Surgeon General or: How I Record Nonsense in My Aparment.

            Sometimes, in music as well as all other forms of art, its important to throw things like logic, conformity, and quality out the fucking window, and just sit down and sound like shit.  When this song was recorded that was the goal, whether or not we knew it at the time is irrelevant.

This is a song I wrote entitled “Surgeon General” it’s a happy little tune about nothing with all but no substance, but you know what? It’s still not that bad. Anyway, enough with my sentimental ramblings about the very hazy history of this song and lets talk about some recording.

            For this song we started with the basic acoustic track to lay the foundation. We recorded the acoustic guitar using a KSM32 and an SM57. After which we laid the bass track down going straight in to the Mbox. If at this point you are thinking to yourself “Man…. He’s sure dumbing this down” I assure you, it really was this slapped together and no… This song isn’t exactly rocket science.

            Now comes the interesting part… What would you say if I told you that all those little kids banging on pots and pans were actually on to something? All the percussion sounds in this song in the exception two beat to shit drums was comprised of storage tubs, pots, pans, and an empty bottle of booze filled with popcorn seeds. And believe it or not with just a handful of mics (and lots of processing after the fact) you can make one of the most convincing low-fi silliness sounds in the world! All you have do is stick an SM57 inside one of the storage tubs and turn it upside down, now you got your kick. From there you take the other SM57 and throw it on your snare (at this stage of the game there is no wrong way to do it) now all that’s left is to set up the KSM32 as an overhead hovering roughly 3ft above the left side of the kit and then set the TM180 about 5ft away from the center of the kit as a room mic (it doesn’t do much but it makes you feel good). 

            Everything else we did on this track is pretty standard… Your average throw an SM57 on the guitar amp turn it up until it feeds back and then start playing. As I’ve implied, this isn’t meant to be taken very seriously and believe it or not I actually can engineer a quality track, sometimes I just choose not to, I suggest you try it sometime.

Equipment List

·      Microphones

o   Shure SM57 x2

o   Shure KSM32

o   TASCAM TM180

·      Hardware

o   Avid Mbox Pro Interface

o   Apple IMac

o   JBL 2325P Monitors

·      Software

o   Avid Pro Tools 10

o   Waves Komplete 8

·      Instruments/Amplifiers

o   Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster

o   Ibanez AW50 Acoustic Guitar

o   Marshall AVT20

o   Warwick Corvette Standard 4-string bass

o    Drum kit (storage tubs, pots and pans, an old snare drum, an old floor tom, and an empty bottle of Mickey’s Malt Liquor filled with popcorn seeds)