Recording - March 2012 - 37

there are really significant changes that need to be made, in the melody or lyrics, I ask the artist if they want my input, and I’ll even say I believe this will count as a 12% contribution to the song, for example, and this will all be in a contract. BMI will want specific publishing splits. Make it all very clear. The artist has the right to say no, of course. So then I know I won’t get into certain aspects as much, but that doesn’t mean I won’t make suggestions. What should artists do to promote their music? A lot of people don’t realize how much work it is to actually do music. Writing and recording it is a little sliver of the job. But you really need to be working every possible avenue you can. Everything from looking around the world to see what websites review music in your genre; getting reviews in your local paper... and just playing some gigs! I always say, “Get a Prius and a buddy, and you’re on tour!” So many of the recordings you shared with me have great clarity and depth of

How have you recorded Tony Levin and Terry Bozzio? You have to work hard to make Tony Levin not sound great! [laughs]. When I’ve done sessions with him, he just wants to know where to plug in. The first time I worked with Terry Bozzio, my whole goal was to see how few mics I could use on him. He told me that all the times before they had placed a mic for every single drum in his kit. For this session with me he had 16 toms, 4 bass drums, and 40 cymbals, and I think I ended up using 13 total channels and approached it in more of an orchestral way. You don’t record an orchestra with 16 mics for the violins. I started trying to approach it that way. What is the basic philosophy behind your Home Recording Boot Camp? I try to help people focus on the core things that help make great records. There are so many records that are just lame, so I try to distill it down, so that people grasp that recording is really mastering a small set of variables and then manipulating

Photos by Luigi Pietro Scantamburlo

sound. How do you achieve this conceptually before even placing the first mic? A big part of it is preproduction. To me it’s kind of crazy to be setting up the bassdrum mic if you don’t know the songs. I told a couple of artists I’ve worked with before who couldn’t afford me for a long time, “Hire me for preproduction; I won’t even be in the studio with you, but let’s get the vision happening.” It’s about starting to really develop that picture from an early point in the game and looking at the arrangements. A lot about getting great sound and depth has to do with getting the drummer to play the right part that complements the guitar part, and trying not to do things that fight the end goal. Many people make the mistake of not having a target, and they randomly throw things out hoping it’ll all turn into something in the end.

them to achieve your own artistic vision. Making them realize that Slayer records are not that different from Beatles records. There might be different amounts of distortion, for example, but the core is the same. Today we spent the entire day on nothing but dynamics. There are predictable results of changing the attack or release times on a compressor. Once you understand that, the whole world blows open. I have absolutely no interest in telling people what kinds of records to like. I just want to give them the kind of tools to reach their vision and doing it in a way that is predictive. Ronan Chris Murphy’s website is www.venetowest.com; for more on the Home Recording Boot Camp go to http://homerecordingbootcamp.com.
RECORDING MARCH 2012

http://www.ribbonmics.com http://www.ribbonmics.com http://www.venetowest.com http://www.homerecordingbootcamp.com

Recording - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - March 2012