Recording - July 2012 - 64

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Suggestions: Though we have been very cautious to recommend the use of compression and limiting this column, due to a general misuse at the hands of many novice and “professional” recordists, we will make the exception here. We would suggest that Patrick consider slapping a compressor on both the bass and the overhead mics and carefully work the attack, threshold and release until his sound sources even out some. We also feel that tucking the lead vocal back slightly and adding a limiter to the overall mix might assist in keeping the distortion at bay during the more excitable sections of the mix. Oh, and a little high-end eq on the snare would be sweet!
Summary: Good R&R energy, just smooth it out a little.
Contact: Patrick Buhr, patrickjbuhr@gmail.com

Kevin Auger / Subanez
Equipment: Yamaha AW1600 desktop recorder, referenced through KRK Rokit5 monitors. Guitar (Ibanez JS1000) and bass (Ibanez Ergodyne 4-string) played through Peavey Valve King 212 amp, miked with a Shure SM57 into an M-Audio DMP3 preamp, then to recorder. BOSS ME-70 for chorus and light compression on guitar. Percussion: BOSS DR-880, direct into recorder. Vocals: Audio-Technica AT4040 active ribbon mic into DMP3 and Lexicon MX400 for light compression. Bass and vocal treatments via AW1600 onboard effects.

Patrick Buhr/The Ashbury’s
Equipment: Apple Macbook Pro with Zoom R16 audio interface/control surface, running Apple Logic Pro software. Mics: Shure SM57s for snare and kick; Behringer B-2s for overheads; Shure SM57 for guitar, MXL ribbon mic for vocals. Bass guitar “went through an Ampeg combo amp direct line in.”

Music: “The Ball” is a male vocal rock song. Riley Bird wrote the song, played the guitars and sang the vocals, Alex Trevino was on bass guitar and Kaleb Ferry played drums. Patrick handled all of the recording and production, with assistance from The Ashbury’s, whose first album In My Head features this song. (And before you ask... yes, the apostrophe is actually in the band name.) This isn’t Patrick’s first time in Readers’ Tapes—his song “Shelby” was reviewed in our March 2011 column. Recording: We dug this submission quite a bit. The scratchy distorted electric guitar in the intro has a great tone, and we love how it gave way to the full band assault. In fact we loved the tone of the electric throughout the entire track! Some of the other sound sources had some small issues to our ears; the bass seemed to be somewhat muffled in the quieter passages (could have been performance, not recording related) and the snare drum could have used just at tad more high end though our monitors. As for the overall mix, Riley’s in-your-face vocal was a bit too present at times and there seemed to be some overall distortion on the track at around 40–52 sec. We also caught a bit of cymbal smear in this same area.
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RECORDING JULY 2012

Music: “Resemblance” is a male vocal Metal song. Kevin wore all of the hats on the project, and recorded it in an “unfortunately-square spare bedroom”. Kevin tells us, “I have acoustic treatments as best as I can, but I just can’t take the “squareness” of the room out. The low end of my mixes usually suffers because of that, and I do my best running back and forth to different stereos in the “finishing” stages to try to get the best balance.” Recording: We struggled mightily whether to include Kevin’s track in our SPOTLIGHT e-newsletter rather than in Readers’ Tapes; if not for the fact that we feel the track could benefit from some overall mastering, it would be headed there. In our opinion “Resemblance” is one of the strongest one-man-band submissions that we have received in some time, and a great example of what can come from some obvious talent and hard work. Right from the intro we really dug the overall balance of the mix. Every instrument seems to be in its place and designed to work as a solid whole. The guitars are as thick as fog (that’s good) and the bass holds its own without intruding into the low midrange. We also have to give Kevin props for his drum programming; it sure sounds like a “real” player to us! Kudos also on the vocal blend, the fact that they are set back into the mix gives the track a level sound in our view. Well done, sir! Suggestions: A successful mix such as this deserves the full treatment, and to that end we would love to hear what a great mastering engineer could do to take it up to the next level. We would encourage Kevin to honor his effort, find a mastering house that specializes in this genre, and “gift” himself a few hours for his mix.
Summary: Great stuff! Keep it up.
Contact: Kevin Auger, augerbass@hotmail.com

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Recording - July 2012

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