The Beginning - Twister
Twister.
This seemed to be the beginning of the second phase of Screaming Mimes for me. When we were first running through the arrangement, the excitement of hearing something NEW finally coming together was evident. I believe this was the first song I programmed into my new guitar processor, the Line 6 Pod XT. I sat in my living room with headphones on, as well as the amp setup right in front of me, so I knew what I was hearing in the phones was the same that was coming out of the amp. I wanted something "swirling" around my head ... since I didn't know what the final lyrics were at the time but knew they would be maybe a combination of the mess a Twister leaves behind or how playing the game Twister can get messy. I had a lot of fun programming this.
We knew right away that this was our next album opener, so appropriately it was the first song recorded. We wanted to handle recording differently this time around, so we called in the talents of my fellow employee at Sonic Arts, Austin Gorrigan. Austin and I spent time the night before setting everything up in our rehearsal space and checking out possible problems and getting drums sounds and line checks so that when we all got there the next night, we'd be ready to roll right out of the gate.
HA !
That was far from true ... but after about an hour of running through headphone mixes with everyone and stamping out a few fires and throwing a temper tantrum (I'm good for one every once in a while .. I'm too sensitive under pressure), we got the hard drive spinning and we were on our way. It took us a few takes to simmer down and get into a groove and I believe it was around take 4 that we had what we needed to move on.
Preston has another great tone going on with his moving bass parts. His 2 basses are very good recording axes. We've done everything from direct into the board, through various DIs. This time we miked his amp as well as took a line out of his amp head. What stuck on this song was the amp. Nice growl going on and the only processing we have on him is 2 compressors ... one for the kic drum to punch a hole in the bass and one for the bass. I made a few edits to his take but thats pretty much Preston all the way through.
Jim .... what a rock .... drummers always have the pressure on them during recording and Jim just keeps getting better and better in the studio. That's him all the way through. Need I say more.
Both Dave and my tracks always seem to be scratched afterwards ... obvious reasons for me for sure. We have been trying to keep our track cuts down on this album and I think we did here. Dave has 3 and I have 2. Dave does all his tracking at home between the hours of midnight and 3 in the morning. I do mine afterwork at Sonic Arts since I don't have a setup at home yet. Both are pretty straight forward here. I did set up a 4 x 10 stereo speaker cab using Austin's power amp to drive it. Miked 2 speakers with Shure SM57s and away we went. I sat in the control room while the amp was stationed in the big studio all cranked up. I record alone because I don't want to put anyone through what I have to do to get that one "perfect" take ;-)
As far as vocals go, pretty straight up again. Dave tries to have fun while he is in the booth ... never standing still. That's how a lot of the oddities get thrown into some songs. Thats usually how shakers & tambourines end up in there. Dave starts banging on things laying around and before you know it they find their way into the mix. There are several "hidden" sfx throughout the song ... mixed mostly for headphone listeners. But of course ... my 2 favorites have to be the whistle siren and the "Duck & Cover" voice over from those old instructional films of the '50s & '60s. Dave finds these treasures all over the place and I think we were able to use it objectively throughout. The whistle siren is that little toy mouth whistle that you blow through to make this really high pitched siren sound. We recorded it and then pitched it WAY down to sound like an old air raid siren. To our surprise ... at the end of the song, it stayed in pitch with the final chord and hit at that final stab of the song. Dave and I laughed for hours over that. Oh ... and Dave usually only takes a few runs through the song and we pick and choose his best vocal lines. Preston & I do ours when we can ... and of course nail them in 1 take ...... yea right.
Well, thats pretty much it for Twister. If the other guys have thoughts, they'll add comments to this post I'm sure. And if I think of something else, I will too.
Have fun listening !
All Things Mimes
Rando
This seemed to be the beginning of the second phase of Screaming Mimes for me. When we were first running through the arrangement, the excitement of hearing something NEW finally coming together was evident. I believe this was the first song I programmed into my new guitar processor, the Line 6 Pod XT. I sat in my living room with headphones on, as well as the amp setup right in front of me, so I knew what I was hearing in the phones was the same that was coming out of the amp. I wanted something "swirling" around my head ... since I didn't know what the final lyrics were at the time but knew they would be maybe a combination of the mess a Twister leaves behind or how playing the game Twister can get messy. I had a lot of fun programming this.
We knew right away that this was our next album opener, so appropriately it was the first song recorded. We wanted to handle recording differently this time around, so we called in the talents of my fellow employee at Sonic Arts, Austin Gorrigan. Austin and I spent time the night before setting everything up in our rehearsal space and checking out possible problems and getting drums sounds and line checks so that when we all got there the next night, we'd be ready to roll right out of the gate.
HA !
That was far from true ... but after about an hour of running through headphone mixes with everyone and stamping out a few fires and throwing a temper tantrum (I'm good for one every once in a while .. I'm too sensitive under pressure), we got the hard drive spinning and we were on our way. It took us a few takes to simmer down and get into a groove and I believe it was around take 4 that we had what we needed to move on.
Preston has another great tone going on with his moving bass parts. His 2 basses are very good recording axes. We've done everything from direct into the board, through various DIs. This time we miked his amp as well as took a line out of his amp head. What stuck on this song was the amp. Nice growl going on and the only processing we have on him is 2 compressors ... one for the kic drum to punch a hole in the bass and one for the bass. I made a few edits to his take but thats pretty much Preston all the way through.
Jim .... what a rock .... drummers always have the pressure on them during recording and Jim just keeps getting better and better in the studio. That's him all the way through. Need I say more.
Both Dave and my tracks always seem to be scratched afterwards ... obvious reasons for me for sure. We have been trying to keep our track cuts down on this album and I think we did here. Dave has 3 and I have 2. Dave does all his tracking at home between the hours of midnight and 3 in the morning. I do mine afterwork at Sonic Arts since I don't have a setup at home yet. Both are pretty straight forward here. I did set up a 4 x 10 stereo speaker cab using Austin's power amp to drive it. Miked 2 speakers with Shure SM57s and away we went. I sat in the control room while the amp was stationed in the big studio all cranked up. I record alone because I don't want to put anyone through what I have to do to get that one "perfect" take ;-)
As far as vocals go, pretty straight up again. Dave tries to have fun while he is in the booth ... never standing still. That's how a lot of the oddities get thrown into some songs. Thats usually how shakers & tambourines end up in there. Dave starts banging on things laying around and before you know it they find their way into the mix. There are several "hidden" sfx throughout the song ... mixed mostly for headphone listeners. But of course ... my 2 favorites have to be the whistle siren and the "Duck & Cover" voice over from those old instructional films of the '50s & '60s. Dave finds these treasures all over the place and I think we were able to use it objectively throughout. The whistle siren is that little toy mouth whistle that you blow through to make this really high pitched siren sound. We recorded it and then pitched it WAY down to sound like an old air raid siren. To our surprise ... at the end of the song, it stayed in pitch with the final chord and hit at that final stab of the song. Dave and I laughed for hours over that. Oh ... and Dave usually only takes a few runs through the song and we pick and choose his best vocal lines. Preston & I do ours when we can ... and of course nail them in 1 take ...... yea right.
Well, thats pretty much it for Twister. If the other guys have thoughts, they'll add comments to this post I'm sure. And if I think of something else, I will too.
Have fun listening !
All Things Mimes
Rando
| Permalink | E-mail this post 
