8 posts tagged “kcrw”

Watch or listen to The Black Keys live session here

BK_Guys

Hold on to your seat here come the Black Keys!  With all the sessions Ray Guarna and I do in our studio, the goal is to bring you big time studio quality sound.  Sometimes We get in a groove and reach for a certain microphone that we know works all the time.  But when guys like the Black Keys come in- anything is game. 

The two-man duo comprising the Black Keys is singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney. They definitely have an ear for what they want their signature sound to be.  They asked me to get some grit on the vocal and get that squashed drum sound in the mix and helped me acomplish this in a few ways.  For Dan's vocals I ran it not only through our trusty Grace mic pre, I also ran it back into an Avalon 737, hit it with the compession and gave it that overloaded sound.  For the drums we used a room mic going thru another Avalon (squashed) and a grouping of the drum mics going into a vintage 1176 limiter (pegged the meter the whole time). 

Avalonhammered

During sound check we taped a song and then the guys would come into the control room to listen. When the blend was right, I got the aproval and we went to air.  Although I was aware of what I was doing, it kind of played with my mind. Usually, hearing distortion and the overloading of the gear makes me quickly back off the gains and try to fix something.  The guys are also their own engineers so with their aproval I knew I was doing something right. 

I made a note on our archive notes thinking how funny it will be when years from now somebody listens and wonders what was going on...  I wrote, "Distortion Intentional."

Mario Diaz
KCRW Sound Engineer

Watch or listen to the Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings session

soundcheck

Sharon Jones brought her revivalist funk and soul sound to our basement today.  The 8 piece band, The Dap-Kings, skillfully backed up the most soulful singing you'll hear this side of Aretha.

Dave, Ian, and Neal

As soon as sound check started, I knew we were going to be in for something special.  A band this size taxes the limits of what our little studio can handle and still provide the quality of sound our listeners expect.  But The Dap-Kings are disciplined musicians who adapted to the cramped quarters and delivered.  Here in the basement, we've been pleasured with many fine performances over the years, but rarely do you find 9 musicians absolutely owning the songs they play, like today's session.  That makes the recording engineer's job infinitely easier, because you aren't going to get any surprises.

One different approach I used in this session was the way the drums were mic'ed;  Very old-school and simple.  Kick drum mic. snare mic, and overheads.  That's it.  It gives the drum's a little space and room sound, which fits the retro-funk style.

I hope you get a chance to check out this rare session,  If you can listen to this music and not compulsively move around, check your pulse.

Here's a sample of the session.  The title track to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings latest album, 100 Days,100 Nights.

Ray Guarna

Near the end of the set up for a typical Morning Becomes Eclectic live performance, if the musicians are good and everything goes smoothly during the sound check, there comes a certain point where everyone is...waiting. Everything is in place, everyone has had coffee, the mix sounds great, and the musicians are happy with what they're hearing in their headphones. Now the engineers, musicians and studio personnel are just waiting for the cue from host Nic Harcourt telling them that they're on the air. "You'll be on right after this song is over," is typically the word that comes from master control (KCRW's on-air studio.)

It's exactly at this point that some bands will use the opportunity to play a bit of some cover song they like or even play along with the song that Nic is playing on the air at that very moment. Once in a while the band will spontaneously launch into a jam and make up words on the spot. These are moments that almost never make it on the air.

That's exactly what happened last week when Sia and her band came in to perform. A few minutes before the band was to go on, Daphne Bach, part of the team that takes pictures and shoots video for KCRW's website, had to run back to the web room for a piece of equipment. (It's a long run too; the web room and the performance studio are at opposite ends of the very very very long hallway.) As the band waited for Daphne, they broke out into a little improvised ditty that can only be called "Waiting for Daphne."

Bob Carlson
KCRW  Production

Waiting for Daphne

Sia (and band)

Watch and listen to the Fiery Furnaces live session here

When I was listening to the Fiery Furnaces CD the day before the performance, I wondered how they could pull off what I heard with just three keyboards, bass, Drums and  a lead vocalist.  Well, as soon as sound check started I learned how talented Matt Friedberger was at using all the elements from his gear and switching with agility from one instrument to another.

A sampler played synth sounds which he manipulated (in real time!) adjusting the attack and decay and adding wha-wha effects all by hand. He also played an organ and keyboard through an amp.  Synth sounds were doubled by a grungy bass played by Jason Lowenstein with diverse drums from Bob D'Anico. The vocals were sung by Eleanor Friedberger (sister of Matt). They really pulled off all the breaks and hard changes that you hear on the CD.  Plus, some of the songs in the performance were interpreted differently from the CD  making it even more interesting.

I asked Matt how the CD was recorded. I wondered if it was done all in Pro Tools, with all the drum and keyboard sounds manipulated in software. He told me no, they actually recorded in sections with different set-ups in the studio for the drums and keys.  For example: a live drum kit was set up for a dead room sound in the studio, then when they needed to change the sound from verse to verse they would stop, change the drum set-up, punch-in and play until the next change, etc. etc.  That way all the parts were tracked as-is and they didn't spend their time trying to create all the sounds in post-production.  I think this kept the feel of the track more genuine with no need to time compress to keep everything in-time.

Well, take a listen to the CD and you will understand what I mean.  Time signatures, instrument sounds  and vocal effects all change track by track throughout the CD.

Mario Diaz
KCRW Recording Engineer

Watch or listen to The Go! Team live performance here

The Go! Team is a 6 piece band featuring Sonic Youth
style guitars, 2 drummers, some samples, keyboard, and cheerleader
chants.  For our session in the basement, we had to reduce the second
drum kit to a single snare drum because of space limitations.  Too bad.

It's always fun to pull together a live session of high energy music
like this, first thing in the morning.  Even a caffeine addict like me
can get through it without a bit of coffee.

The Go! Team also plays musical chairs during the set.  Everyone moves
around taking their turn on guitar, drums, keyboard and vocals.   No
rest for the wicked recording engineer, as each musician brings a
different dynamic to the instrument.

For the gear heads out there:

We usually use Neumann KMS 105's for vocals with Urie LA-4 compressors.
That's what I used this morning.

On this session I chose Royer R-121 ribbon mics and API 225L compressors
set to old style for the guitars, and an 1176 for the bass which was
direct-in through a tube Direct box.  I also used a Yamaha stereo 1176
emulator plug-in to really squash the drums and dirty them up a bit.

We use Grace pre-amps on everything.

Ray Guarna
KCRW Recording Engineer

As you may have heard, KCRW is undergoing a massive campaign to modernize and restore our music library. Part of that effort is the digitization of our entire music collection. The music library contains over 60,000 recordings on CDs and vinyl. We're also going to be restoring and archiving our live performance collection which goes back over 20 years, and is currently stored on rapidly deteriorating reel to reel and DAT tapes.

Just the CD digitizing part alone is expected to last several weeks during which time a group of MUSIC RIPPING ROBOTS has taken up residency in our office.

Music Ripping robots

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So let's kick off this first ever look at what goes on behind the glass and in front of the sound boards here at KCRW!

Listeners of KCRW know all about the astounding variety of musicians, artists, writers, actors and performers that regularly descend into our basement studios. Now is your chance to find out about the people who take all those voices and sounds and turn it into radio.  KCRW has a group of incredibly talented engineers who record, edit and mix the interview shows, promos, documentaries, remote broadcasts and pretty much anything else that you hear in your car or on your iPod that we make here.

Some of the most interesting stuff happens during the regular live performances that are part of Morning Becomes Eclectic. Musicians usually stumble in sometime after 8:00 am, and bring their gear down a precarious set of concrete stairs and into the studio. (often the morning after the band has played a late show at a club somewhere.)  To mix one of our live performances, you need to move fast, arranging and rearranging mikes, cables, headphones and baffles. You need to work with the musicians to get a good mix in their headphones. Then, after all the grunt work you need to sit still, concentrate, and listen critically to the sound check and make the music sound great using the complex tools of the sound mixer. I often tell people it's not unlike the winter Olympic skiing and shooting sport of Biathlon; lots of hustling and schlepping, alternating with moments of zen-like focus.

The work of KCRW's engineers is really remarkable and has been celebrated on the air, on the web, and on our live performance CDs. It's great to have a place to talk about it.

Bob Carlson
KCRW Production Director