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to be able to physically turn the frequency knobs to affect the tracks. It also allows me to bus certain tracks and use vintage outboard effects processors, like the Eventide H3000 and the Lexicon PCM70.) As far as outboard gear goes, Stanley told me he is a fan of the Fairchild limiter, which he used on his first four solo albums. But with the new technology of today, there is a current Fairchild plug-in that Stanley feels gets 95% of the sound of the original hardware. He explained that because of the Alembic’s wide dynamic range you need a good limiter that can control the sound during recording. This also affects Stanley’s choice of mics; when choosing a mic, he considers not only the source, but the room ambience too. For instance, when he wants a really big bass sound, he uses an outside studio. In the past, he’s used studios that housed separate rooms for each instrument, and he really likes the feel and sound of each instrument being physically separated.

this, it enabled us to blend the two tones together when mixing; one track with the direct signal that complements the nuances of Randy’s graceful finger styles, and the other track with the fat amp tone from the live miking. I always found that recording bass onto 2” tape really fattens the bass sound and gives that old expression “tape saturation” meaning. Bass is a very subtle instrument when recording solo parts and takes a different approach compared to its 6-string cousin. One of the songs we recorded was a funky rock piece that took some time perfecting Randy’s solo. We tried many different pedals, such as the Octave Mistress, an Ibanez Tube Screamer, a flanger, and finally the Electro-Harmonix Mini QTron that achieved the right tone for the solo. The Q-Tron is a very versatile pedal that has a cool envelope filter containing a highpass and a lowpass mode that works well on bass. The highpass filter helps the bass cut through a mix, especially when it comes to soloing. By setting the actual filter type, drive and Q controls you get a vowel-sounding tone, which is great for funk guitar and bass. The colorful Bootsy Collins uses this quite a bit in his recordings. By using the Q-Tron in this manner, Randy’s solo turned out to be very expressive. Final Thoughts As it turns out, all three players have a different approach to recording bass, based on their personal playing styles. In this age of DAW recordings and plug-ins, I find that the best approach to recording bass is to capture the natural sound of the fingers on the fretboard by close-miking the amp cabinet.

Randy Coven
I’ve worked with Randy quite a bit, in fact I engineered and produced his recent release, Nu School. Randy has played with some of the best guitarists of our time, such as Steve Vai, Leslie West, and Steve Morse, just to name a select few. Randy has an interesting background: he went to Berklee College of Music in Boston and was roommates with none other than the JEM 777 man himself, Steve Vai. They were in several bands together back in the ’80s and in fact, Randy told me that he actually lent Steve the money to make a phone call to Frank Zappa, which wound up getting Steve the gig as Zappa’s musical transcriber. At Jungle Room Studios, we recorded three songs for Randy’s Fretworx release: “86th Street”, “Dionysus”, and “Constantinople.” We started the session by placing the bass amp in the isolation booth. We miked the bottom cabinet that housed a 10” speaker with an AKG D-112, going to a channel on the Trident console. You may be thinking, “Why is he recording a bass amp with a mic that is typically associated with recording a kick drum?” Simple answer: when the AKG is aimed towards the center of the speaker diaphragm, it captures the high frequencies that are radiated over a very narrow angle. It gives a fuller bass tone as well. We then used a Radial Engineering J48 active direct box and took the signal of the bass itself to another channel on the console. Both signals were recorded down to analog tape, the trusty Ampex MM1200 24-track tape machine. By doing
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In Randy’s case, we recorded 2 tracks at the same time, one being direct and the other through the amp cabinet, and at mix-down blended the tracks together for the desired tone. For a producer working with great players, the wonderful thing is that you don’t have to worry about the actual parts themselves, just the recording process of capturing the desired sound that you are privileged to hear in the studio, so the rest of the world can hear it and share the amazement as well! Brian Tarquin (tarquin@recordingmag.com) is an Emmywinning recording engineer and guitarist, who runs the guitarcentric label Bohemian Productions based in New York (www.bohemianproductions.net).

http://www.bohemianproductions.net

Recording - May 2011

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