I recently had someone ask me a question about what microphones we used on different projects and how we selected them. We have a decent collection of microphones available to use in ChurchHouse Studios. The mic being selected really depends on the type of recording you’re doing and the instrument being recorded. When I first started building our mic closet I found one way to make sure you have a decent variety of mics is to look at two recording tasks. One is to have the correct mics to record a full drum kit. This would entail being able to direct mic the entire kit as well as well as have ‘room’ mics to get an overall sound in stereo and have overhead mics to get a good cymbal sound. That will give you a wide variety of mics. The second is to have a couple of higher end mics to record vocals and acoustic instruments. The definition of ‘higher end’ will, of course, vary depending on your budget. You can certainly get a mic that will fit your ‘high end’ needs for under $2,000. But you can also go a lot higher than that with mics ranging up to $15,000. The question you have to ask is for the type of recording you are doing and the equipment you have, will there be a noticeable difference if you blow your entire budget on one very expensive mic? I would say, multiple good mics is the better choice. With these mics you will be able to cover most instruments and recording situations.
You need to realize that the sound you finally end up with is a combination of the microphone, cabling, pre-amp, compressor, mixing board and anything else that lies between the instrument and the recording medium. Use your budget wisely when putting this pathway together. Also, sometimes the best mic for the instrument you’re recording is not the most expensive mic. The Shure SM57 is still a studio ‘go to’ mic for drums and amplifiers. And it retails for around $100. So one of the keys to building your mic closet is doing research. When I started putting the studio together I read a lot of recording magazines with product comparisons and articles written by well known engineers and producers. For mics I’d browse through magazines and look for articles on mic comparisons ‘building your mic closet’ or the best mics for specific tasks that were available at a reasonable price. This has been made quicker and easier with internet and social media access. I’m not sure, however, that the information has improved. To get an article in one of the major recording magazines you had to be an expert with a pretty impressive resume. Anybody can put up an article or video on line. As they say, everyone has an opinion. And you’ll find a lot of contradictory opinions. Take your time and be careful when doing research. I’d advise sticking to the bigger sources – well known magazines on line or in print (I still buy actual magazines).
So I’ve tried to answer the question without giving any specific microphone names. You can look at our studio equipment page and it will list some of the mics we have (have to check how up to date the list is). Some of the mics we have may no longer be available which is another reason I have not given a specific listing. The answer, as usual, is to take your time and do your research. Look carefully at the mic’s specs. I’ve included a video below that gives some basic information on different types of mics, how they work and and what they are used for. Please feel free to send any follow up questions this post may generate.
Steaming Mulch has always presented us with music that can be both fun and challenging. They’ve had songs that used cut and paste live drums with all sorts of noise and effects. We’ve worked on the ‘movie clip’ tunes that used pieces of movies and TV show audio in them. Sometimes the recording sessions are very directed and sometimes they are a party atmosphere free for all. This time the band came in with relatively completed song parts that mostly needed to be organized before we started recording. The recording process was fun with a lot of time spent selecting FX and deciding where they would be appropriate. After the song was finished I was ‘tasked’ with creating the video. The video side of Steaming Mulch has also grown over time, starting with a single still picture for the video and becoming more involved (and fun) as we’ve continued to record. I think the videos should reflect the music – strange and dream like. As someone who likes to create there’s nothing better than being given carte blanche to do whatever you like. There’s no point to bringing someone in to the creative process and then telling them exactly what to do. This holds true whether you’re bringing in musicians to add a part to a song or someone to take photographs. Let the creative juices flow. Hope you enjoy the music and video.
We’re back with another acoustic cover for you in the ‘Messin With The Music’ series. This time we worked on ‘A Forest’ by The Cure. ‘A Forest’ is from the band’s second album ‘Seventeen Seconds’ which was released in 1980. The Cure has created a lot of different types of music since they were formed in 1978. This song was from their early period when they were considered ‘goth’ or ‘post-punk’. This is the second Cure song we’ve worked on having previously covered ‘The Lovecats’. We haven’t done as many cover songs lately, although we’re getting back in to the flow. We did follow our usual methodology of doing each individual track straight through so it has the feel of a ‘live’ take. We again used all acoustic instruments other than the bass guitar which is run in to a pre-amp then directly in to the mixing board. For this song there are two acoustic guitars doing the same part which are panned hard left and right. There is a twelve string guitar as well as banjo and mandolin. We did two tracks for the vocals to make it sound a little richer. All the pictures we use in these videos are generate by us. These photos are from Redwood National Park. It’s a wonderful place to go if you want to spend some time hiking through a forest.
It’s been a pretty nice spring in our area. We often have a season that goes from 50 degree days then jumps directly in to the 80 degree summer. It’s been refreshing having some time of 70 degree days and cool nights. I’m enjoying it while I can because I certainly don’t expect it to continue. The year 2023 continues to cruise by. Quickly. It’s interesting to remember lyrics to songs that I heard when I was growing up that didn’t mean much then and I’ve come to understand now. I remember when Pink Floyd released the album The Dark Side Of The Moon. I was just hitting my teenage years and we were all fans of the band’s music. The album stayed on our play lists (and the charts) for many years. You knew the words by heart. But I didn’t really think in ‘life’ terms about what the lyrics were really saying. I listen to the song ‘Time’ now and the lyrics are somewhat chilling for me. “You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today And then one day you find ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun” “Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines”. Yikes!! Who wouldn’t love to go back to those days when years seemed to last forever? As you get older you try to make the most of your time, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. One thing I don’t do is live in the past musically. That’s one reason for the Grapevine. It helps me search through new music and has introduced me to artists I would not have heard otherwise. Hopefully it does the same for anyone out there who reads our blog posts.
First Up: Cliff And Ivy – ‘Fossil Fuel’
The band bills themselves as ‘Alaska’s Goth Duo’. Honestly, with periods of the year where you don’t see the sun, I would think that Alaska would lend itself to dark, goth music. Everything about this song and video is fun (yes, I consider dark goth fun). There’s a lot of late 1970’s punk feel to it and the video and tune remind me of the band X (they have a newer release ‘Bring Us The Night’ that has a quicker, punkier sound to it). It’s really a well produced, crisp recording. Very straight forward, driving drum beat. Nice snap to the snare drum. The bass line pins itself to the drum beat and adds a presence to it. The fuzzed out rhythm guitar is not overblown in the mix but is another driving force. Keyboards and synth add atmosphere as they come in and out of the mix. And atmosphere is a big part of the song. Lead guitar parts are leveled in with the rest of the mix and add more to the feel of the song than a big in your face presence. Lead vocals are also more in the mix but are still at a level where you can pick up lyrics. Backing vocals almost sound like another synth, high, airy and slathered with reverb and delay. Some cool changes in dynamics throughout with instruments dropping in and out of the mix. Definitely ‘black light’ music. I think the overall mix is well thought out and achieves the goal of creating a dark, moody presence. The video is wonderfully DIY and fits the song perfectly. It was filmed at a glacier in Alaska – awesome. Nothing better than a band who takes control of their music and video and gets to create their own vision.
Next Up: Piroshka – ‘V.O.’
This song fits pretty well in to the wonderful world of ‘shoegaze’. As with any genre, there can be a lot of variety. A lot of shoegaze puts the swirling guitars and keyboards way out front in the mix and often buries the vocals and drums a lot deeper. In ‘V.O.’ the guitars swirl and keep their own time using delay and an ocean of special effects. The guitar is basically the canvas that the rest of the song’s picture is painted on. To make the guitar fit cohesively in with the rest of the song you have to get the timing of the delay and other effects correct – that makes the song flow. If you present the guitar oscillations out of time with the drums and the rhythm you have a whole different type of song. There’s other guitars that add to the effect with chimey chord arpeggios throughout. The keyboards give more presence to the music, with swells that rise and fall to add to the atmosphere. The drum work is great and deservedly has a higher place in the mix than you often hear in shoegaze. Lots of snap to the snare and some really tasty work on the cymbals. The bass is a bit deeper in the mix. You can hear it if you listen for it, but it functions more as a bottom end floor that’s another building block for the song. The vocals keep to the dreamy feel of the music but they are rightly placed fairly high in the mix. You can pick out lyrics in ‘V.O.’, something that doesn’t always happen in shoegaze songs. There are also other vocals sprinkled in the song that act as another instrument. The song has great mixing and production. I think the separation of instruments makes everything a bit more complex. You can sit back and enjoy the overall swirl of the music or pick up each instrument as a separate piece. A finely crafted and enjoyable piece of music.
Finally: Roy & The Devil’s Motorcycle – ‘Learn To Lose’
A lot of the ambience, feel and sound of a song has to do with the way it is produced. I think ‘Learn To Lose’ is a great example of this. The chord structure and changes are pretty simple. It pretty much follows a blues type structure. The rhythm and timing is also pretty straight forward. So what makes this song stand out more and attract attention? It’s the sonics used on each instrument and the way they are placed together in the mix. Let’s start with the guitars. You have a guitar in the right channel that is basically living in a swamp of feedback. It sounds like they’re taking the guitar, cranking distortion and having the guitar feedback through the amp while actively using a wah pedal. The guitar on the left side has more recognizable chord sounds, although they also have a lot of distortion on it too. In fact, distortion and feedback is a huge part of the overall production of this tune. The vocals come in and they also have a distorted quality to them. They’re placed much higher up in the mix. I’m not really sure if there is a bass in there, this might be all guitars (in watching the performance clips in the video it looks like three guitars on stage). The drums are also placed deep in the mix. The one piece of the drums that comes through clearly is the snare – but that is also fuzzy and distorted. There’s no changes or fills that break up the beat, just a relentless snare keeping time. So if there are kick drums or toms they’ve been kept out of or extremely low in the recording mix. The feel of the song is a crackly vocal placed on a bed of distortion. This is the intent of the song and the production. It’s probably an acquired taste for most people. The joy of sticking your head right in front of a buzzing amp.
Retro: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – ‘Blue Green Olga’
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion has put out songs using a wide variety of musical styles. You can hear influences of punk, blues, noise rock, garage and and a number of other influences. ‘Blue Green Olga’ is from the album ‘Acme’ which was released in 1998. I think the song is probably one of their most accessible, stylistically, to most people. The lineup usually functioned as a three piece with two guitars and drums. For this song there is a great organ sound throughout as well as backing vocals sprinkled among the mix. I think what really grabs me is the wonderful, funky guitar riff that runs throughout the song. Another favorite part is the great snare sound. Lots of snap with a bit of distortion and just the right amount of reverb. These two pieces draw you in right from the beginning of the song then underpin everything else as the other instruments are added in. The vocals are upfront in the mix and yet don’t over power the rest of the instruments. One highlight of the arrangement is the break coming out of the chorus at 1:36 where the instruments drop out and leave the vocal alone before a cough and a second of silence bring in the rest of the instruments. The choruses also provide a nice change of pace with the cleaner sounding guitar playing the chord arpeggios. Another cool part of the song arrangement is it’s long run out at the end which starts at 2:35 and really takes up about a third of the entire song. Great funky breaks and drop outs. Who could ask for more.
In today’s world most people are used to being able to look for their favorite band on the internet and find some live videos of them. Back in the earlier days this wasn’t the case. Most people now hear about the Beatles or Rolling Stones appearing on the Ed Sullivan show and people being able to see the bands live for the first time. But for people like me who were fans of 70’s era’s rock music finding bands on TV was nearly impossible. There weren’t a zillion cable stations and streaming options where you could find almost everything you were looking for. We had network TV (three stations at the time) and more localized stations on UHF channels. You might find a band you liked on a variety show, but they often played to a backing track that had a watered down arrangement of the original song. Then in 1972 live music came to late night TV. Burt Sugarman, an independent producer, felt there was a late night audience interested in seeing bands play live. ‘The Midnight Special’ was on NBC and came on at 1:00 AM Friday after the Tonight Show (this idea spawned two other late night shows ‘In Concert’ and ‘Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert’). My obsession with rock music started at an early age before I could go to live shows and I remember the anticipation of being able to stay up late and see the bands whose records I was buying live on TV. Imagine having to wait for a late night TV show to be able to see your favorite band.
Burt Sugarman is still around and he’s finally put together an official YouTube channel to release individual songs and episodes from ‘The Midnight Special’ (there have been some inferior pirated copies on line for a while as well as some authorized DVDs and clips loaned to other TV shows like VH1). Sugarman always thought people would want to see these shows in the future so he continually transferred the original tapes of the shows to the newest technology available. As a result the quality of the video is great. All the shows had the bands playing live on stage. Since there were several bands on each episode there were multiple stages set up so the show could transition from one band to another without having to change out equipment on a single stage. When the second season started the TV network lined up FM stations who would simulcast the sound in stereo which was pretty hi tech at the time. ‘The Midnight Special’ YouTube channel is the first authorized presentations of these great performances. There were 48 weekly episodes a year from 1972 through 1981. They’ll be releasing new videos of shows and songs over time, but I wanted to give you a bit of a sampling of what you’ll see below. I’ll be following the channel looking forward to seeing performances and bringing back memories from a great time in musical history. I will probably highlight some more songs I like as they are released.
David Bowie – ‘The Jean Genie’ – November 16, 1973
The Byrds – ‘So You Want To Be a Rock n’ Roll Star’ – February 2, 1973
King Crimson – ‘Lark’s Tongues In Aspic Part 2’ – October12, 1973
ChurchHouse Productions Blog 