Focus Right, It's the Law...Son

Pres on the Left, Please
...decent rack.

We've added a 4-channel Focusrite ISA 428 microphone preamp to our collection of gear. That equals out to a total of 32 solid channels of microphone pre-amplification in our rack of outboard gear. The new Focusrite has already been used on several sessions and has passed every recording test we've thrown it's way. Welcome to the rack, Focusrite, you've survived the hazing process.

There's also another new edition to the gear rack in the form of a Lawson stereo EQ. It has colorful knobs, and more importantly, passes audio. Seriously, if you can be impressed by the fact that we now have a Lawson stereo EQ, then you already know what a cool EQ this is.

Picture of new Lawson EQ

[UPDATE: the title of this post is supposed to be a funny pun-like headline. It is not against the law to focus incorrectly, but it IS frowned upon.]

Corb Lund Joins the Cavalry

Corb Lund's new album, Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, dropped earlier this week. The entire project was tracked here at the studio. What's especially cool listening to these songs is the authentic atmosphere they have. It's usually very difficult to hear the details of the room that a particular instrument is recorded in. By the time a project gets through the mastering process countless EQ tweeks, compression, and added reverb have dramatically altered the perceptive "size" of the room in which the recording was made. This recording is so stripped down, clear and concise that I can almost count how many floorboards there are in the drum just by listening to these tracks.

Actually, no, I totally can't do that. There are 63 rows of floorboards in our drum room. I had to count them by hand.

Here's a link to the video for 'I Wanna Be In The Cavalry', which is the first single off the album.

Just Passing Through

Hole Some
...cable expressway is open.

One detail regarding the studio that has always seemed to fall to the bottom of the priority list has been adding pass-throughs in the walls between the major rooms. After accidentally turning that priority list upside down, we were able to knock out this now top-priority project with much help from our handyman friend, BJ Haycraft. Don't call BJ a handyman to his face though, or he may punch you in yours.

In total, we have four new pass-through holes throughout the studio. It is now possible to string a microphone or speaker cable from any of our individual tracking rooms to another without going through a doorway.

Sadly, no sledgehammers were needed for this project.

Koffee is King

Behold This Shrine to Caffinated Beverages
...also makes decaf, I'm told.

If only I'd gotten a dime for every time a session player made reference to the fact that a recording studio is only as good as it's coffee maker, we could have bought three of these months ago!

Seriously...we now have the Koffee King...and that's no typo. That is specifically what the machine has asked us to refer to it as. We are all merely pawns in its presence.

No one here is particularly nervous, it's just the newness of the readily-accessible, drinkable java that has us pacing up and down the hall. Productivity has increased 10-fold around here. In fact, I typed this entire post in less than 10 seconds.

Boss Hoge

Adam Beard, CJ Sorg, Will Hoge
...during mix session of live Will Hoge tracks.

Who doesn't love Will Hoge? I think, primarily, it would be people that haven't absorbed his music.

Adam Beard sat down in our control room and massaged some live tracks for a forthcoming release. Adam, if you didn't know, is also the bass player in Will's band. If I were in Adam's shoes I'd probably produce a mix that would appropriately be titled, The BASS GUITAR and Will Hoge. Lucky for everyone though, that Adam seems like a pretty balanced guy.

Will and Adam were gracious enough to pose for a picture with me, but my proper digital camera was NOT gracious enough to have a charged battery. iPhone camera to the rescue!

A Superlative Session

Superlative Kick Drum
...very very different from super laxative.

Marty Stuart has a new satellite radio show on XM. It is an hour-long show called, "Marty Stuart's American Odyssey". Each show focuses on a different part of the country and will showcase the local sounds and influences during the program.

We were lucky enough to host Marty and his band, The Fabulous Superlatives, while they tracked some favorite standards to use in forthcoming broadcasts of the show.

Harry Stinson, the Superlative drummer, had previously produced sessions for Corb Lund here and it was great to see him and the rest of the band feeling the vibe.

New episodes of “Marty Stuart’s American Odyssey,” which airs Fridays at 8 a.m. ET on XM’s classic country channel “America” (XM 10), will also be available all day every Friday on “XMX” (XM 2), a recently launched channel that provides fans with XM’s most popular and critically-acclaimed original music shows all in one place.

Dogwood Days of Summer

Dogwood with Nathan Chapman and Scott Velazco
...in the control room at Vibe 56 Studio

I suppose it isn't summer anymore, but we were all "in heat" about Dogwood reuniting in our studio. Dogwood consists of Steve Chapman, Ron Elder, and Ken Fletcher. Steve's son, Nathan, has used the Vibe for a variety of projects including some Taylor Swift tracks recently.

Dogwood recorded their tracks "in-the-round" all together, acoustic guitars, bass, and vocals all at the same time. No other overdubs were applied, or even needed.

Here's a track that they graciously allowed me to upload for you here, it's called, 'After The Flood':



You can learn more about Dogwood on their MySpace page:
myspace.com/dogwoodreunion

Rugged Terrain

Lining It Up
...that is not a purse.

While out and about at the Nashville Flea Market last weekend, I came across the same exact rug that we've got in our control room. I almost didn't recognize it, being on a different plane and all.

I had my son take a photo of me in front of the vertical version of the rug. Instead of using the rule of thirds while taking the photo, he divided by 0.

[edited to add...]
That is SO not a purse, it's the little bag for my digital camera. No, I will not carry your car keys in it either.

Console Tape Dispenser Returns After Extended Tour

Console Tape Dispenser
...best described as a console tape dispenser.

I completely acknowledge the fact that this blog does not receive the updates that it should. This update will focus on the return of our console tape dispenser that went missing several months ago. The rights to this story are available, just contact me at cj@vibe56.com and we can work out the details and make this into the movie and/or mini-series it is destined for.

One of the first meaningful purchases I made as the new studio manager for Vibe 56 was this console tape dispenser. I made a joke at the time that the console tape dispenser signified our arrival of "real recording studio" stature. It wasn't that funny then, just as it is now, and you didn't even have to be there. This occurred in February 2006.

I noticed in the spring of this year that the console tape dispenser was missing. After keeping an eye out for it for a couple of weeks I finally broke down and focused a full, money-is-no-object, search of every last corner of the building for the console tape dispenser. The mystery only grew, while the case remained opened.

I came into the studio a few days ago and found the console tape dispenser just sitting in the middle of a table located in our kitchen/lounge. The sun was shining through the blinds on the window in such a way that the console tape dispenser appeared to glow. It was back home.

It turned out that the console tape dispenser had been returned to us by Drum Paradise. They had found it inside of a kick drum, presumably used to weigh the kick drum down in lieu of the more-typical sandbag, or even brick / large rock.

So we're back to being an officially sanctioned "real studio" as governed by the presence of our newly-returned console tape dispenser. It feels good to be whole again.

Crashing the Studio (part 2)

(Everyone was alright)

Look Who Crashed the Studio!

Artimus Pyle and CJ

Hey! It's Artimus Pyle, former drummer with Lynyrd Skynyrd. Artimus was in town to promote his brand new solo album, Artimus Venomus. He had just played a well received show at the Mercy Lounge the night before he and his crew stopped by the studio to say hello to a frequent Vibe 56 producer, Elisha Hoffman.

By pure chance, I had listened to a radio interview with Artimus the previous evening. He survived the infamous Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash back in 1977. Clearly, Artimus has had some amazing experiences, but appeared to be well grounded and a positive guy.

I took a group photo of everyone that dropped by the studio that day. I took several photos, and noticed that our intern, David Wilson, was struggling with his photogenic abilities.

You Can't Handle the Intern

David Wilson
Vibe 56 Studio Intern

Actually, handling the intern is negotiable.

David Wilson has joined us here at the studio as a full time intern for the summer. David was actually present the night the studio celebrated opening its doors for business. If I recall it correctly, he actually helped me carry a keg across the parking lot. Good times!

David has been a tremendous help to the studio and our clients. He's been around music for most of his life and played keyboards and clarinet in a band the first time I met him. It's a good thing to keep in mind in case you need the odd clarinet overdub.

Mr. Wilson, along with our house engineer, Scott Velazco, have become a one-two punch in our mission of recording excellence. Essentially, that means the studio is overstocked on positive vibe and Diet Coke.

If you'd like to find out more about David Wilson, you can do a simple Google search on him.

Pairing of a Pair

Event NS-10

The control room of the studio now has a pair of Yamaha NS-10s permanently located alongside our Event Studio Precision 8 speakers. The new NS-10s are being driven with a Hafler amplifier.

Although this addition certainly isn't earth-shattering, it has added greatly to the functionality of the control room. The NS-10 speakers provide a reliable alternative monitoring ability. Some of our clients never leave their personal monitors at home, and now it's easier than ever to swap them out, whether they are powered or not.

Console and Microphone Check

It's a continuous never-ending quest to make sure everything is functioning properly in any sized recording studio. I'm often reminded of the very first thing I learned in Audio 101, actually it's the THREE most important things in audio:

Signal Flow
Signal Flow
Signal Flow

Downtime is a scary word to any studio, but using it to make the studio a well oiled machine is a great way to turn downtime into a very productive day. The longest hours I've ever spent here at the studio were days when nothing was booked. It's a great time to tear stuff apart and put it back together again.

Rack
...knob your enemy

We recently ran into a rash of problems with our API mic-pres. We have a total of 12 channels of them. The op-amps inside of them were intermittently failing. Intermittent problems are perhaps the hardest to solve, especially in the midst of a busy studio schedule. When you finally get that narrow window of time to investigate the problem, you can't make it fail.

The "soundtrack" to the video above is me while I was testing one of our API mic-pres. There are well over 20 tracks layered on top of each other (not all of them made it to the final rough-mix of my silliness). The mic-pre in question didn't fail me once, there wasn't even a detectable hint of an issue that I could find. Yet, the very next day, in the middle of a full band tracking session it failed again. Sometimes I think these problems have their own personalities and will only show themselves while paying clients are in the building.

If I didn't know better, I'd be inclined to believe that the problematic API was showing off to a neighboring compressor. This may be a method of gear attempting to gain "rack-cred" and garner the respect and admiration of all the other gear in the rack.

We've thankfully gotten past our API issues, and have logged in some pretty heavy sessions since experiencing the intermittent politics of the democratic rack. Vote for us for your next recording session!

We extend our deepest sympathy to Jeffrey Steele and family

Jeffrey Steele and his wife Stephanie, lost their 13 year old son, Alex LeVasseur, in an ATV accident Sunday.

You are in our hearts and prayers throughout this difficult time.

A foundation in Alex's name has been set up through The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

Donations may be sent to:
The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee
Attn: Lani
P. O. Box 440225
Nashville, TN 37244
Regarding: Alex LeVasseur

Or you can go online to www.cfmt.org.

As a father myself, I simply cannot grasp this immeasurable loss for the Steele family. There is nothing I can conjure up in my mind to bring rhyme or reason to this horrible tradgedy. I know I've certainly spent a little more quality time with my own son since hearing about the accident earlier this week. I think a lot of parents are giving their sons and daughters extra hugs this week.

New Year, New Approach

Jonathan Butler Session (Group Photo)

Not only has the studio celebrated the arrival of 2007, but we've also jetted past the 1-year mark of our first solid year of operation.

At this point back in January 2006, we didn't even have our headphone system up and running yet. We've made some huge progress since then.

Currently, we're in the midst of only the 3rd week of 2007, and have already seen some ridiculously cool sessions engineered by Danny Duncan. Danny worked at this studio a lot back when it was operating under the name of "The Dugout", so it's great to see people return and find the same magic they experienced here almost a full decade ago.

Jonathan Butler kicked off our new year with an incredible session. That's Jonathan seated to the left in the picture. With Danny Duncan still in the engineer's chair, we immediately followed up that session with an Israel Houghton-produced project that red-lined our goodness meters.

One of the greatest additions made to the studio last year was an actual human being named Scott Velazco. Scott has taken on the role of our house engineer / assistant. His presence on several studio projects has grown almost exponentially since his first session here at the beginning of last summer. We were really lucky to find Scott, and every session he's been involved with has had an extra layer of smooooth all over it.

We're all very much looking forward to a great 2007!