Tag Archives for " BANG Europe "

It’s interesting making records here. There is an incredible group of musicians here. Now Prague is famous for film recording with orchestras, there’s lots of great studios for that. Classically before world war II, the Prague film industry was very big and sometimes you hear people refer to Prague as a small Paris and before the war it very well was! There were so many famous painters, poets, critical thinkers, and musicians, probably the most famous Czech composer is Dvorjak. There was a thriving film business in the 30s and 40s which lead to really, really great orchestras and recording music for film which was reinvigorated in the 90s and because it was less expensive to record an orchestra than maybe in LA or London a lot of projects started to come to the Czech Republic. Now the Czech Republic and Slovakia are divided and people are very proud of this fact. But basically there’s three or four great studios here and there’s three or four great orchestras that can make up various sized studio groups and on a daily basis there are all sorts of international film orchestral projects going on here.

The music scene has become a little more homogenized unfortunately, but the thing that is really interesting to me is the passion people have with their bands. To have a band, especially if you’re singing in Czech or Slovak, there are some large bands that make careers, but it’s definitely not like if you were a European based band playing all over Europe. The thing that's most fascinating to me is when I first came here, I had a buddy who introduced me to his buddies and these guys love everything British and american classic rock n roll. They revered it so much and it was so difficult for them to get access to it before the revolution, that people here build the most incredible instruments or do the most incredible repair work and they know everything vintage Fender and Gibson instruments and amps. So for instance, my vintage tube amps that I brought over here from the states are playing as well if not better then when I had them in the states because the guys that worked on them revered them so much! They’ve never even seen some of these things, but they’d pull out their schematic that they’ve got on the black market in the 80s and they know everything about it and say, “I can’t believe I’m seeing one of these!” Back in the day they were so hopped up about finding pallets of photocopiers to smash to take out the chips to build tubescreamer because they’be never seen one, but heard it through a random Stevie Ray Vaughan album or whatever.

Stereo Bus Mix Tips

Before I even go to bus I try to have groups before the mix bus to simplify it. So maybe having all my drums to a pair, sending all my music to a bus, and sending all my vocals to a bus. That way I can control them independently from one another, especially with compressors the vocals won’t affect the whole track. Right now I’m at a point where I’m playing around with different things, but generally I’ll have an EQ and a compressor. Now that the delay compensation has gotten so good in ProTools, I’m also able to print stems that as closely as possible recombine the actual mix because the archiving of projects is becoming essential. What I suggest to people, especially composers. If you don’t do this it’s a wasted opportunity. When you finish anything, print the stems. I print each instrument with effects plus the mix and I create a new session which I import these things back in: markers, tempo, any pertinent information. I also always keep any midi tracks because you can always go back in and edit the midi. Anyone can go in and create a new version because you spent that extra time at the end to archive the track and as artists our work is our only asset we have.

Q- Share with us a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce.
A -Preparation is everything. Know something about who you’re going to be working with. Ask your friends, use google, do whatever you have to do. Know what you’re getting yourself into, know what you’re going to need, have some anticipation of what you're going to do when you try to record. Create an environment where the person you’re working with feels inspired. Make your studio work for you, but also make it work for the people who come there.