Hi Ton,
Some of the tracks on my Myspace profile, like “Rentrée 3007” are not so recent so the synths on these were recorded direct because this is what I mostly did back then. There is one short instrumental track, though, called “Minilied”, which is actually an assemblage of tracks that were taken out of another (yet unreleased) song. All the tracks on “Minilied” were recorded using a modest Yamaha CS-1 connected to a small (early 60’s) Kay tube amp, mic’ed with an old Electro-Voice 630 dynamic. I also added some spring reverb from my RE-201 Space Echo between the CS-1 and the amp on some of the tracks. Of course this represents just one of many possibilities, and since it’s recorded with a dynamic you can’t really hear the acoustics of the room. There are more examples of synths recorded through amps on the Automelodi EP and on some of the productions I made for other bands, though.
On “Buanderie Jazz” the only synth sound is the bass and this was recorded direct because I wanted a very dry sound. Most of the effort went on the guitars. I think one of the key ingredients in this case is the Roland JC-120 amp, which has a very distinct, clear sound and a fantastic built-in “stereo” chorus/vibrato that oscillates between the two speaker cones. Patrick (Automelodi’s guitar player) used a Telecaster for all the tracks, but we spent a lot of time trying countless pick-up/amp/FX/mic-position settings. We ended up with at least five different takes of the rhythm part and all these takes were recorded on two separate tracks, one using the SM-57 (very close to the amp), and another one using a condenser (cardioid, a few feet away from the amp). I wanted a very wide “jangly” sound for that guitar part so I knew that I needed to multi-track and stereo-pan it but with so many recorded takes, half of the work was then to choose which tracks to use in the mix, and how to use these. It was admittedly a bit of trial-and-error process because the song was recorded in a rehearsal space and not a “proper” studio. We had no isolated control-room so it was very hard to instantly get a clear idea of how the recorded signal sounded versus the loud sound of the amp in the room. That’s why I decided to record as many possibilities as I could in order to choose later. After trying different combinations, I ended up using a blend of three different tracks. Not very minimal, I know.
For the lead guitar parts we added a few FX pedals in the chain, mainly an old Yamaha flanger (I’ve had this pedal for years and it’s still one of my favorites) and then either an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail or an MXR Carbon Copy delay…(I forgot which one…Patrick probably remembers). I tweaked the flanger and the JC-120 chorus/vibrato settings to a point where the guitar almost sounded like bells ringing. I was very excited about that sound but we had no written lead guitar part so I just told Patrick to improvise on a few tracks. I remember we were running out of time on that day so we did this pretty quickly, but Patrick managed to come up with very interesting clangorous (...almost atonal at times) patterns. The sense of urgency probably helped.
Also, I think one of the most important choices I made for that mix was to keep the drums fairly low so that the guitars could really be up-front.
Oh, and *triangle* (but you won’t hear that on the Myspace player, though).
I hope this answers most of your questions…of course there are other production details but this is starting look like a novel so I’ll stop there.
Oh, and by the way, Ton, it’s an honour to meet you on this forum…I really like what I’ve heard so far from Ensemble Pittoresque.
