My Top 10 Albums Of The Year

The Decemberists - The King Is Dead

A simplistic folk-rock record that has 2 things that set it apart, perfect vocal melody and lyrics.  This album doesn't attempt to use bombast to sell itself, just a sunny disposition and clean, sophisticated style.

Tune-Yards - W H O K I L L 

A huge record of amazing hooks, wild vocals, and funky musicianship.  Merrill Garbus is a force of nature.

Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

Sam Beam gets around to leading a band, and the results are airy, sparse and hauntingly beautiful.  Already capable of writing a perfect song, this record displays perfect arrangements.

Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo

Kurt Vile is a master of economy of language and chords.  A supremely honest, personal record, Kurt manages to pull out emotion of thin air just by twisting syllables around.

The Lonely Island - Turtleneck & Chain

I listened to the title track so much that there's no way it's just a joke.  "Sweater on turtle with the neck on PUFF"

Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern

My yearly foray into the craziest music imaginable.  Marnie Stern holds it down with insane guitar work while Zach Hill displays the fastest, most precise drumming heard all year.  It's somehow catchy, too.

Bright Eyes - The People's Key

The most complete statement of any record on this list.  This album rocks, creeps, philosophizes, soothes and then rocks again. 

Mute Math - Odd Soul

Nothing more or nothing less than a sick rock album.  Guitars, drums, and vocals all set on fire, put into a blender and shoved into a freezer.  Then you lick like a Popsicle.  That's what Odd Soul is.

TV On The Radio - 9 Types Of Light

 It's hard to explain why one likes TV On The Radio, it's just so unusual, and it all just works somehow.  All their stuff is really great, and this is no exception.

Twin Shadow - Forget

A one-man-show, reverbed out synth pop album.  It's just really nice to listen to, all the songs have a unique stamp that is memorable.

Mixing Drums - A Guide

Steve's Guide To Mixing Drums - www.drum-studio.com

Intro:

As with anything related to music, audio, and making records, there is no ONE way to do things, but I felt that it might be helpful to have this information out there.  I'd advise anyone mixing to use this as a starting point, and from there it can be tweaked and adjusted to suit the sound you're looking for.

Overview:

I typically use 11 microphones to record drums --

2 Kick Drum mics -- one inside the drum, one outside

2 Snare mics -- one over the top head, one under the bottom head

2 Overhead mics (Left and Right)

2 Room mics (Left and Right)

3 Tom mics -- one for each of the 3 toms I use

Record Levels:

I record everything, for the most part, to an optimum volume level -- meaning that all the drum mics are recorded as loud as they can be without clipping or distorting.  Naturally, though, when I'm not playing a drum, it's mic's response is very low, and only when I hit the drum does it go up to it's desired level.  This allows for a uniform sound from the get-go.  In fact, leaving all the drums at 0dB (pictured), is not a bad sound at all, it's just not as clean as it can be.

Panning:

For almost all recordings, I leave the 2 Kick mics and the two Snare mics in the dead center.  The two Overheads go 100% Left and 100% Right respectively, as do the Room Mics.  The Toms get spread out from left to right, Tom 1 being 100% Left, Tom 2 being about 50% Left (or even center), and Tom 3 being 100% Right.  All of these pan settings can be adjusted in literally dozens of ways, but it seems to work well for me, most of the time, to have them this way. 

Mix Levels:

For a typical, balanced drum sound, try out these volume levels.

Kick 1: 0dB

Kick 2: -4dB

Snare top: 0dB

Snare bottom: -6dB

Overhead Left: 0dB

Overhead Right: 0dB

Room Left: -7dB

Room Right: -7dB

Tom 1: -2dB

Tom 2: -2dB

Tom 3: -2dB

EQ:

EQ (Equalization) is the type of post-production that I use the most, and along with compression, is the only plug-in I usually apply to my recordings.  There are many different ways to EQ a drum mix, so I'm just going to give you my typical settings and the reasons behind them.

Kick 1: This mic picks up most of the body ("boom!") of the kick drum and doesn't need much low end added to it to make it sound big.  I tend to get rid of some of the mid-frequencies though, to clear up the sound (you'll notice that I do away with many of the mid frequencies).  A typical EQ curve looks something like this:

Kick 2: This mic gets also a lot of low end, but picks up more of the kick pedal beater hitting the head, and produces a lot more "snap!" than Kick 1.  I usually EQ this channel to accent the high end properties and find that it blends well with Kick 1 this way:

Snare Top: This mic picks up the sound of the stick hitting the snare drum, and should give an overall representation of what the snare sounds like up close.  I tend to find a "sweet spot" in the high frequencies that allows the character of the snare to really pop out, while getting rid of some of the muddiness of the mid frequencies:

Snare Bottom: This one is much trickier and really depends on the song, you can either have too much high end, or not enough depending on how the song sounds around the drums.  Or you can just leave it be, this is a good one to experiment with, without much input from me.

Overheads: Both overheads will respond slightly different to the same EQ, but there's a typical rule that I follow that has always suited me nicely...gently lift up some of the high end, and gently get rid of some of the mids:

Rooms: Like the overheads, the room mics shouldn't be treated exactly the same way, but they're usually very close together in their EQ'ing.  Try getting rid of some high end, and accentuate the mid-low end.  This fills out the kit nicely because there's so much high end and so little mids in the rest of the kit, that adding some into the rooms makes for a nice balance:

Tom 1: I have pretty specific ways of making my toms pop out, and you'll also notice that getting rid of mids, raising high and low ends is the key to this:

Tom 2:

Tom 3:

Compression:

I tend to limit the amount of compression I use, and always to try to apply gently when I do.  The reasons for this are:

- The drums will likely be compressed again sometime in the mixing/mastering process after I've given up control of it.

- Compressed drums typically sounds better by themselves but lose something when mixed in with other instruments.

- I think over-compressed drums sound dated and genre-specific.

With that being said, I do typically compress the Room mics and the Snare top mic.  There's no intellectual reason I do this, I just think it sounds better that way.  The overheads certainly can be compressed as well, but I avoid that unless I feel the drum mix needs a little extra "pump".  I almost never compress the kick mics or tom mics; I just do not feel it's required for those, most of the time.  I personally do not spend too much time with specific compressor settings, because my mix is hardly ever the "final mix," I just do what sounds good to me at the time.  This usually involves cycling through presets until something clicks in my ears.  I'll leave it to mix engineers of the whole song to decide how much or little compression to add to my initial ideas.

Reverb:

Reverb is certainly something that is used a lot on drums, but it's so specific to the song that it makes no sense to discuss it at length here.  At best, the drums I record don't require reverb to sound "good", that is something I am quite sure of.  But if you did want to add reverb, I would recommend adding it to the Snare bottom (for a reverb'd snare sound) and to the Room mics (for the illusion of being in a bigger space).

That covers it for my thoughts on mixing my drum set.  Good luck and don't be afraid to experiment!

-Steve Riley, drummer (www.drum-studio.com)

Silverchair's Break-Up: The End Of A Strange, Inspirational Rock & Roll Tale

www.drum-studio.com
In the U.S., news of Silverchair's break-up might seem particularly unappealing as a rock and roll story.  For most, Silverchair must have appeared to be lingering in a post-grunge haze, occassionally releasing a lackluster album every few years to satisfy an ever-dwindling fanbase of misguided nostalgics. That is, of course, assuming that someone actually remembered who they were.  If they were remembered, I'm sure there would be a near-buried image of a music video of with a guy who looks Taylor Hanson, and a man in a pig-mask, for some reason.  The song in that video would probably rock, but wouldn't seem significant now.

The problem is, while they were once contemporaries of Bush, Hole, Live (and other monosyllabic post-grunge bands), they had evolved significantly since their early fame, and had established a new present for themselves; where nostalgia and Greatest Hits tours weren't necessary.  True, they seemed destined for an early death: they were cursed with an explosive early fame, based on a decreasingly-popular style of music and teenaged good-looks.  Their first album, Frog Stomp was a bonafide U.S. hit, but their next two Freak Show and Neon Ballroom tested the fatigue of the public.  Next came singer Daniel Johns' public bout with anorexia, which didn't mix too well with the jock-rock wave that was sweeping over the States, where Staind, Korn and Linkin Park assuming the role of hard rock's new tortured artists.

A live Silverchair show around 1999 would have revealed a talented, yet tired band with nowhere to go.  Their best loved songs were from their first batch, and the newer hits didn't have the swagger and youthful appeal that they should have had.  Even loyal fans wouldn't have expected a rebirth of the band after that point, but they were given new life by an unlikely ally: the piano.

During a yearlong hiatus 2000-2001, singer Daniel Johns tackled his issues with the gentle touch of songwriting via piano.  Working on piano gave his songs a richer sound, a complex blending of tones, keys, modes and motifs that the rock guitar can rarely emulate.  In addition, the writing style gave way to a fresher approach to the rock guitar that still was a basis for many album tracks.  On Diorama, the new songs showcased a hugely ambitious sound, complete with full orchestra arrangements, numerous key changes, wild melodic and harmonic shifts, and a vocal prominence that belied their previous work.  Songs such as "Across The Night," "Tuna In The Brine," brought a sophistication that was completely unheard of for bands of their era.  The album ends with the gorgeous "After All These Years", a piano-vocal outing that has the touch and twists of a McCartney ballad.  Aside from a few lyrical missteps, the album is as enjoyable and inspirational today, 10 years after it's release.

At this point, the band live was a force of nature.  Daniel Johns wielded the presence and confidence that would propel the band further down their new path.  The rock songs rocked harder, his voice was clear and confident, his piano playing was expressive and often improvisational; the band had truly transformed certain disaster into new life.

Their next album, Young Modern, combined much of the pomp and orchestral aspects of Diorama, with several razor-sharp pop-rock songs.  Songs like "Straight Lines" were tight, excellent efforts, designed to be catchy, yet unpredictable.  The album also revealed their most ambitious song to date, their "Thieving Birds" suite, a whip-smart arrangement of Beach Boys-esque pop and flowery baroque obsessiveness.  The album failed to catch fire in the U.S., but was well-received by fans and critics worldwide.  The live shows that followed this album were monstrous.  The band now had more than enough material to play to their "new era" fans and didn't have to cherry-pick their old hits to engage their audience.  I remember hearing a complaint by a concert-goer after seeing them at this time, who loudly moped, "They didn't even play Tomorrow!"  That fan didn't get much of a response, as it was clear most of us weren't at all interested in watching the band dig that far back for nostalgia's sake.  For all of us at the show, the current Silverchair was the one we really wanted to see.

Now that they've officially called it a day, it's comforting to know that their departure wasn't a tragedy, but a dignified resignation by a near 20-year band.  The may have not reached the heights of rock royalty, but their unusual career path and frequent successes will surely read as an interesting chapter of music history.

The "Ultra-Low Price" Solution

This Tuesday, musicians and record labels rejoiced at the sight of a long-forgotten phenomenon in the music industry: a stampede of fans buying music!  That's pretty much...unheard of!  It's like waking up one day and hearing they got Bin Laden or that Lance Armstrong does steroids.   Completely bizarre stuff.  

But there was a time when major artists' albums would prompt midnight lines at record stores on Monday nights, waiting for important Tuesday releases.  Pre-ordering a CD was, at one time, a surefire way to make sure that on Tuesday, your copy was securely waiting for you on your doorstep.  Yes, there was actually a time when consumers were so gungho that they were worried that they might not get their own copy on the first day!  Well, that's not really the case anymore; the word "copy" doesn't even make sense.  It's just digitized information, 16-bits a second at 44,100 hertz.  That usually amounts to about 100MB or less for a full length album, and that's a negligible amount by today's high-bandwidth standards.
 
But alas! when Lady Gaga's 2nd full-length album Born This Way was released, and there were hordes of fans beating down Amazon's virtual doors to buy the MP3s.  Amazon's spokesperson said that it was, "the largest amount of interest we have ever seen for an album in just one day."  The traffic was so heavy that Amazon couldn't keep up, and had to re-tool and try again the next day.

The only catch to this monumental re-birth of the industry was that the full album was being offered for 99 cents.  That's the price of gum; the cheap gum, not that fancy Orbit kind.  It's roughly the price of one-quarter gallon of gas; about the amount you'd need to drive a Vespa to a Best Buy to buy the Lady Gaga CD for $17.99. 

By the way, the background of this $0.99 deal was that it was a promotion for Amazon's MP3 store to place itself as a legitimate competitor of iTunes, and it isn't the permanent price of any full album in the store.

So, being the perpetual optimist that I am (uh), I'm inclined to see what's genuinely good about the Ultra-Low pricing solution.
First off, paying 99 cents at a reputable store like Amazon is possibly easier than getting it for free via Mediafire or torrents.  With those types of sources, you have three downsides: It's illegal.  It's immoral.  It can take a few extra seconds or minutes to find the exact item you're looking for.  If you can go to Amazon and legitimately purchase an album for the roughly the price of a pack of Trident, the cost-benefit analysis will probably find you saving more by taking the "Legal, Moral, But-Still-Convenient-Enough Path."  And, hey, 99 cents might not be much, but it's better than nothing.

And while "better than nothing" doesn't seem like a very lofty goal, I don't have a whole lot of faith that there will someday be a situation where the majority of people will pay $17.99 for an album, or even $9.99 for that matter.  Piracy is too easy and convenient, and will likely stay that way.  So, isn't it logical to try to beat piracy at it's own game?  Make it easier and more convenient to purchase.

Secondly, it would force a sense of economy on the music industry.  The industry could come out more trimmed-down, more artist-focused, and with less side-bar players taking a percentage (because how many ways can you possibly split-up 99 cents?).  Even though the music game has slimmed down considerably since the pre-2000's, it still has fat left to be burnt off.  Maybe the loss of players such as PR firms, consultants, low and mid-level managers, would be detrimental to the overall health of the industry, but it's hard to argue that there's really anything to make the music industry "more dead" than it is right now.  It was quite arguable, in my opinion, that for the music industry to ever grow again, it needs to shrink considerably first.

But is there really enough meat on a $0.99 bone to support the costs of making music?  Probably not.  There are still studios with $500,000 mixing consoles and $500,000 worth of other microphones and instruments, and people with decades of experience in how to make great records.  It still takes weeks, if not months, to properly produce an album that meets the public's standards.  How is a million dollar facility expected to be used for dozens of days, to produce a product that is only worth $0.99?  How is a record label supposed to afford to pay for that cost when they know they're only going to make pennies off of that product, even if all goes perfectly?  How are young bands, who are currently paying $500 per month for a rehearsal studio, supposed to justify their hard work for something that is valued at about 1/3 the price of a can of Red Bull?  Is the demoralization going to be worth it?  Will it create a situation where, even the world's finest songwriters, need to work nights at the grocery store to make ends meet?   Or, will music meet the fate of other types of fine art, where high-quality music will be elevated to an exclusive delicacy, with wealthy patrons footing the bill?  Or can we all just think to ourselves, "we can do this!," and remember that the 99 Cents Store is really not so bad!

Overly Critical in the Internet Age

I think we can all remember a time when there was such thing as “an opinionated person.”  Those people who seemed to have very little figured out, but they were trying.  They formed solid opinions, stuck to them, defended them, and often fought for them.  Others floated by with the comfort that it wasn’t important to judge things like music, movies, comedy and other arts.  There was a clear distinction of people who enjoyed that kind of confrontation, and those who chose not to get involved.   

NOW, in a sense, that distinction is completely gone.  Opinions no longer require arguers to look each other in the eye, and complete strangers can argue without the burden of context or the personal history of their opponents.  Critical argument in the Internet age can take place at the drop of a hat, in the Comments-section of an article, on Facebook with a friend’s friend, or on a message board with like-minded fans.  Confrontation can be instantly provoked, and within moments, people have reached conclusions that are as hard as cement, and formed with mere seconds of thought, and they are published publicly.   With the commentary established, these comments can be read by untold amounts of people looking for information, despite the fact that the author could very well have cooled to the topic moments after making the judgment.  These comments can very well be viewed as intellectual litter, scattered by millions of authors in moments of careless abandon, provoked by impulse, and fueled by the desire to feel heard...or possibly as an attempt to transfer frustration or anger onto a topic rather than it's real cause.  But readers are nonetheless subjected to it, and it can often sour others before anyone’s even had a chance to examine the subject for themselves.  It’s a very curious phenomenon, and something that surely has not been experienced in any other way in history:  The dissemination of public information, written by the public, and read by the public, in one shockingly instantaneous motion.

Let’s look a particularly normal example, pulled from a site called AV Club, a collection of music/movie/book/TV reviews and commentary that I find frequently interesting.  This conversation is happening as I am writing this, and will surely be done being discussed by the time anyone reads this.  The subject: The bands Mumford & Sons, and Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes are going on tour on vintage train cars through the American Southwest.  The tone: this is a silly idea by goofy bands.   My take is that it is a silly idea, but a fun and novel one.  Surely this can’t be a bad thing, in my opinion.  About halfway through the comments I find this:

Ed Sharpe is pure fauxhemian crap. He was actually in a failed spaz punk band called Ima Robot before he decided to hop on the bearded folky indie trend that was happening a couple years back.

Let’s break this down a little bit.  First, “Ed Sharpe is pure fauxhemian crap.”  This assumes that the words fauxhemian is a meaningful term for “phoney bohemian.”  I suppose that Edward Sharpe (which isn't his actual name, but hey...) is a phoney bohemian.  Edward is likely to be seen walking around barefoot despite the wide-availability of footwear, sings songs that seem drawn from equal parts 60’s folk and depression-era country music, all the while licensing these songs for use in TV car commercials.   In his case, “fauxhemian” is actually a cleverly applied title.  But what’s the problem?  The songs aren’t offensive to any sort of standards, they’re well performed and there’s a delightful back-and-forth of female/male vocals.  Is that a problem?   Is fauxhemian-ism so rampant in the author’s region that just the mere mention of that evokes a sense of dread?  Is there a well of personal experience of these types of people that leaves the author no choice but to insult the band based on this perception?  I suppose that’s possible, but seems unlikely.  Besides, it’s music.  Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes is just a band, shouldn’t they be judged by their songs?

The second critique in this blurb refers to his past in a band called Ima Robot, which is a band that I’ve heard of but have never listened to.  This time, the assumption is that this band failed (despite being famous enough for me to have heard of them) and because of that failure, Edward Sharpe formed a band in the red-hot scene of bearded indie-folk bands.  Because bearded indie-folk bands so incredibly successful right now.   Being bearded and in an indie-folk band is like owning a money-printing machine, in this author’s opinion. 

With this we have reached one of the most common insults leveled at musicians and artists in the history of the Internet:  “The artist is just doing this because ____________.”  This criticism can be pointed at anyone, for any reason, and can shoot down any creative effort in a heartbeat, and 99 times out of 100, the critic will never have to answer for this.  Why?  Because it’s an opinion that can’t be proven wrong, even if the artist himself insists that it’s not true.    In this case, Edward Sharpe formed this band because he wanted to trick everybody by playing a popular style of music and make a bunch of money off of you saps.  Ima Robot was his real musical style, and The Magnetic Zeroes is his cop-out cash-grab.  And in an instant, the critic has completely shot down this whole band’s past, present and future.  The argument is now, “This isn’t even a legitimate band!  This effort is completely fake and manufactured to make money!  Anyone who enjoys this is being fooled!”  And I don’t want to sound overly sensitive, but that hurts.  That’s an argument that’s so incredibly devastating to its target, but it doesn’t have be proven, and anyone can read it and believe it’s true without any further reasoning.   As a member of many bands in the past, I can just simply assure people that all bands are manufactured to a point, but every band that writes songs needs a level of sincerity in order to complete their mission and create an album.  To assume that a band like Magnetic Zeroes exists just a moneymaking operation would be to dismiss thousands of donated man-hours, massive quantities of personal sacrifice and huge creative risk.   Making an album is not something to be scoffed at as a purely one-sided affair, it’s too complex, involves too many voices and too much input to be dismissed so simply; yet it’s shockingly common to see it done.  Take a look around the internet, and marvel at how easy it is for people to reduce the lives, work and efforts of untold millions of people down to one snide comment or two, and ask yourself why it’s so necessary for people to do that to one another.   I suppose that’s not my area of expertise, so I’ll leave that to the sociologists to figure out.  In the meantime, let’s concentrate our critiques on things that we can see, smell and hear, and leave the motivation-bashing out of it for a while.  I think if we all decided to scratch with our fingernails rather than slash with a sword, we might realize that things we dislike aren’t so sinister and evil, and merely just someone else’s take on things.  And if they still don’t hold up, we can simply move on to something that will.