EQ Magazine - January 2008 - (Page 28)

corporate has been shuttin’ it down, but it’s there. Is the record company gonna let another wave like that come through? I don’t know if they will or won’t, but I think they need to. When we did this the first time with [Loud Records founder] Steve Rifkind, record companies and hip-hop itself grew. ” As fate would have it, RZA and the Wu-Tang have found themselves right back where they started, partnered up with Rifkind at a freshly resurrected Loud for the release of the band’s fifth studio album, The 8 Diagrams. Most of The 8 Diagrams was recorded at Legacy Studios in New York and Paramount Studios in Los Angeles with RZA’s custompainted, yellow-and-black Roland MV-8000 as the cornerstone for most everything you’ll hear off the album. (He began using the MV8000 while working on the soundtrack to Blade: Trinity, and he’s currently scoring the Vin Diesel film, Babylon A.D.) Recording sessions at Legacy would usually commence with RZA dialing up a beat from his MV, and pumping it through the studio’s custom-built Augsperger monitors and subwoofers. Combining the fat analog signals of the Roland JV-1080 with the tactile flexibility of the MC-909, the MV has streamlined the way in which RZA is able to chop up and sequence his samples. In addition to its MIDI capabilities, the MV is able to handle up to eight tracks of audio, which allowed RZA to overlay his own bass and guitar instrumentation over the beats he created. The MV was run through a Whirlwind passive direct box and into the mic preamps on a SSL 9000J console. RZA would either EQ sounds on the console, or in the box, using Sony’s Oxford plug-ins for Pro Tools. Vocals bypassed the console all together, being sent to Pro Tools through a pair of vintage Neve 1081 preamps. A dual-microphone configuration was set up for each MC to catch different elements of the performances. RZA and lead album engineer Chris Soper would alternate between a Neumann U67 and a U87 used in conjunction with an AKG D12e to retain the classic vocal rawness of the early Wu-Tang tracks. Though he used the Sony Oxford Limiter for rough mixes, the Waves Renaissance Compressor was Soper’s go-to plug-in for vocals, usually dialed up with a ratio of about 4:1. “It was a lot like a sports team that has been to the playoffs many times, says Soper of the ” vibe in the studio. “They were extremely confident in what they did. If somebody wanted to try something, they’d try it. We ended up working on the record for three months, and it was definitely one of the more creative sessions I’ve ever been on. RZA kept the craziest hours ever. He’d only stop if we had another session coming in the next morning. People would come and go, but he was always there. ” “We got some ill sh*t, RZA smiles. “So ” many people came through. Nile Rodgers gave me three old songs with Bernard [Edwards] playing on them!” P-Funk maestro George Clinton dropped by Legacy to freestyle the hook to “Wolves, an ” old-school track with an indie-rock bounce that RZA pieced together on the MV-8000. It features a choice horn performance by Uncle John CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - January 2008

EQ Magazine - January 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Robbers On High Street Rafter RTX Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings Toolbox Rahim Dimmu Borgir Wu-Tang Clan Special Feature! Mastering for Musicians Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drumheads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 IK Multimedia Virtual Instruments Yamaha MSP7 Shure KSM137/SL K+H O 300 & O 800 Sonica Livetracker Apple Logic Studio Novation XioSynth 25, Audio-Technica ATH-M50, Samson G-Track

EQ Magazine - January 2008

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