After taking some time off from my hectic recording schedule, I’ve decided I’m ready to begin recording anyone and everyone possible at Echo Echo Studios once again. I think I got into a gigantic hurry to move up in the recording world and that me in a wrong state of mind. Looking back, I was a part of the recording of some great songs / albums that I didn’t even realize. While I was working several web enterprises that weren’t exactly fun, I’ve decided that I’d rather run a recording studio than write php / mysql code for websites that are supposed to make millions, but result in me throwing away months of my life.

Of course, it’s not like I’ve not been recording. Sure, I haven’t been booked to the max like I have in the past, but I’ve always had a project going on. In fact, I think taking this time off may have been the best possible move for my audio engineering abilities. You may think that I’m rusty, but my skills have never been better!

What have I been doing while on my break?

• I produced an album with Daniel Sexton that I’m extremely proud of.
• I’ve mostly produced a modern rock album with Elevenpoint that may never get finished, although I’d love to see that record get the attention I think it deserves.
• I’ve upgraded to the best recording software in the business
• I’m now just as capable of programming techno or rap beats as I am recording country or death metal.
• I’ve learned how to get real drum sounds out of my relatively small room.
• I’ve FINALLY gotten my studio monitors to translate mixes to the outside world!
• I can now do full blown solo albums. Check out Daniel Sexton

So, my recordings have never sounded better and I’m ready to record again!

Contact Me, Brandon Drury to book time now!

As some of you may already know, I attended the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop back in January of 2006. Wagener has recorded probably 20 albums that I own and it was an enormous learning experience. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I can’t think of a better way to throw away $2500! I was able to sit down and eat with so many of engineers and producers that I looked up. It was exciting! However, there was one common theme. All of them had dedicated 100% of their time to recording. They weren’t doing recording 30 hours per week and then running peer to peer sites 40 hours per week. They were working 70 hours per week on recording. The lesson learned was that if I was going to succeed, I was going to have to decide between running big enterprise websites or recording music.

I decided that to dedicate nearly 100% of my time into a website called TextLinkCenter.com. I wrote all the php code / mysql programming. Unfortunately, we made some big mistakes when creating TextLinkCenter.com and the end result is worked day and night, 7 days a week, to end up with a site that didn’t make me a dime. I would have been better off recording music. The entire time I was engaged in the epic undertaking of learning / writing php code I really just wanted to be recording music.

Now that I’ve thrown in the towel on TextLinkCenter.com for the time being, I’d rather just record a band today. At this point in time, I don’t care about making a million bucks. I just don’t want to work 80 hours per week for 6 months with nothing to show for it.

Unfortunately, there were some casualties in my decision to focus all my time and energy on big time web enterprises. There were bands who pushed me to record them. I drug my feet. They wanted me to record them. I WANTED to record them, but felt morally obligated to focus on my web work. The fact that I was doing my best not to be tempted by the recording bug led to all kind of problems. There were some huge problems with communication that resulted from my simply not checking my email enough.

However, all of that is past me. I’m EXCITED about helping bands make the best recording possible. I’m not trying to make any platinum records. In fact, I really don’t care if any of the albums I record this year sell more than 2 copies. I just want to make ruckus worth listening to! Let the card’s fall where they may.

• Have a clear understanding of budget, goals, sounds you want, etc
• Make sure I also have a clear understanding of your budget, goals, sounds, etc
• Make sure understand that YOU have control over the sound of your recording

Have a clear understanding of budget, goals, sounds you want, etc
So many bands just sort of show up to record without having a clear plan of how much they want to spend. Numerous albums have started out being simple “live in the studio” type of recordings that were meant to have full band tracks recorded in just a matter of hours with minimal overdubs. Some of these recordings have been stretched out as long as 6 months with billions and millions of overdubs. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to extend out a recording, but it is always nice to have a plan from day #1.

In my experience, a live recording of a band is just as good (and maybe even better) than doing tons of massive overdubs. We can debate issues such as click tracks and such, but at the end of the day my goal is to make records that are fun to listen to. Just be aware that there is no guarantee that a recording that takes 100 or 150 hours to make will be any more fun to listen to than a record that takes 12 hours to record. It all depends on the music, the quality of musicians, etc of course. Just understand that there is no real improvement in sound quality from recording instruments separately.

If you want to really take your time to get all the performances “perfect”, I’m 100% up for it. Just understand that this is going to take exponentially more time to record. As a dude getting paid by the hour, I feel an obligation to keep costs low while at the same time making the most effective recording possible. So if you are willing to spend the bucks for extensive overdubs, I’m all for it. Just let me know ahead of time.

Also take some time to figure out what you are going for sonically. In the end, you have already made these choices when you selected your instruments and wrote your songs. However, it’s very important that you make sure your music sounds “right” before walking into the studio. It’s your job as a musician to make sure you instrument’s tone sounds exactly like what you are going for before we even talk about microphones, compression, and other engineering thingies.

Make sure I also have a clear understanding of your budget, goals, sounds, etc
I’m HUGE on communicating with the band. All recording problems stem from the engineer and the band understanding each other. In the end, I’m only trying to help you make the best record possible. It’s important that I know how much you intend to spend, the amount of time you plan on taking, and your vision of what the recording should sound like.

Before we start the recording, make sure to let me know a few albums that are similar to the type of production you want. Of course, it’s impossible to clone the sound of a given recording. (I find that we are WAY better off maxing out the music we have in front of us as opposed to trying to clone the success of others in the past. You can get a great lesson on this in Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray). It’s EXTREMELY important to me that I know what you are going for from the beginning. My engineering decisions will be greatly dependent on your goals. If I think you want a Beatles drum sound and you really want a Pantera drum sound, we’ll be in trouble. (I really screwed this up on the Mike Renick live in the studio recording!)

Make sure understand that YOU have control over the sound of your recording
If you are expecting me to “make” the sounds for you, you have another thing coming. A recording engineer is a lot more like a photographer than a graphic designer. My job is to take pictures of your band’s naked bodies…more or less. While there are subtle tweaks we can do, the only real way to make a great sounding recording is to make an accurate recording. The second we start relying on me “fix” stuff is the second the recording takes a huge turn for the worse.

A great example of this is with drummers who didn’t get their toms to sound huge in the recording. Regardless of urban legend, most of the sound of drums I record comes from the overheads. So if you want great big toms, play them so they sound great big in the room. Again, I’m just capturing what you are doing. My ability to “enhance” is extremely limited no matter if I’m using 2 mics on your drums or 20 mics on your drums. I’ve recorded enough drummers to know that the drummers who sound great in the room are also the drummers that sound best on recordings.

This applies to all instruments. If you like at the mic as a device that simply converts your performance into something that can be stored on a hard drive, your recording will sound great. If you look at the mic as a magical device that can transform crap into candy and frogs into supermodel princesses, you will have problems.

Today we finished up all doom guitars for Fists of Phoenix. Their new record is turning out great. I’m really excited by the direction the band has headed, the improvements they’ve made, and most importantly the caliber of music they are cranking out.

Chase used is Mesa Boogie Rectoverb through my Celestion G12H30 cabinet. We went for bigger, thicker, and darker guitars on this recording so I used my Royer R121 ribbon microphone. For Eon, we used my Rivera Knucklehead for the high gain distorted “doom” guitars with the same cabinet and microphone.

The goal is to have Fists Of Phoenix all finished up by December so I can get more bands into the studio soon.

Brandon