EQ Magazine - October 2008 - (Page 20)

SIGNAL TO NOISE “Untitled” (Rotten Apples) The final track recorded by the original Smashing Pumpkins line-up in 2000, “Untitled” was semiacoustic home cooking that rekindled the vibes of Gish and Siamese Dream. The chain for Corgan’s solo, one of his favorites, features a DOD FX84 Milk Box compressor and a Shin-Ei Companion Fuzz Wah. “The song was our way of saying ‘f**k you’ to all those people who thought we’d somehow lost our minds and weren’t able to return home,” says Corgan. “We were in the studio for what appeared to be the last time, so it was very emotional, and we had only three days.” “The Everlasting Gaze” (Machina/The Machines of God) “The Everlasting Gaze” is the first track off Machina, a highly conceptual piece that marked the return of Chamberlin, but whose course was altered by the departure of Wretzky halfway through recording. The shiny, cosmic grunge that defines the album is encapsulated in this fourminute juggernaut. Corgan switched up to a Les Paul Junior ’57 reissue with P90 pickups, but the extra crunch came by running it through a little Crate practice amp, then going direct into the box from the amp’s line out jack. “When we really wanted to ‘go there’ we would plug into the headphone jack,” laughs Corgan. “Pomp & Circumstances” (Zeitgeist) When Danny Elfman had to bow out amicably of doing the string arrangement, Corgan opted to forego their second option for an internal fix. Using an E-mu Emulator II, they built up a shredded wall of sound that was then bounced down and tape degraded numerous times until it was virtually falling apart at the seams. The tonal disparity between the 8-bit E-mu (although it used a data compression algorithm that gave the equivalent of at least 12 bits), an inspired, bluesy solo, and Corgan’s soaring vocals— doubled nearly 30 times in true Roy Thomas Baker fashion—give the song its uniquely operatic feel. have to be places for them to fit. You could have low-midrange, or you could have everything scooped out with a high-pass that’s cut at 300 or 400kHz.” The miking tactic seemed almost drum-like, which, given Vig’s musical expertise, is a fair assumption. “Maybe from me being a drummer, that’s an aesthetic I brought to the table that I didn’t even really understand at the time,” he says. The army of guitar signals would later make vocal tracking a strenuous procedure for Corgan. Vig didn’t much care for the midrange in Corgan’s voice, so to soften that particular timbre he used a Shure SM7 (generally regarded as a more “open”-sounding mic when its rolloff and boost features are engaged simultaneously) through an API preamp and a Summit TLA-100 Tube Limiter, all fed back into Corgan’s headphones. Like everything else, vocal takes were abundant, with Corgan sometimes singing for eight hours at a time to make sure his tracks were pitch perfect. “My voice is really hard to record,” says Corgan, smiling. “It’s hard to record, it’s hard to monitor, and it’s hard to mix. I’m Irish, I’m meant to sing sad ballads! My voice isn’t really meant for rock, and I’m pretty sure many people out there would agree with me.” He laughs again, and you can hear it a little clearer. His voice. That voice, lurking underneath his conversational tone. That unmistakable inflection that can shift from an airy lilt to a nasal, sandpapery growl at the turn of a verse. To some it represents instant alternative rock salvation; a vocal uppercut to the face of the status quo. To others—Bruce Britt of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, for instance—it’s the “most annoying voice in rock.” But Siamese Dream has gone four-times platinum on the strength of that voice because emotionally, it carries with it as much layered complexity and contradiction as the instrumentation that backs it. “Today” was the greatest day Corgan had ever known, not because it really was, but because it couldn’t get any worse. Somehow that was enough of a comfort to lure him away from the edge. Somehow, against all odds, the Smashing Pumpkins kept moving forward. “To the fringes gladly I walk unadorned, with gods and their creations.” — “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans” (1995) “People don’t always articulate their expectations,” says Corgan. “I think whenever we would work with producers, they would do their best to try and balance those forces between what somebody would want, what I would want, and what was best for the record.” Before a single note was recorded, Corgan knew he wanted the next release to be a double album. Flood and Alan Moulder, friends since their early days at the prestigious Trident Studios in London, were tapped to co-produce. The band began rehearsing at Pumpkinland, their Chicago recording space, and Billy began funneling cassette demos to Flood for review. Roughly two-thirds of Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness was tracked at Pumpkinland on an Otari MTR-90 MKII, while the remaining portion was tracked at the Chicago Recording Company on Studer A820s. “I love recording at 15 ips NAB, but with Dolby SR, because it just adds a whole different dimension to the sound,” says Flood. “Apart from the obvious benefits of Dolby, if you tweak the Dolby unit really, really well, it’s a bit like adding an Aphex and a dbx sub-harmonic bass enhancer on every channel. Also, the way that tape changes the sound or modifies the sound, 15 ips is technically not correct, but I find it to be so musical, particularly on the bottom end. This was very much a conscious decision, and very much a part of the album’s sound.” Another conscious decision was to change up the manner in which the group recorded. In the past, the band had only used one room to track, which of course meant only one thing could be going on at a time. Hours spent waiting for one person to finish up their part led to frustration. For Mellon Collie, Flood would generally work with Corgan in the A room on the Otari and an MCI board, while Moulder worked with Wretzky and Iha in the B room on a Pro Tools rig slaved to both TASCAM DA-88 digital recorders and two-inch tape. The combination of analog and digital opened up a world of recording possibilities, and played to the creative strengths of Mellon Collie’s adventurous spirit. A track like “Thru The Eyes 20 EQ OCTOBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

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

EQ Magazine - October 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Smashing Pumpkins Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Steinberg Cubase 4 Studio Meets Stage Gear for the Studio and Stage Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - October 2008

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