Week 8 - Friday 5/3/1991

Recording "Special". Urbano loses his temper.

Wallace edited the best sections of Winegar's slide guitar work together and played the composite track for Winegar's approval. Gates spent the next hour trying to sing the lead part until Wallace halted proceedings to analyze the backing tracks for rhythmic feel and tuning. Puig held up an electronic tuner to the monitor speakers and soloed the bass guitar. After confirming the correctness of its tuning, we concentrated on the piano, which seemed to go sharp in pitch as the chords sustained. When Puig muted the piano reverb, the pitch problem went away. "It's probably a chorusing effect in the echo," explained Puig. I asked to hear the bass guitar and organ together. When I told Puig that the two instruments did not seem to be in tune with one another, he assured me that I was hearing "dog-eared stuff" that wouldn't adversely affect the recording.

Wallace concluded that the rhythmic feel of the drums wasn't quite right. The snare and kick drum were lagging behind the rest of the instruments, making the overall track sound sluggish. Since Urbano wasn't in the studio at this time, we decided to move the snare and kick parts ahead of the other tracks by a few milliseconds. Wallace explained that Urbano had deliberately played slightly behind the beat to give the song a 'heavy' feel, a skill that takes years of diligent practice to master. Nevertheless, it wasn't entirely appropriate for the song.

So, how does one go about moving some tracks on an analog tape ahead of the other tracks? Here's the recipe:

• Swap the positions of the tape spool and take-up reel on the multitrack machine so that tape plays in reverse.
• Take the signals of the snare and kick tracks from the repro head. Due to its physical distance from the sync head, the snare and kick tracks will play back approximately 100 milliseconds behind the other tracks.
• Record these delayed signals to free tracks on the same tape.
• Swap the tape spools back again so recorded signals play normally.
• The new kick and snare tracks are now 100 milliseconds ahead of the other tracks.
• Run each of the new tracks through separate digital delays to bring them within 7 milliseconds ahead of the other tracks.

Puig told us that the BeeGees usually delayed the kick drum 3 milliseconds behind the downbeats on their dance hits. Also, the first Linn Drum machine had a built-in delay of 5 milliseconds for its kick drum sample. Puig urged me to remember those two magic numbers for delaying kick drums: 3 and 5.

I told Puig that the low end of the kick sounded mushy. He explained that the phase relationship between the kick and the other drum mics had changed when the track had been moved in time. It bothered him too. After some experimentation with the kick and snare delays, he improved the overall sound by setting them a mere 5 milliseconds ahead of the other drums.

Throughout this process, Winegar sat in the control room looking very unhappy. At one point he walked over to me and pointed at my diary. "I hate music," said Winegar. "Write in your diary that I hate music."

Everyone in the control room approved of the modified drum beat. 5 ms might not seem like much of a modification, but it improved the feel of the rhythm track. Satisfied, Wallace told us to begin work on "Ali Akbar", a fun rock song with plenty of loud, distorted electric guitars. Just then, Urbano entered the control room.

We greeted Urbano somewhat sheepishly. After a brief, uncomfortable silence, Wallace told him what we had done to the drum tracks. Another tense moment passed as Urbano absorbed the news. He turned around and marched angrily out of the control room. We all looked around the room at each other. Eventually, I volunteered to see if Urbano was all right. After waiting another five minutes, I ventured outside.

I found him sitting quietly in a plastic lounge chair in front of the studio. "Are you mad about the drums?" I asked stupidly. Urbano replied, "Yes, I'm tired of this." He stood up, punted the lounge chair clear into the nearby parking lot, and ran away. I watched as his retreating form grew smaller and smaller in the distance until he disappeared from view.

A half hour later, Urbano returned to the studio. He had a long talk with Wallace and Puig about his frustrations.

Urbano, Winegar and I played take after take of "Ali Akbar" from 5:00 P.M. until 8:00 P.M. After agreeing that we should try again the following Monday, we called it a day.