Recording - May 2012 - 44

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Suggestions: Now for the good news! “Fresh” is well on its way to being a solid, creative track. As Sly Stone once said, “All we need is a drummer...”! Our suggestion is that Kenny bring in a real breathing drummer, or use any of the myriad drummers for hire via the Internet to turn his exemplary bass work into a complete whole. With all that is good here, an accomplished player should have more than enough inspiration to deliver a killer performance, combining his/or her skill with Kenny’s. It would be well worth the effort, in our opinion.
Summary: Almost there.
Contact: Kenny Weydener, kennysbassspace@aol.com

Rodger Reed / Reed!
Equipment: Apple Macbook with M-Audio Duo running Propellerhead Reason and Record, M-Audio Keystation 88es, Shure SM57, Ibanez Roadster bass, Oscar Schmidt Delta King guitar, Vox Valvetronix amp.

Kenny Weydener
Equipment: Apple 2010 iMac with Avid Mbox 2 mini interface running Pro Tools LE 8.1 with included plug-ins and Toontrack EZdrummer; Sennheiser HD 280 headphones and Event ALP5 powered nearfield monitors; Spector basses and Dean Markley strings.

Music: “Fresh” is a rock instrumental track. Kenny one-man-banded the effort at his home studio. Mastering was done by Dean Stairs at Little Known Artists Studios in Newfoundland. Recording: Quite an interesting tune. Kenny is a bassist by trade, and an accomplished one at that. “Fresh” consists of several layers of multi-tracked bass guitars along with a drum performance that Kenny assembled from his EZdrummer software. Alas, as with so many of the machine-based drum performances that we hear at Readers’ Tapes, this one falls short of the mark when compared t o the fine quality of the bass tracks. While Kenny has created a pretty, seamless and dynamic music bed using octaves, harmonics and well planned frequency arrangements via the multiple bass guitars—amazing to listen to on its own—the drums feel far less successful to our ears. While we are certain that it was not from lack of trying, and wasn’t a shortcoming of the excellent EZdrummer software that we’ve heard create some completely solid performances in recent submissions to this column, the drums feel like they were assembled by... well, the bass player. We found the snare to be dark and overcompressed, and the cymbals ineffective. The quick drum fill at approximately 1:32 was particularly awkward, as were the hollow, widely panned floor tom fills.
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RECORDING MAY 2012

Music: “Dance/Sweat” is a R&B/Soul tune. Rodger did it all at his home studio. Recording: Our overall impression of “Dance/Sweat” is that the multiple individual sound sources fail to form a cohesive sound. The song is fairly busy and Reed! is obviously a talented guy, but as a recording, things could use a bit of re-focusing. From the intro, we would’ve liked to have heard a beefier kick drum (too much “click”, not enough kick) while the artificial hand claps could have benefited from some reverb to help give them some ambience. There also seemed to be a distracting logjam of sounds—horns, clean and distorted electric guitars—just to the left of center of the mix. Reed! has used panning (perhaps too much) more effectively for his backing vocals, and he was wise to clear out the center during the guitar solo. Still, that being said, the track maintains a disjointed feel to us. Suggestions: Balancing a mix is one of the most difficult aspects of a recordist’s job, and songs with high track counts/sound sources can often magnify the difficulty. Our advice to Reed! is that he remix his track focusing on the groove first, and the gravy second. Starting with the rhythm section, that phat synth bass needs an equally muscular kick to play with. We suggest that Reed! attack this first. Next we ask that he consider layering in his secondary sounds with careful attention to panning, perhaps the clean electric panned to 11 o’clock followed by the horn stabs panned slightly to the right of center, etc.. Take your time here; trying different combinations of layering can often yield a surprisingly different result to the overall track. As for the vocals, we love the performance, but feel that a slightly narrower panning scheme on the backing vocals would help to better “center” the mix. Finally, regarding the handclaps, adding a few passes of real hand claps along with some reverb to the programmed sounds can often help to give them a more realistic feel. Try it, this method also works nicely for horn and strings.
Summary: Plenty to work with, experiment and have fun.
Contact: Rodger Reed / Reed!, soularunderground@gmail.com

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Recording - May 2012

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