Volitions Advocate on 17/5/2009 at 16:38

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It was rushed a bit. We had about 5 weeks to put out the 3 songs for the show we had the other night. Really It's just to get something in peoples hands to listen to, and it worked. We handed out probably 80 copies and even had people ask for autographs (which I thought was a little absurd and probably boils down to drunk sincerity or something like that)

I dont hear the "tuning problems' some people are talking about. We'd tune our guitars every other take, and I build guitars so I know that the intonation was set correctly. There ARE some spots where there is dissonance, which is in the writing not the tuning and is intentional.

as for recording the drums... it is a freakin nightmare. We have 8 tracks to play with and we needed about 11 I think to do it all in one shot. One piece of advice I got on another forum was to gate the tom mics as well. As for the drums sounding dead I think its just a preference thing. We didn't want them to sound like they do when you go to a live show. Mic-d drums through a PA do not sound like real drums. While most people do stuff like shove pillows inside their bass drum and tape up the skins we really tried to tune them all to a specific pitch inside a key we play most of the time and let the skins and the wood really resonate, it sounded great when all we had was the drums recorded, you could really hear the wood of them. But he had some new skins that some people told him were great that didn't work for us this way, they resonated a little too much, so I think when he mixed them in he was trying to take out some of that, which might make the sound a little less then stellar. Our drummer did about 97.5 % of the mixing himself BTW.

as for the guitars, we did it pretty simply. We wanted a wall of sound (kind of filter like) and both of us use 2 amps to record with. so we had 2 mics on each amp, DI's for each amp. and a condensor mic we placed somewhere in the room it sounded good to our ears. so there were 5 tracks mixed down to 1 for each guitar, then put in the overall mix. They aren't hardpanned they're about 2/3rds except for things like licks and lead work, which is just slightly off centre depending on what it is.

In any case, the more we do it the better we'll get. we did absolutely everything ourselves and all the equipment is ours, and even if its not perfect there's a certain amount of pride in knowing we got something half decent done. Even if a few people insist on just saying it sucks.

Fingernail on 17/5/2009 at 17:39

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Well, I totally understand the feeling of having done it yourselves, and although rough around the edges, the other (undesirable) extreme is having a super-polished end product with absolutely nothing interesting behind it whatsoever. It's much better to have the other thing first.

Well, it's very easy to say something sucks (particularly if there's no cultural capital associated with it, such as an unsigned band - after all, it's not a "position" like saying The Beatles suck would be), or be dismissive about it. But you've actually done something, which is always better than doing nothing.


And just a note: drums through a PA system at a show might not sound like real drums, but neither do (any) drums on record. If I were you, I'd abandon all aims of authenticity in that vein, the important thing is whether the recording sounds good in its own right*, not whether you imagine it sounds more or less like the real instruments. Because it really doesn't, and even if it gets as close as possible when heard in isolation, nothing in real life sounds like the combination of sounds your hi-fi speakers put out when playing a track.


* and that might be with "natural", untreated drums (but hell, you still tweak them to get the most kick and punch, right?), or absurd gated reverb-plate 80s synth kits, depending on your taste.

SubJeff on 17/5/2009 at 22:48

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The trap is set... :p

june gloom on 18/5/2009 at 01:18

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For me there is no Metallica after ...And Justice For All. Except Death Magnetic was suprisingly good.