Sharing my experiences as an audio engineer and producer. People like to eat sausage, but no one likes to see how it gets made. I am The Sausage Maker, and this is where I peel back the casing. Do you dare gaze into the hotdog? http://soundcloud.com/audioesoterica
Monday: guitar tracking with Scott of Heaviness Of The Load. Got an awesome tone, got some sweet takes. Layering of distortion continues apace.
Thursday: Vocals with Chris of Invitational. Ended up choosing a large ribbon mic over the others. Looking forward to really digging in to these songs.
Saturday, more HOTload guitars. FUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
On Saturday June 9 at 4pm, Heaviness Of The Load and I officially broke the seal on the new Audio Esoterica headquarters, located inside the lavish. Bambou Entertainment complex in west Baltimore (next door to Studio 14). In 8 hours, we tracked drums and bass for 4 reasonably long songs. Drums were done together with a scratch guitar, bass overdubbed. Scott worked the hardest, as captured below.
The new studio sounds sah-weeeeeet! With the curtains and reiforcement panels up, it's tight and punchy and focused.....perfect for HOTL's percussion assault. Stoked to put guitars down on Monday! I believe some Soundcloud samples will have to follow.
No pics yet, sorry. Too busy MOVING INTO THE NEW STUDIO! Re-ran the cable snake to the live room last night, did some test tracking with Orvil and James. Silly times were had. Tonight we cleared out the live room, set up the headphone preamps, put in some power, and acoustically treated the space. So long, flutter echo! I'm super stoked to do my "dress rehearsal" session with Heaviness Of The Load this Saturday. Pictures, and hopfully video, to follow. In the past week I've also remixed and remastered the Mary Christ 7" (much improved), seen several milliseconds into the quantum future, and received the second worst sunburn of my life at Playa Del Fuego Spring 2012. A solid start to Summer 2012.
Had a great meeting Friday night. On to step two, and then.....?
I spent Saturday recording the talented ladies of Mary Christ. Their guitar player Diana likes old thrash, fuzz pedals, and scifi. We're besties now. Great nasty fuzzy tones all around; We biamped Diana's Fender/FuzzWar with my Silvertone/SwollenPickle and miced each with one of a pair of Nady ribbon mics I seem to under-utilize.
We did four songs, all tracked and maybe half to three-quarters mixed. They played tight as fuck, and I had an awesome time hanging out with them, so much so that I took zero pictures. My B. Hopefully they did and I can score some.
Mix and master tweaking continues apace on the Extermination Angel record. The final notes of this revision are ringing out right now, and it's the best so far. I'm off to make sure it passes the loudness test....this is due to Joe at Black Mess Records on Tuesday, for a rush pressing to meet DeathFest. No time to waste!
This week, I did the vinyl master for the Extermination Angel LP, the mix & master for the Mary Christ 7", and the mix & master for the two Lotus Fucker tracks bound for a MaximumRockNRoll comp. Awesome.
I'm also finalizing my move into the new studio digs. I'll be working out of a studio in the Baltimore Bambou entertainment complex in West Baltimore. Details and pics to follow. VERY EXCITING!
Soon, I can start booking sessions for the summer, and around that, work on incorporating the newest member of Caestles into her vocalist role.
The good times keep rollin'.
Mixing and mastering on the Extermination Angel record continues. Between my tendancy to be very conservative on first passes, and the learning curve of my new monitors, I've not nailed it as directly and firmly and quickly as I'd like. Progress is being made though, and we're getting closer to "right".
Tonight, I have a meeting that will, at the very least, be interesting. Fingers crossed that it's also Awesome.
Tomorrow, I take a break from death metal to record some songs with DC's Mary Christ, I believe for a tour 7".
Sometime next week, we get back to vocals for Invitational and Hive Bent.
The train, she does not slow.
In a barberous pair of session, we finished off vocal overdubs and the bass between Friday night and Saturday afternoon. I spent my Sunday night doing general tweaks on all songs, then focusing on the easiest one. Having nearly mixed and mastered that to completion, I think I have a "template" of settings to apply to the remaining 8 tracks. The plan for tomorrow night is:
-finish perfecting my mix and mastering"templates"
-apply the mix template to the other songs
-begin tweaking and customizing the mix of each song
I expect to be working on the individual mixes Tuesday night as well, followed by mastering everything. Then I and the band will have Wednesday to listen and either approve, or suggest and implement changes.
It's all due Thursday May 10th, so I've gotta work FAST.
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