Moriarty Recording

Mix Records on Crap Speakers.

Bill — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:35:58 -0600

"It's the very naive producer who works only on optimum systems." -Brian Eno

It's unlikely whoever is buying your records has anything better than an average hi-fi, boombox, car stereo, or ipod. I'd bet they don't have studio monitors.

Recording & mixing solely on studio monitors is foolish. All that low end in the guitar? It's useless in the small speakers. It's just taking up frequencies the bass or drums or organs or tenor instruments can occupy. You have to be ruthless in cutting away useless frequencies so the record is loud & jumps out of all speakers. Make the record sound outstanding on little crap speakers since that's where most people will hear it. I've found when I do this it still sounds great on the fancy speakers.

"Some years back I had a lot of success with a pair of Auratones strapped in
parallel to a pair of Radioshack speakers. That's the rig I used for the making of Peter Gabriel's So album." -Daniel Lanois

If you consistently have these mixing problems try using small speakers...
the bass drum disappears in your car
the vocal level is not where you expected
the guitars are lumpy in the low-mid
any reverb or echo is surprisingly quiet
anything you thought was subtly in the mix is actually inaudible

I haven't ever bought expensive crappy speakers like Auratones. I just use crappy speakers. You know, radio shack, bose, whatever.

be good to yourself,
Bill

Man Man recording at American Diamond

Bill — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:46:11 -0600

Here's a film from Pitchfork about Bill & Man Man making Rabbit Habits last Summer.

Managerial & Summer Boss & Converts

Bill — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:46:07 -0600

Everyone, meet Chris Radwanski. Chris is now my manager and will be attending to all scheduling, information, costs, negotiations, and generally everything to make sure clients & I are free to focus on making records. Yes, I'll still be completely affordable. This is Philly. But, I want to move into project rates instead of daily rates so we're not rushing and records get the time they deserve. Chris also manages Drink Up Buttercup and his email address is in the upper right. And he's about to move to South Philly. So if you're in south philly and meet someone named Chris it might be him.

A promotion! Marc Snyder, my assistant many of you know, will be engineering many records all summer and taking the enviable(?) job of managing the American Diamond studio. He'll be scheduling all studio visits & sessions, letting you back in to retrieve your skateboard, fitting Dr. Dog & all their projects, me & all my projects and his own work into one room's calendar.

!On the way! Apogee Ensemble, Logic 8, MOTU MTP AV. Fairly soon we'll have a great converter here which will sync to the 2" tape machine, for those of you (us) in the digital age.

Edison didn't invent audio recording

Bill — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:59:37 -0600

I just listened to a great program on the newly heard recordings of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville who invented the phonautograph.