the skills, just the toolbox. My first experiences of great mastering were working with Dennis Blackham on my own early albums. Dennis mastered many of our favourite albums.

The volume thing that you mention is all to do with compression. As you know, zero db is as loud as it gets, but how much compression and how brutal that compression is, is how they make modern records so loud. They give the track a massive EQ tweaking and then compress the f*** out of them! I am amazed at some of the modern recordings I hear.

Shine On,
Michael.