EQ Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 24) Elegantly R aw same chain. I’d record three or four takes of each instrument, and comp together the best parts on my laptop. I had a lot of fun tracking Migé—especially when he’d stop and scream into his pickups in the middle of a song [laughs]. W h a t wa s t h e a p p ro a ch fo r t r a ck ing guitars ? P a l m e r : We set up Mikko Lindström with a splitter box so we could route his guitar to three separate amps.The main source was his Laney VH100R with matching 4x12 cabinet. We miked the speakers with SM57s placed right against the grille, and positioned off-axis to the cone. We submixed all the signals down to one track. Mostly, Mikko used a Gibson SG for the rhythm parts, but we also layered the tracks with an old Levin acoustic from the ’40s that Ville brought in, as well as a Danelectro baritone for the really low sections. The solos were all tracked with aTelecaster or an ESP baritone guitar through the same amp setup. We also recorded a direct signal for everything in case we needed to re-amp later on—which we didn’t. But it was still good to have that direct track available, because we didn’t track the guitars live with the drums and bass, and getting a good guitar sound in isolation doesn’t necessarily translate to having a good sound in the context of a mix. What did yo u u s e t o c a p t u r e V i l le ’s vo i c e ? P a l m e r : A Neumann U67. It has a really warm, full sound, and, if you crank the preamp, the mic distorts beautifully when the vocalist screams. V a l o : We went for a more baritone vocal sound for this album. We also wanted to stack the vocals so that there was some dissonance. We’d record takes where I was sharp or flat, and then mix them together with the main vocal. A lot of the sound is dependant on my body position, so I did overdubs sitting down, or contorting my body into weird positions.The body is a fragile instrument, and posture and placement really affects the sounds you get. H ow d i d yo u a r r a n g e t h e key bo a r d t ex t u r e s s o t h a t yo u c o u l d r e a l i ze t h e s t r i p p e d - d ow n s o u n d yo u wa n t e d fo r the album? Valo: Instead of just playing synth pads all the way through a song, we used the so I can easily switch between the drier signals and more ambient room sounds within the arrangement of a song. One thing I did that was interesting was to sample all the toms individually before we tracked the drums.Then, as I had so much time in my hotel room to edit, I carefully cleaned up the signal leakage between the tom fills we recorded. I kept the original performance, but I pasted the natural decay back in from the individual samples. I did this because I think it sounds great to have natural decay ringing out over the end of the drum fills. How did you handle the bass guitar? P a l m e r : We first ran Migé Amour’s ’76 Fender P-bass through a DI box, and then we sent it out to a combination of amps.The main bass sound is a combination of a Mesa/Boogie and a Prince Piggy Bass 115 combo, which has killer growl. We also tracked a distorted bass track for each song that we later introduced into the mix as needed. For that track, he ran his Fender into a Budda Superdrive II Series 18, using an EBS MultiDrive Bass overdrive. His Hamer CH-12 12-string bass was put through the serious studio infrastructure The Introducing Model 1608 Console. Now Accepting Orders 24 EQ FEBRUARY 2008 www.eqmag.com www.soniccircus.com/1608 1-888-SC4-GEAR http://www.soniccircus.com/1608 http://www.soniccircus.com/1608 http://www.eqmag.com
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