Day #3 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
Recording drums, bass, and setting up vocal microphones
Drum Recording
Today we showed up and the drums were ready to go. See Day #2 for the the juicy drum details. We did what Michael called a line check where we solo'd each track to make sure that everything was working properly. It's easy to forget something mega important (like a kick drum mic) when you have a thousand things on your mind (and the last one being the size of your kick drum. Ironically enough, we didn't have the Yamaha Subkick on. That could have been a disaster at mixing time (when you are actually paying attention to the 60Hz energy of the kick drum).
Good old Jerry Lawson from Hydrogyn hopped up on his kit and was all business. He's one of those drummers that I read about. You may have heard of the drummers that prefer playing to a click track because they don't have to think about timing. I have no clue how that works, but I'll take it. Most of the drummers I'm used to hate playing to a click because they have to think about timing.
Double Time The Click Track
Drummers seam to love playing to a double time click track. I never even considered this before, but in conventional 4/4 time the click hits on the kick and the snare. In other words, the drummer can't hear the click. By double timing the click track, the drummer will hear himself in between snares and hits. This not only allows the drummer to hear what he is doing better without destroying his hearing for life, but it also, seams to simply feel better. Instead of trying to match some ?beep?, the drummer is more inclined to simply play drum in time.
Michael Wagener Studio Construction Video
This was another breakthrough at the workshop. I must say that I was very surprised by the Wireworld Studios facility. It's just not that big. In fact, it looks like a nice little cottage or something from the outside. It was actually a 3 car garage that was converted over to a studio. This is not a big studio, in other words. When you include the lounge area and kitchen, the whole studio only measures up to about 1400 sq ft. That's not all that big for a studio cranking out world class productions. While Wagener said that he'd love to have a big place, he said that it simply wasn't all that economical to record in bigger place. While Wagener's facility is miles from what you or I would call a ?home recording studio? in terms of sq footage, it's not THAT far off.
Wagener put together a DVD of the construction of his studio. He sort of documented the entire process, which I thought was very awesome. I've done my share of research into studio construction and I was amazed that Wagener simply followed the standard methods for studio construction. He didn't do anything too extravagant. Basically, Wireworld Studios is a 3 car garage. One car's area makes up the live room and 2 cars go to the control room. While the room feels much bigger when you are in it, after watching the video, it's very clear that the studio is a 3 car garage.
Soundproofing is something I need. After working in Wagener's studio for 9 days, it became apparent that there is no way around it. While I've made recordings for nearly 5 years without soundproofing I've came to the conclusion that you can not make a recording without soundproofing. Okay, that might not make a ton of sense. However, there is no substitute for being able to get your tones while the musician is performing. There is no substitute for being able to hear only through the studio monitors.
To soundproof, Wagener simply used the standard double wall construction. This is sort of Studio Construction 101. You simply build a typical wall with studs, leave a 2? or 3? air space and then build another wall. It's a little more detailed than that, but that's the gist of it. Wagener did use 8lb Rockwool (which is not recommended for acoustic treatment, but should be great for soundproofing) inside the walls. He doubled up the drywall on each side of each wall. He used rubber on the bottom of the walls to reduce sound transmissions to the floor. The live room has an angled wall that allows the room to be totally live without flutter echos.
Bass Recording
We used some mega bass by Spector. This bass was unreal. The bass player actually pulled out his usual bass and it was NOT EVEN CLOSE as far as tone. I think his bass was a Schector. I'm not sure, I get all these ?ector? models mixed up. The Spector was equipped with a Redeemer from Creative Audio Labs and it made cut easily while at the same time was very thick. Amazing bass! The bass was recorded direct through a Groove Tubes Vipre. The tone was extremely clear, but we wanted a little more character. So we re-amped the signal through a Sansamp PSA-1. The sound was what I would call dirty. It was sort of a dark overdrive and very very thick. The sound was not super low end heavy. It was thick in way that wouldn't overload your subwoofers if that makes any sense. In fact, I was worried that it may be too thick, but it obviously turned out fine. Oddly enough, I don't think we EQ's the bass at all except for rolling off some top end.
Vocal Microphone Setup
For our vocal mic shootout, we setup over 10 mics and when including the extra capsules provided by Korby, we had 16 different microphones to choose from. We didn't go into too much depth with the microphones today, we simply set them up.
- Day #1 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #2 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #3 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #4 Vocal Recording at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #4 Electric Guitar Recording at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #5 Tracking at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #6 Nasvhille Studio Field Trip Day at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
Steinberg Cubase 4 Studio |
Lexicon Omega Desktop Recording Studio Bundle |
Superior Drummer 2.0 |
Propellerhead REASON 4.0 Music Production Software |
