Evan James

Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences
Duet Contest Winner

 

The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, Arizona is a hub for aspiring engineers looking to hone their craft and prepare for a career in the audio and music communities. Over the new year turn from 2008 to 2009, Apogee hosted a contest at the Conservatory asking students to submit projects using Duet in any creative fashion. After review by the Apogee staff, Evan James won with his immensely creative composition “Beach Canon”.

 

Interview:

 

Please describe the recording gear used when recording this track?

• Multitrack Recorder: Apple MacBook
• Interface: Apogee Duet
• Microphone: Neumann TLM103
• MIDI Controller: M-Audio Keystation 61 ES
• Headphones: Grado Labs SR80, Sennheiser EH 150
• Monitors: Tannoy 800a, Hafler TRM 6, KRK VXT8

Which Core Audio application did you use and why?

Logic Studio 8. As I began working on my submission, I was also in the midst of studying for my official Level 1 certification in Logic 8. How perfect, I thought, what better way to put my newfound knowledge to the test!

 

Please describe your production process for this track?

Recording and composing tend to happen concurrently for me. From what I had gathered about the Duet, it was an interface crafted with the home-recording-artist type in mind. I tend to fall into that camp, so I decided to compose a piece for the contest using the Duet and my overly-honed overdubbing skill. I broke up the recording process into two pieces: Record for an hour every morning in my school's recording spaces; later that night I would listen back and edit what I had recorded that morning, shaping the arrangement and adding software instruments. Once I had completed recording, I would make use of my school's great number of control rooms and the Duet's portability to construct a mix that hopefully didn't overtly betray the jigsaw puzzle construction employed.

Even though most musicians prefer to record later in the day and into the night, I found mornings to be refreshing! When you work alone on a project, second-guessing can be dangerous, thus to jump into recording soon after waking was beneficial to the process. Because I only had an hour to record each morning, it was necessary to get setup quickly.

Logic would instantly recognize it on boot-up. In the first week of recording I was more experimental; the process became more focused by mid-second week. Editing and adding software instrument arrangements at night made working in the morning easy, as I could pinpoint exactly what I needed to work on every night.

Mixing took place in two control rooms and one classroom at my school, the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences. Each room seemed to have distinctive frequency activity, so I was especially happy to be mixing inside of Logic and using the Duet to directly feed the monitors. I could tailor the mix as I felt it should sound in each room, hoping that in mixing in several places I would counteract the common mistake of carving out too much of a certain frequency because of a room's bias.

The sounds that you hear on the recording are made up of:
Instruments Recorded: Vocals, Hand Claps, Thigh Slaps
Software Instruments: Ultrabeat, Sculpture (x2), EXS24
Plug-ins Employed: Waves' RVerb, Supertap, and RCompressor. Logic's Space Designer, Channel EQ, and Chorus.

Overall, I was very happy and surprised by how smoothly the whole process went. I owe a good deal of that to the Duet, as its flawless performance throughout the process enabled me to easily compose, perform, and mix Beach Canon. As a home-recording-artist type I can say that it greatly helps the creative juices when you get to work with tools that perform better than you're used to. I'm very grateful to have won a Duet of my own!

 

What were your first impressions when using Duet?

I was greatly impressed by the Duet's use of a single endless rotary encoder to provide control. At first I was puzzled by how many turns of the encoder it took to bring the levels up to something audible, but then I realized that this meant that the resolution of the encoder allowed me to fine-tune pre-amp levels to perfection. Plus, with Maestro you can save your settings, allowing for quick and exact recall. This was especially helpful for me since I had limited time each morning to set up - I could load yesterday's input and output settings with a click and not have to worry about manually reconstructing the levels. The first time I pressed play I was blown away by the sound quality. I did some listening comparisons between the 1/8" headphone output on my computer and the Duet and found the sound had much better definition coming from the Duet.

 

What are your overall thoughts of Duet?

The Duet is an amazing piece of gear. I love the minimalist aesthetic of the device; I love the one-button functionality; I love the effortless integration with Logic. Not to mention that the way that it amplifies, converts and transmits sound leaves me speechless. I will use the Duet for years to come for my personal compositions!

 

Will Duet now play a strong role in your Production process?

Yes, it will. I cannot emphasize enough how much the Duet's sound quality helped the entire production of Beach Canon. After the first morning of recording I listened back and was amazed not necessarily at the quality of my own musical ideas, but by the quality of the capture of the musical ideas. Getting quality sound when throwing ideas around makes for a more productive workflow, as you don't have to expend a chunk of your brain power imagining how that vocal will sound once you EQ and bury it in effects to cover up for your poor recording equipment. The Duet will certainly be playing a strong role in my production process from now on.