What are all these music retreats Ronan is presenting in West Virginia?

Posted on January 16, 2018January 16, 2018 by ronan

My company, Recording Boot Camp, is producing three “retreats” in May of 2018 at a beautiful rustic resort in the mountains of West Virginia. Not unexpectedly there is a little bit of confusion about the retreats, so here is a little information about each.

These retreats are NOT my 6-day Recording Boot Camp programs. They are each their own entities and are a very different experience. We have just a few spots left in each of the programs. -Ronan

Mountain Recording Retreat: May 6-11, 2018
The Mountain Recording Retreat is intentionally not like anything else. Now in its third year, it is about community, music, and great sound. It’s an opportunity to spend a week learning, listening, and relaxing in a community made up of world-class mentors and fellow music makers. We will have daily recording workshops, listening panels, DIY gear building workshops, and even Bingo! Mentors include Ronan Chris Murphy (King Crimson, Gwar, Mafia III), John Rodd (World of Warcraft, Elysium, Starwars Battlefront), Joe Gilder (Home Studio Corner), Brad Smalling (Evergroove Studio) and Peterson Goodwyn (DIYRE). There are $125 discount codes available. Contact us to get the code. recordingretreat.com

Game Audio Retreat: May 6-11, 2018
The Game Audio Retreat is happening at the same time as the Mountain Recording Retreat, but is an entirely separate curriculum. This retreat is advanced professional training in video game sound design and audio implementation, primarily taught by one of the top game sound designers in the world, Mark Kilborn (Call of Duty, Borderlands). Previous experience in game sound is required to enroll. gameaudioretreat.com

Mountain Songwriting Retreat May 15-18, 2018
The Mountain Songwriting Retreat features Dave Nachmanoff, performing/recording artist and longtime collaborator with Al Stewart. This retreat will focus on the craft of writing and provide opportunities for feedback and collaboration. This retreat is open to songwriters of all levels (including no experience). Producer Ronan Chris Murphy will also be teaching some of the workshops. mountainsongwritingretreat.com

GWAR Lives. The Making of The Blood of Gods with photo gallery

Posted on January 9, 2018January 12, 2018 by ronan

I recently worked with the editors of Mix Magazine on an article about the making of the album I produced for the band GWAR, “The Blood of Gods”. It is in the December issue of the magazine. As is typical in print media, it had to be edited down a lot, so I am am posting the full article for hardcore recording geeks and fans of the band. Check out the bottom of this blog for a photo gallery from the sessions. -Ronan

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Making The Blood of Gods

The history of Gwar has not been without its struggles, but the start of 2017 saw the band at a particularly difficult crossroads. In 2011 the band suffered the death of lead guitarist Cory Smoot, (Flattus Maximus) and in 2014 their singer Dave Brockie (Oderus Urungus) passed away. As Gwar geared up for its 14th studio album, they not only had to face many of the same creative challenges any iconic band would face well into a long career, but they were now figuring out how to do it without their long-time lead singer, who was adored by the fans and a creative focal point of the band. Many of their die-hard fans were downright angry that the band was carrying on without him. “Gwar died with Oderus” was a common sentiment on the fan sites, but Brockie had said that Gwar should go on even after all of them were dead and gone. Gwar planned to honor Dave’s wishes … and that is where I come in.

Gwar has been on a short list of artists I dreamed of producing for years. I have known them since the early years. I lived in the old milk processing plant turned art studios where Gwar was formed. My old band played shows with them on the east coast and I was even approached about being in the band a few times in the late 80s. We had spoken several times over the years about possibly working together and at the end of 2016 the planets started to align to make it happen.

The album that would become “The Blood of Gods” (Metal Blade) required the band to regroup; and as Gwar started to rebuild, they pulled from their roots to move forward. Their new lead singer, Michael Bishop (Blothar the Berserker) had been the band’s bass player (then in the role of Beefcake the Mighty), as well as a songwriter and occasional lead vocalist on several of the band’s early classic albums. There were plenty of producers that wanted to do the album, but based on what they told me, I got the gig because I was someone that was an old friend of the band and came out of the same Richmond, Virginia punk scene that spawned Gwar 30 years earlier. They said they wanted someone that was connected to where they started to work with them as they moved forward. I think it also helped that I had always worked with other extremely creative artists like King Crimson and Ulver on some of their transitional albums.

When it comes to metal production, I usually favor albums that sound like real human beings playing, rather than the more processed, quantized and synthetic style of production that has dominated metal for the last decade or so. This seemed to be a good fit with where Gwar was going with the writing for the new album. The band was tapping into their punk roots as well as a lot of classic rock from bands like Sweet, Motorhead, Celtic Frost and even old R&B. I felt a more organic feel to the album would make the music more powerful.

Although I produced, engineered, mixed, mastered and even co-wrote and played on some of the songs, to me, pre-production was my most important work in making this album. I flew out from California to Virginia for three intense pre-pro sessions before the recording began. The biggest challenge was solidifying where the band would go musically on this transitional album. Should they stay true to what the fans had come to expect or should they take this opportunity to move the band in new directions? Would the fans come along with the band taking big risks musically? In the end the answer was obvious: “This is Gwar; we get to do whatever the fuck we want!” In addition to more writing and rehearsals, a huge part of the pre-production was trying to solidify the direction for an album by a band that had the opportunity and musical chops to go in so many different directions.

The reason I dreamed of working with Gwar for so many years was not because of their status as an iconic band, but because I have always known how much raw talent was in the band. The costumes and the colossal stage show can often overshadow the musical talent in the band. I wanted to make an album that showcased that musicality, a music first Gwar album. Of course, it needed the shock, comedy and story telling that define Gwar, but I wanted to make an album that a kid that had never seen a photo of the band and could not speak a word of English could still be blown away by the music. As we started to define the direction of the album, we not only worked on musical direction but also on who would play what on the album. The drummer, Brad Roberts (Jizmak da Gusha), is an amazing musician who can play in lots of different styles, and every other performing member of the band can sing, play bass and guitar extremely well. This was a big advantage when we got into the recording where we could swap out players based on who had the right feel for a certain part. When we were working on a vocal harmony, bass part or guitar riff, I could choose the player who we felt worked the best for that section.

Drum recording commenced at White Star Sound in Louisa, Virginia outside Charlottesville. White Star seemed to some like an odd choice to record a Gwar album, since it is built in an old barn set in bucolic countryside and is most known for its singer-songwriter clients, but it has a big wooden live room, a solid mic closet and a rack of API mic pres pulled out of the old console from Sunset Sound’s B-Room. Four Van Halen albums were tracked through those pres, so they should be good enough for Gwar. I knew it would work out great. All the drums were tracked through the API pres except overheads which were a pair of Shure KSM32s into A Designs Pacifica pres, a combo which has been a huge part of most of my drum sounds for the last 15 years. My hands down favorite kick drum mic for rock is the Shure Beta52, but I also like the AKG D12vr for more modern metal style kick drums sounds, so I brought both of those with me from California. Much to my surprise, neither of those made the cut for this album and I went with the AKG D112 that was already mounted inside the kick drum for live shows. The overheads, a single D112 on the kick and a single Shure SM57 on the snare, make up the majority of the drum sounds you hear on the final album.

In keeping with the vision of the album, we tried to keep as much organic and “real” as possible. While some samples made the final album to reinforce the drums in parts, the overwhelming majority of what you hear on the final album is the live acoustic drums. Additionally, we did comp different takes together, but the drum parts you hear on the final album are what was played. We did not move or quantize a single drum hit on the album. Brad Roberts is an amazing drummer and I wanted the album to be a chance for people to really hear his playing rather than something I created in Pro Tools.

After tracking the drums and a few of the guitars at White Star we moved back to Richmond, Virginia to work on overdubs at the Slave Pit, a complex owned by Gwar that houses everything from the band rehearsal space to their graphics department, costume and props fabrication and business offices. We took over the rehearsal room and lounge and set up to record. For tracking I brought in a small rack consisting of A Designs Pacifica mic pres, an Empirical Labs Distressor, a Pete’s Place BAC 500 compressor and Electrodyne 511, and A Designs EM-PEQ EQs. With the exception of horn parts for one song (tracked by Danny T. Levin at his own studio), 100% of the overdubs outside of White Star were tracked through my A Designs Pacifica mic pres.

When it came to tracking the guitars, I wanted to show off the guitar players. A lot of modern metal albums have guitar sounds that smear and get lost inside big drums (samples), but we spent a lot of time working on the guitar riffs, and I wanted them to be big and in your face, while still keeping the drums and everything big and present. I did this by taking a minimal approach to the guitars. Except for special effect, the guitars are not layered. It is mostly two guitars hard panned left and right. We also spent a lot of time working on the tones and scaling back the amount of distortion. A lot of people do not realize that one of the best tricks for making guitars big and powerful is to scale back the amount of distortion. This maintains a lot of percussive punch in the guitars. One of the guitarists remarked several times how surprised he was by how clean a tone I went for on some of the heaviest songs and how powerful the end result was. About 5% of the guitars were recorded through a Fractal Ax-FX where guitarist Mike Derks (Balsac the Jaws of Death) had programmed some special effects. The rest of the electric guitars on the album were all recorded with a single Shure SM57 on a Marshall 4×12 cabinet and various tube guitar amp heads. I like to use a single mic on guitar amps whenever possible to keep the phase solid, especially when I want the guitars to have a strong percussion punch.

We used a Peavey 6505 for a few super saturated sections, but most of the album was done with vintage Marshall heads (including one that was supposedly owned by Ace Frehley). I found a brother in tone with guitarist Brent Purgason (Pustulus Maximus). He had a nice collection of old Marshall JCM800s with different tubes, transformers, and power configurations. Those heads along with various overdrive pedals, provided a huge range of tones. The guitars usually got a couple dB of compression from the BAC 500 and often one or two dB of EQ from the 511 or the EM-PEQ. I was not doing a huge amount of processing; it was mostly to get some of the tone and mojo from the analog hardware on the way in since I knew a lot of the mixing would be in the box. For guitars we relied heavily on several Les Paul Style guitars from Japanese company Love Rock as well as Gwar signature guitars from Schecter.

The bass recording ended up being a rather simple affair. Blothar had Fender Super Bassman with a direct out that he said he had good results with in the past. We tried it and the sound was big, fat and wooly. We all loved it and that direct output into the Distressor became the bass sound of the album, usually recording with Jamison Land’s (Beefcake the Mighty) signature bass from Dean or Bishop’s vintage Steinberger. I also took a clean Radial DI as a back-up, which I occasionally put into the mix as well.

One of the challenges with the vocals on “The Blood of Gods” is that Michael Bishop has such a huge range as a vocalist – not only in terms of dynamics and the notes he can hit, but also in the styles. He can sound like several completely different singers, and as we were developing the songs, often in front of the mic, I had to be ready for anything. He was often developing different styles of singing to represent different characters in the songs. I brought my Pearlman TM-1 mic out from California for the task. It is a U47-ish style of tube mic that can sound so good on so many different styles of singing. Brent Purgason and Matt Maguire (Sawborg Destructo), who sang lead on a couple songs in a more punk-metal style, were recorded with a Shure SM7B. Lastly, one special guest vocalist on the album was M.C. Chris (of Aqua Teen Hunger Force fame) who I recorded at my studio in Southern California with a Shure KSM32.

Mixing and mastering took place at Veneto West, my studio in the mountains just north of L.A.

Mixing was done in Pro Tools with a fairly large amount of outboard gear for tone shaping. The lead vocal chain was an Empirical Labs Lil Freq for de-essing and subtractive EQ, into a Retro Instruments Double Wide for tone shaping compression into an Electrodyne 511 EQ for a little extra presence and, lastly, an Empirical Labs Distressor for final in your face smack! The final mix went through a Dramastic Audio Obsidian compressor and an A Designs Hammer2. In the box I relied heavily on subtractive EQ from the Brainworx bx_digital EQ for getting all the big sounds to work together and the Nvelope transient shaper from Elysia to get the punch and impact of modern rock drums while still trying to keep the tone and feel organic.

Veneto West is set up in a way that it can be reconfigured when I shift from mixing to mastering. Both the mix position and my primary two buss rack are on wheels. I mix on Yamaha NS-10s near the front of the control room. When I am shifting to mastering, the listening position rolls back about 10 feet and I master on a pair of custom 3-way mastering speakers from F.A.R. in Belgium. This allows me to work in the optimum position for each task and this ensures that for albums where I am mixing and mastering, I get some of the advantages of mastering in a different space.

Creating “The Blood of Gods: was a struggle. We set high standards for ourselves and averaged about 14 hours a day in the studio, 7 days a week over a couple months trying to meet them. In the end it was worth every minute. I am really proud of the album. It honors the band’s past and the friends and players that we lost and moves the band forward. The album has been very well received and debuted in the Billboard Top 50. Gwar lives!

Ronan Chris Murphy

Get the album from Metal Blade here metalblade.com/gwar/

Ronan Chris Murphy – Producer/mixer/mastering – has diverse credits ranging from Prog-Rock legends King Crimson to YouTube sensation Tay Zonday to shock rockers GWAR and everything in between, including Tony Levin, Steve Morse, Terry Bozzio, Alexia, Martin Sexton, Ulver, Jamie Walters, Steve Stevens and Nels Cline. His productions have charted as far away as Iceland, Greece and Malaysia. He also works on music for non-album projects including the hit Norwegian film Uno and video games Mafia III and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. He is the founder of Recording Boot Camp, which helped pioneer the recording intensive concept and has launched an online training series.

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The (not) complicated way I recorded guitars for GWAR

Posted on September 5, 2017September 8, 2017 by ronan

Producing Gwar had been on my bucket list for a long time. This year I got the chance to produce, recording, mix and master their new album. My desire to work with Gwar was not because they are a iconic shock rock band, but because underneath all the costumes and shock value, they are fantastic musicians. I really wanted to make an album that showcased how cool they are as players.

A lot of hard rock and metal production of the last decade or so seems to be all about making albums that are ultra processed, standardized and sanitized to an extent that you do not really hear the personality of the musicians. With a lot of those albums, just like hearing a new song from Britney Spears or Ariana Grande, I almost hear the producers and the Pro Tools editors more than the actual artists. I had no interest in making that kind of album with Gwar. I wanted to make an album that people would listen to, and hear the power and personality of the players, rather than my Pro Tools chops. When Gwar’s new album, “The Blood of Gods” (Metal Blade) is released October 20^th, I hope that is what people hear.

To make that album, I relied on a somewhat classic approach to making the album. I did not want the drums to sound like a synthetic drum machine. Brad Roberts (Jizmak da Gusha) has such amazing feel as a player, that I wanted it to feel like you were sitting in front of his drum set getting your ass kicked by his playing. There are some parts on the album where samples were used to bring clarity, but most of what you hear is the sound of a great drummer as he played it, recorded in a cool room through great gear. We did not quantize a single drum hit on the entire album (or a single note of the guitars). I wanted the album to feel like sitting in front of Gwar performing at the top of their game.

Another reason for going for a more natural drum sound was that I wanted the feel of the guitarists’ playing to come through. It can be fun to have giant fake drums where every kick drum hit takes your head off, but those giant fake drums usually obscure a lot of details of the guitars. Mike Derks (Balsac the Jaws of Death) and Brent Purgason (Pustulus Maximus) are great players with distinct feels. We worked really hard to come up with cool parts and to get the best possible performances and I needed to make sure the fans felt the detail of every riff in their gut.

My solution was to take a minimal approach to the guitars. Most parts on the album have only two guitars, panned hard left and right. It is usually one guy on each side, but in a few spots where we thought one player’s feel better suited a certain riff, we would have one guy play both parts (sometimes on a riff the other guitarist wrote). We did layer some parts for special effects, but most of the time on this kind of album I want as few guitars as possible, because the more you layer the guitars the more you smooth off the edges of the performance. This can obscure some of the detail of the player’s style, but also soften the punch and “in your face-ness” of the guitars. The quest for punch and detail also dictated how I approached recording the guitars.

About 5% of the guitars were recorded through a Fractal Audio Axe-FX. Derks had created unique special effects for certain songs that were reliant on the Axe-FX. Every other guitar on the album was recorded with a single Shure SM57 on a Marshall 4×12 cabinet.

I am a big fan of using a single mic on guitar cabinets. The reason for this is that a single mic is the absolute best-case scenario for solid phase. Solid phase equals power, punch and detail. When using multiple mics, no matter how much you adjust the phase relationship between the various mics, you will always have some degree of phase distortion, which can smear impact and detail on the guitars. When recording, I will almost never use two mics when I can do a great job with one.

There are a lot of great mics for recording electric guitars, and I will use whatever sounds best, but I usually end up with the Shure SM57. There is a reason it is the most popular guitar mic in the history of recorded music. The thing about the 57 is that it is very sensitive to mic placement, so you need to work to find the best spot on the speaker, and they sound much better run into a good pre-amp. Every guitar on “The Blood of Gods” was recorded with A-Designs Pacifica mic pres. After the mic pre, the guitars would sometimes get a little compression from a Pete’s Place “BAC 500” compressor (somewhat similar to an 1176). Heavy guitars do not need much compression, since gain from the amp usually does creates a lot of natural compression. The guitars sometimes got a dB or two of sculpting EQ from either an Electrodyne “511” or an A Designs “EM-PEQ” (a solid state pultec style EQ). The EQ was mostly for mojo. I knew I would be mixing in a hybrid set up and wanted to get some analog transformer goodness on the way in to make the mixing a little easier.

We recorded sections of a couple of songs with a Peavy 6505 head because they can be great for ultra high gain sounds, but the amp did not see a lot of action because ultra high gain is exactly what I did not want for this album. When I was working with the guitarists for the best tone for each song, we went for cleaner guitars than they had done on the last few albums. I did this because of my quest to get the guitars as big and “in your face” as possible. One of the things that a lot of guitarists and engineers do not realize is that, as much fun as it is to play with super high gain amps, the high gain smears the articulation and clarity of the guitar part. The result of this is that the guitars lose their presence and are naturally pushed back into the mix (i.e., less present). The other result is that you lose detail and clarity in the guitars. It makes it harder to hear the unique phrasing of the player and any harmonic nuance of the player’s chord voicings or pick technique. If you listen to many of the all-time great heavy guitar albums, you may be surprised at how clean the guitar sounds are. Classic AC/DC and Black Sabbath albums have very clean guitar sounds, for example

For most of the album we used a large collection of older Marshall JCM800 heads, with various power, transformer and tube combinations. Despite using different versions of the same kind of amp, we were able to get a wide range of tones on the album (which fit the wide range of playing styles on the album.) Some people will see an amp like the JMC800 and think that the limited controls would equal a limited range of tonal options, but, like all great tube amps, they are very responsive to what happens in front of the amp. Difference in guitar selection, pick up selection, guitar volume and pedal choice can have dramatic changes on the tone. We used humbucker pickups almost exclusively, employing several guitars from Schecter, Dean and Love Rock.

“The Blood of Gods” drops October 20^th worldwide.

Ronan Chris Murphy

Benny Greb & Ronan Chris Murphy Drum Sound Masterclass September 13

Posted on August 25, 2017August 25, 2017 by ronan

Benny Greb & Ronan Chris Murphy Drum Sound Masterclass September 13, 2017 in North Italy.

American producer-engineer Ronan Chris Murphy has recorded or mixed Terry Bozzio (Zappa, Missing Persons), Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson, XTC, Mr. Mister), Bill Bruford (King Crimson, Yes), Ralph Humphrey (Zappa), Enrique Pla (Irakere), Lewis Pragasam (Asia Beat, Pete Teo), Bill Rieflin (REM, Ministry), Brad Roberts (Gwar), Van Romaine (Steve Morse, Enrique Iglesias), Victor Bisetti (Los Lobos, John Doe), Alan White (Yes) and Danny Carey (Tool) (but the last two were just playing percussion). He created the online drum recording course Drum Recording Boot Camp.

German drummer, Benny Greb is a prolific German drummer and clinician. He started playing the drums at age six and began taking lessons at age twelve. He plays a large variety of music and can be seen playing rock with Stoppok (de) and The Ron Spielman Trio, jazz with The Benny Greb Brass Band and Sabri Tulug Tirpan, funk with Jerobeam, reggae with Bobby McFerrin, fusion with the NDR Big Band on their Frank Zappa Project, with 3erGezimmeR and Wayne Krantz, and acoustic punk with Strom & Wasser. He has also performed at the Modern Drummer Festival 2010 and at many clinics and drum festivals around the world. Greb is endorsed by Sonor Drums and has his signature snare, Remo Drum Heads, Vic Firth, and by Meinl Percussion. He developed with Meinl a signature line of Byzance Vintage Series cymbals including the “Sand Ride” and “Sand Hats,” both known for their sandblasted finishes. In 2012, Meinl introduced new “Sand Crash” and “Sand Crash/Ride” cymbals to the Byzance Vintage lineup. Furthermore, Benny has a set of trash hats that he uses on the right side of his kit.

In 2009, Greb released his Hudson Music DVD “The Language of Drumming”. In 2015, he released his DVD “The Art And Science Of Groove“.

This masterclass will focus on what it takes to develop a drums sound that serves the music and sounds great in various genres of music. The class will focus on everything from drum tuning and performance to recording and mixing approaches.

The masterclass will take place at Prosdocimi Recording Studio, Cargmignano di Brenta, Italy from 3-7pm. Register HERE.

What sample rates do the pros use?

Posted on July 28, 2017July 28, 2017 by ronan

When you are setting up a recording session in a DAW, one of the things you need to decide on is the sample rate you will be using. Oddly enough, sample rate is one of those things that is often misunderstood and sometimes controversial.

Let me give you a quick primer in case you need to get caught up on the conversation. Unlike analog recording, digital audio cannot record a continuous stream of information. Digital audio take a series of digital “snap shots” of an audio wave form that is then stored (and usually manipulated) in our digital recorders. On playback the digital audio system can convert or reassemble those snap shots back into an analog wave form that is remarkably similar to what was recorded. When you buy a CD (you still buy those, right?) the sample rate is 44.1k, meaning that the audio is made up of 44,100 of these digital snap shots. If you rent a DVD of a new Hollywood blockbuster, the sample rate for the audio will be 48k, or 48,000 of these snap shots.

The sample rate determines the highest frequency that can be recorded, and that frequency is half the sample rate. So at 48k the highest frequency that can get recorded is 24,000 Hz. (In practical reality this is a bit lower than that because some of the highest frequencies need to get filtered out.) Although there is debate about this, traditional understanding is that the highest frequency that a young healthy human can here is 20,000 Hz, so when the CD standard of 44.1k was created, it was pretty much all we would ever need…. so why would we ever want 48k, 88.2k, 96k or even 192k sampling rates?

The answer to that question is the stuff of engineering white papers and endless debates on internet forums. The most common answers are:

The higher sample rates just sound better
If I need to do time stretching the higher sample rates sound better
I cannot hear the difference, but I am going to record with higher resolution just in case
My plugins sound better at higher sample rates
Digital summing sounds better at higher sample rates
Some guy on the internet told me I was supposed to

I am going to forego my own opinions about this issue for the moment (and honestly I am still developing my own opinions on some of these issues). But these are issues I see furiously debated among engineers. The value of working at higher sample rates is something that I have seen engineers passionately advocate for online and in magazine articles, even going so far as to be dismissive and condescending to those that would be foolish enough to still record anything at a sample rate lower than 96k. These guys and gals are so passionate about this, that even I, a guy that has been working with digital audio since the early 90s, started to second guess some of my work. Had I been a lazy unprofessional idiot by working on serious projects at 44.1 or 48k?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Am I still a lazy unprofessional idiot because I still do tons of projects at 44.1k (album projects) and 48k (film, TV, and video game work)? I am simply a bad person?

A huge part of my work is mixing, mastering and doing consulting for clients all over the world. My clients range from weekend warriors to mega stars that I am bound by non-disclosure agreements from mentioning. I noticed something about the sample rates of the projects that were getting sent to me: Of the working pros that did audio recording full time, and the projects being done for major record labels, film companies and big video game companies, almost all of the work was coming to me at either 44.1 or 48k sample rates. By almost all, I mean close to 100%. The majority of projects I was seeing that were at higher sample rates (usually 96k) were coming from hobbyists and part-time engineers.

I was curious to see if I was just getting an odd sampling of projects, so I reached out to my Facebook community for an informal poll. I have almost 5,000 Facebook friends. Most of them are music and audio people. They range from bedroom producers to some of the most successful audio engineers in the world. I asked: “For those of you that make at least 90% of your living doing audio recording, what sample rates are you doing most of your work at?” I got around 100 responses on the first day and the make up was a good mix of small studio owners to multi-platinum engineers . The result? About 95% of the respondents said they were doing the majority of their work at 44.1 or 48k! Literally only about 5 or 6 of the full time pros were doing work at high sample rates!

So does this mean that recording at higher sample rates should be avoided, or that engineers that choose to do so are wrong? ABSOLUTELY NOT! What it means is that if you choose to record at 44.1 or 48 you are not in any way, shape, or form being unprofessional. You are actually working to professional standards.

I see a day somewhere down the road (I am writing this in July of 2017) when most people will be working at higher sample rates. It has some potential advantages and as storage (and RAM) gets cheaper, and processors get faster and faster, there will not be any compelling reason to work at lower sample rates. But we are not there yet. When you shift from 44.1 or 48 to 88.2 or 96 you are doubling the amount of storage space you need, you are increasing the load on your processors (especially if you work with a lot of virtual instruments, reverbs and “harmonic” plugins) and in many DAWs you are reducing the number of tracks available to work with. On a simple recording with a few tracks this does not really make much of a difference, but once you start working on more complex albums, or the intense track counts and processing that can be required for high end film or video game work, higher sample rates can actually make some projects impossible. The same can be said for a bedroom producer’s less complex project that he or she is doing on an older computer.

The important thing to remember is that working at higher sample rates can have some advantages, but none of them are so important that they are worth slowing down your work flow or making it impossible for you to get the job done. Whether you choose to work at 44.1 or 192, you are working within professional standards. For what it is worth, the 3 biggest projects I have worked on in the last year have been for a major video game company, a major label and one of the biggest metal labels in the world. All of those projects were at 44.1 or 48k.
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I am gearing up for next years Mountain Recording Retreat in May of 2018. Enrollment will probably open up in mid August. It is such an amazing event. I never imagined I would ever get to host a recording event where people were on the verge of tears that it was ending. On a technical side, one of the reasons we have been able to do things in this resort location at a low price is that my friends at a couple companies have been really supportive in helping me set up the listening room. My favorite music store in the world, Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center (where I often teach master classes) has given me sweetheart deals on gear rentals for the monitoring for the workshops at the Mountain Recording Retreat. I have bought tons of stuff from them over the last 30 years. If you are looking for gear you should definitely check out the info below.

The Problem with Women and Strats

Posted on June 13, 2017June 13, 2017 by ronan

After some cancellations, we still have space in next weeks’ 6-Day Recording Boot Camp if you want to jump in at the last minute. 6 days of training, including accommodations, for only $1,350. Get more info here.
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Women and Strats are awesome. Without Fender Stratocasters we would not have the classic guitar tones of Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn and David Gilmore. Without women…. well, we would not have the human race (or the awesome new Wonder Woman movie!). But as much as we love women and Strats, in a recording situation they can both present a particular problem when they get intense.

When many female singers really belt or rock out, whether it is in rock, blues, pop or R&B, many female singers can start to sound “shrill” or, as I feel it, “piercing.” This can be really unpleasant and make people turn the music down. We don’t want that. We want people cranking our mixes up!! Many mixers will try and address this problem by cutting the high end off the vocal, but the problem with this is that it can often hurt presence, clarity and the “air” quality that can sound so great on female voices.

This “piercing” trouble frequency is usually around 2.5k (2500 Hz). Many times small cuts can dramatically improve the problem, but sometimes large cuts are needed. The great thing about these cuts on a belting singer is that they reduce the shrill piercing quality while leaving the body and silky presence in a vocal alone. Sometimes the cuts around 2.5k can actually make it sound like the good qualities in the voice get accentuated. The thing we need to be careful of though is that when that same singer in not belting or singing intensely, that 2.5k frequency range can be important for bringing nice presence and clarity to a more subdued or lower register performance. So that cut that helps the intense parts, might actually hurt the mellower parts. This is when EQ automation can be critical, i.e. setting the EQ to cut only on the intense parts. One other option if you are working fast is to use something like the bx_dynEQ V2 dynamic EQ from Brainworx, which will only engage the EQ when that specific frequency reaches a certain level of intensity (amplitude).

A Fender Strat (or most guitars with single coil pickups) can have a similar problem as female voices. The bright and articulate high midrange of the single coil pick up is fantastic for giving guitars a clear bell like quality, but when the playing and the level of distortion gets intense, the clear bell like tone can start getting “shrill” and “piercing”……. sound familiar?

Many times the problem is in that exact same frequency range as the female voice. Right around 2.5k. Just like our female voice, a cut around 2.5 can dramatically improve the problem on the really intense parts, but sometimes hurt the sound on the mellower parts.

It is not uncommon to have songs featuring both powerful female vocals and guitars with single coil pick ups. In the final mix we will hear the problem cumulatively. So it is always important to hear how your EQ changes are working in context. You might hear the voice as shrill or piercing, but when you solo the voice it sounds fine. That is because the voice is blending with those same frequencies in other instruments. So sometimes if you “fix” just the voice or just the guitar it might improve the sound of both.

Of course, some male vocalists and other kinds of guitars can have this problem, but female voices and single coil guitars are the most common places I run across this problem. Most importantly though, you need to remember that EQ presets are stupid and should generally be avoided and that 2.5K /2500Hz is just a ball park starting point and every voice and guitar will be different.

-Ronan Chris Murphy

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My car’s “scan” button (and LL Cool J) make me a better producer.

Posted on May 5, 2017May 5, 2017 by ronan

Except for a couple of news stations, I do not really use presets in my car stereo. The reason for this is that I love the “scan” button that moves through the dial playing little bits of each program until you hit the button again to make it stop on something. I do this for two reasons: One is just that I genuinely like variety, but, more importantly, I am constantly struggling to be a better producer. Exposing myself to new sounds not only keeps me current on new trends, but helps be see musical dilemmas from different perspectives.

I was thinking about this a lot a couple days ago. I am working out of a couple studios on the east coast this month producing an album for an iconic heavy metal band. I was driving back from White Star Sound near Charlottesville (my new favorite studio on the east coast) to Richmond.

I had been wrestling with one of the songs on the album, trying to find a way to get the vocals to really serve the song. We had good stuff, but nothing had really clicked yet.

So, I am driving along I-64 scanning through stations when it latches onto Richmond’s old school hip-hop session. They are playing LL Cool J’s classic “Mama Said Knock You Out.” As I am listening to LL’s amazing delivery, the answer to the production dilemma I had been wrestling with popped into my head: We needed to re-think how we were delivering the rhythm and groove of the vocals. “Mama said knock you out” has a fantastic delivery where the accents of the back beats (the 2nd and 4th beats of a bar in 4/4) are super tight and punchy, but the notes in between flow fairly free. This allows for lots of expression, while still maintaining a powerful groove. On the song I was producing, the singer and I had a situation where I wanted things to be tighter to the groove and he wanted the freedom to be expressive with the time. Listening to “Mama Said Knock You Out” gave me ideas how I could find a delivery that better served the song and got both of us what we wanted. Applying some of the techniques of LL Cool J helped us make a better heavy metal album.

I am constantly learning from a wide range of music and production styles. I have applied things I learned from a Katy Perry production to Americana projects. I get ideas about pop snare sounds from AC/DC albums. I get phrasing ideas on rock albums from traditional world music albums. I like the scan button on my car stereo, but you can do similar things bouncing around various playlists in something like Spotify. The point is to keep your mind open and keep learning. It helps make better music and helps you competitive professionally.

The Mountain Recording Retreat starts this Sunday, May 7, 20017. It is going to be amazing! If you want to come last minute we still have space and still have discounts available for those that need them. I want to thank my friends at LA Sound Panels for helping us treat the main room at the retreat and my favorite music store, Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center for helping out with the monitoring for the main presentation room (with the surprisingly great Genelec 8040s).

Thanks
Ronan

My Publicist is Mad at Me (2016 in review and big plans for 2017)

Posted on January 17, 2017January 17, 2017 by ronan

So I got a call from my publicist…. She was not happy with me!

If you follow me on social media you may have noticed that I have been selling off a lot of studio stuff: studio racks, gear, instruments, acoustic treatments, etc…. So I get a call from my publicist with a stern warning: “you need to stop selling gear on Facebook! Everyone is going to think your business is failing and you are closing up shop. Sell that stuff on Craigslist!!” Since several people did write me directly asking if I was shutting down the business, I guess she was right.

I am not shutting down the business at all! On the contrary, things are going really well. 2016 was one of the best years ever for my business. I worked on projects for clients all over the world. I got to travel to work on projects in six different countries including two on my bucket list (Cuba and The Faroe Islands). I was lucky enough to record, mix and master the music for one of the biggest video games of the year (Mafia III). I hosted great 6-day Recording Boot Camps in Italy and LA, and I hosted the first Mountain Recording Retreat in West Virginia (which most of the attendees liked enough to sign up for this year’s Retreat). After just landing a production gig with a band I have wanted to work with for 20 years, 2017 is on course to be even better. I am really grateful for all of this. The only downside with being so busy with all of my professional work is that I have not had enough time to do as much video making and educational outreach as I would like. I hope I can do more of that for you all in the coming year.

So I am not closing up shop. The good state of the business is actually letting me put into action a dream I have had for a while that involves bouncing between the city, the mountains, and Italy in addition to all the other travel:

I have bought a big cabin in a small mountain town in the National Forrest just north of Los Angeles to move my studio to. I still have a place in Marina del Rey (as well as a lot of business in the city), but I am traveling so much for work these days that I decided that it will be a lot nicer and less stressful to hang out in the mountains when i am working in the LA area. So much of the business at my own studio these days is clients sending me tracks from around the world for mixing and mastering, that I did not really need to stay in the city. And for my LA clients, the cabin is only a few miles north of LA county (but about an hour from the north end of the LA valley). Being equipped with a studio, the cabin is also going to be a great place to do Recording Boot Camps as well. The mountain town is really cool and I think I am going to be able to do Boot Camp programs that include accommodations, saving my out of town students a bunch of money. I sold off lots of studio stuff because I am getting many of the racks and acoustic treatments, etc. for the new studio custom made. Even without all the acoustic treatment done, the new place is already the best sounding mixing and mastering room I have ever built. I am going to wait until the studio is finished in a few weeks before I share photos, but here is a photo of the ceiling in the studio to give you a taste of the vibe of the new studio

Here is a photo I took a couple blocks up the hill from the cabin.

I am also going to be spending a lot more time at the little “barchessa” I rent in Italy and do more work out of Prosdocimi Recording Studio outside of Venice, Italy.

I am currently juggling scheduling logistics for two major production jobs, but when that is settled (hopefully in a couple weeks) I will be announcing dates for upcoming Recording Boot Camps. We will most likely have a 6-day Recording Boot Camp at the new cabin in early June and a 6-day Recording Boot Camp in North Italy at the end of September. The Mountain Recording Retreat in West Virginia is confirmed for May 7-12 and is open for registration.

NAMM is coming up in a couple days. I hope to be there at least 3 of the days. I will be spending a lot of time at booth 6280 with my friends from A Designs Audio. Say hello if you will be at the show.

Here is wishing everyone a great new year.

Recording in bad sounding spaces

Posted on September 22, 2016October 4, 2016 by ronan

I just finished another awesome 6-day Recording Boot Camp in Italy with students from Italy, Sweden and Austria. I am taking some time off this week to enjoy Italy. The last few days I have been exploring the Emilia-Romagna region seeing lots of amazing spaces in churches, castles and palazzi. Of course, because I am an audio geek and in love with sound, I am walking around clapping and making clicking noises to listen to reverb tails of these fantastic rooms (or pretending to cough in places where I needed to be more discreet).

One stand out room was “Don Giulio’s dungeon and torture chamber” in Castello Estense (Ferrara, Italy). While I am sure that this was a terrible place to spend time in the 1500s, the reverb tails in that room were amazing!!!! I was wishing I had some way to make some impulse responses. (speaking of impulse responses, we have added an impulse response workshop to the Recording Retreat this May).

All this listening to spaces reminded me of a good questions someone sent me last month. They wrote and asked:

“When I am recording in a bad sounding space, should I be close miking everything?”

That is a really good question, but one that does not have a super simple answer. Obviously, the closer our mic is to the sound source, the more the direct to ambient balance will favor the sound source as opposed to your bad sounding room. But moving a mic closer to the sound source is not always “a free lunch”, meaning that there might be some things about close miking that may not always sound great. When we close mic with many mics we need to start dealing with proximity effect (that unnatural build up of low frequency energy with directional mics). If the sound source moves around, small differences can cause dramatic changes. And, lastly, some sound sources just do not sound good or balanced if you mic them too close.

When I am thinking about trying to lessen the sound of a bad sounding room or space, the first thing I think about is polar pattern. I think about finding mics that offer the best “off axis rejection” which is going to be my cardioid (unidirectional) mics, or hyper or super cardioid mics. But where this gets tricky is that not all cardioid polar patterns are the same, and they will all change at various frequencies……

I love recording in crazy spaces. Last month I was recording a rapper in Iceland in the kitchen of the guest house I was staying at. Earlier this year I was recording traditional Mexican folk instruments outside of a church in Oaxaca, Mexico and percussion in an Austin, Texas parking garage for a pop album. When I am faced with a recording situation where I think the sound of the space will be a problem (outdoors this includes trucks and leaf blowers, etc.), I lean heavily on moving coil dynamics. Shure SM7B or SM57, EV RE20 or a Sennheiser 421 are cool choices. I find that moving coil dynamic usually does a much better job of rejecting ambience and off axis sounds. If you have never tried it you might be surprised what you can get away with and how good it can sound.

At some point you may have been given the advice that there are certain voices or instruments that should never be recorded with dynamic mics. You should immediately stop listening to any recording advice that person gives you. They have no idea what they are talking about! Of course, many times a condenser mic might sound better on some sources, but if you neglect your dynamic mics, you are really missing a lot of great opportunities. And many times the dynamics sound way better than condensers, even on instruments where a condenser seems to be the obvious choice. Even if the dynamic is not a perfect match, if I am recording in a really bad space, I will almost always be happy with that small trade off for the better rejection and a more focused sound.

Of course, in addition to the tighter polar pattern, moving the mic as close as sounds good will be a big help. Additionally, many times you can make a bad sounding room sound better by hanging up some acoustic treatment (even hanging blankets on mic stands can be a step in the right direction), or changing the position of the musician. Lastly, if you are in a bad room that is not offering some great inspiration like you might get from some remote recording in a cool place, think about moving your space. Take a small mobile rig to another room in your house or the office where you work. If you love the music, do the work to make sure it gets the effort it deserves. But before you start packing your recording gear to move around, try putting up an SM57 and see how it goes.

Ciao from Italy

Recording Boot Camp in an Italian Villa September 2016

Posted on May 10, 2016October 4, 2016 by ronan

I am excited to announce our next Italian Villa Recording Boot Camp September 12-17, 2016 . This is a 6-day Recording Boot Camp held at the Villa Prosdocimi in North Italy outside of Venice, Italy.
The course is presented in English and covers the same material as in the Recording Boot Camps held in Los Angeles, but the Boot Camps at the Italian Villa have the added benefit of home cooked Italian lunches, wine tastings, and evening excursions to local trattorias and historic locations.

Get all the details on the Italian Villa Boot Camp page.

If Los Angeles is more your speed do not forget that there is a 6-day Recording Boot Camp in our Santa Monica Studio June 12-17.