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SESSION REPORT |
DECEMBER
1, 2000 ISSUE |
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The Walls Are
Coming Down |
(RECORDING SESSION
REPORT FRON NASHVILLE TO GERMANY) |
BY JOHN
JACZSZ |
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| I realized that the dreams stopped when The Wall came down in 89. Now,
sitting here in this small pub in Rosengarten, Germany just outside of Hamburg, discussing
world peace with my new German friends, I became acutely aware that this was the best
ending to my childhood nuclear war dreams. Growing up during the peak of the cold war I
felt I was a part of a generation with no future. Our mottoes back in 72 were no one alive
in 85 and Hope I die before I get old! |
| My trek to Germany began with a phone call from Production Assistant,
Mike Griffith, AKA Frog, informing me that a German producer wanted to cut tracks in
Nashville with the A team musicians. There are several A teams in Nashville; this one
consisted of Paul Leim on Drums, Joe Chemay on bass, Brent Rowan, Brent Mason and Richard
Bennet on the guitars; Steve Nathan on keys; Rob Hajacos on fiddle, and Terry MacMillan on
percussion and harmonica. Mike said the producer, Rudi Musseig, was producing tracks for
an Austrian singing group, Schürzenjäeger (Pronounced Shirts-an-yeh-ger), for BMG
Germany and wanted the Rock/Country feel of Nashville. He stated that Rudi would be
bringing his engineer with him. The engineer, Christoph Leis-Bendorf, would handle the
scratch vocals during recording and not the engineering. Not really understanding what he
was saying, I questioned, Mike are you sure youre not misinterpreting his English? his
reply was, I dont think so? He said Christoph will be doing the scratch vocals! Not
wanting to argue, I went along with his interpretation. The opposite would always prove to
be the case; the Germans are very exact in their explanations and their use of English is
probably more formidable than my own. |
| The session would take place at Sound Stage Studio in the SSl J-9000
room, tracking to a Sony 3348. Additional outboard gear was supplied by Underground Sound
and included Neve 33114 mic-pre/eqs for kick and snare, Martin Sound Martech MSS-10 for
bass, Neve 1073s for acoustic guitars and Piano, and Summit compressors for electric
guitars. I am addicted to using the 33114s for Kick and Snare because the transients seem
to be true to the sound heard in the room without being harsh. The equalizer on the 33114
is not as wide banded as most other Neve equalizers and enables me to pull out low mid
frequencies from the kick without effecting the extreme lows. Also, the smooth top end at
10k is excellent for top end snap on the snare. The Martech is like putting a direct wire
from the Bass to the tape machine. The low frequencies are punchy and never muddy. The
1073s have a musical top end shelf at 12k that works well for acoustic guitars and pianos.
The closest thing I have heard to it is Rupert Neves new Amek Channel in a box. The unit
has the same eq as the Amek 9098 console and the 9098 1 space rack mount Mic-pre/eq.
Rupert has definitely tried to emulate his old eq curves by using what he calls sheen. |
| Assistant Engineer, Al Grassmick became my best ally during the session.
Having a simple understanding of German, he was able to follow the lyric sheet with no
problem. The session went off without a hitch, recording 25 tunes in 3 days with an
additional 3 days for more instrument overdubs ( fiddle, Harmonica, percussion etc..). The
songs were not full length because we were doing a greatest hits record for the Austrian
boys, and many of the songs were recorded inside a series of five medleys. As promised,
Christoph supplied the scratch vocals conveying the spirit of the music to the players.
Keyboardist, Steve Nathan, interested in the lyric content, would ask Rudi and Christoph
for the English interpretation of each song. This enabled him and the rest of the
musicians to interpret the emotion of each track. Christoph picked up on some of the
musicians jargon and always ended a good take with an enthusiastic Cool Man! in a heavy
German accent. |
| After completing tracking, Rudi decided that mixing in Germany would be
more advantageous because Schürzenjäeger (mainly Peter Steinlechner with help from
Alfred Eberharter, Rolf Kohler and Christoph) would be doing vocals until the last moment
before mixing. The logistics of fixing a vocal once we were in the mix process in the U.S.
would have been cost prohibitive. All the tracks were transferred digitally through the
Otari UFC to Alesis A-Dat for use at Christophs studio in Rosengarten, Germany. His studio
is equipped with 40 tracks of A-Dat, 32 tracks of Pro-Tools 24 with a Logic Audio
interface and two Yamaha O2Rs. The studio also had the standard complimentary outboard
signal processing Gear (Lexicon, Roland, Eventide etc...) and many Pro-tools plug-ins. It
also turned out that Christoph did more than sing and was quite adept at running
Pro-Tools, playing last minute keyboard overdubs and drums. I hate people like this! Good
thing his wife was a good cook, or I would have left! |
| The mixing went great, the beer and food were excellent and solving all
the worlds problems was easy. I did have a little help in that department from the best
steel guitar player in all of Europe, Nils Tuxen. . |
| Now if we could convince Saddam Hussein to pick up a guitar, drink a
little beer and learn to play All You Need Is Love, my chemical and biological war dreams
might disappear. |
| John Jaszcz (yosh) |
(Yosh is quietly finishing mixes for EMI Canada Artist
Monia and Provident/Reunion Artist Brian Duncan and dreams of world peace). |
READ THE REVIEW ARTICLE ON THE SOUND MARTECH MSS-10 BY JOHN |
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Copyright © 2000, by Jon
Jaszcz, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
Published in Recording
Engineer's Quarterly and Alexander magazines with permission |
USE OF THIS ARTICLE SUBJECT TO USER AGREEMENT |
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