Another One In The Can: Ovipositor Recording Session

Ovipositor went into the studio last Tuesday, May 25, 2010 to record our fourth album (the second on which I am the bass player). Because we were (and still are) really happy with the way the last record, Oakland Minor, turned out, we decided to go back to Eli Crews at New, Improved Recording in North Oakland, a cozy, top notch recording space owned and operated by Eli and his partner John Finkbeiner, where a ton of great bands have captured a lot of great music.

We booked a single day to track all the basics, which meant setting up in the same room and bashing through all the songs as cleanly and quickly as possible. We managed to get 13 songs on tape in one session, recording no more than two or three versions of each (except for one song, tentatively titled “Ride The Mechanical Nun,” which I think we did five times, but only kept two takes on tape). We’ll choose one take of each tune, and go with it — no splicing or dicing, no surgical ProTool moves to add the drums from one track to the bass and guitar of another, etc.

That’s not the way a lot of bands / studios work, but we’d rather practice our assess off and spend just enough time in the studio to get something tight and visceral, than spend too much time in the studio and polish the skin off of, or choke the life out of music that we’re pretty adamant about maintaining some levels of spontaneity and transience anyway. Besides, its not like we’ve got (or frankly, want) record label budget money behind us. Ultimately, we don’t really make any money on this stuff, so we tighten up and do our thing as efficiently, effectively and affordably as possible.

Not only is NIR a perfect place for a band like us in terms of budget and general vibe, but it’s an analog-to-digital audio nerd’s ideal work space, where the best of 2″ tape and ProTools operate in harmonious conjunction. We’re all about that. Eli knows how to get the most out of the room and it’s temporary inhabitants, so we feel like there’s someone on the boards who not only has the skills to get the job done, but is a genuinely good person who genuinely cares about the product that comes out of his studio. When everything lines up like that — when the band works hard, and the engineer knows his shit and cares about his end of the bargain — it’s hard for things to not come together right. So needless to say, we’re looking forward to continuing the process through the completion of this as-yet-untitled record.

For tracking, the process was pretty basic, and I don’t recall every single mic Eli threw up around the room (I saw Royer and Blue mics, among others), nor did I pay attention to all the hardware doodad settings when I was in the control booth (if I was in there, it was to listen to playback). But here’s a little rundown of how things shook out from where I sat. But first, PLAYBACK IS A BITCH, the Ovipositor in-studio album trailer, shot and edited by Colin…

PLAYBACK IS A BITCH Trailer from Nadir Novelties on Vimeo.

We loaded into the studio at 9am and spent a few hours working with Eli and his assistant Carlos to set up the gear. Drums always take the longest because the process of mic placement is the most crucial, so Colin and I took our time with the guitar and bass rigs. My bass setup is really straightforward: Fender Jazz (US-made, DR Lo-Rider nickel strings) to pedals (Boss TU-2 tuner, Pro-Co Rat distortion heavily modified by Colin, Dwarfcraft Devices Eau Claire Thunder distortion), then into a DI box, splitting the signal out 1) directly to the board, and 2) into my Ampeg SVT 4-Pro amp, which was on the floor next to me, upright on its side; the amp lined out to my bass cabinets — Ampeg SVT 1×15 & 2×10 — which were miked in an isolation room behind me. (Isolation is important to keep each instruments’ signals clean and free of each other, especially with bass, which is omnidirectional and can/will bleed under and through everything else if it’s left out in the open.)

Colin plays through two small vintage combo amps, a ’60s era Sears amp that was set up in the live room behind a gobo, and similar era Silvertone in another isolation room. For two pretty small amps, each has a notable snarl to it, and together they round out a mean, growling tube-driven sound. He used two guitars on this session: a (nearly) brand new Electrical Guitar Company Custom all aluminum hollow body with Alumitone pickups in standard tuning (strummed with steel picks; metal up yer ass); and a generic Telecaster copy that he has dialed into some weird tuning. These were played through two homemade pedals, the Brayer (dubbed such because it makes awesomely awful noise) and the Rockalizer (which makes things more rock, duh).

Mark’s kit is a mix-and-match setup of various pieces (I don’t enough about drums to get more specific than that), but pretty straightforward: kick, rack tom, floor tom, snare, hi-hat, crash and ride cymbals. We played together in the same room, listening to the live mix via headphones so we could hear what it all sounded like, and we talked to Eli through the room mics, while he talked back to us in the phones through a mic in the control room. We recorded live to an Otari 2″ tape machine (used two reels throughout the day), which Eli then dumped into ProTools, and copied over to an external hard drive that Colin took home so he can load the sessions into his studio computer and take care of the vocals and guitar overdubs there (further cutting our studio costs), before we go back into NIR to mix the record.

The overall studio experience was loose and fun, and though we did a lot of laughing and joking around and nerding out on stuff, we were also pretty driven and focused on making sure we got as much as we could out of our time. And to be sure, 13 songs is a marathon session; ask most bands who have worked in a studio and they’ll tell you that five or six songs in one day is pretty good. We’re not professional musicians, we don’t make terribly complicated music, and we’re not shooting for the charts here, but we know what we want and we’re fairly certain we know how to get it, and we’re happy with what we’ve got so far, so we expect to end up with (another) solid record.

Stay tuned for more as the process marches on: We mix over two days in late July, we’ll have it mastered some time shortly after that, and then, hopefully, we’ll sell a few copies. Oh, and we’re playing a show on July 29th at the Hemlock in SF with our friends, and damn fine rock bands, Generalissimo (it’s their album release party), and the mighty Cartographer.

In the meantime, here’s a photo gallery of our day in the studio (or click over to the set on Flickr to see this set at full size)…