I was met at the venue by their Monitor Engineer, Tomasz, who has worked with other Shure endorsers, recently Dawes.  He was engaged in a closed sound check, so it was a brief hello before running downstairs to set up for our interview with Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde.

520DX (for dirty vocals) on the left, KSM141 with windscreen (clean vocals) on the right.

After the sound check wrapped, Tomasz came down to make a more formal introduction.  Our chat segued in to an interview when Les and Ler walked in.  After some introductions we sat down and chatted for about ten minutes.  The interview will be posted after editing, but among the topics discussed were some of their more unusual choices in mics.  Les had been a fan of the SM57 on vocals (but it must have the windscreen) for years.  However, he had more recently taken to using a KSM141 in the 57′s place, both in stage and studio.  The 57 was still there, but it had made it’s way in to the horse’s head.

You can just see the windscreen…where the, uh, tongue should be.

Yeah, it’s…well, very Primus.

Another cool thing, though not actually all that different is Ler’s cabinet mic.  He’s using the KSM313 ribbon mic (front side, if you know the model and are curious).  Interesting point: one of the advantages described to me was that this model, in addition to sounding great (as told to us by the man himself), is better for him because it is a side-address mic.  Ler likes to go back to his amps regularly to make all that fantastic feedback happen.  End-address mics (for example, an SM57) would be more likely to get bumped or moved by one of his frequent trips.  It’s also the reason you see a gooseneck rather than a typical mic stand.  Unobtrusiveness is the name of the game.

Hey, drummers!  Don’t think I forgot about you.  Here’s a pic I snapped of Jay Lane’s lovely kit.  I do apologize about the low light level.  Beta 98AMPs are everywhere, as are KSM137s.  However, among the more unique miking solutions are SM57s on the kick drums, and one of the kicks had an SM7B on the beater side.  Jay was also using two PG56s – one for a floor tom and another for vocals.  Tomasz and FOH Jason were using the PG56 drum mounts to place the Beta 98AMPs.

Don’t ask about the stuffed puppy.  I don’t know what’s up with that.

I managed to hang around long enough to catch the first few songs.  I wish I could have stayed longer.  It was my first 3D-projection concert.  I’m looking forward to more of those.

Richard

@Richard_ShureAR

The mention of ULXD is around 11:27.

I love that they get such a big sound without so much as a speaker in the rig. There’s some pretty forward-thinking stuff going on here: a single rack to handle wireless and processing, and they even mix their in-ear monitors (PSM 900 in this case) with not a monitor mixing console, but rather two laptops – a primary and a redundancy.

Pretty cool stuff from a great band.

The video above is of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.  I’m posting it here because there is something to which I wish to draw attention.  It helps to put in earphones or headphones for this.  Look at how he performs his vocals; listen to what he can do with that SM57.  Jon puts dirt in that performance.  It’s dirty, sweaty, gritty rock’n'roll.  He owns that mic.  He makes it more than a simple transducer.

I am of the opinion that your microphone should be considered with the same criteria by which we pick a guitar, or a drum head, or an amp.  It’s often overlooked because when we all started out it was the responsibility of the club to hand us the mics.  We would just load in and let the sound guy put whatever they had in front of whatever we had.  Sometimes there were good sounding nights, sometimes not.  Sometimes a particular model made us take notice, be it on one side of the spectrum or the other.

Take note of the ones that make you go “wow!”  Then go get one and start to work with it.  Figure out what you sound like at different distances; what the characteristics are when you pop a plosive, or move it just slightly off the center of your speaker cone.  Look to videos of others who own the mic – the Jon Spencers, the Mike Pattons, the Rahzels, the Roger Daltreys – watch what they do live.

Then figure out how that mic is yours.

Richard

@Richard_ShureAR

I love doing artist interviews.  It’s not just sitting down and picking the brains of our endorsers that I find engaging.  In a way, it’s a bit like doing live sound.  We Artist Relations guys often function as interviewer, camera operator, and audio engineer when we go out and shoot interviews.  There is a rush in getting everything set up quickly and making sure it all looks and sounds decent for those ten to fifteen minutes you’re hosting artists. It has been a learning process for me – much of what I’ve come to know has been through trial and error.  Like live sound we have our good and bad days.  Fortunately we’ve gotten some new production tools that have made things easy.

Shure has added quite a few broadcast production tools in the last two years and it’s been fun for me to get to know them in this capacity.  They’ve sure made my job easier.   Here’s a rundown on the gear we take to the gigs.

Mics:

VP89M medium shotgun

RPM89S short shotgun cartridge

WL51B or MX150 lavalier mic

A dynamic mic – SM57, SM58, or Beta57A

My first go-to for a mic is the VP89M.  I just love it.  I’ll engage the low-frequency roll-off because we’re working with human voices.  The mic sits in the A89M-PG pistol grip mount, made by Rycote.  In the event we find ourselves in a small space where I’m very near multiple subjects I will swap out the medium shotgun tube for the short one.  This gives a wider pickup pattern.  Lavalier mics come in handy for very noisy environments.  Some on our team prefer them over the shotgun mic.  I’ll use them if I have to, but I’ve had interviews where some unpredictable element has caused me headaches.  People move lapels, scratch necks, shake their heads vigorously, wear noisy jewelry…trying to plan for those unknowns takes time I’d rather spend getting to know the interviewee, conversing, finding a good starting point for the interview.   Of course, the most dead-simple thing to do is put the UR3 plug-on transmitter right in to the back of a mic, and for that having a dynamic mic is handy.  However, it is really only for single subject interviews and, like the lavalier, I’m dependent on the subject’s behavior.

Wireless:

UR3 plug-on transmitter

UR5 portable diversity receiver

UR1 or UR1M bodypack transmitter

Most of the time I’m using the UR3 and the UR5 together.  The UR3 fits right at the bottom of the A89M-PG pistol grip holding the VP89M shotgun mic.  The UR5 has a shoe mount and fits our HD DV video camera and our photographer’s DSLR for when he’s shooting video.  The best practice is to turn on the UR3 with the RF off.   We do an on-site scan with the UR5 receiver to find an open frequency, then sync the transmitter and turn the transmitter’s RF on.  This is to avoid stepping on anything that the show might be using at the moment.  In the event we prefer to use lavalier mics, we’ll have a bodypack transmitter in the kit.

Monitoring:

SE earphones (interviewer’s preference)

SRH240A or SRH440

If I’m flying solo I’ll just do my monitoring from the camera with my SE425-CL earphones.  I use those most of the time.  We also have a set of SE315-K earphones in the kit in the event that we left our personal earphones at home.  Earphones are not for everybody, so if we’re going to have Paul Natkin shoot the interviews on his DSLR we know to bring some headphones.  Those are usually SRH240A or SRH440.  Those take up much more space in an audio kit than earphones though.

The goal is to be set up and ready to go inside of five minutes if need-be.  The options available in our audio kit have been honed over time, though I expect that new situations will cause further changes over time.  Right now the main concerns are finding some place with decent lighting, enough space to get a tripod set up, and an area where the artist will be comfortable.  That’s very important.  If you’re going to go for great lighting but there is no place to sit or elbow room to move it’s likely that information sought will be in shorter supply.  I try to remain empathetic and listen for a natural point to start and end the interview.  Having the tools to execute the technical side of the interview without too much effort allow for the human side to show itself.  Hopefully that’s reflected in the finished interview.

Richard

This is the tool that helped blow away the crowd during Riot Fest 2012′s headliner. Whose was it?

Click the image below to scope the dressing room sign.

Fans of metal will know that recent circumstances involving Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe had led to the cancelation of their highly anticipated tour.  It wasn’t just Lamb Of God that had people excited; the line-up was to include the live version of Dethklok, the animated band from Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse, and Gojira, one of the best up-and-coming metal bands in the world.  I’m a bit opinionated when I say this, of course.  They’re new Shure endorsers.

Gojira are not exactly a new band.  They originally formed in the mid-1990s under the name Godzilla, changing it in 2001.  Their star has been rising for years, gaining fans globally over time.  With the release of L’Enfant Sauvage this Summer, big things seem to be ahead.  The unfortunate cancellation of the LoG/Dethklok/Gojira tour is bad timing.  However, they wasted no time in booking a smaller run upon receiving the bad news.  I got a call asking about borrowing some wireless – UHF-R – for the make-up dates here in the States.  I also got the good news that they’d be coming to Chicago to play at the Bottom Lounge.  Score.

I made my way to the venue last Thursday to meet up with Paul Natkin, our photographer, so we could shoot some posed shots and a bit of the sound check before the show.  It was my first time meeting anyone from the band beyond a voice on the phone.  We called up the tour manager, Taylor, who ran out to get us.  As soon as we were inside he introduced us to brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier (guitar/vocals and drums, respectively).  The two guys were warm and welcoming – always a good sign when meeting endorsers for the first time.  We chatted about the gear they were using since the onset of their endorsement deal for a bit before lead guitarist Christian Andreu came over.  Bassist Jean-Michel Labadie eventually joined us and we made our way outside to shoot some posed photos against the backdrop of Chicago’s El tracks.  Fans had been around the venue doors noticed us and gave a rousing cheer.  The guys were gracious in acknowledging them – a good sign for career longevity in this day and age.

We sat inside for sound check as the band’s FOH engineer meticulously ran through each channel.  Paul snapped a few pics as I checked out their wireless set-ups, looking to make sure there was no RF overload on the receivers.  They are using SM58 for vocals, SM57s for the cabinets, SM81s on the cymbals and hats, and the instrument wireless (as mentioned above) was our UHF-R.  The band wrapped up and Paul and I made our way to the venue’s restaurant for some digs.  As we ate I noticed the restaurant portion was considerably more crowded than I had anticipated.  I had suspected that the show might not have done as well as all would have liked; they did manage to book it only days prior.  We finished up and went in to the venue to listen to opener Car Bomb, a grindcore/mathcore band from NY.  The room was fairly full at this point.  My initial suspicion about attendance was definitely wrong.

By the time Gojira took the stage it was getting difficult to move around.  I found myself considerably closer to the pit than I had been in years, though I didn’t mind as much as someone wearing glasses probably should.  The band started; people bumped their way past me in a rush to get to the pit; the room erupted in raised fists and horned hands.

“I was in the crowd for Car Bomb.  I love those guys.  Anyway, I noticed something – it looks like a lot of guys here are in their thirties.  Is that true?”  Joe asked.  “How many people own a car?”  Hands around me go up.  “How many people have a mortgage?”  Similar show of hands.  “It’s all the people in the back!  How about the kids?  Are there kids here?!?”  The entire front half of the audience erupted in cheers.  Yeah, OK, I’m not as young as I once was.  But I find consolation in the fact that there were plenty of young fans up front for a band like this.

Here’s hoping for a return to Chicago in the early part of 2013.  I’m looking forward to interviewing them.

Richard

@Richard_ShureAR

It was our honor to have System Of A Down as our Featured Artist of the Month for August.  We gave two tickets each to the last two shows of the tour – Detroit and Chicago.  I went down to the Chicago show to see their last performance of the tour.  I arrived and met both Chad Olech (Front of House, Deftones), whom I have known for years, and Pasi Hara (Monitors, SOAD), whom I had met previously; we walked through the backstage areas to the side-stage where Pasi had his desk set up, ready for sound check.

System Of A Down are heavy wireless users.  There are three channels of UHF-R for each Shavo (bass), Daron (guitar), and Serj (guitar) as well as Serj’s vocal channels (also UHF-R with Beta 58A mic elements).  Feeding the band, engineers, and techs their mixes are eight channels of PSM® 1000 with a PA821 antenna combiner and PWS’s HA-8089 helical antenna.  Pasi had connected everything via a 16-port Ethernet switch to his MacBook and administered the gear, held in various racks, with Wireless Workbench 6.  We geeked out a bit over the scans of the radio frequency environments; Chicago has an astonishingly crowded UHF-band.  In spite of the multitude of strong TV channels and random other radios in the Allstate Arena, everything was working and ready.

Sound check happened very quickly.  Pasi and I temporarily parted ways – he to the backstage area as I went to join Chad at the FOH position for the Deftones’ check.  He ran a few tracks recorded the previous night through the PA initially, soon joined by the band.  The empty arena reverberated as sound bounced off concrete and hard plastic seats where hours later the crowd would keep those waves all to themselves.

Deftones are also using PSM 1000.  They’re the first band I look after to use ULX-D.  Chino’s usual weapon of choice is a wired Beta 58A, taped in similar fashion to one of Roger Daltrey’s famous SM58s, though Chino’s moves can be considerably more chaotic than Daltrey’s famous circles.  The wireless version comes out when a mic on a stand is needed, ironically.  This is to minimize the liability of tripping on a cable bringing the mic and stand on and off stage.

At one point I was handed a P10R tuned to Chino’s monitor mix.  I popped in my earphones and went for a walk.  I made it through the crowd and around the circumference of the floor of the arena, then behind the stage without a single dropout.  All this was off a single, directional passive antenna aimed at the stage.  I am, of course, biased in my opinion of those units, but I thought that rather impressive performance for in-ear monitors.  Also, listening to their mix while seeing the show from the different perspectives added a sort of surreal quality to the show.  Earphones or no, the band brought it.

System Of A Down had not been through Chicago in years, which, as a fan, is not OK.  However, they brought it with a jaw-dropping set of 26 songs.  The lights went out and the set opened with the instantly recognizable staccato notes of “Prison Song”.  As the billowing shroud fell from the stage the audience turned frenetic.  As the saying goes, “all killer, no filler”.  During Suite-Pee Chino Moreno jumped up on stage to duet with Serj Tankian.  Drummer John Dolmayan was flanked by Abe Cunningham on his right and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante on the left.  System closed the set with “Sugar”.

After the gig was over I was able to meet up with Serj and geek out a bit over our ribbon mics.  He has been loving the KSM313 on the top end of his grand piano.  We covered a few other topics, including music distribution these days, before the aftershow crowd needed his attention.  I made my way to the crew bus to catch up with Pasi and Chad before heading out.

Richard

@Richard_ShureAR

We in Artist Relations get stories on miking techniques frequently.  It’s interesting to me to hear what people are using and where.  Most of them are lumped in to the usual categories – guitars, cabinets, drums.  There are plenty of arrangements for microphones in these situations.  Those stories can be fun, but from my perspective, many times it is really polishing well-practiced techniques.  They require experience and patience and experimentation to get just right, so by all means, keep it up.  However, I like the unusual.  For example, Shure endorsers Matt & Kim sent Cory a photo of one of their more interesting recording stories.

Matt & Kim add some unorthodox sound to the mix

According to Cory, they wanted a dirtier bass sound.  Their solution?  They recorded the track, brought it out to one of the studio employee’s cars (apparently he had quite the sound system) and they cranked it with the bass up.  The fella on the back is there to muffle some of the rattle out of the trunk because it was too much.

We did things to our microphones back when I was a young pup that would certainly void the warranty just to get a sound, or just to see what sound we could get.  An old, old band I was in had a blast running an SUV over an SM57 plugged in to an Ensoniq EPS 16.  I used to run vocals through a speaker aimed in to an open piano with the strings close-miked to pick up the resonance.  While recording a lot of our microphone abuse videos the most exciting bit to me was the sound that would come from the moments of action: the sound of the mic colliding with glass under swirling Guinness, the crunch of a car tire on the grille of the mic, the crack of the slap shot and the mic body sliding on ice.  I also am a fan of recording just ambient sound for use later, perhaps, or just to have a bank of effects.  I like sticking a microphone out of a window in a thunderstorm or rolling one across different types of flooring.  Perhaps it’s the early influence of heavily sample-based music in my life, but I suspect there are plenty of other people out there also looking for unusual sound sources to incorporate in to their music.

What have you done that is strange and unusual miking?  What instruments have you made of perhaps otherwise ordinary sound?  Why did you want it in your repertoire?  Got any material to share?  Let us know in the comments.

The line for the show had already formed outside the doors when I met Casey Crescenzo in the restaurant portion of the venue mid-afternoon.  He was about as nice a person as you could meet.  I did gush a little bit about his music upon meeting him, for which he offered humble thanks.  If you’re not familiar with the band, the first thing to know is that Casey is the band.  The Dear Hunter is his project.  His productions are sonically sublime and refreshingly big at times.  It can be punk-ish here, vaudevillian there, and all bits of the spectrum in between.  The instrumentation is diverse and dynamic.  Surrounding him are a large cast of players and collaborators, many of whom are themselves extremely talented multi-instrumentalists.  How, I wondered, does one bring a show that could easily be spread across fifteen or twenty players on the road?

I picked his brain during our interview on such things.  “When I’m in the studio I don’t think too much about how it needs to be performed, because [the studio is] my favorite thing – songwriting, production, and engineering.  I love playing live but that really is sort of the effect of writing the music.  I don’t sit and envision the live show first.  At the end of a record when it comes time to play it live it really takes re-working it completely – knowing that you can’t have a horn section, a string quartet, a group of background singers, a harpsichord, a mellotron – all of those things.  Luckily I have been able to surround myself with musicians who are really comfortable switching between different instruments.  Also from time-to-time with the range of music, with the styles we play, we can kind of decide to be whatever band we want for whatever tour we’re doing.  So on a tour like this we decided to be a little bit more of a rock band, a little less of the experimental and orchestral side of what we do, whereas on another tour we might want to be more of a folk band or whatever really makes sense to do.

“Definitely there are times when I will be playing a song and in my head I can hear what’s not there and I am longing for that.  But I figure at some point, somewhere down the line, hopefully I’ll be able to do that.  We did one show recently that was our whole Color Spectrum release from start to finish.  We had a string quartet and there were about ten total people on the stage and that felt like a giant step towards realizing what the band should eventually be.”

We went on to talk mics.  He expressed a particular fondness of the SM7B – a model we seem to be hearing a lot of from our friends and customers as of late.  We’ll have the interview on our YouTube channel soon.

Now having seen the show I can report that, while the performance may not have had chimes or harpsichord or an eight person choir, it was very, very impressive.  I look forward to seeing what the next time brings.  And the time after that.  And the time after that…

Richard

Meshuggah at the House of Blues on May 15, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Paul Natkin/WireImage)

I very much revere Meshuggah.  I’m not alone in that opinion.  If you are a fan of metal you will know that, love them or not, they are the best at what they do, period.  Virtuosic performance dresses a primal foundation.  Fans are just as likely to count out polyrhythmic elements as they are to headbang when listening to their music.

I had the opportunity to see them one other time to date.  It was in 2002 and the band was opening for Tool.  The arena in Madison, WI sat about 8,000.  It was big enough to ruin the performance with ambiance.  When you play as fast and as tight as they, reverb and reflection are not your friends.  I was thrilled then, to know that I was going to see them in Chicago’s House of Blues.

I sat down for an interview with guitarist Mårten Hagström and vocalist Jens Kidman prior to the show.  It was interesting to learn that, for as loud as they are in concert, there is almost no stage volume.  The guitars and bass are all handled by Fractal Audio boxes, leaving the drums and Jens’s vocals the only real volume on stage.  You would only know this from standing on the side of the stage though.  From out front, you needed earplugs…as much as I didn’t want them.  Shure’s part in the story?  Drums.  Vocals.  In-ears.  Mårten and Jens both professed to be fans of the SM7B.  Mårten used his in pre-production and demoing.  Jens hand-held his mic as he laid down vocal tracks for the record.  Playing live, his weapon of choice is the Beta 58A on a UHF-R wireless.  The band use PSM®900 with SE425-CL earphones, excepting drummer Tomas Haake, who uses the PSM 600 hardwired body pack.

Meshuggah at the House of Blues on May 15, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Paul Natkin/WireImage)

For showtime I was set up with a P9R body pack receiver in CueMode with every mix programmed in to it.  I mostly watched at the side of the stage where I was able to select each band member’s personal mix at a whim.  Just for fun (and to take the opportunity to go listen from the house) I went strolling out to the main room with my earphones in and the pack on.  I stopped behind the FOH board for a quick listen without the earphones, then continued on through the venue.  I had a few RF dropouts in the very back of the venue and in some of the concrete stairwells backstage – six in total.  It was amazing considering the band was using a directional paddle antenna which only had the stage in its line of sight.  Those few hits aside, I could hear their mixes everywhere in the venue through the pack.

The only place I didn’t dare go to test was in the middle of the floor.  Our gear can take some abuse, but the energy coming from the stage was driving the most prime real estate of the room in to a frenzied pit.  Cathartic it may have been, but I value my earphones enough to not have them ripped from my head and stomped to pieces.

Jens, Fredrik Thordendal, Mårten, and bassist Dick Lövgren delivered their punishing set from the very front of the stage, as if to drive home the listening experience through their physical presence.  From the back Tomas played faster and with more precision than one would suspect is humanly possible. The set started with “Demiurge” from their new album, Koloss.  Throughout the set were more from the album, along with fan-favorites like “Future Breed Machine” and “Combustion”.  As they launched in to one of their most ambitious and well-known tracks, “Bleed” (obZen, 2008), I dialed in Tomas’s mix.  If you’re a drummer, you might know what that means.

If you are a fan of metal, put this band on your bucket list.

Richard

On Nigel Tufnel Day they had a fresh album, The Hunter.  It’s not like its predecessors, which were conceptual in nature.  This album is more of a collection of very strong songs.  It may not tell a direct story, like Crack the Skye, the album that came before it, but if you have been hesitant to pick it up based on the fact that you’ve heard it is different, don’t avoid it: it’s worth the investment.  Quick divergence over, let’s get back to the show.

Six months in to touring on this last album, the band’s show was as tight as I’ve ever seen.  Rob Lightner, Front Of House engineer, really knocked it out in his return trip to Chicago’s Riv Theatre.  I made sure to grab a spot at FOH to start things out, then eventually moved upstairs to catch the rest of the show from the balcony level.

My balcony view

Note to fans wanting to grab floor space when they come to town: be prepared for intense and inspired pits.  Especially during classics like “Blood and Thunder”, which has electrified every crowd in every room every time I’ve seen it played (this is probably my eighth Masto show).

Afterward I went out with some of the production guys to discuss moving from wedges to in-ears, mic selection, and some of the challenges they face dealing with a stage that loud every night.  The band has been using UHF-R for their instrument wireless for years.

You can find upcoming tour dates at http://www.mastodonrocks.com/tour.

Richard

Armand was the long-time tech for Slayer’s Kerry King.  He knew everyone in the scene, it seemed, and everyone knew him.  He was a guy that could come by our NAMM booth and be the most popular guy in it.  He was a mentor to the uninitiated.  He was a master of his craft.  But far beyond that he was an amazing person to know.  He could make you smile just by saying “hey, man.”  It can at times be cliché in the metal scene to call people “brother”.  But when you refer to Armand as brother, you mean it…because so did he.

I cannot believe that I will not see him again.

He leaves behind his longtime girlfriend, Cassandra, and a family of hundreds.

Rest in peace, Armand.  I miss you.

Richard