Halloween'ene

We actually rehearsed a setlist last night.

I know, right?


Lily used the fretless through her Alembic preamp. Greg's guitar went through the other Neve 1272 channel. Ethan put no compression on the bass side of the Stick (and, honestly, I think I removed all the compression on his channel too.)

Bunnylick

I think we just recorded a new album. I mean. Maybe? There are certainly some interesting things here. Click through for the bunnylick album.


We recorded things the same way we've been doing the last few weeks. Ethan changed to a more baritone set of strings on his Stick. Lou was tired. Greg and I used the same setups we've been using for nigh on a year now (although I'll admit I went into the low-gain input on the Marshall but with my guitar turned up all the way.)

Generally I've decided that the drum sound on Abbey Road would satisfy me for the rest of my life. If I could just get that one drum sound, I'd be more than happy.

Except for An Obsequious Terrapin Commands the River we have very little reverb added on any of the sounds on these mixes. Lou is not happy with the ride cymbal we have available so he's been favoring the hi-hats. Oh and this is the Shechter bass though the preamp... the er... the bass preamp we've been using. I'm very happy with the sound of the LA-2 emulation I've been using.

Weeping Baby Elephant

Full band rehearsal with Diatomaceous Earth. Lily is playing her Schecter through the Alembic preamp. The Stick is split left and right with the bass going through the Badfinger and the "melody" side going through the Philosopher King and the Organizer. I can't figure out how to make this sound like a Hammond B3. Boy, all the YouTube videos make it seem like it's easy.
So I dunno. We make a lot of music. Now we seem to be able to make waltzes. That's cool.

UPDATE: from Ethan "By the way...  that pedal is a Black Finger, not a Badfinger.  A Badfinger is a 70's band featuring a young Paul McCartney.  A Black Finger is a funky compressor made by E-H.  I believe they also made a White Finger, but I don't remember what it did.  After a 12-year Hiatus, George Clinton once released an album called "Hey, Man, Smell My Finger".

JoeMeek 500

That's a JoeMeek 500-series preamp for $300.

You can get a power supply for two of 'em for $300. 

If you wanna go nuts, this 6-slot 500 rack by Lindell is just $329. That'll give you four extra empty spaces for other things.

So that's a thing. Ethan was interested in something in the JoeMeek line. That's a thousand bucks for two channels.

Then again, the JoeMeek 3Q is only $250, so two of 'em would be just $500.

Delightfully Unhinged

So. On Wednesday we didn't have Lou or Ethan. And Lily decided she wanted to play drums. Which said to me I should play bass.

We only had a single Shure 58 on the drums (going through a Neve 1272 preamp). And another Neve was used with a Rode NT1 hanging over a Fender Twin Reverb (with Lily's Schecter). Greg's guitar was recorded like it normally is, except that I used a Neve on him too.
We tried a bunch of things. Somehow we ended up recording this completely unhinged version of Wipeout.

The drums are smashed with compression -- 1176 and LA2 emulations. And the whole thing was very noisy (there is quite a bit of emulated single-ended Dolby noise reduction too.) But I'm extremely amused by this wacky recording. I think it may almost be in mono.