11.26
Technical Junk (for those who really need to know this kind of stuff)
The Performance:
The first New Suburbans CD is self-produced and was recorded in Plainfield, Massachusetts at the home studio of Rowen Caplan. Songs were performed live with guitar, bass, and drums. All vocals, extra guitars, keyboard parts, and extra percussion were performed by the group and added as overdubs.
Kerry Pulaski contributed piano and Hammond B3 organ parts to “SLAP”, recorded at his home in Norwich, CT.
The Recording:
All songs were recorded and edited on a Roland VS1680 with engineering by Dan Ash. Songs were mixed to the ‘master tracks’ on the VS1680, then transferred via SP/DIF to the PC. We delivered the masters as 24 bit data on CD. Some tracks were split and then later reassembled in our mastering sessions at Acme.
Monitors were Altec Lansing 604E ‘Big Reds’ (w/ Mastering Labs crossover) driven by a McIntosh C-28 pre-amp and McIntosh 2100 power amplifier. Event 20/20 near-field monitors were also used for comparison and in the final mixes and transfer.
The drum sounds were for the most part set up by Rowen in advance of our sessions using a Mackie 1604 mixer. We were able in some cases to just show up, plug in the multitrack recorder and get to work.
Outboard equipment:
- Focusrite Platinum Tone Factory
- Mackie 1604 mixer
- Drawmer 1960 vacuum tube compressor preamp (a late arrival)
- Roland VS880 (as guitar and bass preamp)
- Johnson J-Station amp simulator
- Line 6 POD amp simulator
- ART Tube MP mic preamps
- Sescom SM1A DI
- Alesis NanoCompressor
- Samson Q5 headphone amplifier
- Grado, Sennheiser, and Koss headphones
Microphones:
- a pair of CAD/Equitek E100’s (vocals and drum overheads)
- Shure SM57 (on Dan’s guitar amp)
- Sony model 16AM condenser (high hat)
- a pair of AKG 3000’s (vocals and drum overheads)
- AKG D112 (bass drum)
- Studio Projects C1 (vocals – also a late arrival)
- Rode NTV (vocals – another late arrival)
- Rowen’s mongrel collection of drum mic’s (some of unknown origin).
Backing tracks for “I Got A New Kidney” (secret track #11 on the CD) were programmed by Geoff and then imported as MIDI data into Cakewalk Sonar. Vocals and guitars were recorded as audio in Sonar. All tracks were then transferred to the VS1680 for mixdown. Geoff played bass, keyboards, beat box, body noises and rhythm guitars, with Dan adding lead guitar.
The band used at least one ACID loop and some custom Korg O5R-W patches for assorted ‘bleeps’, ‘kersplats’, and ‘sproings’ (Props to Don Martin!). We finally got a chance to use that toy glockenspiel, too.
The CD was mastered by Rory Young at Acme Recording Studio (http://www.acmerecording.com) in Mamaroneck, NY using DigiDesign ProTools. In addition to mastering the tracks, some tracks were in fact re-mixed, since we had split out some of the source tracks to take advantage of the high-end effects and digital processing available. The bass drum was resampled on a few tracks and a number of other drum edits were done. SLAP was time-compressed to liven up the feel.
Additional details about which gadgets were used on which track will only be recalled by actually sitting down to listen to the record, which we’re not quite ready to do yet…
Instruments:
- Fender ’65 Precision Bass
- Yamaha bass model BB200
- Yamaha AEX-1500 semi-acoustic guitar
- Fender ’62 Reissue Stratocaster
- Gibson ’65 Flying V
- Guild Nightbird GG
Amps:
- Mesa Engineering DC-5
- Peavey MegaBass bass amp through Peavey 1×15 closed back cab
Drums:
Rowen uses Ludwig and Tama drums and Zildjian Cymbals. He used Regal 5B drumsticks exclusively for our sessions, and wore various jeans (blue, white, dirty, old, torn, new, etc.), various T-shirts, and Nike sneakers.