Streeter Seidell is a comedy writer and (mediocre) drummer living in Brooklyn, NY. During the day he edits the front page of CollegeHumor.com but when the sun goes down he takes his place at the helm of the Indablog. He maintains a personal blog at StreeterSeidell.com and wants to make sure you know he once wrote something for the New York Times and that it was, in the words of his mother, "Amazing! You're so talented!"
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David Byrne Journal
Stop making sense David Byrne. Seriously, you make too much sense to us - it's scary. When are you coming by to hang out? -
Creative Commons
If you want to know about IP law - this is the place. CC is defining the cutting edge of music licensing. -
Lefsetz Letter
In his own words - "First in music analysis" -
Wired Listening Post
One of our favorite places to stay on top of what's happening in the music industry. -
Create Digital Music
Fairly relevant to Indaba :) -
Underrated Magazine
Our favorite NYC music-scene blog from our favorite CMJer. -
StereoGum.com
Super-hip music blog. A must for anyone serious about the NYC scene. -
The Daily Swarm
ll the news that fit to print ... about music, that is. -
Idolator
Gawker Media's music blog. Perfect if you like a little snark with your music news. -
That's What Matt Said
Shameless promotion, we know, but this is Matt's (Indaba Co-Founder) non-Indaba blog and he wants people to read it.
Friday October 19, 2007 at 04:00 PM |
Ever since they broke onto the scene in the early 2000's, The Strokes have stayed true to their scratchy, crunchy sound. Imitated by many, this style of recording evokes feelings of amateurism, of pure, un-mastered music, of the DIY spirit of rock n' roll so many said died long ago. Of course, each crunchy riff is masterfully produced and here's how they do it according to Indaba user, mashup master, and Berklee music student, Chris H.
(BTW, if you know a recording trick or technique and want to share it with the world, email me at streeter@indabamusic.com and let me know!)
Recording/Instruments:
1. You want really dry drum sounds which means you'll want to catch the buzzing of the snares when the bass plays. Interesting that what is annoying during a normal recording session (or sound check) is helpful here.
2. Make sure you apply a liberal amount of overdrive on the guitars.
3. To get that 'I'm kind of far away, I'm kind of singing through a megaphone' sound, distort and compress the vocals multiple times.
Post Recording:
1. You don't want the final mix too bright or too low heavy, so use roll off eqs around 80hz at the bottom and 10k at the top, taking a few decibles off each end, raise 500hz to 3.5khz a couple decibles to give it a mid-heavy sound.
2. Although The Strokes never literally do this, you can add white noise subtely in the background to give it a vintage feel.
Indaba's own Dan Zaccagnino adds that you can also get the same vocal effects by an running vocals through a guitar amp with high gain and record that.
Anyone else want to add a tip to this?
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Sunday October 21, 2007 at 07:15 PM
As your talking vocals, I have stumbled upon an interesting mic technique just the other night.
Indaba Music had a great week hosting 30 live bands for CMJ and underratedmagzine.com. One of the bands had asked if we had a megaphone he could use. Of course, my answer was no. Not that I have anything against megaphones. I don’t have enough room in my studio to have every sound generating apparatus with my large collection of disco balls.
Anyway, I took one of those big red party drink cups and cut a hole on the bottom of the cup. I dropped the mic (SM58) into the cup so the bottom part of the mic popped out of the hole in the cup but the mic capsule remained completely inside the cup. I taped the cup on to the mic so we would not loose it during the performance. I pulled out everything up to 200hz while boosting 1k-2k and I was shocked to hear the results!
Within about 30 seconds, I had built an impromptu megaphone with about 6 cents worth of material!
It was not quite as fun as a megaphone as ours was missing the trigger!
Monday October 22, 2007 at 12:14 AM
huh. that cup thing is a pretty good idea for a strokes-like vocal sound.
Recording on a shoe string budget with my band 3 Green Cows (not to mention recording with an actual shoe string I'm sure), we came across an old square microphone (60ish) that looked like it was meant to be held in the palm of your hand rather than propped on a stand. It was probably intended for use as a loudspeaker mic, like one you might plug into a megaphone or a loudspeaker system of some sort. It was a good example of function over quality, and not only did it overdrive only slightly but also seemed to cut (or not respond to) highs and lows, only mids (to call it by ear).
Something like that would be ideal. When I first head The Strokes, I thought of that microphone. Probably a dime-a-dozen.
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