Legendary recording engineer/iconoclast/instigator Steve Albini talks to Electronic Musician about his no-nonsense approach to recording:
Practical considerations weigh very heavily in a lot of my decisions. A lot of the bands I work with have extremely limited budgets; they’re sort of spending their rent money to come and make a record at all. As a matter of simple human decency, I don’t want to waste their time. I don’t want to indulge myself in experimenting and trying to find some nerdy, perfect thing when the meat-and-potatoes thing is fine.
Gear junkies will drool, basement recording hobbyists will learn, and emusician.com will receive a lot of hits. Plus, in the bonus section, Albini explains the perfect building material for studios: adobe.
Some of Albini’s mics:
Word.
This was a great article, if you know what
he’s talking about. But for a sap like me, with a couple of guitars and a real job, most of it went straight over my head. So, the last section where he talks about starting small and learning to solve problems was especially relevant. I’m currently going the mac route, with an M-audio a/i and a couple of e-bay microphones, so there’s plenty of room for me to slide off the learning curve. S’fun anyway
would you know this microphone?
http://www.abbagdl.com/pre_agnetha_clip_image022_0001.jpg