finster wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 21:39 |
Hey Steve, im a huge fan of your work, and im thrilled you have your own forum now, thats just awesome!
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A while ago, I decided to stop being annoyed that people use the word "awesome" all the time, thereby making this once-special word mundane. I decided that when someone said something was "awesome," I would imagine they meant it in the literal sense: So great and imposing that it strikes everyone dumb with awe. Unfathomable, humbling greatness. The burning bush speaking with the voice of God almighty, etc.
"Awesome milkshake." I imagine it 100 feet tall, looming in the distance, mist pouring down its sides like a Saturn rocket, shuddering the earth with its weight.
"Awesome guitar solo." I imagine it bringing entire villages to tears with its power and terrifying beauty. It will enter the canon beside Beethoven's Grosse Fugue.
I even began using the term myself, in a kind of yield-to-the-Dark-Side sense.
But now, I must imagine my modest little forum being "awesome," and alas, it is impossible. An internet forum is incapable of inspiring awe. Still, thank you.
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On the album Sovereign by Neurosis, if you recall, could you tell me
1.What you used to get that killer guitar sound?
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I don't recall the guitars being treated specially. Steve vonTill and Scott have amplifiers and effects they have honed through years of experimentation, and they bring the sound with them wherever they go. Steve uses an old-school Mesa amplifier and cabinet, Scott uses a Marshall JMP. Steve's overdrive sounds come from an MXR Distortion+ and a Rat. I don't think Scott uses any pedals.
The mics would have been some combination of a ribbon mic and a condenser mic , maybe an
RCA74 or
RCABK5 and a
U67 or
Lomo 19a9 on Steve's amp, and for Scott's amp, probably an
STC 4038 (like the Coles mic) and a
Sony C37p or a
Manley CR3. Something like that. I probably used an ambient mic, but the isolation room is pretty dead, so it was more of a phase-widening utility than a reverberant sound.
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And
2. What you strapped across the drum bus?
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There was nothing done to the drums as bus processing. There was no stereo master bus processing until the mastering session, and even there, there was little but EQ and two or three dB of peak limiting. Dave Collins wrote about his cut of this record in the old RecPit. Maybe he can post his thoughts again.
The drums were recorded in the large live room of
Electrical Audio's studio B, and the guitars were recorded at the same time in the
adjoining isolation "dead" room. The sound in that isolation room is deader than dead, but there was some bleed into the live room. Noah's keyboard amplifiers, if I'm not mistaken, were set-up in the live room, and his stuff played into the ambience there as well.
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The tone of that album is amazing!
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I'm sure you meant "awesome." Thank you in any case, but the credit goes to Neurosis. Their records are remarkably easy to make, since they have their aesthetic and their sounds so completely in-hand when they get to the studio.