If you like your music loud hard and fast - and recorded well, you should check out the new release from the Norwich band Lithium Zero. The group has recorded a CD of 7 songs at their home studio that truly sounds big and full. Most of the time bands find themselves at the mercy of the studio, the clock, an unknown producer and an ever increasing budget. By doing it themselves, they managed to save a bundle and most importantly, learned how to get the sounds they wanted.

Guitarist Michael Sepello tells a bit about his group's experience recording the CD:

For the recording of "New Treason" we decided to take on the task ourselves. We recorded most tracks at our practice space in Norwich, NY using a Yamaha AW16G 16 track digital recorder. This is a 16bit recorder with 8 XLR inputs and a CD burner. Our singer, Rob Leahy, picked this up for around $1,200. Once tracks were recorded, we exported the tracks as individual .wav files onto CDs. To mix the tracks I built a new PC based on AMD's Athlon 2600 processor and used Steinberg's Cubase SX for software and a MOTU 1224 8in/8out converter. The computer and software and converter added up to around $3,000.

We started by recording guitar scratch tracks over a click track in the tempo that we thought fit the song. We didn't need the scratch tracks to be absolutely perfect, but it soon became evident that even subtle flaws in our scratch tracks would cause timing problems for everyone down the line. For scratch tracks, Rob and I played the parts directly into the recorder using Line 6's Pod Pro or sometimes a Pod 2.0.

Here's a picture that we took at my home studio. This is me in the chair and Rob Leahy standing up. This is where a lot of the music gets written and where I mix the recorded tracks.

Drums came next. We had a huge room with a high wooden ceiling to record in. The natural reverb was beautiful, though we discovered that we needed to minimize some of it with office dividers and moving blankets. We really shelled out some cash on microphones for this project, figuring the recording would sound very amateurish without pro mics. We used a Shure SM57 on the top of the snare drum and a BLUE "baby bottle" on the bottom head, which we ended up not using in the mix. Each tom got its own Audix D2 microphone, which I think sound great. We used a matched pair of Rode NT5 small diaphragm condenser mics as overheads and were extremely happy with them. We didn't mic all of the cymbals and found that we got plenty of the hi-hats through everything. We didn't have money for a great kick drum microphone and ended up using an old Peavey mic that we had. An Audix D6 or a Shure Beta52A would have given us more of the modern kick drum snap we were looking for. We ran the kick through a compressor and a BBE Sonic Maximizer to really bring out the low end and make it snap. Since the drums are the foundation of the whole song, drummer Mark Loewenstein went over and over his parts making sure every part was the best it could possibly be.

The bass guitar is always the hardest instrument to capture. You really need to start with a good instrument. Our bass player, Dan Sepello, plays a 5-string bass. The Ibanez 5-string he had originally could not handle the low end sound it was producing. Once he spent the money on a real Spector bass, we understood what a great instrument can do for your sound. We tried so many things recording bass. We ran directly into a JoeMeek "British Channel" mic pre-amp and got a decent sound. We used the direct out from Dan's Hartke head and discovered that it sounded terrible. We used a couple different dynamic mics in front of the cabs and were less that pleased. Then we used the BLUE "Baby Bottle" microphone about a foot away from an SWR 2x10 cab. We ran the Baby Bottle through the JoeMeek microphone pre-amp and a BBE Sonic Maximizer. This is mostly what you hear on the CD.

For guitars, we tried a few different amps. I really liked the Mesa Boogie Nomad 55 with the BLUE microphone in front of it. That amp had a great overdrive sound. Mostly we used the amp models directly from the POD Pro, directly into the recorder. All of the guitar solos were recorded direct.

The BLUE "Baby Bottle" was really purchased for the vocal tracks, although we ended up using it all over the CD because it's such a great sounding microphone. We built a small vocal booth with mic stands and moving blankets. We tried several different rooms for this too. We didn't want too much room reflection here. The vocals were run through the JoeMeek "British Channel" with a little compression and almost no EQ.

In mixing, I tried to use effects and compression very sparingly. The Waves Gold Bundle plugins for VST are awesome. I think reverb and delay were the only effects I used. I think I may have used a subharmonic synthesizer on the bass guitar to thicken it up on the bottom. I would constantly keep comparing the mix to professionally released CDs like Foo Fighters, 3EB, and Sum41, depending on the song. That's how I would make sure the bass level was right and the kick stood out or the vocal wasn't too loud. Having a good set of studio monitors is a big plus also. I was using a pair of Alesis Monitor Ones and I wanted to throw them out the window. There is nothing worse than spending 8 hours mixing one song, only to find out it sounds terrible on every other system. I finally bought a pair of Event Electronics TR8-N powered studio monitors and am completely happy now.

Rob Leahy took the completed mixes and mastered them on his Macintosh based system using T-Racks mastering software. He used an Edirol 24bit, 2 channel, USB unit to handle conversion rather than rely on the built in sound card on his Mac. He again constantly compared to final master to pro CDs for level and EQ. He also tried to maximize the level without making the mix sound overly compressed.

It was a horribly tedious process that I wouldn't recommend to the faint of heart. This article really gives a brief overview of the process. But I'm already looking forward to the next project.

As Lithium Zero found out first hand, trying many different and seemingly ridiculous experiments can lead to rewarding results when recording. A lot of hard work on their part paid off in a great sounding CD.

While the argument about which brand or make of equipment is better than which will last forever, one thing is for sure: each person has his own preferences (I can tell you that many happy users of the Alesis Monitor One speakers wouldn't "throw them out a window." You have to try the equipment and let your ears be the judge. The recording will be your evidence. The listeners will be your jury.

Sorry about the legal analogy, but what do you expect on O.J.'s 10 year murder anniversary!

Check out the mpeg for the Lithium Zero song "When You're No One" on this page and go to their website www.lithiumzero.com.

--Zoe

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