Week 5 - Monday 4/08/1991

Recording 'Existential Past'

Berg laid down a melodic string line using Emax II 16-bit Arco Strings, though it was later wiped from the tape to make room for additional vocals. He doubled the line with a solo violin patch and added some Indian instrument samples for the verses. Winegar followed up with an accordion part. The voltage on the mixing board went haywire during this overdub, causing a half hour delay while technicians repaired the faulty equipment.

"The headphones, microphone stands and isolation between the two studios here suck," Puig complained to Peter. It's true. We can hear low frequencies from the adjacent studio.

Winegar attempted to record some shaker, but it interfered with the delicate high frequencies of the guitars and had to be discarded. In hopes of softening the shaker sound, Puig instructed Winegar to move around the room until he found a 'sweet spot' between the two AKG C12 mikes set up earlier for the accordion track. We decided to record the lead vocal instead.

It's difficult to provide Gates with helpful feedback because suggestions such as "put more energy into it" or "sing it like you mean it" or "sing as if you're smiling" mean nothing to him. He responds with, "Don't tell me that. Do you want it louder? Sharper? Flatter? What do you mean?"

To demonstrate what we wanted, we played him the original demo of the song. He wasn't impressed. Winegar, on the other hand, was "blown away" by what he heard. The "squashed low mids" and "smooth sound of the harmony guitars" appealed to him. He explained that the 24-track version has a few frequency spikes in the guitars that "annoy and depress" him. I'm sure it can be fixed in the mix.

We returned to recording vocals, with Puig handling the punch-ins and outs with incredible precision. At one point I asked him why the bass guitar recording seemed to have magically improved since yesterday. He had worked on the track in the morning prior to our arrival, using EQs and filters to shape the sound.

The main compressor used for this song's lead vocal is a solid state Neve compressor/limiter rack unit. It's currently set to apply up to 8 dB of compression at a ratio of 3:1. The limiter recovery time is 100 ms and the compressor recovery time is 400 ms.

All in all, the lead vocal track was completed in a little over two hours; not too bad, really. It was time to add the song's vocal hook, consisting of a cheerful choir singing "nah nah nah" in two-part harmony. Not surprisingly, Gates refused to sing the embarrassingly happy part by himself, so Wallace, Winegar and Berg were recruited to join him at the microphone. Their first attempts were weak and joyless sounding, so Wallace goaded them into trying again, all the while cheering them on between takes. After doubling the parts, they overdubbed an extra-breathy version and Gates tracked the part by himself for good measure. Puig bounced all three of the multiple vocal takes together (compressed through the Fairchild), leaving the Gates' solo "nah nah nah" performance on its own track.

Gates sang some improvised melodic lines for the song's outro. After completing this, we sat around in the control room making silly faces at each other for the next fifteen minutes. We tried to record Winegar's harmony vocal parts, but nothing usable was captured to tape. The session ended at 8:00 P.M.