EQ Magazine - June 2008 - (Page 24)

THE PANIC IS ON or something. It’s wise to always have at least one direct sound recorded in case you get too crazy with effects.” THE PIANO Recording Panic’s upright piano to tape was a “rare treat” and “opportunity to use some interesting effects” for Mittendorfer. Once the instrument was set up in the studio’s isolation booth, Mittendorfer says he removed the piano’s front panel to expose the hammers. “For a traditional piano sound, I placed a stereo pair of mics on the hammer side. But for my weird piano sound, I’d have one mic at the hammer side, and another mic in the room. The second mic was run first into a Lexicon PCM 42 delay before going into a DI to get a weird modulating delay on the piano.” VOCAL SESSIONS Urie’s lead vocals were recorded in a deadened portion of the main live room that was closed off with tall gobos. The signal path was a Neumann U47, Neve 1073, and a Universal Audio 1176 (set to light compression) before hitting tape. Changing his approach ever-so-slightly, Mittendorfer set Ross up for his lead vocals in the piano booth for a closer, more intimate sound. He captured the guitarist’s voice with a modified Apex 460 sent through the same 1073 to 1176 chain. The three-part harmonies and group vocals were tracked around a single mic. “Doing the harmonies with three of us singing at the same time was really hard, but I really like how it sounds—it’s not exactly perfect,” notes Ross. To capture the background vocals, Mittendorfer set up a Neumann M149 in the middle of the main live room, and placed the three performers in a triangle around it, allowing a few feet of space between the singers to bring some of the room’s ambience into the vocal track. As with every other basic track, Mittendorfer recorded an effect-heavy alternate to the main clean vocal. “Walker came up with a cool trashcan vocal sound for ‘The Piano Knows Something I Don’t Know,’ says Mittendorfer. “Next to the U47 vocal mic, I set up an SM57 plugged straight into this tiny Orange prac- tice amp placed face-up at the bottom of a four-foot tall metal trash can. Then, I placed a U87 set to omni at the top of the trash can. I patched the signal through the PCM 42 in the “x2” mode for a lo-fi sound, and I also put a tiny bit of a delay on it—about 250ms—to give the vocal some extra space.” Ryan was passionate about not making the record sound too ‘good’ in the mixing stage. He wanted it to sound like the Plastic Ono Band records. R O B M AT H E S “ ” ments for string sessions, and so it was his suggestion—not the band’s—that they do orchestral tracking there. But the band became excited about the sessions when the members discovered that senior engineer Peter Cobbin mixed two records that piqued Ross’ interest: the 1999 reissue of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, and Elfman’s Charlie & The Chocolate Factory soundtrack. “Ryan was passionate about not making the record sound too ‘good’ in the mixing stage,” says Mathes. “He wanted it to sound like the Plastic Ono Band records, and the early McCartney solo records, where you’re actually hearing the songs as they would have been performed—not some kind of astonishing sonic manipulation.” MIXING AT ABBEY ROAD Mixing Pretty. Odd in Studio Three at Abbey Road on a 96-channel SSL 9000 J console, Cobbin says he also utilized the room’s other console—an original EMI TG 12345— as well as EQ units, compressor/limiters, and effects held over from the Beatles era. “Based on my talks with Rob and Ryan, I was prepared to be experimental,” says Cobbin, “They wanted me to go a little wacky. After spending some days going through the songs, I scoped out my gear and began to set up a mix chain.” Cobbin took a kind of minimal approach to the main rhythm tracks. “There was enough proper acoustic perspective, because everything had been recorded so well, that I was able to keep everything fairly natural, but still build on each sound using some of the distorted and grittier options Claudius captured. I wouldn’t use all of the bass tracks, for example, but I would filter the bass DI track, and pan that very low-end sound up the middle. Then, I’d take one of the edgier bass sounds, and pan it off to the right to spread the sound of the bass throughout the stereo image.” Cobbin adds that he also employed some mixing tricks from the Beatles heyday. “I fed the drums through a pair of antique EMI RS 124s, which are heavily EMI-modified Altec compressors. As far as limiter/compressors go, that’s the sound of the Beatles.” STRINGS IN THE BEATLES’ HOOD Throughout the songwriting and recording process, Mathes sang or played his orchestration ideas for the band, leery of using any kind of synthesized stand-ins. “We did our best to hear what he was coming up with in our heads,” says Ross. “Some of the parts he arranged are based on melodies that were on our demos, and some are just his ideas, or his interpretations of our suggestions. For example, we wanted ‘When The Day Met The Night’ to sound like summer. On another song, I asked him to make it sound like you’re in the middle of the ocean.” Abbey Road Studios One and Two happen to be Mathes’ preferred environ- 24 EQ JUNE 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

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

EQ Magazine - June 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board 3 Doors Down, Hard-Fi, Paul Manousos Tool Box Panic at the Disco Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Projects Apple Loops Utility SSL Duende Mini JBL LSR4326/PAK & LSR4312SP Holophone H3-D Creation Audio Labs MW1 Studio Tool Amp Modeler Roundup Eventide Timefactor, Electro-Harmonix Stereo Pedals, Korg Pandora PX5D Room with a Vu: Blues Tunes Studios, Silverlake, CA

EQ Magazine - June 2008

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