Use Your Ears Pt. 2
Posted in Recording | Tagged Channel, Drums, mic, MKL 2500, Octava, placements, Recording, Strip, Trident |I decided to go ahead and upload the samples that I was talking about in the previous post. To recap, I used two Octava MKL 2500′s and placed them here:
and here:
This second mic was rotated to make the different sounds you will hear in the clip. The first four bars you hear are with the mic facing forward (like the picture), the next four are with the mic turned at a 90 degree angle away from the kick, and the third is with the mic turned 180 degrees away from the snare. You can hear how the sound of the snare changes with each turn. I ran both mics through a Trident channel strip, and gave a hefty boost at 50 hz and 4k, and filtered out everything above 12k. Compression was also used.
Again, I was going for a particular “sound” and it wouldn’t be suitable for a lot of applications. But for what I’m working on, it works quite well! Thanks for reading.
Jeremy
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Use Your Ears
Posted in Recording, Uncategorized | Tagged Amy, Gabriel, mic, placement, Recording, Roth, tips, Winehouse |If I were to give any one of you “producers in the making” a drum kit, and your choice of any mics to set up on the kit, there’s a fairly good chance that a good number of you would set up the mics in the same way. You’d put a matched pair of condensers above the kit- a left and a right, a D-6, D-112, or large diaphragm mic on the kick, a 57 on top of the snare, a small pencil mic on the snare bottom, and probably some M421′s on the toms. I would probably do the same, until recently. We do this because we are raised to believe that this is how you mic a drum kit. And it works- kind of. But by following tradition, we neglect the MOST useful tool we have as producers- our ears.
I’m going to admit something embarrassing. I just now discovered the music of Amy Winehouse. Elsie and I were driving in the car recently, and the song “Rehab” came on. I instantly turned it up, and asked Elsie, “Who the hell is this?!?”. The production sounded amazing- flawless to my ears. Yes, I’m a bit late to the party, but if you know me, this may not be all that surprising. Thus began the journey of researching every detail I could find about the sound of this record. This journey led me to research Gabriel Roth and the Daptones Studio in Brooklyn.
There’s a great article here about how he works. You should read it. But I’d like to highlight one thing he says in the article-
“One of the big problems with modern engineering is everyone telling everyone else how they put this microphone here and another there, and you have to use this condenser for overheads and this large-diaphragm condenser for the kick, and so on. Once it becomes a formula, people stop using their ears.”
After reading this, it occurred to me that I’d stopped using my ears to dictate mic placement, I relied on tradition. So, last week I started running experiments with different mic placements. And for starters, I tried something he mentioned:
“From the drummer’s point of view, if you looked down between the snare and the kick drum, you’d see it about a foot or two away from the snare,” he explains. “The second microphone is often in the same spot as the first but adds different frequencies. Sometimes the one and only mic is over or behind the drummer’s head. Sometimes the only mic is a Radio Shack dynamic.”
So, I set up one mic this way (between the kick and snare, but back a foot). Now, you may be thinking, “Wait, you’re doing the thing you were trying to avoid, putting the mic’s where someone told you to put them!”. Yes, this is true, but only for a starting point. I set up a mic in a “Gabriel Roth” fashion, and then started moving that mic around until it sounded balanced. After some experimentation, I set up a second mic near the first one, but pointed it more towards the kick drum. By the way, I tried this with every mic I owned, and for the beat that I was playing, the winner was not my Neumann M149. The winner was a (mildly priced) Octava MKL 2500! That mic was sitting in it’s case for the last three years!
I had to apologize to her for all of those lonely years of neglect. I ran this mic and a second 2500 through my Trident channel strip, and found glorious results after spending some time messing with the EQ. I also found that I got very different- and very rewarding results by rotating these mics to different angles. But the important lesson here is not that I found a cool easy way to record drums with two mics. The lesson here, is that by trying something I’d never tried, I got a sound I’ve never obtained. Use your ears. If anyone is interested, I could post some samples on here of my results. Thanks for reading.
Jeremy
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“A Minor Bird” Journal #4- Chemical Reaction (2)
Posted in Collaborations, Recording | Tagged A, Bird, Darren, Jeremy, King, Larson, Minor, Recording, Stacy, studio, Sucre |This entry was taken from October 28th, 2011. We were reworking the verses on Chemical Reaction. If you were curious about what that piano sound on the verses was, you can see it in the picture below. I remember this day well…
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It’s been a great week so far here with Darren and Stacy. Looks like we may have finally come up with a name for this project, but I will wait until it’s official to announce. They got here on my birthday (best gift ever!) but as the first day of working went on, my ever so slight ear-itation turned into a full fledged ear infection. Mostly better now! As always, I’ve been taking lots of pictures of our process. Here are a few from yesterday:
Darren put some coins onto some dangling tape. As you strike the keys, it sounds very much like a harpsichord. When doubled with the Crumar DP-50, glorious things happen.
Stacy spend most of the day working on lyrics. As you can see in the picture, God was shining down on the paper, dictating the words for her. This never happens when I write…
Back to work! By the way, I’m posting lots of this stuff in my Instagram as well. Thanks for reading!
Jeremy
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Jon Foreman Collaboration
Posted in Collaborations, Concerts | Tagged Album, Foreman, Jeremy, Jon, Larson, Solo |Friends, it was an eventful weekend. I achieved one of my long time goals- playing music live with one of my favorite songwriters- Jon Foreman. Switchfoot was playing here in Springfield at the Gillioz last Friday, and before the show Jon asked me if I’d like to accompany him on the cello for the after-show show. We did four songs in the parking lot behind the Gillioz, to a crowd of people that hung around after the show. It was truly an honor! Of course I don’t play the cello in a live setting all that often, so I was a little terrified, but still had fun. I neglected to get ANY pictures of the performance, so if you were there and took pics, please email them to me! (band@jeremylarsonmusic.com)
I’ve been keeping something a secret for quite some time, but I think it’s safe to let you all in on this now. Jon is working on a new solo album, and I wrote some string/piano arrangements for two of the songs. Since he tweeted about this the other day, I figured it was safe to talk a little bit about it. I’m not exactly sure when this album is set to be released, but I’m so excited for you all to hear these two songs. Some of Jon’s best songs yet!
I’ve really been in a collaborative mood this year. I’ve put aside writing much of anything for myself so I could work with Stacy, and Jon among others. It’s just where I’m at right now. I’m working on filling up my fall schedule right now, so if you are interested in booking any studio time with me- long distance, or in Springfield, please let me know asap. After the fall, I’ll probably jump back into working on a new album of my own full time.
Thanks for reading.
Jeremy
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“Light Up” Video
Posted in Videos | Tagged Darren, King, Light, Stacy, Sucre, Up, Video |As we were tracking the vocals for “Light Up”, our friend Brandon Goodwin came over and shot a little bit of video. Oddly enough, the vocal take that he filmed (and this was the only vocal take) was the one we ended up using on the album. Check it out:
I’m back home now, and fixing up my studio a bit for some upcoming sessions. I’ll probably work on some of my own music, maybe a bit of Sucré, who knows! Just excited to start writing again. I will probably also start doing some updates here as well. I’ve let this site get a little outdated with all of the touring this year. Thanks for reading!
Jeremy
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