When we were kids, we didn’t have bass amp simulator plug-ins – we had bass amps and expensive microphones and we liked it!  Today we are fortunate to have better options to record bass guitar.

One thing we should point out right away when it comes to recording bass in the studio is that we usually record bass at the same time as the other rhythm instruments (drums, guitars and keys) to capture the energy of live performance.  This presents a challenge because bass players, as we know, usually like to let loose at very loud levels.  In our studio, we often have the bass player perform in the same iso room with the drummer.  They are still wearing headphones with individual monitor mixes but we have found that being in the same space “magically” brings out tighter performances.

DI, Close Miking & Plug-ins

A common technique for recording bass in the past was to split the signal, recording both a direct out and close miking the bass amp.  This technique used to be the only way to have more options later in the mix between the dry and amped sound.  This technique has its drawbacks if the bass player and drummer share the same room because miking the bass amp would cause two leakage problems: 1) bass leaking into the drum mics and 2) drums leaking into the bass mic.  Luckily things have changed for the better.

With the invention of amp simulator plug-ins, we now have the best of both worlds.  We often record the bass directly and feed it back into the bands’ headphones during tracking.  For some bassists, this form of monitoring takes some getting used to because they are used to “feeling” booming vibrations when they play.  But usually after a few minutes of warm up and some mix adjustment, they are good to go (and the rest of the band often appreciates that they can now control just how much bass they are getting in their headphone mix).

Direct Recording Impedance

If we do record the bass direct, there are some things to keep in mind and we have to get into a quick “nano” discussion about impedance.  Instruments like bass guitars are high impedance (Hi-Z) and many older recording mixers and interfaces only have low impedance (Lo-Z) inputs.  In this case, we need to use a direct box to change the impedance if we are recording directly from the bass guitar or from the pedal board.

Because direct boxes are designed for many situations, we like to use ones designed specifically for bass guitars, like SansAmp Bass Driver DI by Tech21.  Nowadays things have changed and most recording gear has both Lo-Z and Hi-Z, so you can just plug into the appropriate input.  We like when bassists come into the studio with bass heads that have pre-amp outputs (like the GK MB line or Ampeg SVT series) so that we can just plug in an XLR cable direct to the board and we’re good to go.  This saves the hassle of lugging a heavy bass cabinet into the studio and we still capture the bass player’s unique sound.

EQ and Compression

We usually record the bass with no EQ on the board and just a bit of compression limiting so that a performance that gets louder than expected will not be ruined by digital distortion.  Once we have recorded the performance using this direct technique, we have a completely isolated bass track with no leakage from other instruments.  At this point, if the band is happy with the recorded rhythm track, we will dim-solo (bring up the volume in the mix of the selected track) the bass track and listen for any bass flubs that need to be overdubbed.  It is best to do this now before any settings get changed on the pedal board or amp.   Once everyone is happy with the bass performance, we often use amp simulators (like Guitar Rig 4 by Native Instruments or Amplitube by IK Multimedia), compressors and EQ plug-ins to change the overall bass sound.  It is important to mention that it is easier to give the bass more character (growl, warmth, punch) than it is to remove it after tracking – so if possible have the bass player back off a bit on a real nasty or distinct sounds unless you are sure you will want it in the final mix.

Mic Selection and Placement

When we do decide to mic the bass amp, there are a couple of things to consider: mic selection and placement.  There are no “right” answers to either.  We often close mic the cabinet with mics like the AKG D112 and Sennheiser MD421, which work great.  But the best way is to do a little experimenting.  If we have the luxury of time, we like to have the bassist start playing to the track and have an assistant move the mic to different locations on the speaker cone and different distances from the cabinet for about 10 seconds at a time, while we take notes on each location.  Then we’ll play back the track with the rest of the mix and see which location gave us the sound we wanted.  If nothing quite works, then we change the mic and do it again until everyone’s happy (or we get a new bass player, just kidding).

Zac Cataldo is a musician and owner/producer at Night Train Studios, a recording studio in Westford, MA.  He is also co-owner of Black Cloud Productions, a music publishing company. Contact him at zac@nighttrainstudios.com.

Brent Godin is a bassist/guitarist and engineer/producer at Night Train Studios and talent scout at Black Cloud Productions. Contact him at brent@blackcloudproductions.com.

Find them at nighttrainstudios.com and blackcloudproductions.com.

Photo by Johnny Arguedas

Women’s Audio Mission, an entirely female run recording studio and non-profit organization in San Francisco, know their way around the world of pro audio. While the gender make-up of WAM is a single note, their roster of clients is incredibly diverse – from local up and comers like The SHE’S, to the trio of Mongolian Master Musicians known as Nutgiin Ayalguu.

Rather than worrying about the industry’s veritable glass ceiling, Women’s Audio Mission (or WAM) is busy doing something about it – providing the tools necessary to level the industry playing field and working with some pretty heavy hitters along the way. Recently, WAM recorded the GRAMMY Award winning Kronos Quartet, tracking material for the live performance “Women’s Voices,” which premiered in San Francisco this past weekend.

WAM founder Terri Winston took some time between sessions to talk about the incredible arsenal of microphones she used on the Kronos session, including loaners from Telefunken and Manley, the differences in recording classical and indie rock, and how women can get more involved in pro audio.

Hi Terri, thanks for taking the time to talk to us about this recording session. Have you had many sessions similar to Kronos Quartet in that you were focusing largely on stringed instruments?

We’ve been lucky to have a lot of sessions with acoustic instruments and strings. Lately, WAM has been focusing a lot of our recording efforts on traditional folk music as part of our “Preserving Culture” project. This has given us the opportunity to record many different types and styles of stringed instruments like the saz or bağlama from Turkey, the morin khuur from Mongolia, the dan tranh from Vietnam, in addition to other pop sessions.

How was the Kronos Quartet session different from others like it?

The session with Kronos Quartet was unique in that they used these recordings as backing tracks in their [live] performance, which meant that they often wanted their tracks to sound different from a traditional quartet.

This was a dream session not only because the Kronos Quartet are incredible musicians but also because they really like to experiment with different sounds and we had the chance to try some really fun recording and mixing techniques. The composition we worked on is called “All Clear,” written by the Vietnamese composer and musician, Van-Anh Vo. It is about the Vietnam War, so we were trying to create different atmospheres from very disturbing to beautiful. It was really great to be a part of that because the tracks are so moving.

How did you end up partnering with Manley and Telefunken? Did they have particular microphones in their catalog that you knew would be a good fit?

definitely had particular microphones in mind for the session. I knew what microphones Kronos Quartet had used in the past and I wanted to be really confident that we had the best microphones for all of the different configurations we needed to cover. I had a lot of experience with the Manley Reference Cardioid and the Telefunken ELA M 251 and knew that those types of voicings would work great in a modern classical format. Manley has been a big supporter of WAM and we had some kind connections to Telefunken through SoundPure.com. Having access to these microphones really made the recordings spectacular. It’s so great when the people behind these amazing microphones are also truly wonderful.

Tell us a little bit more about mic’ing the session. What led to your specific choices?

We ended up using two microphones on each instrument so that we had a choice in timbre and also knew that we would need the extra tracks for different types of processing.

For instance, we knew that the quartet was going to have to simulate an orchestra on one track and we didn’t have a lot of time to do that many overdubs, so the multiple recording chains came in handy. We could pan and time shift instruments to appear in sections.

On Violin…

Another instance where this came in handy was when [Kronos Quartet’s] David Harrington wanted his violin to become distorted in different sections. He also liked to choose between the two mics for different movements. We ended up using Telefunken CU-29 Copperheads and AR-51s on the violins with Avedis MA-5 and Millennia HV-3R mic pres. Both mics were amazing for different reasons. The Copperheads smoothed out any harsh upper mids and brought out some heft in the body, while the AR-51s are great for bringing out the air.

On Cello…

We used the Manley Reference Gold and Telefunken ELA M 260 on the cello into an Avedis MA-5 and Millennia HV-3R mic pre. The Manley was so rich and detailed as expected. It’s such a sweet microphone. The big shock to me was how much low end the ELA M 260 had, especially for a small diaphragm condenser. It sounded great especially on the cello’s pizzicato parts and on a percussive part that was being used as a heartbeat.

On Viola…

We also used a Neumann U 87 and AKG C 414 on viola and Earthworks QTC 30s as a stereo pair for room mics. These are also really amazing microphones and another instance where the folks at Earthworks are just as awesome as their microphones.

What tips do you have when it comes to tracking contemporary classical material like this? How does it differ from the indie rock that our readers are so used to working with?

The biggest differences are that these sessions move a lot faster than most indie rock sessions. The musicians are so amazing and you have to be more conscious of the noise floor of your recording chains when recording classical music because there is a much wider dynamic range.

My advice is to be extremely well prepared and have done your research. Even though I was very familiar with Kronos Quartet’s music, I still listened to a bunch of Kronos Quartet records before the session, talked to some folks about how they had recorded them in the past, got in touch with their live sound person and gleaned as much information as I could before the session. We spent a full day before the session testing all of the microphones that we had with different mic pres to determine the best and quietist recording chains for each instrument. Kronos Quartet is so inspiring to work with that you really want to be on top of your game for them.

Speaking of tips for engineers, WAM runs Sound Channel, an online program of pro-audio training materials. Do any Sound Channel modules address the techniques you used during the Kronos Quartet’s session?

Thanks for mentioning that. Sound Channel has a huge amount of resources on microphones, mic pres, mic technique and a bunch of gear comparison listening examples so you can hear how different microphones sound on different instruments. It’s a great way to learn online and they are being used in college programs all over the country.  You can access the training library at http://www.soundchannel.org.

It sounds like the “Women’s Voices” program was an amazing fit for an organization like WAM. Was it coincidental that Kronos Quartet came to an all-female recording studio for this material, or was it planned?

It was somewhat of a coincidence. We were tracking an album with the composer Van-Anh Vo in December. She had met with Kronos Quartet around the same time to discuss composing a piece for them. David Harrington stopped by one of the recording sessions with Van-Anh and we talked a bit about how we were approaching her recording and he liked how it sounded. Eventually that led to Kronos Quartet coming to WAM to record.

Anything else we should know about Women’s Audio Mission?

Any women interested in recording and music should join WAM! We connect over 850 women from all over the world. Membership gives you free access to our member meetings with guest lecturers, free studio tours and events, free magazines, free convention passes and discounts on gear and classes. It’s a great way to become a part of a growing recording community. You can join on our website: http://www.womensaudiomission.org/.

For more information about Women’s Audio Mission, visit www.womensaudiomission.org.

photo by Marsha Vdovin

We’ll draw three (3) random winners on June 16th – good luck! One entry per person, U.S. residents only.

Standback Features:

1.    Lightweight and durable – Weighs less than a pound and will support up to 100 lbs.
2.    Amp stays on floor maintaining your low end (Coupling effect)
3.    Folds flat to fit in your gig bag or in the back of most amps
4.    Adjustable amp angles

Ticket info is available here, but you can enter to win a FREE pair of tix simply by re-tweeting “I wanna see The Brothers Comatose @performermag” – we’ll pick one winner before the weekend!

As if that weren’t enough, The Brothers Comatose will get naked for you.   In what they are calling Operation:  Buck Wild, the SF-based string quintet will be uploading a new photo – with one more item of clothing removed – for every 50 presale tickets sold for their upcoming May 19th Album Release show at The Great American Music Hall.

Here is photo 1 – Enjoy!

How can you resist?
What’s under that poncho?  What happens to the cat?  Is that one guy outside??  Only one way to find out!

Every guitar has stories to tell. Some were played by masters, many were destroyed, and all contain a secret history that only exposes its edges when pressed through the fire of an amp. Tony Cochran knows this, and builds guitars that look as legendary as they sound, which is one of the reasons his Boostercaster is currently featured in the National Guitar Museum’s traveling exhibition, Guitar: The Instrument that Rocked the World.

How long have you been making these guitars?

I started making guitars about a year and a half ago.

Why do you build these guitars?

I like visual complexity. If it doesn’t interfere with the musicality, then why not? I mean, how many Telecasters can you look at, you know?

How did you start?

I was trained as a painter and artist and worked in a body shop for 15 years. So I was building a motorcycle for my brother but making it look different, using brass and rivets instead of flames and chrome like other bikes. After that my brother asked me to work on a guitar he had just gotten and that one turned out so well I wanted to do a second one, and that one turned out so well I wanted to a third one…

How do you conceive these guitars? Do you have a list of what you want to make or do you design each project based on what you have?

A combination of materials can be used to create a visual effect, and that’s what I do to the guitars. I don’t build guitars from scratch, I take guitars that have a history and give them a new history. So you find something that’s got good bones and plays well. I’m not trying to find a guitar to fit a preconceived idea. I see the guitar done when I see the guitar. So if I were going to buy a Les Paul clone I would see the guitar and know what it’s going to look like when it’s finished before I take it home.

It’s like a painting; you know how it’s going to look finished when you start otherwise you never know when you’re done. Some artists work until they’re fatigued, rather than until it’s done. When I start I know 90% of what it’s going to look like and leave 10% to chance – because that’s fun part.

Do you adjust the electronics?

It depends, when you’re buying used guitars not every piece always works. I always make sure everything works as expected. That’s about it. I know a player buying the guitar is probably going to change the pickups, just like if they were buying a new guitar.

Some of your guitars have little widgets you’ve added that create interesting sounds. How do those come about?

It becomes part of the history; who knows whether they ‘work’ or not. Anything you add to a guitar might change the tone, or might not. It’s all subjective, there’s nothing wrong with making a guitar look cooler. Most look cool already, but they’re all pretty similar after a while. I don’t see any reason to not add a device that may or may not work.

It seems like you could get some unique sounds and feedback with all the metal on these guitars.

It’s not necessarily going to make the guitar sound better or worse, but it could change it. I hope it affects the tone, but that’s all subjective. One guy’s beautiful tone is another’s buzz bomb.

How much do they weigh?

I try not to add weight, so about the same or less as when I start.

Take me through a build.

The typical build starts by disassembling the entire guitar, then I shape the body, head, and neck to how I picture. You can’t change one part without changing all the others; you’ve got to make sure the feel of the neck matches the body. Then I add color and start putting the guitar back together, assembling as I go along. Each step speaks to the next one. Like a painting, it has to come together as a whole. I think of these guitars as art first, and mechanical musical instruments second.

So the process is very fluid?

I never question what’s going to come next. Sometime I have to stop and figure out how to make that happen in the physical world. Eventually you have to pick up a tool and make everything fit. It’s a puzzle, but a puzzle I designed.

How long does a typical guitar take?

It depends on how many evenings I have because I have a full time job writing a comic strip. They’re a labor of love so I don’t want to rush it. They can take upwards of a month.

It’s inspiring to see every guitar you make is so different from the last.

We got a letter the other day from someone wanting me to copy another guitar they’d seen and I told them to ask the person who made the guitar to copy it. I won’t even copy myself.

Each guitar has a detailed story about where it was ‘found,’ – are you trying to create an alternate universe for these guitars?

You’d be surprised how many people ask if the stories are true. We’re just one generation away from a weird story becoming the ‘truth’ anyway. If I say I found this guitar in the attic of a haunted house, what will they remember when we’re dead?

www.tonycochranguitars.com

Enjoy!

Sad news to report – legendary bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn has passed away at the age of 70. Dunn died Sunday in his sleep, while on tour in Japan.

Dunn’s credits are too numerous to count, but his presence on ’60s soul and R&B records cannot be understated. He’s also well-known to movie and TV audiences as a key member of the Blues Brothers’ rhythm section. According to Wikipedia:

Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.’s and as a session bassist for Stax Records, which specialized in blues and gospel-infused southern soul and Memphis soul music styles. Dunn also performed on recordings with The Blues Brothers, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Albert King, Levon Helm, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Guy Sebastian, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Roy Buchanan and Arthur Conley.

“We’re building a totally free platform of tools for artists and labels to sell, share, and promote music directly to their fans. We feel it’s vital that all musicians have access to basic web tools that are free, open, and theirs to own.”

CASH Music, a non-profit organization that builds open source digital tools for musicians and labels, is headed by Maggie Vail (formerly of the Seattle/Portland indie label Kill Rock Stars) and Jesse von Doom. Together, along with a small team of supporters, they have set out to level the digital playing field for artists by making tools that musicians would actually want and need to use, as opposed to what faceless, corporate tech companies dictate to them.

Could you explain what CASH Music has to offer artists?

The most important thing is that we’re a non-profit and all the tools we’re building for artists are open source, meaning that anyone can use them and build on them and then share that back with the community. We feel strongly that this is not something where people need to be making money off the backs of artists. This sort of distribution chan

nel should just honestly be direct to fans, and in a way that means actually the fans and the band – nobody in the middle.

So there are no gatekeepers in the way.

Yeah, and we want to make it as easy as possible for artists to use themselves. It’s not quite there yet, and that’s why we’re raising the funds through a Kickstarter campaign for the hosted version of our platform. By “hosted,” we mean that it lives on our servers, anybody can sign up with an email address and have a page with all the functionality needed to sell, stream, promote, manage tour dates, manage mailing lists – all that kind of stuff.

So right now CASH’s platform is a download that you would install yourself, on your own web server, correct?

Yes, and we did that first (which is a little bit backwards for most start-ups) to make a point: we believe that the most valuable relationships you’re going to have are going to be directly on your own site. Maintaining and owning that information is really important. We’ve only released version one [of the platform] at this point, and it just has email collection, tour date management and social feed management – we can bring in your Twitter and your Tumblr and all those sorts of things fairly easily. The next version is coming soon; that will include commerce – the big part that I know everyone’s been waiting for –

Shopping cart type stuff?

Yes, and each iteration is going to be easier to use.

Let’s take a step back. How did CASH get started?

There were a couple of things that happened at the same time. Jesse von Doom, who is my co-Executive Director, and I started working together about five years ago. Right after that I was working on the posthumous Elliott Smith record, New Moon, and getting ready to send it to press and radio. I was thinking, ‘Is there any way you could do a secure streaming site? Does that exist? Can you do that? Do you know how to?’ Jesse, being who he is, went above and beyond and built this really amazing streaming site. You could see when people logged in, you could see how many times they logged in – that made follow up so much easier. That site became one of the many tools that the platform, that CASH has been doing for many years.

The other piece was when Kristin Hersh [Throwing Muses] and Donita Sparks [L7] were talking and decided that they wanted an easy way for artists to set up a subscription service, where you buy into something and you get songs later – you can support an artist year round. This is actually what Kristin does, and that’s pretty much how she makes a big part of her living these days. So those two things were sort of the beginning of all this.

How much technical know-how would an artist need to get up and running with the tools?

Well, ideally, and in the end, you’re not going to have to have any. With the hosted version you just need an email address. For the distributed version, it’s going to work with WordPress and Tumblr, so you could conceivably make your site on super-easy-to-use platforms and then just plug in these functional elements into those places, and you’ll have a fully working website that will do all of the things I mentioned before.

Because we are non-profit, we don’t need everybody to use us exclusively; this is going to be a very open platform. It will be compatible with all services – as many as possible – so if you feel more comfortable with your stuff living there, or if you want set up your own Amazon S3 account, you can just go ahead and sign up for one. We’ll teach people how to do that because it’s really important to own where your stuff lives.

What aspects of CASH are you most proud of?

That we exist [laughs]. It’s kind of a wild idea – actually, it’s not a wild idea – it’s a really basic idea, but because you can’t make tons of money on it people think we’re crazy. Neither Jesse nor I are looking to get rich. Really we just want to have a job where we can do artist advocacy.

What areas could CASH improve on with future iterations of the service?

We go to people and say, ‘What do you need? What do you want? What would be useful to you? Do you want to be able to get this management? How do we do this to make your job easier?’ I think that’s going to be a lot of what we’re going to be doing in the future. We’re doing these Hack Days where we sit designers and developers down with musicians and say, ‘Go crazy. You guys just go nuts and figure out how to build something that will work for musicians.’

With other competing services – those two parties don’t really talk to each other.

No, they absolutely don’t! The programmers and developers try to develop things they think artists want and the artists have all sorts of suggestions that don’t make it to the developers, so there is a disconnect.

What else is in store for the future with CASH?

I think we’ll move into a little more education and, like I said before, teaching artists about things like Amazon S3 servers and why you want to own your stuff and how to do even basic coding. Understanding that sort of thing is going to appeal to some artists. Some won’t want to do it and of course we’ll always have options for [them]. I think it should be very interesting, what the future holds. We have a lot of grand plans.

www.cashmusic.org