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Mark Wein

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  1. Ah! I just discovered how to answer folks in the comments! Thanks guys...nice to meet you too erok123!
  2. Thanks Anton! I had a few minutes to kill between students this morning. I'm playing through the Bias Desktop modeler into PT...it was a fun track to play over!
  3. I did half a take: https://soundcloud.com/mark-wein/purdie-jam
  4. Here are three songs from my self-released album "Black Market Hearts". Scott Francisco produced the album and was kind enough to write up some notes on the process. We recorded in his home studio for the majority of the album although some overdubs were done at my music school and at Cerritos college for the Hammond B3 on one song. The basics were recorded at my place, which was cozy, but worked out well. I have a 10x20 drum room where Tyler and Martin lived. Martin was recorded direct with an Avalon 737, so there were no leakage problems between bass and drums. Ultimately it wouldn't have mattered since we kept all of Martin's takes from tracking with only a few little punch-ins. Mark was in the iso booth singing and playing various heads through a Demeter isolation cabinet with an 80 watt Celestion speaker. It was miked with an old Shure SM57 Unidyne III that I prefer over the new ones. The guitar went through Chameleon 7602 mkII and an 1176. Gary was playing a real Wurlitzer 206 through a Waves PRS Guitar interface DI. He also had a midi controller for controlling the virtual instruments we used on a couple of tunes. The drums were recorded using a pair of mics in the recorderman configuration as well as a Unidyne III SM57 on the snare, an Audio Technica 4053 on the hat, a Cascade Fathead ribbon mic under the snare that also picked up the batter head of the kick, an Audio Technica ATM25 inside the kick, and ATM25s on the toms. I also had an Audio Technica 4047 in front of the kick that I ended up never using. The low end from the Fathead was more than sufficient. All of these mics were recorded on every take, but in the mix I used varying combinations to suit the song. The recorderman mics varied from song to song: Audio Technica 4050s, MXL V87s, or Unidyne III SM57s, depending on the song. The kick, snare, and recorderman mics went through Chameleon 7602s and everything else went through a Millennia HV-3D. I used a little eq on the Chameleons, otherwise no other processing. For the room mics I used a pair of AT 4050s in a Mid/Side configuration at the other end of the room. They also went through the Millennia. I then delayed these tracks 10-20 ms in the mix to make the room feel a little bigger. All of my preamps feed into a Yamamha O2R96 and then digitally straight to Pro Tools at 96K/32bit. The Pro Tools rig was an HDX system running version 10. vVer. 11 hadn't come out when we started and it's never a good idea to switch mid-project. Most songs were recorded with click tracks, but a couple felt better without. There was some comping of takes and whole-band punch-ins and that sort of stuff, but very little editing after the fact. Several songs were recorded more than once before we "found it", and a couple we never did. That's why having ten or eleven songs does not mean you're ready to cut an album. Ultimately we whittled 17 songs down to 11. Working at my place made it possible to take the time to do that. In a commercial studio, where time is money, the budget would have necessitated mowing through all the material in a day or two at most. A couple guitar parts were keepers from tracking. All the other guitars were recorded at Premier, since it was easier to bring a little recording gear there as opposed to Mark's entire equipment collection to my place. Guitar overdubs were recorded with the trusty SM57 Unidyne IIIs, AT4047, or Fathead in varying combinations. Most of the pedal effects were recorded as-is. I also recorded room mics for the guitar overdubs with the mid/side 4050s. It quickly became evident that the room vibe was going to be a big part of the overall sound, so all the earlier guitars from my place were piped through the PA at Premier and the room ambiance was recorded for those as well. The bass was also reapmed using Martin's Ampeg B15 and an AT 4047/MP set to fig.8. Everything went through the Millennia with no eq or compression. The keyboard overdubs kept the same setup except for the organ. We went to Cerritos College (where Dr. Pritchard is a faculty member) and recorded the B3 using a pair of Unidyne III Sm57s on the top rotor and an MXL Cube on the bass rotor. Again I used the Millennia HV-3D and also had a stereo AT4050 to capture the room. All of the vocals were tracked through a Pearlman TM-1 tube mic and the Avalon 737. I didn't compress it much as we tracked, but I squashed it pretty heavily in the mix. Early on we tried doing vocals at Premier, but we had trouble with external noise and decided to start over at my place. All mixing was done in Pro Tools at my place. I mixed three or four songs before I felt I had nailed the sound, so I then had to go and apply these discoveries to the earlier ones. One of the best things about mixing in the box is the ability to live with a mix for a period of time and then go back and make changes without having to star over. For me, that makes all the difference! I used some artificial reverb, but the room mics really provide the ambiance you hear on the record. I also used the ReelTape and Waves Veq-4 plug-ins on every track to give it more of a tape/vintage console feel. I use this trick almost all the time now. Most of the songs took three of four passes to get right. Though we were going for a fat analog-ish sound with plenty of room, we weren't trying to be "vintage" or "retro." We just wanted to capture a live feeling record that sounded as if we were in a studio that had all the cool vintage toys making a contemporary record. Due to scheduling conflicts, we had to record the horns the day before mastering. The saxes were recorded with an Audio Technica 4060 tube mic, and the trumpet with an AT 4047 into the Chameleons. The arrangement was for two trumpets, alto sax, and bari sax. Scheila did a pass each on alto and bari, while Sean played both trumpet parts. As soon as that was done, I stayed up overnight to get the mix done in time to upload the files the next morning. It took a while, but I think we achieved our goal of making a great sounding record with a unique voice that avoids all of the "contemporary blues record" cliches.
  5. My 1964 Silvertone 1484 Twin Twelve amp and cab. Mostly because of the paint job. I'm sure you can't miss it in the picture below:
  6. My 1964 Silvertone 1484 Twin Twelve amp and cab. Mostly because of the paint job. I'm sure you can't miss it in the picture below:
  7. I heard on the radio today that Tom Cruise now plays guitar, and he may tour with Warrant and sing. Does the E meter cause interference with guitar wireless systems? It almost looks like a PodXT in a way:
  8. That Suhr is sublime! Thanks! It's my pr0n-yist instrument. A couple other favs:
  9. Well, pr0n: While personally I get tired of the threads full of people fighting over Gibson QC and junk like that I think that the guy earlier in the thread who said that this is a "gear" forum has it right.
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