Two people recording a full-length CD and playing all the instruments it is a bit like painting graffiti on your own wall. It is easy throw a few blobs of paint around, but shaping it and making it bold is tedious and time consuming, and you have to look at it everyday until it is right.
Because Ming Dynasty is just the two of us, we never hear our songs in full before we finish recording them. We strum out the parts with lyric and melodic ideas, then we record a version. From there we start to dig into the arrangements and actual instrument parts. We often record two or three different versions of the basic tracks before we settle on one that we like.
This can be very expensive in a recording studio, so we decided we would record the Yellow Tiger CD ourselves. We purchased a Digi 002 with Pro Tools 7 and a G4 power book, along with a half-dozen inexpensive microphones. We had a cheap six-channel board that someone had given us, and we intended to rent an inexpensive rehearsal room to record in. This all seemed like a good idea at the time. Engineering was new to both of us, but we fancied ourselves clever enough to manage. We read manuals and books and scoured the Internet for anything to help us capture the sounds we would be playing.
Day 1: We started by taking a cab with all the recording gear from Eric’s place on East 11th Street to Funkadelic (rehearsal) Studios at 37 W 26th Street. The hallway there was filled with beat-up couches occupied by a mix of long-hair, heavy-metal heads, along with a few hipsters and nerdy types, all trying in vain to impress one another. Our plan for this first day was to lay down drums for the title track “Yellow Tiger.” We raced time to set up the Digi 002, the board, computer and 6 drum mics, and begin testing the levels. Two hours gone, two hours left before I had to go open the bar at 5pm.
Eric was the drummer of the day and feeling the pressure of the time constraints. We knew the melody, but for the drum beat we had nothing more than some vague ideas in our heads–the rest was a black hole. Eric had to play the song to a click track with no band, and I had to engineer with Pro Tools pretty much for the first time in my life. When I thought I was ready, I signaled Eric excitedly with my finger and pushed the record button.
Eric was playing a very solid groove: he brought the song to life and my brain started to resonate with it so solidly that I could actually hear the other instruments over the drums! Then, without warning, Eric stopped playing and said, “WHAT’S THAT?!” I got spooked out cuz I couldn’t believe he was hearing something in my brain. Could we be that in sync? The possibilities were both scary and magical…until I saw, through the wall, the Latino band playing in the next room.
My excitement deflated. This is a BIG problem! I thought. No way did we spend money and all this energy to record a rock song with Latino dance music swaying in the background!
I went over to their room and tried to talk them into moving to the other side of the floor. I told them that we were trying to do a professional-quality recording, and I offered them $20 to move. Nope, they were way deep in their groove and didn’t give a shit.
I returned to Eric and we listened to the playback. It seemed to us–through the cheap headphones–that the mics weren’t actually picking up the sounds of the immovable Latinos. And so we continued recording.
Eric was playing great that day and we probably did fifteen takes, confident in the performances and sure we had several really great takes to choose from. Drum track number 1 was in the bag. We quickly wrapped up all the gear and wires and rushed out before the studio charged us for another hour. We dragged everything into a cab and back up the stairs at Eric’s place. I headed for the bar.
Later that evening, Eric went through all the takes. All seemed well at first. Then, as he started putting eq and compression on the tracks, the song began doing the Cha Cha! The Latin band came back to life in all their glory, and Ming Dynasty would be starting Day 2 from scratch.
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regards
fluflaken
Noah,
We scratched out the contact info for the blog. We will give the editor a call.
Thank you,
Ming
Damn, this is just such a good piece of writing Ming. I think you should submit it to someone. NY Press has some pretty good music coverage these days. This might be more like a story, though. The editor is *#$%. Tell him you’re a friend of mine.
Eric, couldn’t make it to Arlene’s Grocery the other day, next gig I’m there, no doubt about it.
Simon,
I have to disagree with the comment below. We recorded on our pro tools. Once we settled the local part of it it was magic. The record is posted on the home page. I think the reviews indicate it is more that competent sounds.
“I think that the kind of studios that most unsigned bands can afford right now will get them a ‘competent’ sound and nothing more”
Eric
Thanks for jumping in everyone.
I love that people understand how frustrating this can be. We were certain this was an ethereal assault on Ming Dynasty until others began to share their NYC recording dramas. This story has just begun. We are not going to report the rest blow by blow but will post more of the highlights, good and bad. It went from agonizing to comical to numbing.
Eric
Wow. What a process. Eager to hear the rest of the story! Thanks for sharing.
This approach is very familiar to me and makes more sense to me than the ‘traditional’ route a lot of bands take which is go into a ‘proper’ studio and spend a shitload of money on getting a couple of songs to sound like your favourite band.
I was never crazy about that idea. It’s different if you are on a label and have some relatively ‘big name’ guy to come tweak your knobs and give it a whole new sound - but they need to really know their shit and that doesn’t come cheap.
I think that the kind of studios that most unsigned bands can afford right now will get them a ‘competent’ sound and nothing more - more than that and you need real love or money..
Ming got the love..
Eric lives on E 11th? I lived on E 11th, now I’m on E 13th! We all need to get some drinks together!
And I knew I had video and pictures from China 1.
I had only met eric and Ming once before in LA but had really enjoyed the experience. So when I had a chance to head to NYC for the day for work (I’m in Toronto) I emailed eric to see if he was around. He told me they’d both be around and that I should come down for lunch. Jumping in a cab, I got directions to china 1. Turns out they were recording in the basement of a Chinese restaurant.
It was very fun to watch them work. And it was very cool to see an old-school approach to getting things done.
Great to hear the finished product with that memory attached to it.
Hi Guys, thanks for the responses. As you can gather from the finished product we figured out alternatives, but stay tuned, we will be discussing the rest of it over the next few weeks. I am glad to know we are not the only ones who have suffered this NYC recording dlilemna. We ended up recording all of the drums outside of New York City, but some of the locations for guitar and other things are pretty interesting.
Sari,
I love the name “Highway Sounds”. What a great NYC city story.
All best,
Eric
YES! I’ve had the exact same experience. Funkadelic has a recording studio wing which is more expensive. Sweat Shop practice studio (Lorimer) has a recording wing which is decently priced. But recording in NYC is ultimately a losing battle. Either you’re too loud (recording at home), someone else is too loud (recording where being loud is ok), or you pay a thousand dollars. This city is not helpful to artists these days is my take, though we’re supposed to be the arts capital or the world or whatever. Live shows have been the best recordings I’ve been able to get here. Occasionally a practice space yields some decent takes.
godspeed
That’s really funny. Our friends Tim and Kathena - all the way over from you on the western end of 11th street - named their studio “Highway Sounds” because it’s impossible for them to record without the rumble of the West Side Highway making it into their tracks. I suppose recording in cramped NYC, it’s impossible to achieve true sonic isolation anywhere - making for some interesting audio mashups.
I can totally relate…I just finished a five-year song-writing and recording project with my best friend,Dan. We are the two instrumentalists and singers for the project (though we brought in lots of friends to play various parts, sing harmonies etc.) Dan and I had the additional hurdle of being in different states…yeah, he’s in Ohio and I’m in NY. So our collaboration had to be virtual — sending snippets of song ideas and lyrics over the internet until we’d piece together our song. And yeah, our first song we recorded in a rehearsal space (Coyote Studio in Brooklyn) on a cheap multi-track…
We have some of the tunes on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Indelible-Beancurd/31894133479