Recording - March 2011 - 48

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The first theory would be that since this is Patrick’s initial foray into full band recording/mixing, something simply slipped away from him and he failed to notice. The other real possibility is that Patrick took the more anarchistic approach towards his mix and decided to defy the “kick drum goes in the center” theory that has been around for, say, about as long as people have been recording kick drums. Convention vs. creativity, and the winner is....
Summary: Square peg, meet round hole!
Contact: Patrick Buhr, pbuhr@mcsweenysschool.com.

John Sinek / Long Black Night Of Brilliance
Equipment: Dell XPS 410 PC with Intel Core2 Quad CPUs @ 2.40GHz and 3 GB RAM with M-Audio Delta 1010 Sound Card, running Cakewalk SONAR 7.0.2 Studio Edition and plug-ins: Dave Brown Audioware for Compression, Limiting, De-essing; Sonitus:fx Reverb, GClip Signal Clipper, TruePianos VST Plug-in, Modartt PianoTeq 2.2, Steven Slate Drum Samples. Mackie 1402VLZ mixer, Behringer Composer Pro MDX 2200 Compressor, Shure SM58 mic; Peavey DPM C8p MIDI Controller, Roland JV1010 sound module.

Patrick Buhr / Line-Up
Equipment: PC with Zoom R16 Mixer/Interface running Steinberg Cubase; Behringer Tube Pre; Mics: Shure SM57 (snare) and SM58 (kick and ride), Behringer T-1 Tube Mic (vocals) and C-4s (overhead) and B-2 Pro (guitar amps).

Music: “Shelby” is a male vocal rock song. It’s unclear whether Patrick is just the engineer on this project, or whether he also played all the instruments. Recording: Patrick relates that this is his first full-band project, his other efforts having been acoustic guitar/vocal affairs. On first listen we were (A) impressed by the quirky songwriting/performance and (B) puzzled by some of the mix choices that Patrick made. So in an attempt at cutting to the chase, let’s focus in on the primary source of our confusion, that being the drums, or more specifically the kick drum. Now Patrick comes across in his cover letter as a pretty intelligent and savvy guy with a fairly good grip on recording. So given that, why oh why is his kick drum panned completely over to the far left hand side of the stereo field? Sure we’ve heard drum sets panned to the side before, the Beatles did it often in order to establish clarity in dense mixes that were recorded with very limited track counts. That said, it was the entire kit that was placed out from center. In Patrick’s case the rest of the kit is centered, with only the kick panned. Hey Pat, you wouldn’t be toying with us, would you? Suggestions: Making suggestions in this column can often be a slippery slope. After all, from our seat we can only make educated guesses as to what transpired during people’s decisionmaking processes. To that end, let’s examine two possibilities regarding the wayward kick drum.
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RECORDING MARCH 2011

Music: “River of Light” is a male vocal rock song. John wrote, arranged, programmed and performed the track in addition to handling the recording duties. Recording: In his production notes, John describes the process of recording “River of Light”, and believe us when we tell you that he left no stone unturned. He started with the piano, played to a click, then added the kick, then the bass on keyboard, then piano accents, strings/pads, the organ solo, and then vocals. The other drum sounds were done last, each part played on the keyboard and then each note placed painstakingly over several weekends. For our part, we really like most of the tones here, particularly the intro piano and the clear staccato bass. John tells us that he was going for an ’80s style drum sound in his track, complete with a period-correct reverb in this case, and he indeed did an admirable job. Ah, the ’80s... when the only thing bigger than the reverbs were the hairstyles! He also tells us that he often times struggles with dark, murky-sounding mixes on his songs. He did a lot of compression to get more loudness, and some subtractive eq to open up frequencies where appropriate. Unfortunately, to our ears, his worries about dark mixes may have led to some overcompensation. While all of the ingredients to the musical soup are in place, the overall recipe is on the thin side (hey, it’s almost lunch time, what can we say!). Suggestions: The most successful mixes are ones that can musically represent the entire spectrum of frequencies from bottom to top, unless one is going for a specific ideal, e.g. a club or dance remix where the low end is bumped considerably. While we are not sure whether the thinness here came for the culmination of the individual tracks or during the mastering process, we would encourage John to revisit things and try to enhance the low and low mids in order to give his mix some needed girth and drive.
Summary: Almost there!
Contact: John Sinek / Long Black Night Of Brilliance, jjtaup@yahoo.com.

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Recording - March 2011

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