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[bob ebeling]

RSettee:


The things we took from the demos were mainly atmosphere stuff or percussive noise type things. A good example being the two ascending siren type guitars on Duel that lead into the chorus. Anything I thought sounded cool and would take for ever to reproduce. I just sampled it into my Akai S1000 which I loved and span it in from Cubase which I always ran at the time. I didn't do the demos, Jez the drummer did. He was and is still a bit of a closet engineer and I thought they got some great moments as you often do in demos. I figured it'd be good because he'd get an engineering credit and we would know that we had managed to keep the moments from the demos that were special. It wasn't that we couldn't reproduce them, we didn't really try and I liked the idea of using them and it took hardly any time at all.


Regarding Bass, most, if not all were played by Adam. They didn't have a bass player.


The production is basically how I view producing bands. You may notice that I mainly do co productions with the band. That's because they normally know their sound and have good ideas and we work together to try and make the best album possible. No egos or bad ideas try everything and make a judgement call. I don't take all the credit or all the blame!

Best.


Alan.

[bob ebeling]

Hi Bob.

Gabriel F:


Hi Gabriel,




If the drums are live I generally use a kick and snare sample along side the real ones. I get the sound without them and then blend them in to enhance what's there. It's never the same samples and can be a blend of numerous ones. I don't compress the drums on the channels much but send them to various different sub compressions which I bring in and out in different sections of the song so the drum sound changes subtly from verse to chorus etc.


I hardly compress guitars at all generally and don't eq them much either. I may filter low out and add some bite to get them to cut but I ride the levels quite a lot.


Generally I don't eq massively just carve out little bits and add little bits, pretty subtle but I find it all adds up.


Cheers.


Alan

[bob ebeling]

Alan is also thumbs up on my phone/interview/post idea so he might answer a few more here and then I might just start printing everyone's questions for a week or so until I can figure out how to line my phone into protools (for less than $5!--tips!  lol) but for now---keep firing away, we got him where we want him!

GO BACK TO PAGE 2 FOR HIS FIRST 3 ANSWERS!

[ktownson]

The cheapest way to record a phone conversation is to stick a mic in front of a speaker phone. You could also run a miniplug out of a headset enabled cell phone and into a mixer channel.

Radio Shack sells several solutions to recording analog phone calls--the cheapest is about $30

[bob ebeling]

I only use a landline, no cellphone at all, but I just looked and there is a headphone out on it, so I think that will work and I'll get it experimented with and worked out properly before I do the call.

Now we just need some questions!  Alan has caught up while waiting for Toni in an Airport today.  Refer back to page two if you have not seen his three answers.  keep the questions coming now.  We are gettting him into a mode. hahahahahaha (evil laughter)  

[Dave_EK]

In a mid-session panic, I chopped the end off of a handset cord and soldered a 1/4" plug on so I could go into a DI... not perfect, but it worked.

[bob ebeling]

Baby monitors are quite powerful too!  I wouldn't chance that for Moulder though.

Total sidenote: anyone hear about this bandcamp site?  looks pretty cool if your sitting on some back catalog or trying to find a way in general...

http://cavedponie.bandcamp.com/

Now, back to questions for Alan Moulder.  Shoot.

[ktownson]

re: direct from phone line...Just don't have it plugged into anything when the phone rings. There's about 50v ringer voltage on the analog lines. Back in college, I fried a cassette recorder this way...I guess the statute of limitations for wiretapping has run out by now, eh?

(Oh, crud, you said headset cord...nevermind)

[Peter Beckmann]

KB_S1 wrote on Thu, 30 September 2010 11:28

I would be interested to hear a little about Assault & Battery 2. What was the reason for the Miloco tie in? Could the studio have been opened independently? Is there any concern that at some point in the near future that diminishing budgets will make it impossible to satisfy your demands for quality in the projects you work on? How many booking clients are making full use of the large live space in the studio?

Obviously I'm not Alan but I used the live room at Assault and Battery 2 for recording drums, and that turned out really well. We had a tight schedule to get 3 tracks done in one session with 3 totally different drum sounds. I wanted to use A&B partly to check it out, but also 'cos I knew the band would trip out over the modular Moogs and ARPs in the synth room, which would mean they wouldn't get bored waiting whilst we swopped bits of drum kits and mics around.

There's plenty of cool outboard, we got great sounds, so a good day all round.

The tie in with Miloco makes sense to me because what you really need is to keep the rooms booked, and that has to be easier being part of the big organisation that Miloco is.

I would think too, that WRT diminishing budgets, having your own studio is a big plus. So long as it isn't making a loss on your productions, you can work somewhere cool on those projects you really want to do but that don't really have the budget for how you'd like to do them.

Sorry for the interruption,  now back to your scheduled programs...

[fiasco ( P.M.DuMont )]

bob ebeling wrote on Thu, 30 September 2010 17:05

I only use a landline, no cellphone at all...

Now that is impressive!

[pete andrews]

Alan -

i'd love to get just a couple thoughts on what working on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic was like... in particular, the approach to Harriet Wheeler's vocals.

thanks!

-pete

[bob ebeling]

I've submitted the last few questions to Alan.  Just wanted to remind everyone that you can fire away any questions for Alan Moulder and you'll get a response within a few days.

[Todd Loomis]

Hey Bob...  did you already submit my 1st 2 questions from the 1st page?  I wasn't sure...  here they are again just in case:

I'm really curious about his thoughts on EQ across the master buss... which ones he likes to use, and what settings, and most importantly, why?

Also, I'd love to know more about his use of buss compression... if he likes to use it... how much... settings, etc.

[adoucette]

Awesome!! I've spent some time with a mutual friend of his Flood, He told me great things

[bob ebeling]

Hey Todd, resubmitting your questions now.

Are you using eq and compression on the mixbuss?

I am.  Especially because of the flatness of digital, even with all of the great front end, I find that my API 5500 into either a pair of Tube Tech CL1b's or Neve 33609, then if it's really still begging for life, a pair of Pulse EQP-1A3.

After this chain it's like night and day usually.  I don't do very much beyond running thru these boxes.  Maybe straighten out the top and bottom eq-wise (no more than a db, 2db in extreme cases) and just barely tap the needles on the comps (slow attacks, fastest releases).

Bob

Andre, you hung out with Flood?  What did he have to say.  I got to work with both of them and found their creative partnership pretty awesome.  Alan stayed more in the mixer role and Flood was more of a big picture/special dashes of flavor/great new ideas guy.  Toni Halliday was in on the sessions too and she had excellent input on the song arrangements and helped to really look at lyrics and structure.  The 3 added up to a complete amazing studio guru machine.