Category Archives: Music Production

My Close Encounters with Adam Yauch

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It’s been a really sad afternoon and evening for me. Adam Yauch, one of my longtime heros, died today. As usual, there are a million things that I’m supposed to be doing right now, but I just had to stop everything and grieve. I live in Brookyn, Adam’s hometown, and it feels like everyone should be pointing their stereo speakers out the window and blasting “Pass The Mic,” but no one is (me included). I feel like news stories about Adam should be rolling on every TV station in town, but there’s been little mention of him. It’s just a normal night in Brooklyn. Vibrant. Alive. Overflowing with life.

I know I truly love a band when I imagine that I’m in the band when I listen to their music. This hasn’t happened with very many musicians, but this feeling was probably the most intense with the Beastie Boys. I loved their music so much in the early 1990′s that I essentially dedicated my life to trying to become a Beastie. It was more than a long shot: it was nothing short of an entirely impossible quest. But I had no choice. There was no other reality worth seeking.

Close Encounter #1

Even though I became a true lifelong Beastie fan in the early nineties, my first close encounter with MCA took place 27 years ago. Continue reading →

An Important Message for Anyone Who Has Lips

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I recently played some shows at a club in Brooklyn, and both times the sound guys were surprised that I had brought my own vocal microphone. I’ve always gone out of my way to urge people to use their own mics when they play shows. Thankfully, the good people at Audio-Technica recently put together a couple of videos that illustrate this point brilliantly:

If you’re sold on the idea of having your very own, personal vocal microphone, here are some suggestions:

The Shure SM58
This is the microphone that most clubs use. It sounds great. It’s a classic. However, it’s not perfect. The biggest problem with the SM58 is that the grill dents and deforms when you drop it. The more dented and deformed the grill gets, the worse it sounds.

The Audix OM2

I’m a big fan of Audix Microphones. I own a bunch of them. The very first Audix mic I bought was the OM2. Even though I’ve had it for six or seven years, it still looks and sounds like it’s brand new. The OM2 has a great sound for live vocals, and the grill was designed not to dent when you accidentally drop it. Audix is based outside of Portland Oregon, and they manufacture many of their microphones in the USA.

The Audio-Technica MB4K/C

Kristin Mueller, my dear old friend/bandmate/roommate, used to have an Audio-Technica MB4K/C. We used it for live vocals, and it had a really snappy, present sound. I really liked using it. Plus, back in the day, Kristin was in another band that shared a practice space with Interpol (during their heyday). She was psyched to discover that Interpol was using Midnight Blue Audio-Technica mics too. Midnight Blue, baby! The microphones of mystery! You can hear this mic in acton in the following video. It was shot on Valentine’s Day in 2003, in a long lost dive bar called Siberia. I brought the MB4K/C to use as my vocal mic. Poor Kristin got stuck using a house mic for backup vocals. Sorry Mueller!

How Recording Music is Similar to Lighting a Film

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The camera department and the sound crew tend to be thought of as existing in different universes, but I’m starting to see how we may have a lot more in common than you might think. As you may know, I do not yet own a video-enabled DSLR camera, but I plan on buying one soon. My search for the ideal camera has been grueling. I’ve read endlessly about it, and picked the brains of my DP friends incessantly determine which way to go. The more I dig into the practices and theories behind shooting high definition video, the more I see parallels between recording sound and capturing moving images. Continue reading →