Hi, this is Yeshe. I decided to help out a bit with the blog, relieve Nathaniel of all the pressure he’s been feeling creating all this “copy,” it is a demanding job after all, the life of a musician.
On Friday BBV had the pleasure of recording Harbinger, Dave Meneses’ band. Dave was one of the guest artists on Delog, performing on “Shabten Soldeb” and “Cut the Spell.” Dave has been working with us on our recent compositions, laying down piano parts and also a guitar track here or there. In Harbinger, Dave happens to play the drums, he is supported by his brother Victor on the guitar and Jacob Housand also on guitar.
The band was scheduled to arrive at 4 PM. About 4:30 I get a call from Dave saying that they decided to rehearse a song before they came over to the studio. I was delighted to hear this, not often do I have the pleasure of recording bands that really take the time to rehearse and have their parts down before coming into the studio; it was a good sign.
They arrived about 5:30. After loading in the drums and amps they found that they were short one cymbal stand, the stand for the all important ride cymbal. Having no other options we were forced to improvise a stand. Using a bolt, a rope, a mic stand and my bass amp we were able to rig the cymbal to stay in position and have a decent sound. We used the bolt as a hook, tied the rope to the bolt and strung the rope through the hole in the cymbal. We tied the rope to the boom extension arm of the mic stand and of course couldn’t tighten the boom enough to hold the weight of the cymbal. Using the excess length of rope we balanced the boom with the weight of the bass amp. Dave and I had a blast figuring this out and it worked perfectly. I noticed that the bolt added a bit of resonance to the ride, made it just a little brighter especially when he played the bell of the ride, no doubt because it didn’t have the felt pad a cymbal stand usually has.
Now, on to one of my favorite part of recording, micing the drum kit! (This is going to get a bit technical, sorry.) I began with the kick drum. Noticing that Dave does not have a sound hole in his kit I was resigned to place the mic on the out side of the drum. Because I didn’t want much bleed from the rest of the kit I used a soft shell case from a djembe as an improvised baffle. I used a D-112, which I ran through a Universal Audio LA-610. I tested the baffle, and set the levels right away to make sure that the combination would work out. I was surprised by how much impact and low end there was, yet also how much clarity on the attack of the kick. I moved on to the rest of the kit, placing MD421s on the high and mid toms and an AT3030 on the lowest tom, a beta 87 on the snare and a spaced pair of Octava MK12As for the overheads. The high rack tom was giving me a lot of trouble; it took a bit of effort getting the mic in a good position that did not interfere with the crash cymbal right above it. Ultimately I had to ask Dave to raise the cymbal a bit. With the kit all miced up I went though and tweaked the kick and the rest of the drums to dial in the right sound. Looking back I feel that the beta87 was not the right choice on the snare. His snare had a lot of ring and now in the mix process I am finding that I have to really massage it to get a nice tone out of it. Probably would have been better to go with a dynamic, like a sm57.
Since we do not have proper isolation booths our intention for the night was to get final takes on the drums and scratch takes for the guitars. In order to accomplish this I brought the guitars in direct, which of course sounded awful. Especially Jacob’s, it had this little toy amp sound. No bother, it took the pressure off of Victor and Jacob as they would overdub their parts later.
We began to record at 7:00. They started with a new, untitled song. This was the one that they were rehearsing before the session. Needless to say I was impressed. The skill displayed in the songs is outrageous, it is so dynamic. Truly, heavy metal is the modern heir to the performance and writing artistry of classical music, especially that of the romantic area. Time and time again when recording heavy bands I am struck with this thought, it’s right there in the songs, just listen and you’ll see, the two styles connect. Most impressive though was that Harbinger was able to get final takes of this and the other 3 songs in fewer than 3 takes each. Their precision is incredible, their timing is perfect, and their composition skills are tight and well crafted. We wrapped up around 10:00 PM, all of us satisfied with the outcome of the session.
Victor came back to the studio on Sunday. I experimented with the mics on his half stack, I placed an AT4060 about 1.5 feet from the upper left hand speaker, which to my ear had the richest sound. And I also placed a 421 about a inch away from the upper right hand speaker. The 4060 had a very full sound, lots of body, very round and warm. The 421 had a much sharper sound, it cut through a bit more and actually seemed like the “right” sound for Victor’s style. I kept both, thinking I’d play with a combination or settle on one over the other.
Again with amazing skill we were able to get final takes for both his rhythm and solo guitar parts for 3 of the songs and one scratch of a long song we didn’t have time to continue tracking. I expect that, had we enough time to run that song again, he would have nailed it in that second take, but I had booking issues and I couldn’t go beyond our slated session time.
Jacob is booked to track his rhythm guitar and solo parts later this week. And Dave is slated to come in to record the bass. I’ll be mixing in the mean time. Look for updates as they happen!
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