It's in the Wind

BAMM Studios had its first outside performance when Ha Ha Tonka, straight out of the Ozarks, was kind enough to grace the stage. Brett Anderson, Lennon Bone, Lucas Long, and Brian Roberts are the distinguished southern gentlemen that played an amazing, broken down set on April 8 before their show at Slim's. This four-piece set consisted of acoustic guitar, mandolin, and acoustic bass all recorded through DIs. Lennon Bone, the drummer, played tambourine and stomped on a guitar case with a Beta 52 microphone inside warped with a t-shirt. Only two vocal mics were used to pickup the massive 4-part harmonies.

The recording was a constant battle against the wind, but the performance prevailed. The mix came out very clean and powerful. The wind is only heard at the beginning of “Pendergast Machine,” a song with nothing but mandolin and strong vocal harmonies highlighted by Lucas Long’s deep bass vocals. In the song “St. Nick On the Fourth in a Fervor,” Bone's idea to substitute a guitar case as a kick drum was turned into the giant, wall shaking sound that made it so much more than a normal live show mix. With a perfect balance of vocal patterns and instrumentation, it would be a smart idea to check tour dates and see when this great band will be playing next around you. Here's the link to their site.

Stay tuned for BAMM’s release of Ha Ha Tonka’s parking lot performance.

Jerad

The A Team

The A Team

The A Team at BAMM consist of Phil Lang, Jerad Fox and me, Sonia D. Pina. Together we have successfully created a studio at our new location, recorded some great indie bands, and even created a fully functioning stage and studio at the conference center at SXSW. Of course all of this has come out of some crazy ideas and creative minds, the best example of that being our studio in San Francisco, California.

We knew that to feel confident in inviting any type of band into our studio that we would need at least 16 channels. Even though we had a lot of different equipment to start with (Mac Pro, Digidesign 003, Digidesign 002, Apogee Ensemble, Mackie 1604 VLZ3, Korg D888, Phonic Helix Board, M-Audio BX5a speakers), we were faced with the limitations of our hardware. In other words, we weren't about to spend 100k on a 24-channel Neve board. After a couple playing around with all of the ins and outs, limitations of pre-amps, specificities about Phantom power, and still keeping in mind we wanted 16 functioning channels, we made it work by utilizing 3 of those consoles mentioned before—the 003, Ensemble, and the Mackie. I would have never thought mixing those three pieces of hardware would make a cohesive workstation, but it sure does!

Now, when we a stage where bands can play, a snake that takes the inputs from the stage into the studio room, and sub-snakes to communicate between the three consoles. All those channels get recorded onto our computer. Then, last but definitely not least, we send a feed of our mix live to the TriCaster for live streaming. End product? A mixed audio feed during the live, multi-camera broadcast, and all channels recorded to be mixed later. Seems so easy writing it now, but believe me, this took all of our training and experience to put together.


The TriCaster allows us to shoot multi-camera productions live and take the audio feed straight from the Digi 003.


Keep tuned folks. There is a lot more awesome content on its way.

Chao!

Sonia

Cross one off the bucket list

Most of us here at BAMM are musicians with an awesome day job, and I’m just another one of those musicians who can’t walk away from a good instrument. This past weekend I pulled the trigger on a 1975 Rhodes Mark 1. I have wanted one of these babies for quite some time, and I finally mustered up the nerve after a nice refund from Uncle Sam. Thanks, Barry Dunham.

I don’t have enough zeros in my bank account to collect old cars. Even if I did, I’d rather have this beast than a cheesey mid-seventies Corvette, complete with vanity plates. Now for the name. I was thinking Rhonda Rhodes, or just Fat Andy because it’s so freaking heavy (I learned the hard way that transporting one of these beasts in not a one-man job). Then again, you can never go wrong with LaFawnduh (Napoleon Dynamite spelling, of course).

Phil

4/15/10

I trust everyone filed taxes today. Now that we have that out of the way, Here’s a brief BAMM update.

We continue to mix and edit the audio and video from our incredible week at South by Southwest. It’s relatively easy to shoot footage, but the work comes in the post-production (as if we needed a reminder). Jerad and Sonia have been mixing the audio from the RV performances and interviews downstairs, while Jeff and Jamie have been editing the video footage upstairs. The footage looks and a sounds great. You can see a few of the videos on our main page. This may sound lofty, but searching through the bands playing SXSW has made it abundantly clear that there is tons of great--great--music out there by people we've never heard of. That's my warm and fuzzy for the day.


Jerad rocking the Pro Tools.


Jeff won't edit film without his editing hat.


SXSW was such a large project that the preparations made the move into our new space fast and unceremonious. Now that we’ve had a chance to take a breath we’ve taken on the task of renovating the space. So far I estimate 12 gallons of paint, at least a dozen rollers, and we’re working on our fifth role of painter’s tape. The renovation has gone smoothly, despite Fernando's false claim that I lost the paint roller and a heated encounter with the manager from the hardware store. We have a contractor coming in to work on putting a lighting grid over the performance space and stage curtains are on the way. It feels good to do some manual labor. Here's a picture of where we are in the process. Call me crazy, but I think we should have gone with even more of a candy cane theme around the mezzanine.

More soon from various jackalopes at BAMM.

Phil