One Year Yesterday - Moderator produced content inside.

Here's three new songs from a new band I'm producing. Three very nice young guys (all 19 -20) who were easy to work with and just good humans. I had about 3 days in the studio with them, then spent a few more days on the edits and mixes and mastering - mastering done by Bill Dooley at Paramount.

http://www.philokeefe.com/20060428/ts_for_intention.mp3

http://www.philokeefe.com/20060428/emily.mp3

http://www.philokeefe.com/20060428/fall_on_me.mp3

I thought some of you might be slightly interested in checking out some of what I've been working on lately. Many of the guitar tracks are my Epi Casino through my new pedalboard into a Fender HR Devile, and we used a lot of Memory Lane delay, as well as a fair amount of Demeter Compulator and Lovetone Brown Source on them, as well as some other stuff. Piano is a Motif 8, and the additional keys on Emily (played by me) are an Oxygen 8 II with the new Digidesign Xpand softsynth. If you have any q's on what I used on anything else, feel free to ask. Full album is scheduled for early this upcoming winter.

One Year Yesterday's MySpace page can be found here.

Hope you enjoy them.

Thanks for the nice comments everyone. I'll be sure to pass them along to the band.

I noticed there's a few questions, and I'd like to answer them all, but OTOH, in the studio, I'm like a confessor - and I will not break the sanctity of that without getting permission first. So I'll ask the guys how much they feel comfortable with me sharing about their performances in the studio, and if they're okay with me answering some of the more personal questions, I will.

I will say this much though - these young men can actually write, play and sing. Did I use modern studio tools and techniques in an effort to present them in the best possible manner? You bet! That's part of my job. And if I'm going to present them to an A&R rep, which I would like to do, then they're going to expect that. So yes, I used the toolbox, in what I hope was a musical and unobtrusive way. But it's not a "manufactured" production - far from it. I'll say no more without permission.

Signal path and so forth is my baby really, so I can comment comfortably there. Tyler's lead vocals were the ELUX 251, with a Stedman pop filter... pretty close range, but that varied. That went into a Vintech Dual72, followed by a Aphex 106 - just tickling the comp at a couple / few dB of GR max. What I did with it in PT, and then on the way back out will have to wait until I check on a few things in the studio to confirm them.

I'll post more about the guitar and bass parts a little later when I have a bit more time....

Thanks again for giving it a listen everyone, and for the comments!

Thanks. I did the MP3 conversions, but other than that, I didn't do anything beyond what Bill did. And to be honest, I was pretty happy to hear Bill make a few comments such as "well, I had to do some EQ on this one - a cut at 5k..." And when I asked him how much, he said "about a quarter dB". And on another track, it was "well, I'm sitting here twirling knobs, but it's not sounding any better - it sounds great the way it is". It's always nice when you hear the mastering engineer say stuff like that.

The MP3 converter I use is pretty darned cool - dBPowerAmp Music Converter. It uses the LAME (or if you wish, Blade) MP3 encoder, and while I am still not the world's biggest MP3 fan, the LAME encoding seems to have less of the objectionable side effects to my ears. I always do MP3's at at least 192 - anything less and it is just too annoying to me.

The other cool thing is that it's free. Download located here.

Yes, on all three songs, it was just one snare mic, on the snare shell, using an Audix i-5, into a Vintech Dual 72, and again, just a touch (+/- 3dB) of Aphex 106 compression on the way into Pro Tools. I'd tell you I really like the Aphex, but they're discontinued, and I may want to pick another one up on Ebay at some point, so why make it harder on myself?

I don't think I listed the drum stuff in this thread, although I think I described a little of it on Craig's forum. So here it is in agonizing detail:

The overheads were a take-off on the classic "three mic" technique positioning. I used Audio Technica 4041's. One nearly directly centered over the snare, approx. 42" up above it. The second was lower, over by and "peeking over" the floor tom (4 pc. Pearl kit BTW), aimed "across" the floor tom and at the dead center of the snare drum. Again, 42" or so away from the middle of the snare drum. Yes, I measured. Both of those went into a FMR RNP and RNC - which are fantastic tools. Not just "for the money" - they really are incredible bargains.

Toms were both Audix D2's, although I may have been using a 421 on the floor tom at one point - I'll have to check the notes on that and get back to you. But it's mostly the D2's. IIRC, I had them on the top heads, out near the far rim (furthest away from the drummer), about the width of my hand above the rim, with the mics angled inwards between the "tone" and "attack" zones of the heads. I was just trying to catch it where it had some punch and attack as well as tone. Just a clean, natural sound but with a little slap and punch. The preamps were Yamaha i88X. I still think that box is worth the price for the preamps alone.

The kick was the hardest thing on the kit. Everything else went up relatively fast and easy, but the kick wasn't quite working for me in the room as we were listening to it, and of course, that means that it wasn't happening when it was miked up. So we had to play around with that a bit more in terms of tune and damping and so forth. I used a EV RE20 into the Vintech / Aphex 106, but I hit the comp a little bit harder going in than I did on the snare... but not a lot. Maybe in the "- 6dB on the peaks" range. The second mic was a Yamaha Subkick, into one of the board preamps on my Yamaha 01V96 and printed to a second track in PT.

Speaking of damping, we tried a few diifferent things, and ended up using a touch of Moon Gell on most of the drums - just enough to control - but not lose - some overtones. But the kit came in set up very nice. The best guy locally that I have found is Todd over at Ontario Music - he really knows how to set a kit up, and with the exception of the kick, I really liked the way he had this one dialed in.

There's something else that contributed a bit to the drums, and that's an analog tape stage. I mixed to both digital and analog (Otari MX5050 IIb - 456 @ 15 IPS) and took both mixes to mastering. I transfered the analog mixes to 24 / 96 WAV files and brought Bill Dooley both sets of mixes and told him he could pick his preference. He picked the analog mixes over the digital ones, which I kind of suspected he would.

What contributed the most to how the drums sounded was Nate Lotz. He's not overly flashy (not a bad thing), and he plays solid and consistent. Once we had the kit set up and I had him play for me the first time on it in the studio, I knew we were going to be fine after hearing just a couple of bars. He hits the snare, he doesn't over-hit the brass and hats, and really has a good understanding of dynamics and good, solid time and feel. Yes, the players and sound sources DO matter folks - never forget that! The rest is easy. Well.... okay, maybe not easy, but it's not rocket surgery or brain science either, and if I can do it, blah, blah, yadda, yadda...

I know a lot of this stuff is "old news" for a lot of you vets, but I thought I should put down some details for the curious as well as anyone who's getting started and looking for some basic suggestions; but while (as Bruce says) "there are no secrets", every instrument, song and singer is individual and requires its own approach and you've gotta listen and use whatever works.

If I'm not boring everyone silly, I'll describe a bit more about the rest of the instruments and vocals when I get back from Tucson. I'll be playing there this Sunday at the Tucson Folk Festival backing up my buddy John McGill ("Toxic Potatoe" on the forums), along with John's wife Sally and our friend Ralph Torres ("Songrytr"). We're bringing a laptop along, but I don't know how much we'll be able to post from out there, but I'll try to check in a few times over the weekend. I'll be back on Monday.

In the meantime, thanks again for listening. And while I'm gone, as always, please remember the forum motto - be excellent to each other!