Recording - May 2010 - 33

baritone guitar, since it’s in a key that seems too high for standard tuning without distortion, and the baritone with a clean sound gave it a slightly unusual framework. How did you record the guitar, mics, room amp or close mic, etc? I close-miked everything, using a largediaphragm Shure KSM condenser and a Neumann U 47 for the voice. I tried lots of mics for the acoustics, and probably used the Shure SM81 the most. I also used a tube direct going into the Urei 1176 compressor for direct stuff. What format did you record the songs on, analog or digital? I used Steinberg Cubase SX1, 2, and 3; the project lasted a long time and there were upgrades during the project. Cubase is very powerful and fits my needs fine. I find the German approach easy to understand and remember—after making some mistakes in the beginning, years ago. All software like this requires quite a ramp-up period of time to learn what to do. Basically, you have to be able to edit almost everything on the fly, or have a superhuman memory and ‘fix it later’. With Sarah, I simply had to decide which good-sounding take sounded better, and keep it. There were literally 3 notes that I fixed of hers, so we ran no pitch correction, which always helps the naturalness, since it is natural. I did de-ess some songs, and still don’t know if that was a great idea or not, since, of course, it sounds different on each system it’s played on. My computer is a plain vanilla, electronics outlet Hewlett-Packard desktop. Years ago, I used Apple stuff, but when my Mac fried, there was literally no place in town to get another and get back to work, so I made the big jump to PC stuff, which led me right to Cubase. Mark of the Unicorn A-to-D converters, and a few random keyboards I have around, and that was it. Van Romaine and his engineers in New Jersey and Germany did the drums and percussion. He was touring and at home while he tried to get these tracks done for me—Thanks, Van! He uses beyerdynamic mics, I think. Dave LaRue recorded his final bass parts at his home studio, and was pretty much direct with his 4- and 5-string Musicman bass. Being a guitarist, I’m interested to know what foot pedals you used on this project. Were there any in particular that really gave you that classic Steve Morse sound? Perhaps you can share a technique with the readers. I don’t think I used a single foot pedal, and I usually don’t in the studio. One technique I did use was to double a part with the effect, say a chorus delay, on the opposite side of the dry part. Then, when you double

the part, pan the doubled part exactly opposite so that on take one you have dry on the left, effect on the right—take two you have dry on the right, effect on the left. It makes it sound sonically complex without totally phasing out. The doubles need to be pretty close to make that work, since it’s best if they are the same volume. Can you explain how Steen Skrydstrup modified your amp rig with the ENGLs and how that has affected your sound? The biggest way it’s affected my sound is that my rig never breaks during shows! It’s a great example of industrial quality trumping consumer quality. With my usual fat snake of long guitar cords, I could always rewire and troubleshoot any part of the rig. However, in this context, with limited time to set up, and lots of traffic on the cords, this heavy duty multi-pin approach is easier to set up and amazingly, very reliable. In case you haven’t guessed, I haven’t had 100% luck with multi-pin systems in the past, but his work seems to be impeccable. I feel very fortunate to have a rig of such high quality from the guitar all the way to the speakers. Some final thoughts from Brian I love to see our old-school guitar heroes incorporate the new digital recording technology with the classic analog recording techniques we all know and love. This is something that is near and dear to my heart. Since I come from the old days of analog myself, I’ve always felt strongly that digital recording needs the warmth of an analog mixer and vintage compressors to enhance the signal flow. This is exactly how Steve and I worked together on the instrumental track “Towers”, dedicated to the New York Friends of the Firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11 at the World Trade Center. I recorded all of the tracks on the Ampex MM1200 2-inch analog tape machine and then dumped them down to Digital Performer via the MOTU 24io interface. So when Steve sent me his solo tracks, I just flew them in the session and lined them up and mixed. I’m a strong believer that both digital and analog worlds complement each other very well. I even encourage budding recording engineers who solely live in the box to go out and buy an analog 1 /4" 2-track tape machine to use for master mix downs to warm up the signal. Once properly aligned, you’d be surprised how these devices make a sonic difference! Brian Tarquin (tarquin@recordingmag.com) is an Emmy-winning recording engineer and guitarist, who runs the guitar-centric label Bohemian Productions based in New York (www.bohemianproductions.net).
RECORDING MAY 2010

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Recording - May 2010

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