Commander Wagener, as I've called him multiple times today, is a hell of a dude. Even though he currently has 64,000,000 album sales under his belt, he's totally down to Earth. It's been a blast spending a day with him. His sense of humor actually lines up quite nicely with mine, which is a nice treat. He still has a hint of German accent that you will hear about once per sentence which certainly adds to the experience. We've heard stories about mixing Master of Puppets with James on one side of him and Lars on the other. We've heard stories about Ozzy leaving a message on his machine saying ?my mixes better rock or I will set you on fire?. We heard various stories about Motley Crue, Extreme, etc etc. Just the conversations have been totally worth it.

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Choosing A Song

For this workshop, Michael decided to record a cover song. The reason being that we could focus on the engineering elements of the song. Obviously, recording music is about ?selling emotions? as Michael said multiple times today. Cramming the emotion into a song takes a tremendous amount of work and it just seamed more reasonable to use a ?template? that was already there from a creative standpoint so we could focus on the engineering end of things. The song we are doing is probably Michael's biggest hit to date. We are recording Skid Row's ?18 and A Life?. The idea is to give it a sound that is obviously more modern with a band that is a little more modern.

The Band: Hydrogyn

The band recording the song recently recorded their album with Wagener. Their name is Hydrogyn ( http://www.hydrogyn.com/ ) Take a strong look at this bands logo (for starters) and tell me that they aren't going places. Everyone in the band is super friendly. More importantly, I don't think I've seen a more effective frontman/frontwoman in all my years. Highly recommended! You'll need to check her out when Hydrogyn hits the road. The band has a few tunes up on their myspace as well. Nice tunes as well.

The Studio

Commander Wagener's Studio surprised me in a number of ways. First of all. This dude has more outboard gear than you could possibly imagine. When it comes to racks and racks and racks of hardcore mega-expensive preamps, compressors, and converters, I'd bet you'd have a hard time beating it...anywhere. He also has a hell of a guitar amp collection. Combined, studio is backed to the brim with gear. I'm not sure how you would fit anymore in. In fact, he has about 10 guitar cases in the kitchen, if that tell you anything. He can't fit anymore gear into the studio!!!

He only has one control room which is amazing and one live room which is not nearly as large as I would have expected. It measures 12x22 if I remember correctly but is filled with so much gear that the room seams much smaller than that. The walls are not parallel so there is no flutter echo (annoying reflections). However, it's not like the room has been super treated. The floor is just concrete that was painted white.

Nerd Recording Stuff

We went over how to find the best place in the room for placing the drums. Awesome!

We tried 10 or so different mics on the snare top. The winners were not always what you expected.

We tried out 23 different preamps on the snare. Special thanks to Hydrogen drummer Jerry Lawson for repeatedly beating the snare for hours. That couldn't have been fun. Thanks for taking it in the ass for us, Jerry.

Micheal gave us the most amazing sounding guitar pick of all time. SERIOUSLY! MINDBLOWING!

At The End of The Day

So far the workshop has been amazing! I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'm learning a ton, meeting cool people, and having a great time. I'd recommend this to anyone serious about recording.

Brandon

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