SnowGhost Music

I got a phone message from Sean Moeller of Daytrotter: “Looks like we could be working together sooner than we thought”. We had been bumping into each other at festivals like Noise Pop and South By Southwest, and agreed that we were two kindred spirits that should hang out more often. Intrigued by his mysterious voicemail, I called him back and asked what he had in the works.

Death Cab for Cutie was set to release their new record with Atlantic and wanted to do something unique to drum up some hype. Daytrotter, the music media darling of late, was the perfect place to showcase some new and old songs to get people excited about the new release.

Sean didn’t seem to know all of the details right away, but told me that if the session were to happen, he wanted me to engineer it. I was honored and gladly accepted. After some logistical loose ends got tied up, I got the details. We would be in Death Cab’s home town of Seattle at Studio X, formerly known as Bad Animals, where Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and REM had recorded some of their biggest records.

Because Daytrotter’s format was very different than my usual style of engineering, I got some pointers from Pat Stolley on how to properly run a session in the Daytrotter vein. The only rule was that everything got mixed live to two track. In Pat’s words, “You commit to your mix just as the band is committing to their performance". I was excited and a little nervous at the same time - I didn’t know the space or the gear as well as my own, and would have to make decisions on the fly. This called for as much preparation as possible. I was introduced to Mike, their in-house studio engineer, and got the gear list and patchbay layout, along with some pictures of the space. They had a very similar setup to SnowGhost’s, mainly because of their SSL G series console, Genelec and Yamaha monitors, and mic selection. Mics we had in common were 57s, 421s, U87s, 451s, D112s, SM7s, M49s, and RE-20s. I decided to bring along a couple items of my own, a Schoeps XY stereo mic and the API mic-pre lunch box, because I knew that I would get great drum sounds quickly with that very simple setup.

In addition to getting to Seattle the day before the session, I brought my assistant Nolan as an additional hand, knowing that we would have to move fairly quickly. We walked over to the studio from our hotel to take a peek at the live spaces. Fortunately for us, there were no sessions going on that day and we got along quite well with the studio staff. Mike offered to stick around and help us get set up early, moving gobos, setting up mics, patching outboard gear, and labeling the board. It was a huge weight off my shoulders to be able to process everything about the studio and gear without the band waiting around for us to get set up. One of the more frustrating things for a band and engineer is people standing in the studio…. “Hurry up and wait,” a friend of mine once said.

Because of the ‘live’ nature of a Daytrotter session, we wanted to have all of the members of Death Cab for Cutie in the same room, much like they would be set up in a practice space. This meant using a lot of gobos. The live room at Studio X was quite large and reverberant; a great space for a symphony, but it would be washy on drums. We decided to use all of the studio’s gobos to create a ‘space within a space’, with enough distance between them to avoid choking the sound. Around the drums, we built a short partition from the rest of the band. To maintain the low-end of the kick in such a large room, we took two gobos and built a corner for it to fire into. This tended to create a massive standing wave in the sub-harmonics of the kick, which reinforced the overhead mics in a room as large as this one, where bass had a plenty of space to dissipate. Behind each of the other players, we placed an eight foot tall gobo to make them feel like they were in a tighter space. It worked quite well on Ben’s vocals, pushing him forward with a presence that would otherwise be lost on a vocalist in a large room.

We started with the drum setup, minus the actual drums. I knew that Jason played a custom Ludwig set, and was a well-established recording engineer himself (check out his studio at twosticksaudio.com), so the drums would be well-tuned and he would know what sounded good. So we found the best space in the studio to isolate and control the drums, and went after it setting up the mics. I put a D112 on the kick and my favorite SM57/AKG451 combo, taped together, on the top of the snare. I put up a couple of spaced Neumann 170s for the overheads to get separation during the louder cymbal parts, and to pick up the spread of the toms. I wanted to have the option of crushing the drums, airplane-hangar-style, so I put another SM57 under his seat aimed at the kick and snare, eventually running it through an 1176 with pretty extreme settings. Finally, I put up my (very) favorite Schoeps XY stereo mic in front of the drums and aimed it down towards the gobo-partitioned corner in front of the drums. All of these mics went through my API mic preamps, which sound fantastic on drums. I compressed with a Distressor on the Kick, the SSL G series on the snare, Fatsos on the overheads, and Dakings on the room mics. I used the SSL G series EQ on all of the drum mics because they were easy to reach and had a nice ‘grungy’ quality to them (sorry for the old man humor).

Nick had an Ashdown head and cab that he was really into but also liked the sound of his newly purchased Summit instrument preamp. He said that he had been through them all, but that this configuration had a smooth yet articulate tone; the older vintage Ampegs and the newer hi-fi Aguilars were either too muddy or too slinky for his tastes. He thought that the Ashdown had a smooth low-mid range without the mud, and that the Summit DI handled the top end without sounding clicky. We placed an RE-20 on the 15” speaker of his cabinet, which was isolated in its own room, with great results. You’ve got to love the RE-20 on bass, it’s more vibey than hi-fi, which seemed to compliment the more modern Ashdown quite well. Both the bass amp mic and the DI were run through a pair of Neve 1073s and LA-2As, and all I did was turn them up. It’s easy when you have that kind of gear.

Chris’ station was definitely one of a recording engineer and producer. Through a couple of pedals, a Nord, a modern-style Rickenbacker guitar, all going to a pair of tube guitar amps, he had the ability to create new tones on the fly. The amps were a gorgeous Fender Tremolux and a funky little Orange amp called the Tiny Terror. We isolated them in the vocal booth. Chris’ setup was very simple, and very clean. No tone was lost because his signal path was uncluttered. He said that I had the option to blend the amps to counter Ben’s guitar and that I should use my ears. As if I needed any more flexibility, I set up a U87/SM57 combo on each amp so that I could further tailor the sound. This ended up coming in handy as we recorded at the speed of light. All of the mics went through SSL amps and compressors, which sounded nice and crunchy, and again, were easy to reach.

I had to guess a bit on what Ben would be doing, knowing that he could bounce back and forth between piano and guitar, along with his vocals. So we created a couple stations for him, with an SM7 at the piano and another where he could stand and play guitar. Both of the SM7s went through Grace pres and Distressors, also adding a touch of de-essing from the DBX 902. We placed a beautiful stereo pair of vintage Neumann M49s on the Yamaha C7, patching them into the Grace mic pre and LA-3A, with a great rock in roll piano sound; it was very warm and midrange-y, cutting right through the mix. With the set list that they chose, Chris ended up playing the piano. For Ben’s Silvertone, we had one last isolation space: the hallway. Again, we put our U87/SM57 combo through the SSL pres and compressors, which also complemented the amp’s natural overdrive. The only effect used in this session was a plate reverb with a short pre-delay ahead of it, on the vocals. This gave us some warm space to surround Ben with, and sit him nicely in the rest of the mix.

As far as the recording went, we made a first pass of all of the songs and ended up with a few keepers, because I was not familiar with the band’s vision of balance. After a listen back with pen and paper, making some notes, we were able to nail the remaining tunes the second time around and I felt much better about my performance. It’s kind of funny to me that I can refer to my mixing job as a performance.

Overall, this was a very exciting session for me for a few reasons. Obviously, Death Cab for Cutie played a big part. But I also have to recognize that Sean and all of the Daytrotter folks encourage bands to take risks, and encourage engineers to take risks. It really opened up my eyes - and I think the band’s as well. So many things today have gotten lost in cliché samples, metronomes, multi-track workstations, and become over-thought. Remember that Motown recorded albums in a day. Carry on, Daytrotter.