Frustrated and determined Ming and I got back to the drawing board. We
went all out trying to solve the problem of where to record drums.
There just had to be a place in New York City that was quiet, cheap
and available. But where? We have many friends in the East Village
and Williamsburg but we came up with nothing.
Within a couple of days, by chance, we came upon a few possibilities.
One afternoon while walking my Dog, I ran into Kate from Kate’s Joint
on E 3rd. Over the years she had several bands rehears in the basement of
her restaurant. She offered to lend us her space. When we
went to check on it there were cooks and waitresses running all
over getting things done. We thanked Kate for her offer but recording
there would have been difficult.
Soon after, the beautiful lounge in the downstairs of China 1 was offered by
owner and long time friend Andrew Krauss. Our only hesitation with China 1 was
the lack of space to store our equipment between recordings. In this
scenario we would bring my drum kit along as well as all of our recording
equipment. We could work from 9 to 5 pm, then bring all of our stuff
home in a cab. Hauling it back and forth each day was not ideal but we
decided to give it a try.
After putting the microphones on the drum set and setting levels we
heard a low humming sound coming from an enormous refrigerator containing
several cases of exotic Asian beverages. Unable to contact Andrew, we
made a decision to unplug the 400 hundred pound fridge. The power
cable was in the back of the unit. Ming reached behind as I tried to slide
the unyielding beast across the floor of the bar. I groaned and
huffed as Ming stretched her torso and arms towards the outlet. Then
with what sounded like a pro wrestler tearing a phone book in half,
Ming’s pants split wide open. The split was bad enough that Ming went out in search
of a new pair of pants. In the meantime I unloaded all of the Tsing
Tao beer to make the unit lighter.
20 minutes later I turned to the door to see Ming standing in
front of me in what looked like my gandma Rosalia’s curtains
from her house in Queen’s. There were flowers and
Italian garden scenarios leaping from her pant legs. I was half
blinded by nostalgia and half by the pattern itself. There she was
sleek black shirt atop of a renaissance painting
accident. We roared with laughter for a few minutes then went back and
accomplished the unplugging of the Fridge.
Next we heard footsteps on the stairs. Andrew came down apologetically
with photographers from a prominent NY magazine doing a story on the
Restaurant. He had told the crew that one of his attractive employees
would be at China 1 which may enhance the pictures for the article. As they came in and
greeted us, Andrew asked Ming if she would be in a photo with him for
the piece. As the words fell from his lips everyone’s eyes moved
slowly to Ming’s 6 dollar trousers from The Bargain Bazaar.
Ming smiled unfazed by their reactionI took a napkin off
a table and put it over my face to
stop from bursting into laughter. After an awkward moment. The photographer
recommended head shots.
When we got back to our work we noticed other sounds from
pipes and machines that were unmanageable. China 1 would not work for
drums. We did return later to do all the guitar tracks on Bring Me
Down and the end lead guitar in Rice Field. We were able to avoid the
unwanted sounds by isolating the guitar amps in a 2X3 foot bathroom.
Ming dynasty will have it’s official CD release party for
Yellow Tiger
At Arlene’s Grocery 95 Stanton St
New York City
Thurs Jan 29th
at 10 pm.
Admission is 8 dollars
There will be CD’s and Josh Davis posters available.
You can also purchase the CD NOW at
Day 2: We dragged our equipment back to Funkedelic. This time we asked first, and got assurances from the studio that no other bands were booked in the space next to the room that we planned to use. So far so good. Next we raced to get everything set up, a job that we knew from the previous day would take well over an hour. Trying to make that setup time useful, we talked as we worked, discussing possible arrangements and drum parts. We’d still have to hear a few different versions before anything could be set in stone.
At last we were set up and ready to roll. We didn’t have it in us to return to “Yellow Tiger” today—it would just be a depressing reminder of all those hours lost to the Samba Villains the day before. Instead we planned to tackle two songs, “From Below” and “Train Came.” We worked on “Train Came” first. The song has a little 7/8 twist in it along with two short drum breaks. Placing these parts and executing them properly was crucial to the song. After many trials and intense discussions, we managed to finalize where the parts would go. Then we started recording, and eventually succeeded in getting a few takes that we were happy with. But all that had taken three and a half hours—and the studio clock was ticking!
As we began “From Below,” we became concerned that our 100 gig external edit drive was getting full and decided to switch to destructive mode, which saves the last take only. The idea was that we would record this way until we got a take we liked, at which point we would switch back and do more versions non destructively. To save additional time, we did a “Save As” and renamed the file instead of starting a new session from scratch. This spared Ming the task of naming tracks 1-8 “kick drum,” “snare drum,” “overhead,” etc. We worked for another two hours and after the usual debates and compromises, voila!, “From Below” (a very complicated arrangement) was done.
Like Marines, we packed up to beat the closing hour and avoid being charged for it. This day Ming had no bar to open, and after she accompanied me back to the apartment on 11th Street, she stayed to listen to the tracks.
We eagerly opened the first take of “Train Came”…but we were NOT hearing Train came. After fiddling with it for a few dreadful moments, I did a restart on the G4, hoping for that “I rebooted and everything was fine” magic. Once rebooted the trouble persisted I systematically tried every file…but to no avail, I was not hearing the intended takes. Only when I opened the last version of “From Below.” did everything seem normal. I checked and found that the audio folder held only eight files. Eight files? Eight files is one take of one song. There should have been dozens—hundreds, even!—of files in there. But no luck. There were just those eight—amounting to a single take of “From Below”—and no rebooting or begging Jesus was going to make the missing files reappear. By performing a “save as” instead of starting a new file coupled with recoding “Destructive mode”, we were sharing the audio files between two songs and systematically erasing every prior take of both songs. We were left with the very last take of “From Below”.
Now we had to face the fact that we’d lost basically two days of hard work. Done out by our own hand! Sitting there dejectedly with our heads in our hands, we looked like a couple of defeated ball players. Beaten not by a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth or a 45-yard field goal, but by the trials of technology.
Ming saved us. She lifted her head and broke the silence with the cheery proclamation: “There’s always tomorrow, man!”
But tomorrow had to be different. We knew that we couldn’t blame Funkedelic studios—in fact, they were gracious and accommodating—but it was becoming apparent to us that having to set up and break down every session was taking too much of a toll. Racing the clock was contributing to our lack of due diligence. A few more days of working like this (even if the consequences were less disastrous!) would surely bleed the life out of us and start affecting our creativity.
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.
Since We Broke Up from ming dynasty on Vimeo.
Candid video shot in the living room of Eric and Ming of Ming Dynasty singing Since We Broke Up.
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(we kill bears
because of their feet
bears eat us
because of our brains
so who’s smarter?)
Ming Dynasty is a band from NYC formed by Eric Miranda and Ming Chan. Eric Miranda, lead guitarist and vocalist, has been playing in the New York City music scene for over a decade. He has record credits with Francis Dunnery, Jesse Malin and Joe Lynn Turner. He has played with the Counting Crows and Ryan Adams. Miranda pursued his own musical course, first with a band called The Plums, which sold tens of thousands of records on a very small independent label and later on his own as a singer/songwriter, playing gigs at CBGB’s, Continental, Arlene’s Grocery and other renowned New York venues, almost always to a full house. Miranda met Ming Chan in 2006. She’d moved to New York City from Taiwan where she was the singer and bassist in a Taipei band called Moo Shoo Sweet Potato. Though she’s as urbane and cool as they come, her people actually hail from the mountains where they farmed for a living. The Hakka were one of the few ethnic groups in China that refused to bind the feet of their women. They farmed using their feet, being too proud to kneel down in the dirt. We think that’s where Ming gets her eclectic blend of humility and hardcoreness. After hearing her sing and play the bass, Miranda knew she had amazing potential. After warm reception from shows at New York and LA’s Knitting Factory, the duo locked themselves up in a farmhouse in Millbrook, New York with a Pro Tools setup. After six months, they emerged with their first LP, Yellow Tiger. Jamie Candiloro, who has worked with REM, Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson and others, mixed the album. Yellow Tiger is written, arranged, performed and produced by Ming and Eric. Every track on the Yellow Tiger LP packs both wistfulness and high-energy impact into its three- or four-minute lifespan. Each song is both a ferocious tiger and a little bird, all with the potential to be a hit. Please go to itunes or cdbaby to get a piece of Yellow Tiger!
Grace Space
840 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
7 PM
US
June 28th and July 24th @ 10 PM
Sullivan Hall
214 Sullivan Street (btw. Bleecker and W3rd St)
New York, New York
US