Greetings Cyber-Nuts and Bolts!

Welcome, wandering eyes and fingers! This constitutes the first blog of recording empire Figment Productions (http://www.figmentproductions.ca), where I will take this electro-space to blather on about projects I'm working on, bands and artists I'm collaborating with, gear I'm currently using or lusting after, and various geeky anacdotes to do with recording, songwriting, and general nonsense. This will also be a venue for unabashed and shameless promotion of my thought-rock band, Parlour Steps (http://www.parloursteps.com) and other bands I like and lust after.
In the spirit of extroversive nihilism and a driving need for acceptance, I hope you like it. Let's dig in.

On March 9th I headed into wonderous Vogville Studios (http://www.vogville.com) in glorious Port Coquitlam (over on the blander side of the tracks) with my band, Parlour Steps. We stepped into that posh little den of art to translate one of our songs, Thieves of Memory, into glorious digital one's and zero's. You can hear the rough mixed results at our website.
Now Vogville is owned by a very forward thinking man, a Mr. Jonathan Fluevog (yes, that Fluevog, heir to the Fluevog shoe Empire). He has been tireless, and determined to go broke, outfitting this place with nearly every little bit of gear I've been desiring lately, culminating in his recent investment in a Digidesign Protools High Definition (HD) rig, clocked to an Antelope master clock. This thing sings.
I layed down the 32+ tracks of this new song into 24bit, 88.2 kHz Broadcast Wave files. Reasons being I had some guide tracks in 88.2, stemming from a period when I was mixing in the box at home on my Nuendo/ RME rig and thought that since 44.1 was just a halving of 88.2, less math meant easier, therby better, conversion during mastering. My little obsessive brain can chew on this shit for hours.
The tracks came back out of his G4 sounding exactly like how I layed them it. So precise. The imaging was immaculate, everything slotted so well together. Only when I started overdubbing through the Apogee Rosetta D/A converters did I start to notice that Apogee, somewhat high frequency enhanced, sound. It's pleasing to me so I went with it.
The mic/ patch breakdown was straight forward vanilla, representing what I've been going for, gear wise, for years now. The input list is detailed below, for those interested.

Kick Drum
AKG D112, Vintech 1073 preamp, Empirical Labs Distressor
Aphex D6, SSL preamp/ compressor
Converted NS10 woofer (so fuckin killer!), Avalon 737 pre

Snare Drum
Top - Shure SM57, Vintech 1073 preamp with a hint of 3.6K boost, Distressor
Bottom - Octavia pencil condensor (adequate), SSL pre/ comp

Toms
Sennheiser 421's, API preamps, Summit tube compressors

Overheads
(2) spaced pair Rode NT1's, SSL preamps, Amek compressors (smooth as silk, baby)

Mono Rooms
Shure 57 taped to the floor, SSL preamp, 1176 compressor with 20:1 ratio squashed
Rode K2 tube mic, Vintech 1073, 1176 compressor 20:1 squashed, with a slow attack, fast release for maximum pumping. I could listen this all day.

Chamber (Vogville has one of the coolest little chambers around, with a decay time suited for most rock recordings. As it is seperate from the live room, I mic it up and add it to the track as I see fit, with the option of a big, boomy room sound, or a tight intimate kit sound)
(2) Neumman TLM103's, Vintech 1073's with a hint of 5K boost, Joe Meek Optical Compressor

Bass
A Gibson Thunderbird from the '70s, DI'd through a J48 into a Vintech 1073, into the killer Teletronics LA-2A. Amped through an Ampeg tube head, Trace Elliot cab, mic'd with the Rode K2, Vintech 1073's, into an 1176 at 4:1. I mixed these two tracks through a Dolby Noise Reduction encoder, kind of a hi-end multi-band compressor with fixed ratios/ attacks etc. Sounds phat without too much low end mud that I'd need to dial out later.

Guitar
A Godan semi-hollow through a VHT head feeding a Mesa Boogie cab mic'd with a 57 and a 421, phase corrected in Protools, through 1073's, then through the Amek compressors. I had Rees double the track for phatness. I had to really brighten it up with the pultec eq to make it cut.

Stomping
We carried in a bunch of rotting, tetnus-freaky boards out of the blizzarding parking lot to try and get a thick stomping sound in the chamber. I put on the hardest shoes I have and went at it, but it sounded clacky and thin. Then I noticed the wooden, hollowed staircase in the chamber and it was love at first sight. I put a K2 under the stairs and the TLM103 overhead to catch the chamber decay, both through the 1073's and Amek comps. Then I did the two tracks in one take each, stomping away like a freakin four-on-the-floor funk-zombie. My feet are still bruised from givin'er!

Sex-a-phone
Eric Termaat came in, looking as good as he sounded, and blew away into the K2, with the TLM103 in the chamber. 1073's again, with 3.6k opened up a bit. Amek compressors smoothed it all out.

Vocals
Rees, Julie, and I wailed into the Rode K2, thru a 1073, into the LA-2A. Glorious. I grabbed as much chamber sound as possible on this song, so I left the TLM103 up and mixed in some of that real phat room sound. Keepin it real, yo. Nothing like sound waves bouncing around a real, imperfect room. Digital isn't as gritty and convincing.

Various Synths and Organs
All midi, I'm ashamed to add. We didn't have the time or access to the real synths. For our next record, we will hunt down the real shizzle, fo shnizzle!

All monitored through Halfer Amps, NS10's and Genelec's. (God Bless the Mogami wiring).

In early April I head into Vogville to start in on The Neins Circa's next record. They are fantastic and magical - Cameron Dilworth being a songwriter of masterful purportions. I'll be laying the skinny clear and throurough here after.

Caleb