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Nashville-based producer, engineer, and studio owner Russ Long has recorded country greats Dolly Parton and Neal McCoy, and he’s known for his dynamic work with rock, pop, gospel, rap, and film soundtrack projects, as well. Two projects—including Sixpence None The Richer’s songs “Kiss Me” and “There She Goes”—were nominated for Grammy Awards, and he has also recorded songs for Wilco, Newsboys, Allison Moorer, and the Girl, Interrupted soundtrack. A contributor to Pro Audio Review, Long co-owned The White House studio in town from ’94 through 2001 and spends much of his time these days recording bands in Nashville’s popular Omni Sound Recording, as well as in his own studio, The Carport. He recently finished a project with a Washington, D.C.-based band called Hotspur. Russ Long’s Guide To Nashville Recording, an instructional DVD full of
basic record engineering tips released by Audioinstruction in 2005, can be watched
to better learn how to professionally record any drum, bass, guitar, or vocal
recording session—whether you live in Nashville, or not. Long’s
disc is the company’s first in a planned series of similar “engineering
session documentary” discs filmed literally over the shoulder of the instructor
throughout a session. Future discs will address basic techniques for live sound
mixing and music mixing engineers.
RUSS: Although my use of compression and EQ varies drastically from one genre to another, my miking technique is pretty much the same for everything. One exception to this is that I’m more likely to throw up a few more ambient drum mics if the music is more aggressive.
RUSS: When I track to digital, which is almost always the case these days, I use quite a bit more compression than I would tracking to analog tape. But I tend to be minimal on the EQ end of things. I find that proper mic selection and placement drastically reduces the amount of EQ necessary.
RUSS: I generally have a favorite mic for most scenarios that I start with. If it doesn’t work, though, I’ll experiment with other mics until I find something that does. But I always use the Balls on the drum toms for every session I record [see photo.] I'm a lover of the Blue mics—I have a Cactus, two Bluebirds, and six of the Balls. The Cactus is one of my top two most frequently used vocal mics.
RUSS: During my sessions tracking Hotspur I tried one of my favorite things that I’ve been doing lately, which is using two mics per tom when I record a drum kit. I’ll put a Blue Ball on the top and a different dynamic mic on the bottom, and I had some Y-cables made up for me that combine the two signals—the cable reverses the phase of the bottom dynamic mic—and I run that combined signal of the two mics through one of my Daking modules. The result is astounding.
RUSS: I’ve had some good luck capturing drum ambience with mics strategically placed in large water bottles, or inside various lengths of PVC pipe. It’s kind of hit or miss and not really a technique but, when it works, it’s stellar.
RUSS: All of the technology that is available to us today. It’s far too easy to loose sight of what’s important: the song.
RUSS: Tracking Dolly Parton.
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