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!