paula

recording drums has always been simultaneously one of the most fun and frustrating parts of recording bands. the drums on this ep are still some of the best i’ve recorded, and they were done with only three dedicated mics plus the room mic for the whole band (about ten to fifteen feet away from the kit). i used two rode nt5s for overheads (in the glyn johns spaced pair arrangement) with an sm7b about six inches or so above the beater-side hoop of the kick and pointed at the snare. i used an equalizer on the sm7b to bring out more of the kick or snare, depending what the song needed. fun side note: you can hear some kick pedal squeak in the bridge when john’s vocals stop, which is a genuine delight.

i really enjoyed the snare sound i got on this ep, but was dissatisfied with the rest of the kit. iirc, i had two apex 210b ribbon mics for overheads (recorderman arrangement), a sennheiser md402 on the snare, and an sm7b on the kick. i love the snare sound, especially after i ran the drums through the dbx compressor, but the rest of the kit lacks definition because the overheads were set up too high, and so it sounds very reverberant and roomy (also due to the figure-of-eight polar pattern on the ribbon mics).

this was a similar set up to the definitelays ep but with better success. apex 210b ribbons for overheads again (again in recorderman arrangement) but placed lower to give the kit more definition. sennheiser md402 on the top of the snare, a 58 underneath the snare, an sm7b on the kick, and a 57 on the floor tom (i only play a three-piece kit in this band). can’t recall if there were front-of-kit or room mics.

this ep (and this song specifically most likely) has the best drum sounds i’ve ever captured. it helped that i got to use two u87s for overheads (back to the glyn johns arrangement). the rest of the setup was a beta 52 on the kick (just inside the port), beta 57s on the toms, an nt5 and an sm7b on top of the snare (with the sm7b going directly to the dbx 266xl compressor), something under the snare that i can’t recall (likely a 57 or beta 57), and a single apex 210b for a front-of-kit mic about ten feet away from the kit, roughly as high as top of the kick drum. the room mics (two 57s in xy, pointed at the ceiling) were about forty feet away and way up in the balcony (we recorded in an old church turned music venue) and really added a lot of depth to the drum sounds.

certainly not the “cleanest” drum sound by any means, but we wanted it to sound like the ep was on fire. because we recorded directly to the four-track cassette recorder, i had to get the drum balance correct before actually mixing it, which was terrifying but something that i’d like to do again. it certainly forces you to make decisions early, which ends up making mixing much easier. i can’t remember at all how i would have mic’d the kit, but i know i used the md402 on snare and sm7b on the kick. i think i used the apex 210bs for overheads but can’t say for certain. i think i put 57s on the toms. the real magic came after we dumped the guitars and drums from the tape to the computer and ran the drums through the dbx compressor. i don’t care if it was $80 used at long & mcquade; it’s amazing.

everything was tracked through an allen & heath mixwizard wz4 16:2 (a board i love and find very easy to use with my workflow) with all the tracks going directly out from each channel into my computer. you can see the apex 210b ribbon mic i was using to capture the front-of-kit sound in this shot. i tried to point the null spot at the bass amps to minimize bleed.

recorded april 2022 and released august 2023. the recording i'm by far the most proud of. this feels like the first truly professional job i've done tracking and mixing, and it's nice to feel actually satisfied with a recording and not wish i had done something differently. getting better at getting good sounds at the source and doing less while mixing. having a ripping band with two pros certainly makes that a lot easier.

peep the glynn johns overheads with u87s. my favourite drum sound iv'e ever achieved.

also my favourite room i've ever recorded in. would love to make a million more records at the artesian.

some different set-ups for tracking the rhythm bass parts.

using the m216 to cascade the vocal signal through a few channels to get some grit.

one of the records i'm most proud of in terms of recording, performing, and mixing. recorded mostly august 2019, finished up fall 2022. released march 2023.

this was the last thing i recorded in this house. we tracked it the weekend before we all moved out. a very nice send-off for a place where i recorded a lot of material. becky goes to wreck beach, "danceland," "rooftops," and "riot year" were all recorded here.

the middle section of "peel apart" was recorded on the tascam 424 in the new place i moved into with piper and is one of my favourite parts of the album. guest vocals by vanessa.

recorded & released summer 2021 for the virtual prfbbq. video by bassist leo keiser. this was incredibly fun to perform, record, and mix; i'd love to do a proper live record sometime. one of the two cameras stopped recording at some point, and so the latter bit is just the single shot.

recorded (motly) december 22 & 23, 2019 in gage's house. tracked and mixed by chris dimas; mastered by chris goosman at baseline audio labs. released march 2021. this was our first full-length, and most of the songs were a few years old by the time we recorded them. planning to finish writing another full length this year and hopefully record it in 2024.

tracked january 2020, released march 2020. drums and guitar recorded live directly to the tascam 424. with only four tracks i had to get the drum mix correct in the moment, and doing so made this one of the easiest records to mix as all the choices had already been made.

tracked late 2018/early 2019 (i honestly can't remember), and released august 24, 2019. this was the last record i made in a hybrid style, tracking everything through the tascam m216 board onto the computer, sending the stems back out into the board to be mixed analog (and utilizing some outboard gear like the dbx 266xl and alesis midiverb ii for drums), and recording the stereo out from the board onto the computer. the record likely would have sounded better just mixing it in-the-box, but it is a pretty fun way to work (albeit tedious). i think i used my ehx memory boy for the vocal delay (still a favourite vocal sound i've ever recorded), and the vocal distortion on "caller i.d." was created by sending the vocal signal out to another channel on the board, driving it, and repeating this process until enough distortion was created.

i definitely forgot i recorded this one. it's on the same cjtr compilation as "danceland" and "rooftops" that came out in 2018. i don't remember much about tracking it except that i know we tracked at least some of it to the 424 portastudio, and i convinced john to record his main rhythm part twice as fast so that we could then slow the tape speed by half and pitch the guitar down an octave. pretty sure we used the reverse reverb setting on the alesis midiverb ii as well on the main vocal and some of the instruments. i can hear that the pitch of the whole track drops down at the end, so i must have dumped everything from the computer back onto the 424, and then played it off the 424 back onto the computer while slowing the tape speed down at the end.

john also stacked all the verses sequentially with one single chorus at the end of the song, which is a truly great arranging technique. see also "the bar is low" by pissed jeans for more.

both of these were recorded as part of our local radio station's compilation consisting of saskatchewan bands covering each other's songs. "danceland" was recorded while piper was still living in new brunswick, so ethan, andy, and i recorded our parts, and piper recorded his vocal remotely and sent me the file to mix in. i also ended up playing piper's rhythm guitar part (sg junior through an ampeg b15), as well as composing and playing the lead guitar part in the bridge. because we did this kind of hastily, i ended up singing the backup vocals myself, and i think i played a keyboard part as well.

pretty sure i mixed both of these songs in a hybrid style similar to the club is above us. again, very tedious (i wrote down the settings of each channel as well as any outboard gear by hand), but again, very fun.

recording a different band playing one of my band's songs was incredibly fun, and taylor even wrote two extra verses to make the song an appropriate length given that the steves essentially write jingles.