EQ Magazine - December 2008 - (Page 18)

FOR THE RECORD But somewhere along the way something bad happens. Blame it on too many overdubs, too many EQ boosts and not enough cuts, convolution reverb abuse, or a mastering engineer that was bound and determined to be the victor in the Loudness Wars, but the fact remains: What ships from the pressing plant is a squashed, pitch-corrected, timestretched sham; a dull, lifeless, reproduction of a once-beautiful thing. No balls, no groove, no soul. Louisville-bred rockers My Morning Jacket decided early in their career that they would never be the punch line in that terminally unfunny joke. Considered by many to be one of the best live bands on the circuit (or at the least one of the most athletic— point of proof being their nearly fourhour set at 2008’s Bonnaroo Music Festival), the quintent knew that when it came time to record their newest LP, Evil Urges, they were in a do-or-die scenario. It was here that they would either defend their hard-earned rep and assume the throne as the leaders of modern rock, or die a shameful commercial death. Singer/guitarist/mastermind Jim James knew that if the band’s fate was to be a glorious one, they would need to find a producer that understood the magic of their music enough to encourage great performances instead of relying on quick fixes. They needed an old school pro. Little did they know when they embarked on a short run of live dates that their sonic soulmate was waiting for them in the crowd, an ardent fan of their patented psych/funk/indie/southern rock gumbo. “I went to see them play at [Colorado amphitheatre] Red Rocks and we hit it off immediately,” says veteran producer Joe Chiccarelli (Elton John, U2, Beck, and The White Stripes). “I had seen them about six years earlier and was a fan, so I had an understanding of what they did even before we started working together.” “As I began our search for someone to work with, Joe’s name just kept popping up over and over again,” James says. “Even the people I was talking to about working with us were talking about Joe.” Since the men of My Morning Jacket had already cut loads of demos for Evil Urges before Chiccarelli was flown in, the newly assembled team was able to hit the ground running and get right to work on what would prove to be the band’s crowning achievement. “We tried to go for the middle road between banging it out and being surgical,” says James of the group’s strategy when entering the studio. “I believe you have to have a certain spontaneity and then capture it, harness it, and get surgical on its ass [laughs]. [Making an album] is like a blacksmith pounding out a sword— you have to put a lot of labor into the process, but if you pound it too much, you can ruin the sword.” esides the human voice, the studio is perhaps the greatest instrument known to man,” James observes from My Morning Jacket’s tour bus during a brief respite from a tireless one-gig-after-another tour of “B PEDAL TO THE METAL While the My Morning Jacket guys used and abused everything from EMT plate reverbs to the Urei Cooper Time Cube to create the otherworldly sounds on Evil Urges, a good portion of the spatial effects were courtesy of a hot little pedal from Eventide called the Time Factor (for a full review of the Time Factor, go to www.eqmag.com/gear). “It has a real natural tone with a very warm, almost analog high-end quality that blended into the tracks very well,” Chiccarelli says. “Even though it's in a stompbox form, it has a line level in and out, so it was very easy to interface into the API Legacy Plus console.” The Eventide ended up being used on lead and background vocals, guitars, and keys. “I love the fact that I can sit it on the console and easily tweak and refine while I working on a live performance,” Chiccarelli tells. “In some cases it was printed on the track with the original sound. For background vocals, I would print several sets of various stereo delays using the Analog Tape Echo and Mod Echo programs to fatten and widen the parts. I would then balance them off in Pro Tools, combine them to one stereo track, and bounce them back to tape.” SAM ERICKSON My Morning Jacket discusses their last take with producer Joe Chiccarelli. Pictured left to right: Patrick Hallahan, Bo Koster, Joe Chiccarelli, and “Two-Tone” Tommy. 18 EQ DECEMBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com/gear http://www.eqmag.com

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

EQ Magazine - December 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In My Morning Jacket Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 8 Propellerhead Reason 4 Indie 500: Lunchbox Pres and Compressors 500 Series Preamps 500 Series Compressors Gadgets and Goodies Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - December 2008

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