Recorded in a pro studio yesterday. Showed me a lot.

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Chibi Nappa

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The band I run sound for spent the day in Studio 4 just outside of Philly yesterday. I tagged along for the experiance and to offer my input (and play one track of shaker egg :) ). It was a one song one shot deal. The studio and the producer (Phil Nicolo) were definatly the real deal. Bands such as Boyz 2 Men, Aerosmith, Dishwahlla, Billy Joel, Cibo Mato, and the Fugies have all recorded and mixed there. Anyway, I learned a ton from the experiance, and I thought I'd share some of it here.

The #1 thing I learned: The recorded sound is everything. I've always heard people say that, but until I experianced it first hand I had no idea just how true it is. Phil initially tracked the band live to a click track. I sat in the control room with him. The compleatly un-processed, un-mixed live sound coming out of the monitors blew me away! By the time overdubs and punch-ins were compleated, a deaf chimp could have made a professional sounding mix with those tracks.

And what a room we had to work with.... It was just a giant recording space with beautiful wooden floors and walls and a two-story ceiling. The drums just kicked ass in there, even without the $30,000 Telefunken mic in the center of the room or the Neve console everything was running into.

The second thing I learned was the value of great sounding musical EQ. Phil could crank the knobs and shape the sound any way he saw fit, and it all held together. In fact, it did much better than simply hold together.....it continued to sound just as amazing as it did before he started turning knobs. My budget EQ falls apart into a nasty, phase-y mess when I do anything past the smallest nudge. I was simply amazed. Add at least 1 channel of killer EQ to my shopping list. :)

Anyway, I'll be back with more stories later.
 
Chibi Nappa said:
The #1 thing I learned: The recorded sound is everything.
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Why is that such a hard concept for people to grasp? Everyone always acts like the mixing is where the magic happens.
 
Thanks Chibi - very interesting... what kind of EQ was it just out of curiousity. Or was it a cool sounding channel EQ on the board?
kylen
 
kylen said:
Thanks Chibi - very interesting... what kind of EQ was it just out of curiousity. Or was it a cool sounding channel EQ on the board?
kylen
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It was the channel EQ on the board. I asked him about it, and he said the EQ alone runs over $1500 for each channel...... and there were 48 channels!
 
so maybe when my rich uncle can kick the bucket..i can make my own studio and afford that....how much did the band shell out for the one shot deal?
 
distortedrumble said:
so maybe when my rich uncle can kick the bucket..i can make my own studio and afford that....how much did the band shell out for the one shot deal?
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$1000 for the studio time and the services of the Producer (Phil worked from 8:30 AM straight through to 1:30 AM), $75 for the 1/2 inch tape with our mix. That included brief song arrangement, tracking, overdubbing, and mixing. Good thing when he said $1000 for one day, he ment litterally all day. :)

Phil was a great guy with many great stories. He told us all about producing Kris Kross. Nobody had any idea that "Jump Jump" would amount to anything, let alone sell 6 million records. He said that the kids came in knowing nothing at all about rap. "Jump Jump" took 3 days to track vocals alone. But he said the kids were smart and by the end of it they learned everything they needed quite well. The funny part was that they needed background vocalists for the "jump jump" line in the chorus. Phil himself and the 6 other workers on hand that day did it themselves. Once the record took off, Phil said it was quite surreal hearing his own voice everywere he turned. :) I guess you never know what will take off.
 
Another thing that I found interesting.... Phil had Protools right there in the control room, but he chose to work with 2 inch tape instead. And I'll be damned if he could overdub, punch, and edit on that thing with amazing speed.
 
thats crazy.....i think i nearly fell out when one of my songs was played at a friend's wedding but hearing it all over the radio might have made me pull over to the side of the road to calm down
 
Mic placement and getting 'that sound' when you track is what it's all about.

When I was in the studio for class during the tracking, everything that I was hearing was pretty close to how it sounded when it was done mixing. I mean, maybe some compression to bring stuff out and a little reverb, but nothing really heavy was done. That was during a jazz group that our teacher said we had "perfect mic placement" on. When we did a rock band in the end we had to eq the hell out of the kick drum and snare to get a decent sound.
 
rock bands will be the death of many sound engineers lol..whats even more hilarious is when you tell rappers no smoking, food or drink in the control room and someone says "dawg, i can't do this right if i dont smoke one right quick" and speaking of mic placement how do you all set the mic for vocals....inline with the mouth or a little above it?
 
distortedrumble said:
l..whats even more hilarious is when you tell rappers no smoking, food or drink in the control room and someone says "dawg, i can't do this right if i dont smoke one right quick"...
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LMAO... I had a guy say almost that identical thing last week before he was about to go into the ISO booth to track vocs. He also argued with me about bringing his 40oz of Silver Thunder in with him....
 
they have the biggest look of shock on their faces when you tell them.....and my mom says i watch too much tv. damn snoop and the rest of them for drinking and smoking in the studio....but then again...at any given time they have enough money to replace anything in there they break....thug G wilson is still up in his baby's mama's crib lol i figure they can drink on the couch and use a coaster on the lamp stands beside it
 
If anybody is interested our drummer posted photos of the session at www.omnisoul.com/studio4

I'm the guy asleep on the sofa and playing the shaker egg. And yes, the studio was thoughtful enough to supply a free Crusin' USA arcade machine. :)
 
Will do. Gotta' get the singer/writer's permission, but I don't think he'll be opposed to 20 seconds for demonstration purposes.

One thing that the photos just reminded me of: Phil keeps action figures on his monitors. Good to know that I'm not the only guy that does that (I'm just not comfortable without some kind of robot up there :) ).
 
awesome man. Thanks for letting is in. Cant wait to hear that shit! take care
 
You can almost tell just from the pictures that Phil is a pretty involved and attentive guy. Seems very in to what he's doing, as well as what the band is doing.
 
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