#bear hive

After months of purgatory, Bear Hive have released their Bird Cloud-recorded "All In Real Time" album. I'll write something long and labored about it, but for now listen to it here: https://bearhive.bandcamp.com/

Also, here are the various ways this album has titled over the past 2 years:

All In Real Time

All In Good Time

Monuments

A Monument To Maintain

Behavier*

AUCW 8 - Bear Hive as LCD Soundsystem

BIRD CLOUD GEAR SPOTLIGHT VOL. 1: The Rite Of Spring Reverb

The above track is a segment from "Wild Yonder" by Bear Hive. This is an example of how vocals sound through The Rite Of Spring Reverb:

The name comes from Igor Stravinsky, the unit comes from a Yamaha mixer that my mother in law saved from an elementary school dumpster. The only modification I've done is, uh, screwing it to a block of wood and writing on it with sharpie.

I went through a phase where I wanted to try to not use digital reverbs, probably because at the time so was Chris Walla. So I made a DIY plate verb from a piece of heating duct and made a slinky verb from an old Crate amp. The Rite Of Spring Reverb has been the most useful contraption.

Spring reverbs have their own resonant frequencies, and these don't always mesh with the song. My solution is to use the varispeed function on Reaper. I send out the track and modify the play speed, so when I go back to the normal speed after recording in the spring track, the resonant frequency jives better. This also helps to adjust the decay time - faster playback speeds give a longer reverb tail when adjusted back to normal. The Bear Hive sample above is actually 3 different tracks of verb at 3 different speeds.

Yeah, one of those "bad at social media" posts.

I have a crazy announcement coming soon but I have to wait until I have the okay from the parent company to post something. Otherwise I would be violating international law. I'm actually completely serious about that part.

In other news:

-Final mixing on Bear Hive's long awaited, super-awesome full length

-Mastering the Darin Gray/Bill Horist improv session

-Mixing Peter Schlamb's space jazz record.

-Making a full length for Ernesto Cuevas, Grafton's favorite half Mexican, half Native American country singer (feat. Pete from Old Souls Revival/Primary Colors/a very early incarnation of Loose Lips Sink Ships on mandolin). One of the songs was written 20 years ago, during the flood of 93 and this is the first time it's been recorded. Hashtag "woah."

-Waiting on a few bands to prep their records for what will likely be a crazy busy spring in these parts.

Here's the kind of response I get for mix revisions: