Updates

Maverick Saloon was fun, and thanks to Mrs. Brown for hosting us.

Full length version of “Snow and Dust” from the Surfrider Stoke fest – me, Chad Schmid, and Jordan Martin. A happy little song about the end of the world.

Lyric (for the Cosmologists out there):

“Girlfriends /
Want to know the ending /
Want to know if we are just /
Snow and dust pretending…”

I’m getting ready to record a new record – which usually means, time to suffer through getting drum sounds. In the past, I put too many mics on the kit, rushed placing the mics on the kit (and didn’t listen to what the mics were getting), and ended up turd-polishing in the mix – struggling to make the drums sound good.

It’s 2008, and I’ve decided to get lazy and smart. I’m spending WAY more time on prepping the drum room, and I’m using a the minimal ‘recorderman‘ drum micing technique. To prep the drum room, I used lots of bass trapping (corner traps made of stacked dense pillows with an air gap behind the column) and RealTraps hung on the ceiling. I got the RealTraps without the usual reflective coating, so they absorb HF cymbal energy. The room sounds quite good – and it’s only 7′ x 7′ x 8′ high!

OK OK OK – but here is the best part – I got a pair of Avenson STO-2 omnidirectional mics. These things are freaking fantastic. I mounted them on some really cool mic arms which are springy and adjustable so you can move the mics easily to any position or angle.

Running these mics into an Apogee Ensemble pre, with NO EQ in Logic, plus a tiny bit of reverb = BLOCK ROCKING KICKING DRUM SOUNDS. SO EASY, I feel like I’m cheating. The Avensons are really wonderful mics – but I don’t think I’d be getting these great results if the room wasn’t treated properly.

Next, the kick mic – I was considering not using one at all because the overheads sounded so good. But, I wanted a bit more depth in the overall kit sound, so a kick-micing we go. I have a classic AKG D112 kick mic, but I think it’s better for open-front kick sounds, and I wanted to leave the front head on. Next I tried my SM81 – it sounded like crap everywhere facing the front kick head. I saw an ad in Tape Op for a Josephson mic, and it looked like it was being used to mic the SHELL of a kick drum. I tried pointing the mic at the kick rim, 45-degrees inwards about .25″ away from the top of the kick. It sounded good, but got more tom sound reflected off the top of the kick than I wanted. I feared this would kill the awesome stereo image I was getting from the Avendsons, so I flipped the mic so it was pointing 45 degrees away from the kick rim. Bingo!

I ran the SM81 bass-drum mic to another channel of the Ensemble, and sucked-out about 4 dB of 300 Hz and did a 3 dB boost at 80 Hz. BOOM. Just enough bottom-end-support to anchor the sound.

So, here are the advantages of this minimal micing method:

• Only three tracks
• No temptation to fix in the mix (‘turn up the high-hat mic! turn up the maracca mic’)
• Great stereo image
• If your drummer sucks (and my drummer is me sometimes), you’ll have to just PLAY BETTER rather than tweaking already recorded sounds. I.e HIT THE SNARE HARDER. Hit the high-hat LESS HARD. Etc.
• No crazy-ass phase cancelling to fight with.

SO, the sound? Click below. I had fun with phasing, distortion, and stereo delay too…

Thanks to Jordan and Dominic for the micing assistannce.

UPDATE 1/31/09 – MY ‘default’ sound now adds a close-mic on the snare top, usually the classic SM57 or maybe a really directional mic like the Audix OM-6 to keep high-hat bleed to a minimum…

I’m also getting some interesting sounds by ‘treating’ the kit – for one song, hanging tambourines off of the kick so eack ‘thump’ of the bass drum has a tiny jingle from the tambourines, or stacking change and metal things on the snare head for recording a break-down section…

I’m psyched to be playing the Surfrider Stoke Fest ’08 in Shell Beach, CA – Feb 23d, 6pm at Old Vienna (thanks, Jen!). I’ll be playing a few songs solo and some backed up by Chad Schmid and Jordan Martin.

Chad is also going to play a set of his songs, as is the inestimable K

The other day, driving back from San Francisco, I realized how much I hate fairness and democracy – in the music / open mic context. (See my previous rant on the subject of open mics here).

But wait, you say, isn’t fairness the very thing your typical venue DOESN’T have? i.e. lame booking agents that won’t check out your CD (or call you back), open mic nights that turn into a weekly insiders-only party, the incestuous club of hipster bands that dominate your scene, etc etc – [insert your complaint here].

Yes – but fairness has it’s dark side too. Example: I drove up to the Hotel Utah to play their reputedly excellent open mic. Signup is ‘by 7:30′, so I’m there at 7… but wait , what’s this? OH NO NO NO IT’S A RANDOM-DRAW NIGHT!!!! KILL ME NOW!!

For those of you who haven’t experienced this horror, a Random Draw Open Mic night works like so: everyone puts their name on a scrap of paper, the scraps are placed in a jar, and the scraps are pulled out to determine the order of play.

Now, I understand the motivation here – the host wants to be egalitarian and fair, maybe has some vague hippie ideal of providing an ‘even playing field’, blah blah blah. This is all wonderful and great – IF the typical number of attendees of your event is small, and they are all local. For example, the Open Mic night of a remote Alaskan fishing village, or maybe of the Springwater Lodge in February should be run this way.

FOR EVERY OTHER OPEN MIC, THERE ARE HUGE PROBLEMS WITH THIS APPROACH.
1) It is a gigantic ‘locals-only’ filter. Think about it – if there’s no benefit to being there early to get a good spot, then the slacker-freak-serial-killer-meth-head around the corner has exactly the same chance of getting a great spot at the Random Draw night as the valiant guy who worked hard to get there early (you know, me). At the Hotel Utah, I hit a reverse home run – I drove 4 hours to be there, and drew number FORTY SIX. Yes, dear reader, that meant I got to play after 45 other fabulous and talented musicians – around 12:30AM. How likely am I to make that drive again? NOT AT ALL. Result: the quite fun open mic at the Hotel Utah will remain a locals-only deal. That’s too bad. I actually had a guy tell me “yeah, these kids from Japan played here one time- they had a flight out the next morning, and drew almost the last number of the night – isn’t that cool?”. No it isn’t cool – it’s fucking retarded. The host should have bumped them up ahead of local regulars. I’m just saying.

2) It removes the host’s judgment from the ‘who get’s to play’ process, and that’s a cop-out. If EVERYONE gets to play just because they show up, and there’s no other filter (commitment to be there early, reviews, fans that showed up to see them, a funny shirt, the fact that you are visiting FROM JAPAN), etc then your night will become what the Utah’s was that night – 53 random folks playing one song each. Some good, some bad, no structure, no editing. That’s an open mic a robot or a monkey could run, and while it’s good for the bar to have a bored herd of musicians waiting to play, it is bad for the audience and the scene.

The best open mics cultivate new / random / sucky players of any style – but DON’T automatically put them on the same playing field as known-good talent that the audience likes. Open mic hosts: encourage the terrible performer, but put them on later. Let them play fewer songs until they get better. Make choices. We’re counting on you.

- Karl

P.S. There is one open mic I remember that did it even worse that the Utah – that’s the much more famous Club Passim in Cambridge. Their approach was to have a random-draw night, but NOT DRAW ALL THE NAMES AT THE START OF THE NIGHT – no, that would spoil the surprise! Their special magic was to draw one name after each performance, so YOU NEVER KNEW WHO WAS UP NEXT! It was Chinese water torture, open mic style. (“might I be next???? Damn. Ooh, ooh, ooh, how about now? No.” Idiots.

P.P.S I bet the Utah on a mellower night, if I got a semi-sane number, would be a great place to play. Excellent vibe, cool staff, nice host, good sound. That’s why they’re so popular, right? My rant above is about the hidden problems of a ‘fair’ approach.

See photos…