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hey dudes and dudettes, i'm currently (and have been for a few days) in the process of recording my band's (cymbals eat guitars) 3rd record and i figured i would make a post here about it. hopefully it's not too much info and will hopefully as well be of good use to any folks who are going to be recording in the future. the pics i'm putting up have already been on instagram and Facebook, but if anyone has any questions about gear, process, etc feel free to ask. we all love recording so much and are super excited about making this record! we have a total of 2 days for basics at the big studio, 4 days of overdubs at a small place, then 4 days of mixing - all for 9 songs coming in at somewhere between 40-50 minutes. we practiced really hard to make sure we can come in and nail takes together - we track everything together live so overdubs are usually pretty easy in that they are just overdubs - we don't have to go and track all of the initial takes again. we had one or two songs done on the first take!

day 0 - load-in the night before at water music in hoboken, nj. this way the next day will go a fuck of a lot smoother… this studio is amazingly huge and professional with a humungous live room which could probably fit a small orchestra, multiple amp rooms which are each the size of some studios i've been at and a control room with a gigantic neve board.



day 1 - set-up. we had a drum tech come in and properly set up, help select and tune the drums. this dude is super legit (drum tech for jay-z's drummer ) and was well worth the money spent. it just ensures that the drums are going to sound amazing and we can save lots of time getting good drum sounds (which of course usually takes FOREVER). andrew is using a nice vintage gretsch kit and had access to a couple of really cool old snares from the 30's and 40's.

i got to choose from a bunch of amps and narrowed it down to these 4. the gibson vanguard and ampeg b-15 won out and i bi-amped them for my main keyboard, which is a nord stage running mostly wurlitzer and organ sounds. i set the gibson to break up a bit earlier and gave it a brighter, jangle-y tone while the ampeg was slightly cleaner/warmer. the fender bassman and ampeg jupiter were both cool but the bassman was too clean for my liking and the jupiter had a particular upper-mid punch that i wasn't in love with. other than that, i recorded some grand piano at the studio and anything else will be overdubs.



i'll post more of the main gear pics tomorrow when i'm at the overdub studio.

sick!

One-takes are the way to do it, that old school style.
When approaching everything like it has to count...chance favors greatness.

Good luck catching lightning in a bottle.

Also

skullservant wrote:

here are the rest of the rigs from our initial tracking days.



joe's rig - an original 1967 gibson es-335, (not pictured) a few jazzmasters (a mascis squier and 2 1962 american reissues) and rickenbacker 330 (not sure of the year). pedals of course. a 1980 marshall JMP with 4x12 cab, a 1970 silverface fender twin and (not pictured) both a 60's and 90's box ac30.

matt's rig - (i think a vintage) rickenbacker 4003 and a new fender standard p bass. no pedals on this record i think! crazy. mostly using the ampeg b15 and my fender pa100 and ampeg 8x10 for some grind.

we started doing vocals and overdubs today in brooklyn and will be here for another 3 days. had a late start but we got 3 songs done on vocals and will be getting a few wurlitzer and piano overdubs taken care of. my standard wurlitzer tracks were all using my nord, pedals and amps but i'm going to do a few direct takes with a wurlitzer 200a for a different sound.

Niiiice setup, that studio looks amazing. Looking forward to the record!

So stoked for this to come out, love the old albums a lot

Joe needs more ssbs though

Very excited for this
The whole recording process looks really fun

Ampeg b15 is one of the best sounding amps of all time. Love the fact that it folds into it's self. That studio looks so legit.

tomlane95 wrote:So stoked for this to come out, love the old albums a lot

Joe needs more ssbs though

i try not to push my stuff on him too hard. i let him figure out what he wants on his own and sometimes i'll make him something to replace something else. he's had more of my stuff on his board in the past but he changes his board around every once in awhile and shifts things around.

MrNovember wrote:Very excited for this
The whole recording process looks really fun

it has been really fun! it's been really fast too, i'm blown away that we're already in day 2 of mixing.

Bellyheart wrote:Ampeg b15 is one of the best sounding amps of all time. Love the fact that it folds into it's self. That studio looks so legit.

seriously one of my favorites, especially for keys. i lucked out on one about a year ago too for an amazing price and i had been looking for the past 3 years or so for an affordable one.

it's crazy how much has happened since my last post.

we did 3 more days of overdubs - keyboards, vocals, guitars, some trumpet, violin and cello, tambourine and a failed attempt at theremin. i got to use a bunch of really cool keyboards - my nord stage and korg MS2000 along with the studio's roland paraphonic-505, roland juno-6, arp omni and wurlitzer 200A. they had all sorts of rad delays there to use including a few EHX memory mans (memory men?) - early 3 and 4 knob versions - a super cool DOD analog delay 680, a REALLY clean fulltone TTE, WEM copycat and an echoplex. this was psych-space-delay-time nirvana. FUCK i want them all but of course cannot haz



we had some of our friends come do some guest appearances on a few songs which was super fun and we ended up just having an impromptu studio party the last night of overdubs. darby cicci (the antlers, school of night) came over and recorded some trumpet on one song, noel heroux (hooray for earth) jessica and cristi jo zambri (hooray for earth, zambri) recorded some really cool backing vocals and joe stickney (formerly of bear in heaven) did some tambourine.



then yesterday i had a huge treat... i went over to joe mcginty's (psychedelic furs) studio to record some chamberlin on his beautiful old musicmaster 600 which was formerly owned by james iha of the smashing pumpkins OMG
this thing was the precursor to the mellotron and puts out some incredibly breathtaking sounds - i only had an hour with it but i wished i could have spent the whole day there, geeking out and recording sounds. joe has sooooooo many cool synths in his studio dear lord. an arp2600, electric harpsichord, yamaha cp70, RMI fairlight, vintage moog modular... the list was never-ending.



we're on day 8 of recording and are 2 days/3 songs in on mixing.

This is gonna be so fucking good.

day 10 - final mix day! we've been at this rad mix studio in brooklyn for the past 3 days mixing 3 songs a day, which is pretty fucking brutal i must say. custom neve, serious outboard gear, a giant EMT plate which was formerly at RCA studios, tape machines and more. too cool. we're mixing to 1/2" tape which will add the extra mojoz. just a few more hours and we're done with the exception of mastering which happens next week.

Stoked to hear this.