Blog Ketchup

It's been a busy couple of months for me. All kinds of recording at the Library, my band Greycoats, going out to play CMJ in NYC, playing Hammond B3 and Yamaha CP70 electric piano for the Joel Hanson CD release party, renting my studio out to other local producer/engineers and in my spare time building a three-tiered mansion for Maddox, our pet tortoise.

I have had numerous sessions over the last two months, but I will focus on just a few here.

I had the distinct privilege of bringing a portable recording setup to St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, MN to record a 1.5 million dollar pipe organ, played by renowned pipe organist, Bill Chouinard, for the Norah Long project. We did two traditional hymns and then added chimes and bell sounds to another song. For the portable set up I grabbed the Digi002 and mac G4 tower/flat screen computer monitor from my basement, my API lunchbox (which I used for the close mics) and used the 002 pres for the rooms. The mic setup was; 2 - AKG C214's up close, a pair of AT4033's in the middle of the room and AKG C1000's in the far back corners of this enormous sanctuary (kinda wish I knew the total feet of cable I used for this setup). When Bill pulled out all the stops, that thing really screamed. It was really a treat to capture it.
Similar instrument, completely different set of skills, equally known for these skills, I recorded Billy Steele on the Hammond organ in my studio for the Norah Long project. Billy has played and recorded with the grammy award winning group Sounds of Blackness, working at Flyte Time studios with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. I feel so fortunate to work with such world-class musicians. When Billy plays the Hammond organ he literally becomes part of the instrument. He is able to speak, to sing, to yell, to emote through this instrument. From his soul, through his fingertips, onto the keys and through a spinning speaker. All I had to do was put up a few mic's and capture it.
Earlier in the month I had an 8-piece country band visit the Library for a day, resulting in a full album of classic country covers. They all stood in one room and played as live bands do. I mic'd up a drum kit, upright bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, harmonica/background vocals, a main vocalist, pedal steel and two fiddle players. The next day I mixed the whole thing and an album by Glen Hanson called "Is What It Is" was finished.

Norah Long

If you are from the Twin Cities and know anything about the local theater scene, then Norah Long is a name you are familiar with. Take a look at her bio on the Guthrie Theater page and you will see what I mean.

Norah and I are working on a full album of traditional church music but she has given me liberty to do with them what I see fit, making it a non-traditional album of traditional songs. We brought in Zach Miller to play drums, Aaron Fabbrini on upright bass and Michael Pearce-Donley on piano and organ for a small handful of tunes. I am also excited to be bringing a portable recording set-up to a large Lutheran church to record Bill Chouinard on an actual pipe organ for a couple of the songs.
Norah has been spoiling us rotten with the most amazing chocolate candy-bars you could imagine. Chocolate with bacon, white chocolate with dried kalamata olives, chocolate with passion fruit and sea salt. Unreal.

It is a delight to work with her and a really fun challenge to breathe some uniqueness into these old church hymns and spirituals.

award winning?

I recently received an email from Elizabeth Hunnicutt with this photo attachment...and a note that said "Thanks Matt!"

nice.

Rachel Kurtz-May

My friend Rachel Kurtz-May and I have wanted to work on a project together for years. Unluckily for me, she has several friends who have smaller recording set-ups and are willing to make albums for her at a very affordable price. This is why it just hasn't worked out, until now. Rachel is recording another CD, from many sources with varying sizes of studios, but this time she decided to throw a little audio love my way!

Rachel came in last week and did a bunch of tracking. Solo acoustic and vocal songs, overdubs of electric guitar with our friend Nate Houge (who was also on the Monsters of Folk tour with me and Jonathan Rundman), our rapping friend Agape laid down his rhythmic vocal stylings on a song called "Kurt Cobain," and we ended the session by doing full drums with her husband Michael on electric guitar and local gospel drummer, Chico Cockrell.

The mixes will be finished up soon and I have high hopes that this will be her best record yet.

Jonathan Rundman

Over the last several years I have had the pleasure of doing a bunch of mix work for my friend Jonathan Rundman. He and I go back several years and even shared a tour together (called the Monsters of Folk tour) with two other friends. Jonathan fully embraces the DIY method of recording with a Digi001, an old computer and only two microphones, all captured in his basement. Jonathan is no wannabe artist though, he has been featured in Paste magazine and frequently tours around the country as a solo artist.

Jonathan brought in a bunch of songs for me to mix and even add some parts to. I love that about him, his trust in me to add whatever I hear to his tunes. One of my favorites in this batch is a song called "Surgical Precision," which has the mood and sonic textures of a fast paced "Get Back" by the Beatles. With no bass on the track I grabbed my Hofner violin-bass, like the one McCartney used, and played a very Paul-inspired bass line, then added a guitar solo. The trick was to play it in a sloppy/cool way like the late George Harrison would play. No vibrato, lots of bends and even a little out of time.

It turned out great and I am grateful for people like Jonathan who keep me busy with mix work.

Jenn Dwyer

With Vicky Emerson's project finished and another full album project in the works I was asked to work on some mixes and minor tracking for various people.

Jenn Dwyer, whom I shared the camera with for a Sara Groves music video back in 2002, has been working on her own album. It was produced by my friend, Ben Gowell and features many of the same musicians I use for projects at the Library. They kindly asked me to mix the album and it is turning out great. Good producers and good engineers make my job so much easier.

time flies when you're getting hitched...

It's been over a month since I last posted. So I am going to make up for it in this one post, a month-in-review, if you will...

Brett Tyler and I finally finished up the last mixes for his album aptly titled "Bittersweet." Brett kind of became a fixture here at the Library. Luckily for me he recently moved to a new place about a mile away so this won't be the last I see of him. Keep an eye out for this album's release this fall.

This past month also had me working on drums for two days on a project called As We Tremble. There are some remarkable photos found here.

In the midst of all this insanity I got married and honeymooned for a week in Chicago with my lovely lady and best friend, Corrie.

I literally buried myself in a pile of instruments and didn't burrow out until Vicky Emerson's "Long Ride" album was complete. I even ran downstairs and asked the good folks at Sonic Edge studio if they had a banjo I could borrow. 45 minutes later I returned it after learning how to play it well enough to track a part for one song.

After returning from the honeymoon I found out that a rental for one of my eq plug-ins expired and the company would no longer rent the eq out short term. I had pony up the dough and then patiently wait for 5 days for it to come in the mail (they were backed up and couldn't overnight it due to a massive warehouse inventory). With my time I decided to add another wall of books to the main tracking room.

This has nothing to do with the studio, however, I do play out professionally quite a bit and was asked to "bring a bunch of toys" to a recent gig. So I showed up with this set-up. A toy piano, Suzuki Omnichord, Casio SK-1, a Hal Leonard monophonic mini synth, MicroKorg, a homemade shaker and a thunder barrel I got on my honeymoon in Chicago. I ran the MicroKorg through my Digitech talker pedal and did some rhythmic vocoding that night.

I've been looking on Craigslist and at local thrift stores for an old console organ that features the best sonic flavors of cheese. I finally found the mack-daddy of them all in this Lowery D550 (aka the Contempo 80). It has everything I ever wanted and more in a console organ. And it looks nice sitting next to the Hammond. I like to think that they play duets together in the middle of the night when no one is around.

Jason Gray Deluxe

Jason Gray again graced the Library studio with his presence yesterday. His new album will be released in September and my hope is that it will catapult him to a whole new level. Aside from helping him out with one of the songs for the new CD (see post from May 21st) he asked me to produce the tracks for the deluxe edition of his new record, which will feature an additional 8 songs. Several of them will be simply acoustic guitar and voice, the rest will have added sweeteners like drums, piano, upright bass, accordion, etc. My good friend Aaron Fabbrini (pictured) regularly assists me at the Library and is an enormous help to me with my work. Aaron and I played in Jason's band in the early part of the decade and even recorded a live album with him and a handful of other talented players. Knowing that he was coming in today, I asked him to bring his upright bass. The first time I ever recorded him on upright was for the Vicky Emerson project and he blew me away with his parts, tone, intonation, everything! Jason wanted to record the Tom Waits tune "You Could Never Hold Back Spring" for this deluxe edition. Last week I had asked my pal, Steve Haines to come in and play piano for it. As he and Jason fine tuned the ins and outs, I set up a snare drum and ride cymbal with a sizzler and just two microphones. We then captured this 2 minute, smoky, jazz number with just piano, voice, and brush kit. As we were listening back, Steve picked up my accordion and began to play along. So we sent him into the iso-room to track some squeeze-box. All it needed now to make it complete was upright bass, which brings us back to today. Aaron glued the whole thing together with his upright playing and did a phenomenal job. Since he was there we had him play upright on yet another tune and electric bass on one more. There are only a handful of bass players who play with such precision in this town and Aaron is one of them. I have just a few things to add to Jason's deluxe edition CD and then I can mix it and turn it in. For those who feel that this singer-songwriters new album leans a little too far into the pop-music camp, perhaps this deluxe edition CD will balance it out.

Vicky Emerson sessions

I just finished a week of tracking Vicky Emerson and band. Vicky is a talented singer/songwriter originally from Minnesota but now makes her home in New York City. I was really excited for this project a couple months ago when we met for preproduction. Finally the week of tracking was upon us. We had a slight cast change, that was beyond our control, but the final lineup ended up being the perfect fit for this record. Tyler Burkum (Mat Kearney, Meiko, Wild Sweet Orange) played electric guitar and lap steel, Aaron Fabbrini (Sara Groves) played upright and electric bass and Steve Goold (Bill Mike Band, Jason Harms Quartet) played drums and percussion. One of my favorite moments from the session was for the song "Into the Woods." Wednesday after lunch we took a walk down by the Mississippi river and I rummaged through the brush collecting various branches, logs, sticks and leaves to create a loop for the guys to play to. We brought them in and Steve and I went to work creating an organic drum loop using these items.After the loop was recorded and assembled the guys went in and made magic happen. It sounded so good we decided to let them keep playing for an additional 3 minutes after the song was done. It turned out so cool we are trying to decide if we should just leave it all in tact and have a 7-1/2 minute song on the record. Why not, right?

The schedule for the week was pretty insane. We were only able to get 2 songs on day one. Vicky had a show at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and wasn't able to get to the studio until a little after 3pm, so it was a short day. Day two we ran into a few issues related to computer glitches and noisy neighbors. Another two song day, leaving six songs for our final day of tracking the band. (gulp). Day three came and we were able to knock out all six remaining songs! Then Thursday and Friday Vicky and I were able to track ten vocals and three piano takes. (whew! I get exhausted just typing it.)

It was a great week of recording.

(pictured below is Tyler Burkum. Aaron Fabbrini is behind the glass door with his upright bass)

three-in-one

Yesterday we kicked out the bed tracks for an up and coming artist named Beth Roesch. Beth has a sound that is influenced by some of the finer female singer songwriters of our day. Songwriters like Patty Griffin and Sara Groves, of whom she is a huge fan. So she was really excited when I told her that her backup ensemble for the tracking would be none other than Sara's band. Aaron Fabbrini played bass, Zach Miller played drums and I played electric guitar (okay, so I am not in her band but I used to be, so that sort of counts...) These guys are incredible studio musicians, bring tons of ideas, ample gear (Aaron even brings his own Telefunken preamp and Tube-Tech compressor!) and an unbelievable amount of passion and care. We will finish up these three tunes and when Beth is able to schedule more time, we'll hit another three. Ultimately resulting in a full record.


A few days ago, my very good friend Jason Gray called for some help on a song for his new record. He has been working with award winning producer Jason Ingram for this record and the tracks that I have heard sound pretty amazing. I am so excited to hear the rest of it. There was one song that still needed a little tlc and asked me to help. It was a dark but hopeful song that simply says; "could it be that everything sad is coming untrue." They had pushed for it to be a simple acoustic and vocal song to place at the tail end of the record. Jason had really hoped it could grow into something bigger, more emotive. With that kind of direction I added a big marching bass drum, piano, electric guitar and my friend Ben Rosenbush (pictured) who came in to work on mixes for his upcoming album (more on that later) got roped into playing cello on it. All in all I think the additional parts really helped the song and I am once again happy to be involved in another Jason Gray project.


Last week Ebony Jefferson came in to record a song called "Life Alone." Steve Goold made yet another appearance in my studio to play drums and a fantastic job he did. Ebony has a very soulful singing voice and has met up with a co-writer in Ben (pictured to the left) whose songwriting style is (in my humble opinion) a cross between Audioslave and Lenny Kravitz. Her voice blended with his writing style is a pretty cool combination. Ben brought in a Les Paul studio and an old Marshall half stack. I had to think whether I have actually recorded an old Marshall half stack before and came up with a solid no. These aren't as popular as they once were so my chances of tracking them have been limited in recent years. However, I totally understand why they were such a go-to amp in the studio at one time. Such a dark, meaty, trashy tone! That guitar/amp combination worked really well in this track. Eventually I will make links to these artists myspace pages once the songs are mixed and uploaded.

continuing with Faith

Faith Udeh won a band competition and one of the prizes was 20 hours of recording at Winterland Studios. I have worked there before. They have a beautiful API Legacy plus console in their control room that still has the drool marks from my last visit. Steve and Justin and I were back at it, this time capturing two more bed tracks on day one. Then day two we finished up Faith's vocals and I added a bunch of sweetener keyboard and omnichord parts. The bass I used for this session was borrowed from my friend Aaron Fabbrini. It is a hallow-body Guild Starfire bass and it sounds huge. For one of the songs I ran it through an auto-wah pedal and it gave it the perfect growl for that tune. One of my favorite things about visiting other studios is see how they do things and learn from it. This time I figured out how to wire up a small speaker from a studio monitor to make it a kick drum microphone that only hears the sub-frequencies. I had an old Yorkville monitor in my garage so I built my own and will be trying it out on a project today. In the top photo to the right (the drummer photo) you will see such a speaker mounted to a mic stand. Below is the speaker/mic I made in my studio.

Faith Udeh - rock hop?

Faith Udeh has been in the studio this week. She is a hip-hop artist that has several songs that have a pretty aggressive rock edge to them. We are taking this project one song at a time until we get an entire album done.

For this session we brought in Steve Goold to play drums (he was pretty excited about his newly updated toms for his Risen acrylic kit) and Justin Sharbono to play electric guitar. I sat in on bass and quickly remembered that I get a little overwhelmed when I play multiple roles (player, engineer AND producer). It can be difficult to watch all the meters, keep your ear attuned to what everyone is playing and simultaneously remember all your own parts as a player. We got the sounds pretty quickly, which tends to happen when you have players and gear of this caliber. Luckily for me my new friend Dan Deurloo dropped by to see the studio, so he sat in the captains chair and manned the button-pushing while I wore my bass player hat for a little while.

Last week I was explaining to Faith the phenomenon that hiring professional musicians to record on a project winds up being cheaper in the long run. Simply due to the fact that they bring a ton of skill, great musical minds, incredible knowledge of their instrument and a wide range of gear with them to the session. For instance, if Steve comes in to do a full record with me, he will bring up to 9 different snare drums and several cymbal combinations. For this one song with Faith, Justin brought in 2 distinctively different colored amplifiers made by ÷13 (both visually and soncially!). One that is a dead ringer for a Vox AC30 and the other sounds like a beefy Marshall. We ended up running them simultaneously for a pretty monstrous guitar tone. He also had 3 electric guitars with varying tones. All that combined with much experience in the studio means better ideas in less time and better takes, ultimately resulting in less hours of editing.

Faith will come in and nail down her performances, I will finish adding any sweetener parts and we will be ready to mix! In the mean time I have been working on mixes for two albums that I am thrilled with, Brett Mikkelson and Ben Rosenbush. I will update the blog when they are finished.

CD Release Concert

I haven't posted anything in a while. Mainly because the studio work I have been doing is mostly mixing, which doesn't make for cool photos. Last night, however, I played with Elizabeth Hunnicutt and a band of fantastic musicians (all of whom played on her CD) for her release party. The night went really well, there was a crowd that must have numbered about five-hundred and I had a record amount of instruments at one gig. Pictured below is me sitting in my musicubicle. At one point Liz said something about me having 20 instruments back there, so I counted... 10! Here is a list of what I played last night.

1. Hammond B3
2. Fender Rhodes electric piano
3. Yamaha CP70 piano
4. Yamaha S03 synth
5. glockenspiel
6. lap steel
7. dobro
8. accordion
9. mandolin
10. metal shaker

I can't imagine ever breaking this record. It was a really great show and I hope that Elizabeth sells truckloads of CD's.

Pedal Steel

Now that Elizabeth's project is done I am able to put all of my focus on an album I have been working on for far too long of a time. Brett Mikkelson (Brett Tyler is apparently still in the running...) has been more than gracious through all of my transition time into the new studio and finishing up some other projects. We have made some serious headway in recent weeks. This particular week we were honored to have Joe Savage in to play pedal steel on most of Brett's album. Joe is simply one of the best this town has to offer. A regular player on A Prairie Home Companion and also sits in with several of the Twin Cities finest groups. Joe is the kind of player that can give you so many great parts to work with that it is literally difficult to sift through them. Each part is played with precision, great thought and with accuracy, all on one of the worlds most difficult instruments to play. Truly an honor to have him at the Library to add his beautiful skill to an album I will listen to over and over after it is finished.

The Final Additions to the Hunnicutt album

The Elizabeth Hunnicutt album is finished! It was mastered yesterday and it turned out great. One of my personal favorite moments while tracking was adding vibraphone to a few of the tunes. I have gotten to know John, Steve and Chan of the New Standards, who rehearse across the hall. Steve let me borrow his beautiful vibraphone one evening and I spent a couple hours coming up with parts. I had hoped to be able to add vibes to the album but wasn't holding my breath. It suddenly worked out and I am so glad. It added a really nice element to this already beautiful batch of songs. I will now be moving onto some mixes for a couple other projects and hitting the long awaited Brett Tyler album.

An actual post about recording...

I haven't posted much lately because after I finally got into my new studio I was (and still am to a certain degree) working my fool head off catching up. Just this week I finished the Tim Lemmens album and began mixing Elizabeth Hunnicutt's album. Of course, since I am also the producer of her record I take some liberties while mixing to add elements that I feel enhance the song. I will share two of those here.

Today while mixing her song, "I Will Raise You Up" I wanted a bigger, boomier kick drum sound. The song starts with a slow drum groove with enough space for a longer decayed bass drum. Since Steve Goold played a tighter bass drum I couldn't achieve it with compression and certainly did not want to attempt a cheesy digital reverb on the bass drum. So, I sent the bass drum signal out into a bass amp which was shooting it's low frequencies into a larger than life bass drum that is on loan to me from my friend Matt Freed. I put a Senheiser 421 against the front head and then compressed a room mic with a long release that was set to the timing of the song. I sent those two tracks back into ProTools. This reamping technique easily accomplished the long bass drum notes I was looking for.
She also has a song "Be My Calm," which she wrote in her car as she was stopped somewhere in Nebraska during a torrential downpour. She nervously tapped out the rhythm on her steering wheel and this melody and simple chorus came to her, so she opened her MacBook and recorded it in Garageband (three cheers for modern technology). During the recording of the basic tracks I plugged in two matching Shure KSM44's but then returned them to their protective metal cases. Placing one on Steve's floor tom and one on his snare drum I told him to keep a steady four on the floor kick drum pulse and then lightly tap on the mic boxes with his finger tips, bringing the element of tapping on her steering wheel, how this song was birthed, to the final production. A week and a half ago I was listening to the Fender Rhodes part we had recorded, which works great in the bulk of the song, but wasn't working for me in the quiet chorus. I wanted something that sounded more like a music box. So one day, I went to my local thrift store and purchased a music box for $3.99. Back at the studio I put a mic in front of it, turned the crank and forced it to only play one note at a time as I recorded it. I then separated each sound and labeled them to their corresponding musical note. I wrote out the chord structure for the chorus of the tune and proceeded to place each note on the grid within ProTools, creating a legitimate sounding music box version of her chorus. I liked it so much I decided to start the song with it.
I will be finished mixing the record by the end of January!

points on jazz project

A quiet blog does not equal a quiet studio. The new studio has been bustling since day one of being open. I made some time in my schedule for some jazz instructors to come in and track a Dave Brubeck piece in 9 movements. They all tracked it live and will add piano later. It was a first time event in the new studio to actually have each musician in their own isolated rooms playing together. A dream turned into reality for me as I engineered these guys tearing it up.