EQ Magazine - December 2008 - (Page 26)

FOR THE RECORD SAM ERICKSON Jim James (right) checks in with Joe Chiccarelli (left) after finishing a vocal pass. the main vocal, we would use a [AKG] C12 on the backing vox, which has a thinner sound that mixes nicely with the U47.” Chiccarelli says that James’ vocals were sent through either the Neve 31102 pres on Avatar’s 8088 console, or through outboard Neve 1073s. Every vocal signal was sent to either a Teletronix LA2A or a Urei 1176, and lightly compressed before hitting the tape. Though the Neve pres added a sense of warmth and the squish from the compressor/limiters significantly beefed up James’ vocalisms, Chiccarelli’s liberal use of reverb is perhaps most responsible for the singer’s unique sound. “To Jim, reverb’s another instrument and another sound on the record and he plays off that texture,” Chiccarelli says. “It’s really important he has it in his headphone mix and he hears exactly how it is going to sound on the album, whether it’s a plate or a chamber or an old ’80s AMS RMX16 non-linear program.” Says James on the subject of drenching everything in reverb: “I just have a need for space in a recording. I feel that a lot of modern recordings are lacking space and depth in the stereo field. Many recordings sound flat, with all the sounds pushed right up in your face. I hate that. I like older recordings where you can feel the space around the performers. It’s not that I’m on some retro trip—that gets old—I just want there to be some difference in distance between the instruments.” fter the core instruments were recorded, James approached Chiccarelli with a wild idea: Take Evil Urges into a completely different realm by adding horns and strings to a sizeable chunk of the album’s tracks. A COMPRESS IN “Michael [Brauer] has a particular style of applying compression that differs from mine,” Joe Chiccarelli says of the man who handled the mix on Evil Urges. “He uses multiple stereo compressors to feed things. But things were effected when tracking, especially the room mics: I used [Urei] 1176s on all of the electric guitars and Teletronix LA2As on the acoustic guitars. Keyboards were all hit with the dbx 160, and I used [Empirical Labs] Distressors and Chandler TG1s, Germaniums, and Neve 33609s on the drums. The vocals were processed through an Altec 9473A Dual Band Limiter as well as the LA2As and 1176s.” With so many room mics being fed into so many compressors, one has to wonder how many tracks made it to the final mix. “Michael muted a few things, but not much. I left him with a lot of options to mix and match with,” Chiccarelli says. “For drums, I’d leave one mono, distorted, squashed room mic, one real far, wet-sounding ambient track, and one up-close mic to catch the early reflections and reproduce a lot of the low end build-up. You can hear the perspectives change a lot throughout the album.” 26 EQ DECEMBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.cadmics.com 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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