EQ Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 36) METAL MIXED How did you approach the engineering of “A Little Piece of Heaven”—which is almost a bizarre theater piece. Were you challenged to expand the sonic landscape in order to address the song’s cinematic layers? Archambault: I was around when that song was written, so I was aware of its strong visual focus. There are very few songs out there that actually transport you somewhere when you close your eyes. It’s an amazing work, and it’s based on a piano part that The Rev had written. When he played it for the band, all you heard was piano, drums, and a vocal melody for like eight minutes. Everyone looked at each other, and said, “This is like a Danny Elfman score. At that point, we pictured ” using strings, brass, and woodwinds, and that’s why we brought in former Oingo Boingo member Steve Bartek as the arranger. In a sense, that song was the hardest to pull off technically, but it really wasn’t any trouble—if that makes any sense. I mean, there were a lot of elements, but we really didn’t do anything different from an engineering standpoint. We put up Neumann U67s and Earthworks M50s for the strings—a combination of close mics and room mics. But the core of the piece is actually pretty simple: drums, guitar, bass, a main vocal, and 12 tracks of strings, woodwind, and brass. When the bed was laid down, we did some sound effects—like breaking bottles outside—and crazy vocals with all five guys in the vocal booth. Gates: We didn’t establish any rules for Steve’s arrangement, or for ourselves. And doing the vocals was awesome. We had one big, fun, drunk day, and laid down a million and one vocals. There was a time—not too long ago—when a diverse album such as Avenged Sevenfold would have been considered commercial suicide by majorlabel A&R squads. Archambault: Absolutely. So I say, “Hats off to management, hats off to the label for allowing them to do this, and hats off to the band for pulling it off. In a ” sense—because the band conceptualized and wrote this whole epic—I think Avenged Sevenfold may have the biggest pair of balls ever. Does Shadows like to record his vocals by listening through headphones, or is he more comfortable with the tunes blasting through studio monitors? Archambault: For the last record, he switched between headphones and studio monitors, but, this time, he used only headphones. He doesn’t seem to have a preference, and he has learned to help himself sing on pitch by removing one of the earpieces if he’s having intonation issues. Another thing that helped is that we used guide keyboard lines. You mean you’d actually play the vocal melody on a keyboard, and pump that into his headphones? Archambault: Oh, yeah. Distorted guitars can be so much white noise that it’s sometimes hard to find a solid pitch reference. So, a few hours before Shadows was set to sing, we’d sit down and literally play out the entire vocal melody on a keyboard. I wish more people knew about this, because when there’s definitely no issue as to what the note should be, it often frees up the singer to concentrate on phrasing and delivery. www.argosyconsole.com 800.315.0878 or 573.348.3333 Imagine - then transform The finest facilities in the world rely on Argosy studio furnishings so can you. 2008 Argosy Console, Inc. 36 EQ FEBRUARY 2008 www.eqmag.com Levels Audio; Hollywood, CA http://www.argosyconsole.com http://www.argosyconsole.com http://www.eqmag.com
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