Note to Self
I recently started a new job at a guitar shop, Jim’s Guitars. It’s a pretty cool place. Jim’s been buying, selling and trading vintage guitars for almost 40 years, so we see some pretty cool stuff come in the shop. Also, he’s one of the few Orange Amp dealers in Maryland, so it’s not bad getting the opportunity every now and then to play a $10,000 guitar through a $5,000-$6,000 Orange Amp & Cab! Check out some of the guitars we have for sale here.
Anyways, this place is more like a museum then anything else. People come into buy small things, strings, a guitar cable, a cheap beginners guitar, but no one in the current economic state is really on the hunt for a $4,000 1946 Gibson LG-2. So, the very few customers we do get in, come in, do a lap or two around the store, brush their fingers across the strings of a few guitars, flip-over a few price tags and then head out. There’s a lot of down time needless to say.
A few days ago I was having lunch with my good friend Mike York. He is a recording enthusiast like i am, and was running circles around me with all the mic-pres and consoles he had been looking into recently. I have never really been a gear head. My most expensive piece of recording equipment is probably the pair of small diaphragm Oktava mics i have (i can’t even tell you their specific model#?). I asked Mike what motivated him to learn so much about specific recording & processing gear. He told me, whenever he listened to an album that really impressed him as far as the quality of recording, he would research who recorded it, where they recorded it, and what they used.
So, luckily for me i have this new job where i’ve got some time to do some similar research. I’ve been checking out what some of my favorite producers have in their studios, including favorite mics, pre amps, eqs, mixing consoles, monitors, etc… And almost coincidentally, another friend Mr. Austin Stahl, sent me some links of tracking, mixing and mastering notes from David Bazan’s new album “Curse Your Branches” and Pedro the Lion’s last full-length “Achilles Heel”
David Bazan doing some editing on the CYB sessions
There’s some pretty awesome insight as to how they tracked some of these songs. For example, Bands With Managers, the opening track on “Achilles”, the drums were actually tracked 10 beats per minute faster and then slowed down, i’m guessing to help fill out the drums.
But here are the links to the tracking/mixing/mastering notes:
David Bazan – Curse Your Branches Mixing & Mastering Notes
Pedro the Lion – Achilles Heel Recording Notes
If you guys find any other cool recording notes let me know. I need to reabsorb all this technical jargon!
