Haarp Does Truck Farm (08/17/07-08/19/07)

After a two year break from recording, I finally got myself together for a weekend session with Haarp (Ex-Rat in a Bucket) at Truck Farm Studios. I didn't really sleep much that entire week, as my anxiety level was toxic and my mind continuously went through every possible situation that could arise. In short, I was obsessed, and I have to thank my trusty assistant/co-engineer Eric Martinez for keeping my head on my shoulders the week prior.

The Studio
A few shots of the main tracking room and control room:

Live Room

Live Room from Control Room

The Console

mmmm... The Gear

Eric and I arrived just after lunch on Friday for an afternoon and evening of setup. Since we planned to track Haarp live (with the exception of vocals), we needed to get everything right the first time. No overdubs. Truck Farm has a nice selection of gear, but there are some pieces in my gear collection I just cannot do without... so I brought them along:
- Neve 31102 preamp/equalizer modules (2)
- Calrec 1161 preamp/equalizer modules (2)
- Type 312 preamps (2)
- Type 1272 preamps (2)
- Bloo Technologies LA-2A
- G4000 Stereo Compressor

The Studer
Even though the mixes would eventually be transferred to ProTools and taken back to my mixing studio, my love for analog tape still forced me to record to Truck Farm's Studer A80VU MkIV first. This is one of the best tape machines ever built, and it is, by far, the best I've personally had the pleasure to record on. I spent an evening prior to the session aligning the machine (+9). I kind of hate aligning tape machines, but it's very important to have every track to spec.

Here she is in all her glory:

Studer A80

Drums
I typically like to work on drums first. They usually take the longest to setup and mic and are probably the most complex. Keith plays a typical 5 piece set with a kick, snare, two rack toms, and a floor tom. His drums sounded very good in the room and needed little tweaking, but I immediately knew his cymbals would present a problem becuase they were very low; just over his toms. It took us several takes and mic adjustments before we settled on final placement. All in all, the cymbal bleed was minimized and very manageable. Some shots of the drums:

Replacing Drum Heads

Drums (in Mid-Setup)

Fuzzy Coles 4038

Keith Says Hello!

We did some additional tweaks Saturday morning, but ultimately settled on the following setup:
- Kick: Beyer M88 > Type 312 > API 560B > Distressor
- Snare: Beyer M201 > Type 312
- Overheads (stereo pair): Neumann KM84 > Type 1272
- Rooms (stereo pair): Coles 4038 > Calrec PQ-1161 > G4000 (sounded awesome !!!)
- Rack Toms: Sennheiser MD421 > API 512C > API 550B
- Floor Tom: Electrovoice RE-20 > API 512C > API 550B

Bass
I absolutely love recording a bass player who has his shit together. Pomes came with a nice bass setup, new strings, and tuned to C (damn!). We pulled a DI (clean) and a mic (little dirty) for a nice blend and flexibility when mixing. Final setup:
DI: Avalon DI > API 553 > Sta-Level
Mic: Beyer M88 > API 560B > LA-2A

Da Pomes (in Best Borat Voice)

Bass Setup

Guitars
Getting good, solid guitar tones took a bit longer than I had originally planned. Both guitarists had way too much bottom end, and not enough clarity in their tones for recording. For both guitarists, we swapped cabinets and/or heads until we got what I was looking for. It may have taken some time, but the tones we got were killer. Big, thick, rich, and creamy... and heavy of course.

Grant's Setup:
- 90s Les Paul > Randall Head (model?) > Mesa Cabinet
- Mic #1: Beyer M160 > Neve 31102 > Blackface 1176
- Mic #2: Sony C37A > Calrec PQ-1161

Grant is Mysterious

Jason's Setup:
- Guitar? > JCM800 > Randall Cabinet
- Mic #1: Beyer M160 > Neve 31102 > JoeMeek SC-2 Optical
- Mic #2: Shinybox 23C > API 512C

Jason Rockin' It

Vocals
Shaun is a maniac. The most challenging aspect of recording Shaun was getting him to feel comfortable. At shows, Shaun is used to holding a microphone, moving around, raising his hands, and screaming his ass off. I knew that if he had to stand still in front of a mic on a stand with a wind screen, his performance would be terrible. So I opted to give him a microphone that he could hold and run around the room. We tried a couple different recording setups, but settled on a Shure SM7 > Neve 1272 > Bloo LA-2A, and we tracked straight to ProTools.

Shaun Screaming

Shaun Relaxing

Sir Martinez
We did this entire project in a weekend, and easily spent over 35 hours. Eric was with me through it all... and shitty drunk most of the time. He made my work that much easier by setting up mics, keeping things neat and tidy, and just drinking alot of beer being Eric. I couldn't have done it without him.

Eric (Photo by Keith)

Cheers... can't wait to do it all again.

I'm Tired and Need a Beer.

Who-Dat DIY

I am pumped for Saints football season... and I am such a gearhead it's kind of ridiculous. So I thought it would be best to combine both worlds in my latest piece of home-brew DIY recording gear. I introduce the "Black and Gold" G4000 VCA. It's a stereo VCA compressor based on the quad compressor in an SSL Series 4000 console. This one has a couple unique features. It has a 5 position selectable sidechain HPF (err... High-Pass Filter) and a 10 segment gain reduction LED meter, with a selectable range of either -10dB (1 dB/LED) or -20dB (2dB/LED). It uses gold can DBX 202C VCAs. The gold cans originally sparked the little Who-Dats in my brain to do something with a Saints theme.

I finished it just in time for football season... and it sounds wonderful. I used it this past weekend during the Haarp sessions at Truck Farm (more to come on that).

Go Saints !!!

(Click for larger)

Why Don't We Say Pop?

Replacing underground plumbing is no easy task. I spent the first 3 or 4 weekends as a homeowner digging a hole in my front yard. It was nearly 4' x 12' and over 5' deep. And after the first 2' or 3', the ground is clay... not fun. And it smells, or maybe that was the broken sewer line, whatever. So eventually I get down there and remove all the sections of separated/broken terracotta, and eventually the plumber shows up to fix everything.

So why didn't you just pay the plumbers to dig the hole? I asked myself this every weekend, but then I remembered they wanted $99 per hour for a two man crew to dig it out, and then I snapped to my senses and kept shoveling.

Wanting no part is backfilling this hole, I put it off until this past weekend. I spent a few hours filling Friday after work, and decided it better to wait until Saturday morning when it'd be cooler.

As a side story, Entergy is replacing all the underground gas lines in my neighborhood with higher pressure gas lines. They actually subcontracted it out to some company from Wisconsin. Needless to say, there is plenty of dozers and backhoes and things to break up concrete on every block.

This is where my story comes to its climax. One of the workers (from Wisconsin) must have had pity on me as he watched my skinny, weak ass labor filling the hole. He pulls up in one of the fancy dozer/backhoe combos and says (now please imagine the heaviest Midwest accent), "Yeh want me to fill that?"

My eyes got big and of course I said, "Sure."

So I sat on my stoop drinking Gatorade while this guy dozered and backhoed a huge pile of mud and clay into my hole. The guy saved me at least a couple days of work. He did it in 10 fucking minutes.

When he was finished I asked him if he wanted to get some lunch at Panola down the street. On me, of course.

He yells, "Naaaah, I gotta get back to work... just brang a 12 pack of pop for da crew on Monday!"

(Me thinking).... Pop? hmm... oh, ok. Soda! duh.

"What kind you like?" I yell.

"Uhhhhh, Mountaaain Dew."

So, there you have it. I got my hole backfilled for a $2.99 pack of Mountain Dew.

PS - I have some nice pictures of the whole process but they're on a camera that's in Canada right now... eh.