Drum Tracking and other Adventures
What a day!!!! Some of it i cant tell you yet, but soon. This has been one of those days where all of the planets kind of snapped into alignment and alot of completely unrelated things all came together today. That latest sample recreation for that Legend-ary artist got sent out to get mixed today. Its an absolutely beautiful song and I am proud to have worked on it.
I also talked to one of my co-producers and partner's in production crime, Ben Hud, from the Cayman Islands. Me, Ben, and Brent Kolatalo (another production partner in crime) have been producing a bunch of Jamaican artists on a new Riddim called the "Baby J Riddim". We've done several versions so far, but one version, featuring Delly Ranx, called "Shake Your Booty" is (in my humble opinion), going to be a very big hit in the islands. We're servicing it to radio in a couple weeks and looking for a video production company to shoot a video for the song. The early response on the song has been tremendous. As soon as its serviced to radio, I'll probably post it here so you all can hear what it sounds like. Its a very fun song.
I also am producing a song for NYC rockers Skidmore Fountain right now. Monday and Tuesday i was in New York doing pre production with them, and today we recorded the song. Drums, Cello, Guitar, and Lead vocals. It was a very long, but very productive day, and the song as well as the recording is coming out super great. I'm happy. The blog i posted yesterday about drum micing was spent with the drummer from Skidmore Fountain and all the best sounds we got from yesterday we recorded today on a song called "Break". I'm still hoping to find time to do an audio blog with sound examples of all the different mics we tried on all the different drums, but i'm just too exhausted right now to contemplate it. However, I did take a screen shot of the drum mic/pre setup. Here it is, the winners from yesterday's shootout.
Skidmore%20Drums.png
Actually, this is almost accurate. The low tom did not go thru a Sytek mic pre. The Sytek has no pad and the input from the C800G on the low tom was too hot, so i had to go thru an Oram-sonic Mic Pre with less gain. Everything else is as pictured.
I also recorded the guitar and cello today thru amplifiers. I did one guitar take with a Less Paul thru my Madison half stack mic'd with a pair of Royer R122 Ribbon mics into Avalon 737's. I also used this same chain to record electric Cello although i set up the Madison amp completely differently, and used different EQ curves on the Avalon 737's. That Madison amp is so versatile and sounds so good. I endorse Madison amps, and for a good reason, they sound great, and they get a very wide range of different tones. I did a guitar overdub with a Telecaster thru a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp as well. Oh yeah, i also recorded a few electric Cello parts with the Madison half stack as well as a Leslie Rotating Speaker Cabinet. Both Royer mics were on the Leslie cab on oposite side to get a real left to right stereo pan thing going, and i used one Oktava ML52 Ribbon mic on the Madison 4X12 cab. blended the three together and got a great sound. Some parts i cut with the Leslie cab moving real slow and a couple parts with the cab spinning very fast. cool effect and real.
Anyway, I'll probably post at least a clip of the Skidmore Fountain song once its mixed, so you can hear all of these things if you'd like. for now, I cant keep my eyes open and its only 2am, but then i'm working off of about 3 hours of sleep, if that. Time to get a good solid 8 hours of shut eye, i hope.
-Ken Lewis
I also talked to one of my co-producers and partner's in production crime, Ben Hud, from the Cayman Islands. Me, Ben, and Brent Kolatalo (another production partner in crime) have been producing a bunch of Jamaican artists on a new Riddim called the "Baby J Riddim". We've done several versions so far, but one version, featuring Delly Ranx, called "Shake Your Booty" is (in my humble opinion), going to be a very big hit in the islands. We're servicing it to radio in a couple weeks and looking for a video production company to shoot a video for the song. The early response on the song has been tremendous. As soon as its serviced to radio, I'll probably post it here so you all can hear what it sounds like. Its a very fun song.
I also am producing a song for NYC rockers Skidmore Fountain right now. Monday and Tuesday i was in New York doing pre production with them, and today we recorded the song. Drums, Cello, Guitar, and Lead vocals. It was a very long, but very productive day, and the song as well as the recording is coming out super great. I'm happy. The blog i posted yesterday about drum micing was spent with the drummer from Skidmore Fountain and all the best sounds we got from yesterday we recorded today on a song called "Break". I'm still hoping to find time to do an audio blog with sound examples of all the different mics we tried on all the different drums, but i'm just too exhausted right now to contemplate it. However, I did take a screen shot of the drum mic/pre setup. Here it is, the winners from yesterday's shootout.
Skidmore%20Drums.png
Actually, this is almost accurate. The low tom did not go thru a Sytek mic pre. The Sytek has no pad and the input from the C800G on the low tom was too hot, so i had to go thru an Oram-sonic Mic Pre with less gain. Everything else is as pictured.
I also recorded the guitar and cello today thru amplifiers. I did one guitar take with a Less Paul thru my Madison half stack mic'd with a pair of Royer R122 Ribbon mics into Avalon 737's. I also used this same chain to record electric Cello although i set up the Madison amp completely differently, and used different EQ curves on the Avalon 737's. That Madison amp is so versatile and sounds so good. I endorse Madison amps, and for a good reason, they sound great, and they get a very wide range of different tones. I did a guitar overdub with a Telecaster thru a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp as well. Oh yeah, i also recorded a few electric Cello parts with the Madison half stack as well as a Leslie Rotating Speaker Cabinet. Both Royer mics were on the Leslie cab on oposite side to get a real left to right stereo pan thing going, and i used one Oktava ML52 Ribbon mic on the Madison 4X12 cab. blended the three together and got a great sound. Some parts i cut with the Leslie cab moving real slow and a couple parts with the cab spinning very fast. cool effect and real.
Anyway, I'll probably post at least a clip of the Skidmore Fountain song once its mixed, so you can hear all of these things if you'd like. for now, I cant keep my eyes open and its only 2am, but then i'm working off of about 3 hours of sleep, if that. Time to get a good solid 8 hours of shut eye, i hope.
-Ken Lewis
posted by Protools Mixing at 1:09 AM
5 Comments:
c800 on the low tom.. nice ;D
Ken,
Given I'm a novice. What do you think about using a Neve 1073 or an API 512c on drums?
I think the Neve 1073 or API 512C would be an excellent choice for drum tracking. Of course a good single channel 1073 Module will cost you around $3,000 and while they sound amazing, there are plenty of other very good sounding choices for alot less money. One of the things that most surprised me about the most recent microphone shootout was that MANY of the "Budget" microphones sounded noticably better on certain things than the super expensive mics. For instance, the Studio Projects C4 mic's (about $300 for a PAIR!!) sounded slightly better than my pair of very expensive Royer R122's on the cymbals. I was pretty surprised as the Royers are typically my overhead of choice. Also, the SM57 sounded better on the top of the snare than about 6 other mics i tried, and was 2nd or 3rd best on the bottom of the snare as well. Some of the differences in mics on the same sound source was shocking. I'll be doing another shootout soon of mic pre's, and I'll see how different my "choice" mics sound thru different pre's. Unfortunately, i only have 5 different types of mic pre's, but it should be enough to get results.
-Ken Lewis
Thanks for getting back at me. I'll look out for your next shootout too.
damn you got delly ranks on the beat that is awesome - delly is the best reggae artist around
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