Jeremy Larson

What To Buy, and When To Buy It

I have to admit, I'm a little surprised that my brief mention of a car jacking with a hatchet didn't peak anyone's interest...  I guess there's not really much of a story there anyhow.  That's just what happened.  I watched a man sprint at full speed toward a large SUV with a hatchet.  He tried to get in, but the car sped around him.  Pretty crazy.

Moving on.

Let's do something fun here.  

Did any of you ever play Mega Man X for Super NES?  It's awesome.  Now, when I first started playing it, I was trying to beat the levels by choosing one at random.  What I didn't know, is that there is an ideal order to beating the Boss's.  If you beat the Flame Mammoth first, he'll give you what you need to beat the Chill Penguin and so on.  If you go out of order, it's almost impossible to beat.  For the longest time, I kept thinking why is this game so damn hard?!?  There's a sequence to it.

Buying gear is like Mega Man X.

I'm going to tell you the order I think you should buy your gear in.  Recording equipment is expensive, so many of us have to buy one piece at a time.  For the sake of simplicity, let's pretend you already have a computer, and Garage Band.  In order of importance:

1.  A/D Converter: (that's analog to digital converter)

I bought this fairly late in the game, and I wish I would've bought it much sooner.  I'm gonna be honest, it's not a glamorous purchase.  You plug it in, and it just sits there.  Usually there aren't many knobs to turn, and they don't do much.  You also don't easily hear an immediate difference in the sound with a single track.  It's in the details of the mix.  Buying a good converter improved my recordings more than any other purchase.  Don't skimp on this.  

2. Monitors: (your speakers)

People always told me to "mix on what you're used to".  I disagree.  I say, mix on what exposes your flaws.  When I bought my new monitors recently, my old mixes sounded terrible.  The new monitors exposed a lot of chaos in the low mids.  My old monitors seemed to just slap a bunch of makeup on my mixes and made me think they were ok.  They weren't.  

3. Room Treatment

Now, I know that room treatment can cost a fortune, but that's not what I'm talking about.  Buy some bed foam, mattresses, blankets, etc.  I don't care what mic you are using, if you're recording drums or  acoustic guitar in a room with nasty acoustics, it's gonna sound nasty.  Your brain is going to tell you that if you just got the right mic, your drums would start sounding amazing.  It's just not true.  I've used some very expensive microphones in really nasty rooms, and you know what, those mic's captured that "nasty room sound" perfectly.  It's gotta sound good in the room first.

4. Preamps

Now we can move on to the fun stuff.  Don't buy a $100 outboard compressor or EQ.  Your built in Garage Band plugins are probably every bit as good.  Wait until you can drop some money into this.  I have a different opinion on this than most people.  I've worked with racks of tens of thousands of dollars worth of outboard gear, and found myself using everything sparingly.  Recording is different than it used to be.  If you're like me, you're afraid to commit to a sound right off the bat.  I want to be able to change compression and EQ while I'm mixing, therefore I use a lot of plugins.  I typically use preamps as a part of the signal chain, but not really for the "sound".  So if you've heard something I've recorded and thought, "man, I wonder what mic and preamp he used for that...", it's probably irrelevant.  90% of the "sound" probably came from me using plugins.  People may do things differently, and that's ok.

5. Microphones

I know, you were hoping this would be number one.  Microphones are cool and sexy.  I was using decent microphones before I bought any of this other stuff.  It was a mistake.  I was constantly disappointed that my thousand dollar microphone didn't sound like a thousand dollars.  I've heard amazing things come from the right singer in the right room, even with a cheap mic.  Don't rush out to buy a nice microphone.  If you are just dying to get a cool looking workhorse mic, I'd recommend an SM7 (that's not the same as a 57).  I've used it live and in the studio, and I love it on almost everything.  We even used it on Stacy's voice for the live DVD and it came out beautiful.  You can get a used one for about $300.

Hope that helps someone out there.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

4 years ago...

Weird.  If you were a freshman in high school when we made this, you'd be graduating right now.

If memory serves, this is one of the first things I ever did with Brandon Goodwin.  Back then, I was working with a record label believing all sorts of tall tales about where my career was going.  Off the top of my head, I don't recall a single one of these things ever happening.  Now, to be fair, I don't think I was their ideal artist any more than they were an ideal label for me.  It's just funny to me that back then, if they told me I was gonna have CD's in Starbucks, I told all of my friends and family.  I don't think I would've ever guessed that four years later, if approached by a label making big promises, I would say, "Prove it".  That wasn't really what I was intending on blogging about, but I just came across that video and it got me thinking about everything back then.

I was going to blog about the attempted car jacking I saw yesterday by a guy with a hatchet, but I suppose that can wait for another day.

For tonight, I have an episode of The Sopranos to watch, and, more importantly, this:

I have high hopes for this one.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

PS, my absolute favorite single malt scotch under $100 right now is Glenmorangie 12 year- Quinta Ruban.  Any scotch drinkers out there that wanna share their favorites?

Helpful

I really have to give a huge thank you to Harley for sending me this wonderful chart.  As soon as I got it, I started putting it to good use while mixing.  I have it right next to my Bob Katz chart in my control room now.  It's probably a little hard to see here, but click on it, or save it to your computer.  It will come in handy.

I hope this is as helpful to many of you as it will be for me.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

PS. This image was taken from here:

http://www.beantownboogiedown.com/storage/Hertz-Chart.png

Improvement

I must thank you for all of the kind words about the previous post.  However, I should clarify that I'm working on a "song" for placement in a movie, not an entire "score".  Someday...

I continued working on my "Epilogue" EP tonight.  It's turning out to be some of my favorite music I've ever written.  I'm feeling closure about moving on from the last album, and that's what I was hoping for.  I'm starting to get over the feeling that I'm unable to conjure up the energy and inspiration to make another album of the scale of the last one.  It's becoming easier to see how I can improve on it.  

One of the main ways in which this new material is different, is that I'm able to record string parts in the style of a small ensemble.  With the last album, I was still trying to learn the instruments, and my technique was a little rough.  Parts needed to be stacked to sound bigger.  Since then, I've improved quite a bit, and a simple 4-6 piece ensemble is feeling more than adequate.  I'm able to move quickly, rather than spending hours on hours doing overdubs of the same part.  I almost bounced down a rough mix of what I was working on to share here, but changed my mind.  That will have to wait.  I'm feeling encouraged.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Working...

These last few days have been crazy, but really fun.  I'm working on my first submission for a movie.  It's really stretching me creatively, and that's a good thing.  I like the idea of seeing how well I can fit the bill for a client's request, and how fast I can do it.  I usually don't talk about this kind of stuff when it's not a sure thing, but I thought it'd be nice to keep you all in the loop a little more.  There are probably a hundred different bands submitting for this, so don't get your hopes up just yet.  Sorry to be so brief!  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Test

Testing video embedding directly into Typepad...  Let me know if you have trouble seeing it.  I'm trying to bypass Vimeo and Youtube.

Jeremy

Bucket Fix And Blood Pressure

Most of yesterday and this afternoon was spent trying to fix a buzz in the new piano.  Here was my first attempt with a strap and a bucket:

I thought it was fixed, but today the buzz was back.  After taking a few more pieces off, I think I finally found the source and fixed it.  I'm so anxious to start working on this new track.  Lot's of ideas floating around.

In other news, my good friend Todd made his Television debut with MuteMath on Fuel TV last night.  Take a look:

Congrats Todd!  

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Moving On

It's a difficult thing letting go of an album.  If you are a musician, you know exactly what I'm talking about.  You spend years making an album, you promote it, you release it, most bands tour with it, and at some point, you let it go.  You move on; you start making a new one.  It's difficult, because you still love it, and you believe that it never reached it's full potential.  You know that the moment you start working on new material, you are devoting yourself to something else- something new.  Moving on is an exciting thing, except when you're just not quite ready to let go of what you have.

Last night, I started working on new material.  I knew instantly that this was a premature move.  I still love They Reappear, and I'm not quite ready to move on.  Especially since I know that I'm going to release it on iTunes with a live DVD sometime in the near future.  As I was working on a new idea tonight, I noticed it carried much of the same sentiment of the songs on They Reappear.  It's as if I'm not actually moving on at all, but attempting to continue making the album that I've already released.  It's getting late, and I may not feel this way tomorrow, but here's where this is going:

I think I'm going to write a short EP to release along with the DVD/iTunes/Physical CD in the fall.  It will be sort of an "Epilogue" to They Reappear.  Though I reserve the right to change my mind, it's what I feel at the moment.  We will see.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

The other night, I was hanging out on turntable.fm and we were playing our favorite music from movies.  I played the theme from The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, and was surprised how many people actually hadn't seen the film.  Here's the theme (there's a very unfortunate cropping of the title):

It's a wonderful piece of music.  Even more beautiful, is the movie itself.  I know a lot of people don't like watching videos on blogs, but if you haven't seen this movie, please watch the trailer:

The movie is on Netflix.  Other soundtracks that changed my life (in no particular order):

1. Dancer In The Dark

2. Eternal Sunshine

3. There Will Be Blood

4. Norwegian Wood

Have you guys been on turntable yet?  It's pretty addictive.  As soon as Ryan finishes up the last Yearbook EP we will all pack up our sleeping bags and just camp there.  Hope you all had a nice weekend.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

I Live In Missour-uh

Proof:

 

Feel free to insert your own captions in the comment section.

Jeremy