Rite of Passage: the Distressor

I said in the post yesterday that we got some new gear. See the two pieces there on the bottom of this rack...those are distressors. Just got them last week thanks to the good, kind partnership with Mr. John Erskine, the music department's recordist. Almost every good studio has a pair of these, or least every studio has come to a crossroads and come to a decision on why they didn't buy them. I've waited a long time to be able to have one to use regularly.

For those interested: our digi 002R was modded by www.blacklionaudio.com. It is a great little company in Chicago. I hated using the 002 when I borrowed it years ago. The sound of the stock 002 made my decision to not use Protools pretty obvious. Now with the "Tweak Head" mod, my analog/digital and digital/analog is pretty close to the full HD systems that cost upwards of $10K. Pretty fun. The amazing thing about BlackLion is that they have since made even more improvements to their tweak head, and Matt told me that he'd add those updates for free if I can ship it down to him.

Matt is sending us one of his clock generators to try as a demo for syncing up everything in the chapel upstairs. Free demos! I'm sure we will end up keeping it. I like to support companies like this.

Mixing last night went pretty well. After working on "Here is Our King" for two days and feeling lost with how to make everything work with the room mics, I switched to working on "Light of Jesus." It should have been more of the same since it was recorded the same night as the other song, but something clicked in about 30 minutes and I already had a really solid sense of what the song should become. Then I went back to "Here is Our King" and realized how boring the mix was in comparison. I'm riding the room mics further down that I did last year now to let everything be more defined. The rooms were washing everything into a big mush. But I'm riding the rooms up at quieter moments when the band drops. So far so good. Its tough to do it in a way that isn't noticeable...so that there is a sense of the wholeness of each part.