EQ Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 13)

PUNCH IN opportunistic capitalists. And they are. But record companies are also fighting to preserve something wonderful about their product: music’s ability to play an important role in our culture; one that in the past has helped raise the collective awareness. Given that, if you’re going to ride the tech-stimulated anti-label zeitgeist, you need to be aware that doing such also means resigning yourself to a possible future where the medium is reduced to little more than cultural wallpaper, stripped of much of its artistry, its meaning, and its social consciousness. It also means a destabilization of industry economics. Perhaps in favor of a better one, but so far, the butcher’s bill has been massive downsizing of label rosters by almost 50 percent. All of this just for the sake of convenience for consumers? Is that worth the tradeoff to you, as a musician? So ask yourself: Are the real enemies of music’s future the record companies? When you come up with an answer, head over to www.eqmag.com, visit our “Forums”, and give me feedback in our “Letters to the Editor” section. I await your responses. RIGHT FROM THE START Fink Keeps it Simple for Distance and Time BY GREG REYNOLDS It’s easy to get carried away when making an album. You might blow your rent check on the newest gadget or feel inspired to triple every guitar line just because you have an unlimited track count. But even the biggest gear nerds—such as Brighton, England-based blokes Fink —will attest that sometimes it’s best to just keep it simple. With their latest release Distance and Time [Ninja Tune], guitarist/vocalist/namesake Fin Greenall (who has produced Amy Winehouse and many others), and cohorts Guy Whittaker (bass) and Time Thornton (drums), spent less than three weeks creating their newest slab of dubbed-out minimal folk. Holed up in The Lookout Studios with Lamb mastermind Andy Barlow, the band got with the program and banged out an album’s worth of tracks in less time than many bands spend getting drum sounds. “On some of the tracks you can hear fire crackling in the background,” Greenall says. “That’s not a cheesy effect. We were huddled around the fireplace when we were tracking, trying to keep warm and play our parts with frozen fingers. We just wanted to get out of there [laughs].” The warmth of Fink’s tracks has little to do with the proximity of open flames to the performers, Barlow assures. According to the producer, Fink’s sound is all about capturing the most realistic sounds possible and avoiding posthumous processing like the plague. For instance, Greenall’s ever-present nylonstring acoustic, which is outfitted with a Headway “The Snake” under-saddle pickup, wasn’t tracked direct. “A direct acoustic sound is not the sound a perfomer or the audience hears when then are playing,” Barlow says. To create a realistic image of the instrument, Barlow insisted on a miking strategy that mimicked the perspective of both performer and audience: A Neumann U 87 six inches up from the neck, placed where Greenall’s left ear would usually be and another Neumann U 87 straight out from Greenall, in the middle of the room where an audience member may sit. “We did compress in,” Barlow says, “but only slightly. We’d keep a really low ratio on a Summit Audio TLA-100A to keep the transients in check, but that’s all.” The “fix it in the mix” philosophy, Barlow says, is never an option. For example, on the song “Blue Pancakes,” Whittaker’s Tacoma 6-string bass provided way too much sustain. Rather than killing it digitally during the mix Greenall recalls Barlow taking the MacGyver approach during tracking. “Andy recommended sticking a big sock down on the saddle to dampen it down, resulting in an indie-dub bass sound,” he says. “Initially Guy was mortified at doing that but he started to dig it because it really worked well . . . he could play it a lot harder and the notes would die a lot quicker so he could start pummeling it for the take.” Greenall further stresses that the key to a great Fink recording is in his bandmates making simple gear choices and not relying on some “magic box” to provide their sounds Fin Greenall. for them. “The less of a drum kit you have, the more creative you have to get with the few pieces available,” Greenall uses as an example. “Dynamics should be achieved by the artists performance, not by volume draws and automation in Pro Tools.” www.eqmag.com AUGUST 2008 EQ 13 http://www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

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

EQ Magazine - August 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Lyrics Born, Fink, David Kahne on Working with Paul McCartney, What a Future with no Record Industry looks like Tool Box ?uestlove Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Apple Logic Pro 8 USM Mic Round-Up USB Mics Chameleon Labs 7720 Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - August 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.