Electronic Musician, December 2010: Difference between revisions
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“I can’t call it my music,” Burnett says, “but I can say for certain that we treat recorded music as an art form. We don’t treat it as a pop media event. Marshall McLuhan said that a new medium surrounds an old medium and turns the first medium into an art form, as television did with the movies. The Internet has done that with television. Television is in a golden age at the moment, these incredible dramas like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men. Recorded music to me is very much an art form like that, the act of recording and the way it’s released and perceived. It’s all changed; we’re no longer in the mass age. We’re now in an age when people have to find niches.” | “I can’t call it my music,” Burnett says, “but I can say for certain that we treat recorded music as an art form. We don’t treat it as a pop media event. Marshall McLuhan said that a new medium surrounds an old medium and turns the first medium into an art form, as television did with the movies. The Internet has done that with television. Television is in a golden age at the moment, these incredible dramas like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men. Recorded music to me is very much an art form like that, the act of recording and the way it’s released and perceived. It’s all changed; we’re no longer in the mass age. We’re now in an age when people have to find niches.” | ||
'''It’s Better, It’s Burnett''' | '''It’s Better, It’s Burnett'''<br> | ||
Burnett readily claims that his records simply sound better than the dreck that commonly fills the airwaves, iTunes, and the Internet. “These records sound better than most of the records being made these days,” Burnett says. “So many records are highly compressed, over-compressed; they’re all made in a computer. Rather than putting a mic up in front of a guitar, something is patched into a machine. The kind of work we are doing is not mass-production. We’re doing very custom productions.” | Burnett readily claims that his records simply sound better than the dreck that commonly fills the airwaves, iTunes, and the Internet. “These records sound better than most of the records being made these days,” Burnett says. “So many records are highly compressed, over-compressed; they’re all made in a computer. Rather than putting a mic up in front of a guitar, something is patched into a machine. The kind of work we are doing is not mass-production. We’re doing very custom productions.” | ||
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“Seventy-five percent of this record is first or second takes, and 95 percent of the singing is in the room with the band,” Costello continues. “But we don’t make any great proclamation of it being a ‘live in the studio’ recording, because as you hear, there is no lack of nuance or refinement in the sound.” | “Seventy-five percent of this record is first or second takes, and 95 percent of the singing is in the room with the band,” Costello continues. “But we don’t make any great proclamation of it being a ‘live in the studio’ recording, because as you hear, there is no lack of nuance or refinement in the sound.” | ||
'''Strategic Miking with Vintage Ribbons''' | '''Strategic Miking with Vintage Ribbons'''<br> | ||
Musicians recording instruments and vocals live in close proximity can create an engineer’s worst nightmare. But Piersante already had a plan in operation, having engineered Costello’s 2009 album, ''Secret, Profane & Sugarcane''. “You have the obvious ‘Let’s put Elvis in a booth so we have a discrete vocal,’” he explains, “but it didn’t seem the way to capture the band and Elvis and get the immediacy and the interplay that would happen if they were all live together in the room. So I set them up in a circle and used mostly a lot of RCA ribbon mics [RCA 77-DX, RCA-74 Jr. Velocity, RCA 44-BX, RCA MI-6203 Varacoustic into Neve 1073s and 1081s]. It worked out very well, so I just continued with the same setup for this record.” | Musicians recording instruments and vocals live in close proximity can create an engineer’s worst nightmare. But Piersante already had a plan in operation, having engineered Costello’s 2009 album, ''Secret, Profane & Sugarcane''. “You have the obvious ‘Let’s put Elvis in a booth so we have a discrete vocal,’” he explains, “but it didn’t seem the way to capture the band and Elvis and get the immediacy and the interplay that would happen if they were all live together in the room. So I set them up in a circle and used mostly a lot of RCA ribbon mics [RCA 77-DX, RCA-74 Jr. Velocity, RCA 44-BX, RCA MI-6203 Varacoustic into Neve 1073s and 1081s]. It worked out very well, so I just continued with the same setup for this record.” | ||
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But when recording Costello’s rangy vocals, Piersante used a Wes Dooley AEA R 44 ribbon mic. “Dooley built his own ribbon mics based on the old RCA 44 Bing Crosby radio mic; it is very true to the RCA design,” he says. “Using a vintage ribbon mic on an artist like Elvis, you’re going out on a limb. We’re capturing performances, and God forbid I miss a performance because of a broken mic; that take could be the one.” | But when recording Costello’s rangy vocals, Piersante used a Wes Dooley AEA R 44 ribbon mic. “Dooley built his own ribbon mics based on the old RCA 44 Bing Crosby radio mic; it is very true to the RCA design,” he says. “Using a vintage ribbon mic on an artist like Elvis, you’re going out on a limb. We’re capturing performances, and God forbid I miss a performance because of a broken mic; that take could be the one.” | ||
'''‘Hi-Fi Lo-Fi’ Approach''' | '''‘Hi-Fi Lo-Fi’ Approach'''<br> | ||
So is the sound of National Ransom simply the result of all those beautiful, vintage ribbon microphones? “To a degree, it is the sound of these old ribbon mics,” says Piersante, “but it’s also a lot about what I don’t do. I’ll try to leave things; I’ll get a sound and I’m not afraid to put some EQ or compression on it, but if you’ve got a great musician and a great instrument in a great room, that’s 80 percent of your battle toward getting good sounds. | So is the sound of ''National Ransom'' simply the result of all those beautiful, vintage ribbon microphones? “To a degree, it is the sound of these old ribbon mics,” says Piersante, “but it’s also a lot about what I don’t do. I’ll try to leave things; I’ll get a sound and I’m not afraid to put some EQ or compression on it, but if you’ve got a great musician and a great instrument in a great room, that’s 80 percent of your battle toward getting good sounds. | ||
“I call our sound a hi-fi lo-fi sound,” he adds. “We capture everything very hi-fi and we’re very careful with the way we treat it and the kind of gear we’ll run it through. But we don’t try to make everything completely clean and sparkling. We like the character of the noise of the ribbon mics and the bed of stuff that might be lurking below the track.” | “I call our sound a hi-fi lo-fi sound,” he adds. “We capture everything very hi-fi and we’re very careful with the way we treat it and the kind of gear we’ll run it through. But we don’t try to make everything completely clean and sparkling. We like the character of the noise of the ribbon mics and the bed of stuff that might be lurking below the track.” | ||
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An integral member of Costello’s band since the ’70s, pianist Steve Nieve was recorded in mono with a vintage Neumann U67, run through an original Universal Audio UA 175 Limiter. “[The limiter] has somewhat of a Fairchild quality, so that one mono mic was run through there with a decent amount of compression applied to get that dreamy piano sound,” says Piersante. “We miked the piano pretty much above the hammers, a foot or two off-axis to pick up the whole soundboard, then gave it a good amount of squish with the 175. And we added another RCA 77 ribbon to the low end of the piano, as well.” | An integral member of Costello’s band since the ’70s, pianist Steve Nieve was recorded in mono with a vintage Neumann U67, run through an original Universal Audio UA 175 Limiter. “[The limiter] has somewhat of a Fairchild quality, so that one mono mic was run through there with a decent amount of compression applied to get that dreamy piano sound,” says Piersante. “We miked the piano pretty much above the hammers, a foot or two off-axis to pick up the whole soundboard, then gave it a good amount of squish with the 175. And we added another RCA 77 ribbon to the low end of the piano, as well.” | ||
'''A Million Ways to Greatness''' | '''A Million Ways to Greatness'''<br> | ||
''National Ransom'' sounds beautiful, golden, practically a time capsule of tested studio techniques. How can the home-studio enthusiast possibly hope to match the sound of 1940s RCA ribbon mics and Neumann tube mics mixed down through a Bushnell-modified API console from 1968 to an Ampex ATR 102 1/4-inch tape machine? | |||
National Ransom sounds beautiful, golden, practically a time capsule of tested studio techniques. How can the home-studio enthusiast possibly hope to match the sound of 1940s RCA ribbon mics and Neumann tube mics mixed down through a Bushnell-modified API console from 1968 to an Ampex ATR 102 1/4-inch tape machine? | |||
“The most important thing is to get a really great set of speakers,” Burnett advises. “Those become your eyes and ears. If you’re shooting something and you can’t see it clearly, then you don’t know what you’re doing. The same applies with recording; being able to hear what you’re doing is the crucial thing. So get a great set of transducers like the ATC [SCM 150s] or the Westlake Audio monitors Mike uses at Electromagnetic [Westlake BBSM 10s and BBSM 4s]. If you’re using acoustic instruments—if you’re not just plugging a box into another box, but you’re using a guitar or violin—take a lot of time in miking. Even an SM 57 is a great microphone. And how good the instrument itself sounds will determine a lot. The most important thing is the great instrument, then the great speakers. But even beyond that, if somebody is playing and they sound great, it doesn’t really matter how it sounds. You can record it through anything and if the song is moving, and the singer is singing it beautifully, it’s great. It can sound a million different ways and still be great.” | “The most important thing is to get a really great set of speakers,” Burnett advises. “Those become your eyes and ears. If you’re shooting something and you can’t see it clearly, then you don’t know what you’re doing. The same applies with recording; being able to hear what you’re doing is the crucial thing. So get a great set of transducers like the ATC [SCM 150s] or the Westlake Audio monitors Mike uses at Electromagnetic [Westlake BBSM 10s and BBSM 4s]. If you’re using acoustic instruments—if you’re not just plugging a box into another box, but you’re using a guitar or violin—take a lot of time in miking. Even an SM 57 is a great microphone. And how good the instrument itself sounds will determine a lot. The most important thing is the great instrument, then the great speakers. But even beyond that, if somebody is playing and they sound great, it doesn’t really matter how it sounds. You can record it through anything and if the song is moving, and the singer is singing it beautifully, it’s great. It can sound a million different ways and still be great.” |
Revision as of 16:02, 23 May 2017
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