Jam – 2013-08-21 – Carroll’s

21 Aug 2013 3 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , ,

ds130821Deadstein’s primary guest this week was the venerable Mackie MDR-24 multi-track recorder, making its appearance for the 3rd week in a row. Not making his appearance was Alan, who was our only no show as he was vacationing in the tropics. Short of that we had no musical guests with Donna singing with us for the middle part of the jam.

After last week’s themed evening based on the 1/10/79 Coliseum show, we had not such plan for this week. I was just hoping to get a good recording of some good music after having a good time. I think for the most part, the goals were accomplished.

As far as recording, things were relatively easy for me because nothing had been moved from the studio from last week. This meant I had the same mixing board, containing only 8 full channels as last week, but the extra mic stands were in the room, not moved from last week. Even the small extra screw-on boom stand I brought for Scott’s kick drum, and forgot to take home with me last week, was left in situ waiting for me to use. What I did change out this week, was to leave my Behringer 8-channel digital pre-amp at home and I substituted it for my Mackie small desktop mixer. It has 6 pre-amps in it, even though when I got to the jam, I found out channel 5 was dead, so it really only has 5 channels in it. So in total, I had 8 channels from the mixing board and 5 from my Mackie, for 13 channels in all. That was just enough for this week and I’ll have to figure something out when Alan gets back. Most likely I’ll expand the use of the mixing board’s sub-outs so I have more than 13 tracks at my disposal. Of the 13 tracks covered: 1-4: Vocals (Scott, Rich, Donna and Larry), 5 Piano, 6: Guitar, 7: Bass Direct, 8-10 Lee Drums (kick, snare and overhead) 11-13: Scoot drums (kick, snare overhead).

The reason I switched out the Behringer 8-channel pre-amp for the Mackie analog board was because the guitars from the previous 8-14-2013 jam had a disconcerting sizzle to them that I am thinking wasn’t necessarily a digital artifact as much as it was an artifact of a bad (cheap) pre-amp. I say this because I didn’t notice the sizzle on the 6 drum-tracks recorded though it. Maybe the SM-57/guitar combo wasn’t good for the Berhinger. More investigation needs to be done to determine the the Behringer unit is destined for the scrap heap or not, because it is a lot more convenient to use the Berhinger if it sounds okay. Nevertheless, sound is what really counts, and the tracks from this week’s jam all came through without any cacophonous artifacts to worry about.

Funny, last week I tried to perform the mixdown simulating Kevin’s desired amp setup as applied to the direct out feed I recorded of his bass. I split the bass track into two channels and applied both high end (guitar) and a low end (bass) amp models to each respective channel. After some work in trying to control the low-end bass, I approached the sound Kevin was looking for, if not going a bit too far on the high end of things. This week I figured I would go back to basics and try to get Kevin’s desired sound just using one standard bass amp model on his direct bass recording. At first I failed miserably. Kevin thought I did everything wrong when presenting his bass as an overly blobby mess of subsonic tones. This wasn’t the sharp attach that sticks out of the mix he was looking for. I took Kevin’s criticism to task and got back to work to reshape his tone. I applied an additional EQ to his sound after the bass amp model, which contained its won internal EQ. That added a bump around 2k while taking away quite a bit from the 100Hz area. I also hit the 1176 compressor much harder that I had done previously which added some nice warm distortion to the sound. This coupled with a mastering process that also concentrated on tightening up the woofy bass, gave Kevin the sound he was looking for. I am glad to see Kevin actively listening to the recordings. I does help me out to have another set of ears to listen, as well as another set of arms to wind up and pack the wires at the end of the night.

KevinRecordingSetup

As far as playing actual music, I was kind of excited to be the only guitarist in the room. If we play Jerry Garcia Band music it is more authentic and if we play Grateful Dead music, I can switch between Bob and Jerry’s roles without having to think about stepping on anyone’s toes. With this in mind we actually focused on Grateful Dead to start and the Here Come Sunshine typically has 2 guitar parts so this would be a test to see how empty my one guitar could sound. From the first note on, the music felt pretty good and comfortable, so issues of not sounding good were not really an initial concern. As a matter of fact, the openness of the one guitar provided lots of space to work and live. Additionally, Lee and Scott were having a man crush with each other and each others drumming and the play between, each other, so that feeling of comradery only helped in the fun of the evening and the quality of the music. Lee thought there was something special going on. I don’t know if I was privy to it since I was focusing on my own issues, but if they are happy, so am I. In the end, I think the drumming sounds really good on the recording. Lee’s Kit is in the left while Scott’s is in the right and together, they give us the full rhythm section we are looking for.

With so much more to say and so little time to write it, I’m going to have to cut off the commentary at this point and just wait to make some more history with Deadstein. Until then, Freak Out!

The audio files are provided in the following folder:
http://deadstein.com/audio/08-21-13

Jam – 2013-08-14 – Carroll’s

14 Aug 2013 12 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

ds130814With Alan’s birthday passing us by this week, it was his turn to step up to the plate and suggest the songs to be played for the night. Instead of winging it during the jam, Alan pulled a great show and setlist out of the air and announced it was the show to be played on this Wednesday of Deadstein. The January 10, 1979 Nassau Coliseum show he selected was a very famous show in the annals of the Grateful Dead in that they played an unexpected Dark Star and Saint Stephen in the second set. I guess the fact they the Grateful Dead did both the Dark Star and Stephen at the New Year’s show and the Winterland 10 days prior could have been a clue, but I guess for those in attendance, it was a great surprise.

I know Scott went to that show, because he scanned what he believe is his stub from that night. I also assume Alan went and I have a feeling Rich also attended. For the rest of us, 1/10/79 was just another great date that bubbles to the top in the lore of the Grateful Dead. As we discussed during the jam, this was the ending of Donna’s tenure with the Grateful Dead as her 2/17/79 show would prove to be her last. In any case, the song selection proved to work out for our Donna in that most of the good beefy Donna songs happened just before the Dark Star in the second set. This gave a good early out for Donna as Deadstein would head down the spacy path that the Dark Star pointed to.

As I did last week, this week I lugged my multi-track taping setup to the jam in an effort to get a good recording. This week’s soundboard was different than last weeks and finding the insert’s second in-between click position to capture the signal of the vocal and Piano mics was difficult if not impossible to rely on. No matter what I did, my 1/4″ jacks would ease their way out of the position I tried to lock them into. My work around for tracks 1-8 was to use the post-fader direct outs for each channel rather than the more desirable pre-fader insert-out. My other isue with this board was the fact that it only had 8 true channels, while the remaining 16 channels were hybrids stereo channels that provided no insert outs and or direct outs to tap into. Fortunately for me, I decided to bring my 8-channel Behringer digital mic pre-amp which accepted 8 microphone tracks while forwarding the signal of each track to the Mackie MDR-24 recorder using optical ADAT cables. This initially caused a problem until I figured out how to sync the 8-mic pres to the recorder. Hopefully all these channels were recorded properly without and digital artifacts, because if there are any, the recording will be toast and we didn’t a back-up recording just in case. Another change from last week was the fact that we captured Kevin’s bass using a DI box, instead of trying to mic and capture the combination of his two amplifiers. We also did this without any back-up in case there was an issue with the DI. If we failed to capture Kevin’s bass, the recording will be bread and not toast since there is likely to be enough bass captured in mics use for other instruments to pickup the intent of Kevin’s playing. Let’s hope we don’t have to rely on that and the signal from the DI worked.

For the first song, Promised Land, we will be able to test this theory since Kevin’s channel was unintentionally muted. Likewise, Alan’s vocal mic was also unintentionally muted for the first set. That’s what happens when you start panicking about inserts vs. direct outs just prior to beginning the jam. At least I was able to rectify this before the end of the night. Finally, the last changes from last week’s recording techniques relate to drums. This week I had a set of 3 mics on each of the 2 drummers. At some point, Lee’s clip on AKG snare mic fell to the floor, so we are going to have to see when that was attached to the snare and when it was on the floor. Probably no big deal because I had one of Scott’s Neuman’s acting as an overheads and I’m sure that will pick up the entire kit nicely. I was suspicious of Scott”s other Neuman, it was providing a very high amount of noise shown on the meters so I could trust the signal would be good. I therefore used my AT 4033 as Scott overhead while his snare had a Sennheiser 421 and his kick was captured by Scott’s Shure kick drum microphone. Enough of the recording information, we got started around 8:15, not bad considering all the setup but we had a full show to play and no time to waste so we didn’t. We kicked of the first set opener of Promised Land at 8:15 and closed out the first set closer of Music Never Stopped just before 10pm. Since Kevin had already made his halftime phone call about 3 songs prior to the end of the first set, the set-break was shorter than usual and we got going around 10:30 with the second set Shakedown opener.

I think the room had its sonic issues early in the night in that we had troubles hearing all the vocals and the piano for the first few songs. After a few more songs we got a more comfortable sound in the room but we were experiencing monitor squealing feedback on several occasions during the first set. A slight adjustment at halftime was effective in that they didn’t come back for the second set.

The dedicated setlist gave us good focus and drive and we waste no time and played with purpose. This left us with a pretty satisfying feeling. I don’t think I personally became comfortable with my guitar playing until the Passenger, when the unmitigated letting of my hair down provided for a formidable Passenger.

I really enjoyed some of the activities in the second set including the 3-song combo of I Need a Miracle, Bertha and Good Lovin’ That was a good time. The following Dark Star was one of our better ones that went all over the place. The drum solo that followed was a nice break and should be an interesting mix. Even the space had its moments.

While the Johnny B. Goode left us the 15 minutes remaining to play something additional not on the 1/10/79 setlist, we decided to call it a night at that point. There was talk of throwing in a Sailor-Saint at that juncture, but with lots of wires to clean up I think we made the right choice and just packed in in after the Johnny B Goode. Enough is enough. As far as guests we had Dr. Phil the vet and Walter. They were the two lucky ones to enjoy us. Now the hard work of mixing the recording is before me, so all I can do at this time is Freak out!.

The audio files are provided in the following folder:
http://deadstein.com/audio/08-14-13

First Set

Second Set

Jam – 2013-08-05 – Carroll’s

05 Aug 2013 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , ,

ds130805Playing at the beginning of the week on a Monday has its advantages and disadvantages. For me, writing this post on the Friday night after the Monday jam I feel no worse for the wear as I made it through the week. Even better, I took the Monday off following a dog trial weekend so I had a little time to prep for the jam. For me that didn’t include practicing but it did include getting my multi-track gear out, tested and mobilized for the jam.

I feel the recording quality has deteriorated over the last few weeks so I figured this week would be a good week to break out the old Mackie HDR-24 and record us the right way. With Scott scheduled to miss the jam, I had just enough microphones at home to piece-meal this recording session with recording just 1 drummer. I currently have several of my microphones lent out to people and haven’t gathered them all back. While Donna couldn’t make the jam, Scott surprised me when he showed up. I was able to at least stick Donna’s mic in Scott’s kick, and a centered the one overhead mic in between both kits. I think it worked out pretty well. Short of that all the recording an micing of the instruments worked out and I got all 12 clean channels with no buzzes and no drop-outs. I could expect anything better.

From the first moment of the jam playing didn’t come easy, not practicing all week didn’t help me a bit, and there were only a few moments where it seemed to come easy. Nevertheless, the recording technique helps hide the blemishes while highlighting what’s good. With that stated, the recording produced some of the best sounding Deadstein in our current configuration.

I think Walter was our only guest for the night, but Chick Corea was rehearsing the in studio next door. Some how we managed to get 19 songs in with all the set up and take down and we weren’t playing with any urgency as the night progressed. Somehow though, after listening to all the music, it feels like a full meaty night of music. It is encouraging to me and makes me want to gather up a few more of my mics so I can continue to multi-track. Let’s see how long that lasts. Freak Out!

The audio files are provided in the following folder:
http://deadstein.com/audio/08-05-13

Jam – 2013-07-30 – Carroll’s

30 Jul 2013 2 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , , ,

ds130730This week’s Tuesday jam felt as if it fell on the heals of last week’s Thursday jam. When I arrived at Studio 2 with Rich and Scott, we walked into the room to find Kevin and the same exact equipment we left last Thursday. It looks as if nothing moved or changed. I’m not ever sure if Kevin went home or if he spent the last several days in the studio. In any case, when we arrived, there was little to do, setup and tweak.

The PA, the monitors, the drums and all they amps were just like we left them last Thursday night. In some respects this bummed me out because I was looking forward to a new setup since we had a bunch of gremlins present last week. Kevin therefore switched out his buzzing Mesa Boogie rectifier amp for a Fuch’s Twin Reverb and used that for the night. The PA actually sounded strong this week despite last week’s issues. The Fender Silverface Twin Reverb I had last week, which I wasn’t thrilled with, was still my amp of choice for this week until the end of the first when I noticed it beginning to fall apart. For the second set I switched to the Mesa Boogie amp that Kevin abandoned and gave that a chance. While I was setting up that amp, Donna scatted through a New Speedway Boogie while I was getting my own Boogie established. Once ready with my amp, Donna began to singe verses.

For the night we had no guests, only a repeat of the seven of us with the exception that Donna only hung around for the first few songs of the second set. Before starting the first set we were relishing the fact that Jerry’s freakin’ holy week was upon us, with his birthday and commemoration of his death coming to us at the start of August. We therefore had the idea that we should dedicate this jam session to Jerry Garcia and his music.

We opened with a simple Jerry Garcia Band number, And It Stoned Me and that got us going in that direction. Thinking of a Jerry song that I sing where Donna would have a significant role lead me to select Brothers and Sisters as the next song. Before we knew it, someone was suggesting that since we played a song that began with “A”, then one that began with “B” we might as well keep the alphabet going and work towards a song that began with “C”, then “D” then “E”, etc. This kept us going ordinally through the end of the first set where a Might As Well followed the Loose Lucy. I also provided some stranger song/set juxtapositions including a first set Eyes of the World, He’s Gone followed by If I had the World to give. Even the midset Deal was played in early 1970’s style to signify its set location as the 4th song. Our only stretches to the concept were the first two songs which were JGB songs, yet not written by Jerry. At the time we were doing these two songs, the alphabetical Jerry concept wasn’t realized and it was only the happenstance of the Brothers and Sisters that dictated our destiny. When we got to “K” we had no Jerry songs so we cheated a played the Knocking on Heaven’s door as an honorary Jerry song. Likewise, we had to stretch a bit on “J” as Jack Straw had to fit the bill. Good thing we played it because it was one of the better moments of the first set.

We had potential to keep the alphabetical setlist going for the second set but I wasn’t quick enough to think of the Other One as an “O” song as it was naturally being segued into out of the New Speedway Boogie. It was a bonehead maneuver on my part that brought this whole theme to a crashing halt. That got us to the “S” song Donna was looking forward to all night, Stagger Lee which she took the lead vocals on.

a-z-uploadableAs a side note, on the Friday night following this jam I opened up a half-case of wine I picked up on my way to the jam at the Wine Library. Unbelievably and coincidentally, the wine is called A to Z. Oh my G-d.  Is that subliminal or what?   I had no idea the name of the wine I had just picked up, I don’t pay attention to that.  What a cool thing it was to find this out as a pulled a bottle out of the case.  This is actually 3 days after I wrote the posting and made the weekly setlist poster.  The box, as show in the picture was staring me in the face all the time.

With Donna gone for the final hour and the alphabet blown out of the water, we still wanted to stick to a Jerry Garcia theme and did some interesting stuff like trying to pull off a China Cat –> Doin that Rag. That didn’t quite work as we didn’t have the Doin that Rag introduction in our heads when it was time to play it. That brought this transition to a screeching halt. The Mission in the Rain and the Cats Down Under the Stars were serious Garcia efforts on our part. The Ripple represented the nice positive closer foe the night’s Jerry theme. Since we tried the Jerry theme before the actual freaky holy week began, we can still pay tribute to Jerry when we jam again next week. Until that time, Freak Out!

The audio files are provided in the following folder:
http://deadstein.com/audio/07-30-13

Jam – 2013-07-25 – Carroll’s

25 Jul 2013 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , , ,

ds130725We had our core group with us this Thursday at Deadstein.  Donna was there for our first set, sans the Here Comes Sunshine.  It seemed destined to go into a Viola Lee Blues, but with Donna ready to go, I veered the band to a Bertha instead.  I think it was a good decision and got us into a good flow from a set list perspective that followed though the end of the night.  We had a few guest including Steve and Lindsey and Scott’s friend Julian.  It was nice how he picked up on the Richmond 11/1/85 vibe I tossed into the second set with the Sailor/Saint, She Belongs to Me followed by the Gloria closer.

Funny, Julian told Scott that he wanted to hear him sing the Box of Rain, so when looking for that encore type of song just before midnight we were thinking Box of Rain.  A chant of “We want Scott” started and wouldn’t you know, in comes Scott Bayer.  This wasn’t what we were looking for, but we got the Box of Rain closer nevertheless.  It was a good feeling version and left us on a good note.  It was such a good note that we agreed to call it a night with 5 minutes left on the night.  Probably a good decision.

This week’s recordings are from a single MP3 recorded slung from the back wall of Studio 2.  I did all I could to get some okay sound out of it.  No need to freak out, so I will Freak out.

The audio files are provided in the following folder:
http://deadstein.com/audio/07-25-13

Jam – 2013-07-18 – Carroll’s

18 Jul 2013 3 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

ds130718In the middle of an extended heat wave, Deadstein was able to able to survive with a big band in Studio 2 at Carroll’s. Musical guests for the night included long time friend Bill Siegel, who came with his little organ to accompany us on our tunes. Also joining us for the first set was Donna who graced us with singing lead on a mellow Candyman and who also knock our socks off when she whaled through a Sugaree earlier in the set.

It was almost 100 degree outside while we were playing and with 8 people in the band , most toting amplifiers, the air conditioning was having trouble getting out of the upper 70’s. The lead to a hot, sweaty jam.

Initially we had a bunch of trouble with the PA system, not really able to get the Piano sounded adequate for the room. Additionally, I had trouble finding how to pickup the piano by itself in the PA recorder, so who knows how the recording for the night will work? I also had some technical difficulties during the first song of Shakedown when I discovered a gremlin in either my Fuchs Twin Reverb or my pedal board, so I switch out the amp and used a Silverface for the rest of the night, which had its tonal challenges in and of itself. Too bad, because this caused some struggles for me for the first part of the night , not really finding my comfort zone until late into the jam.

While shaky, the Shakedown Street at least got us started and we were able to hear the benefit of the funkiness Bill’s keyboard brought us. Trying to think of a good 2nd song that drew Donna into the mix, I selected the Sugar Magnolia and out of the jam we went into a Suagree where Donna was able to provide us some of her Orca-esque bellowing. This is to say that she whaled during that song. We never did get back to the Sunshine Daydream, but that is not a big deal.

The Masterpiece that followed was a better than usual one for us and we were tight and concise on it feeling and sounding good. The cautionary tale, as Rich put it, of the Duprees was a good time and the Cassidy that followed had Donna and I working well together on the vocals. Having Bill there, I thought it would be best to challenge him and take advantage of some of his sounds and play the Sailor Saint. Once again, this keeps getting better and better as we hone our skills and get more comfortable with the changes in the songs. When you finally finish the combo and let that final A chord ring out, you really do get a sense of accomplishment wash over your being. This was Bill’s swan song as he left us after the Sailor Saint and we took a quick short break, earlier than usual.

We slowly worked our way into the Candyman, with Donna singing, initially with just Rich, Lee and I accompanying her, but everyone joined in by the end. I think that was the last song for Donna leaving Deadstein to its core constituency for the rest of the night.

Following another short break, it was damn hot in the studio, we embarked on the next segment of the night which was the pre-drum type of second set. This started with a pretty reasonable feeling Terrapin out of no where into a Woman Are Smarter. Both songs felt pretty good. We then played the rarely played To Lay Me Down with the patience for the most part such a subtly sophisticated songs demands. I thought this was a really good version for us. For some reason I associate a second set To Lay Me Down with a second set Let it Grow, so I decided to head right into the Let It Grow out of the To Lay Me Down. I decided to try to play and sing the Let It Grow from memory without turning to the music in the book, which worked for me on this occasion. I was able to focus more on playing than reading which free up my mind a bit, even though I had constant anxiety as to whether or not the quickly approaching next part of the song would come to me in time to play it. This Let It Grow felt good and even experienced a relatively competent ending to the jams portions of the song.

After another small break we ended playing all over the place. A little Wish You Were Here and Little I’m Free from Tommy which fell apart when it was time to leave the lyrical portion of the song. With Kevin using the tile floor as a heat exchange to get some cooling into his body, I figured I might as well play a little Good Night Irene which seemed to wake him up and get him back into the game. The Midnight Moonlight to close ended at 12:01, just past midnight and sent us packing into the 90 plus degree temperatures that greeted us when we opened the door on 55th Street. Usually getting out of the hot, sticky elevator with all six of us crammed into it and opening the door on West 55th Street, with the river just to our west, is a cool and refreshing experience, but this night the outside was just as hot as in the inside of the building. This works for us as Deadstein is always seeking both a hotter and cooler experience, so not matter which way the winds blow we end up on top, so until we freak again, Freak Out.

The audio files are provided in the following folder:
http://deadstein.com/audio/07-18-13

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