Welcome to the Lounge Hour

Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:32 pm

Good afternoon,

This is a recording I made when then entire crew of the High Street Blues Band was together.
We went to a practice studio and borrowed some amps and two of the worst sounding Behringer mics I've seen.

Lets just say random mic placement.

The recording was made using an Edirol UA-25 and mixing was limited to panning one mic left and the other right. The mp3 crushes a bit of this together so it sounds kinda 65% left 65% right.

The music is improvised, which means no one has any idea what anyone else is going to play. Everything including lyrics is made up as we go. We are all playing at the same time in the same room.

This was the first time I've jambed with double kicks, though you can barely hear them.

Anyways have fun critiquing my first stereo mix.
Any tips on more suitable stereo room mics would be appreciated. Also thoughts on what a mastering eng would do if presented with this track (apart from laugh) as in EQ, compression, filtering. I have some ideas but I can't decide when to stop tweaking.

Enjoy. Smile

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 7:32 am

I think you did pretty good with the equipment at hand.
Vocals sounded low. Guitar too loud.
The room acoustics actually sounded OK. I would try to record there again with proper gear.

Hopefully a mastering engineer would shorten it a little. It might make a fun hidden track if it was only a few minutes long.

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 7:41 am

Thanks MarkG.

The singer was singing into the rooms PA, it wasn't quite loud enough to get over the two quad boxes and massive bass amp and my kit crammed into a room with carpeted floors and what looked like bed sheets with insulation behind them. Was like a padded cell. Dank with smoke/liquid stained walls. We felt so rock 'n roll. Razz

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:37 am

Nice Man,

I was surprised how good the stereo separation is even with the small room. The bass on the left is unconventional, but I'm a bass player, that's the first thing I hear, and I want to be in the middle Very Happy

Maybe it's because I'm listening on head phones, but it feels like it needs more bass frequency in the middle. You could HP the left channel and pan it hard right to compensate.

Sounds great though!

Steve

[edit]
I said HP, I meant LP oops.
[/edit]

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 10:04 am

Cheers Steve, kind and helpful words.

I will definitely try your idea to centralise the bass.

The two microphones were set up in the middle of the room, my kit against one wall with a mic sort of forward and left and the other forward and right of the kit, both about chest height. Lead on one side, bass on the other, rhythm guitar opposite me.

The singer was nearer one mic and the PA nearer the other.

Once again, cheers for the tip on centering the bass.

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 3:34 pm

I re-read my post, and it should have said LP not HP. You probably figured that out. Razz

I don't play much jazz, but a buddy of mine is a jazz drummer. You play different than he does, but I like your sound. I can hear a little of the rock and roll you were feeling in the room with the stained walls. I like it.

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:20 pm

Definately for the gear, sounds pretty cool. Reminds me of some early UFO tracks I have. Very late 60's real early 70's type jam. Ive got tons of stuff me and my son have done like this. I need to go through it sometime. Really enjoyed it.

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:01 pm

Awsome! I glad you dig it.

Gecko, I totally missed that, yet I remember thinking last night "high pass into the bin, keep the bass." Smile

I love just jambing, noodling around till you find something you like, we call it moments of gold.
It's especially fun when you have played with your other band members a lot and understand what everyones thinking. I would imagine, Bushmaster, that you and your son have a connection that would come through in the music. I'd be keen to listen to some.

From this session, I got 3 hours and 45 mins of recording, that track came from about 20 mins in. I still haven't listened back past an hour. I have like 12 gig of us jambing.

Thanks again everyone for kind words, I can't wait to show the other guys.

Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 1:21 pm

Other than the obvious of the guitars being too loud it sounded pretty cool. I think the guitar player would have fared better with his contribution if he had tried to lock in with the bass player a bit and to develop some kind of motif or melodic line to build off/from.
The random pentatonic noodlings were more of a distraction to me than anything.

I did like the vibe though.

Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:20 pm

Fair criticisms sshack, we definitely had the amps cranked.

As to random pentatonic noodlings being a distraction, it's sweet music to my ears. I've uploaded an example of Bean Cassidy on lead with an old friend on bass and yours truly on their kit. Recorded in mono on my Behringer mic in their lounge room.

The track is called Fresh.
Again, this track was improvised. I'm keen to know what you all think.

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:08 am

I thought the balance of the mix was better, probably because there weren't any vox to compete with. The guitar tone was good, but in going back to the pentatonic noodling...I don't have a problem with blues scales and such (all of us guitar players use the junk out of them), but I'm of the opinion that in scenarios/jams such as this one where everything is laid back, the guitar needs to be more concerned about POCKET rather than note choices.

It took me a good 16 bars or so before I could even catch on to the groove. There were moments where the guitar would lock in, but it wasn't consistent enough to keep me interested. To hear someone falling in and out of the pocket is frustrating to me as a listener.

This is certainly a good starting point though. I wish I had someone to jam with and record simultaneously.

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:50 am

I'm getting the picture a bit clearer now, and I thank you for the criticism. It will defiantly be taken on board.

I agree with the tone being better in "Fresh", it's only a small Drive practice amp and the bass was through a Fender Keyboard amp, much easier to get a solid tone than from a quad box.

I am thinking about ways to practice being in the pocket when none of us can cover any songs, not even the stuff we have recorded of ourselves. Are there some, like, pocket rudiments?

Cheers once again for the feedback.

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:33 am

Rather than try and describe rudiments, I would suggest learning some tunes from bands/folks like Earth, Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, James Brown...or anything related to the Mowtown, Stax, Funk/Disco eras.
More times than not the guitar parts are simple for the left hand and more challenging for the right.

Listen to/learn such staples songs like Sex Machine, Jungle Boogie, Sir Duke, Shining Star...and so on.

Once you have established yourself comfortable with feeling the pocket or groove, then start to incorporate your blues lines little by little. The problem with us guitar players is that we want to blow our wad right out of the gate when in fact less is always more.

Coming from a thrash/metal background and now being in a party cover band that plays tunes like these, I frequent this school and slices of humble pie every day.

In the end it translates into being a better player, which finds its way into making recording a lot easier too.

This has been my experience.

Good luck.

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 10:01 am

You translate your experience into something everyone can learn from. Thank you.

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:29 pm

Tell ya what it did for me boss. Reminded me of exactly how long life really is and how little has changed along the way:) You guys could have been a garage band from the 1970s!

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