Jake

Jake:
Good. That little mic is convenient, compared to... I mean my bigger one I got for mine, sounds better than that mic, but, you know, for this sort of thing, I'm tempted to get one like that.

Scott:
Did you get a Sony one?

Jake:
Yeah, I got the Sony one that's like 200 or or so.

Scott:
Yeah, I was debating over those too, but I just went for the cheaper route. I went to go see that documentary, um, that Wilco documentary

Jake:
Yeah... I'm Trying To Break Your Heart.

Scott:
Yeah, that's the one. I came away from there... Well, I really liked it. Then I had to go home and burn one of The Guest Stars shows onto CD cause I wanted to listen to it. I recorded them at Dan's party and then once at I-Spy but I didn't label either of the discs. I was listening to them trying to figure out which one was which. I would think, "Ok, this is the I-Spy show.." But I kept thinking, "Man, this sounds like crap compared to the Wilco shows in the movie!" Of course, they didn't have the $100 Sony microphone.

Jake:
Well, they were probably taking feeds off the board too, know what I mean?

Scott:
They recorded some stuff off the boards, but you really need to have a dedicated board for that.

Jake:
Yeah, that's what they were probably doing. They have what's called a splitter snake, and so... A snake is like there's a junction box up on the stage that all the microphones plug into, and then it's one long line that runs back to the sound board. A splitter snake then has a second female or male, or whatever it is, XLR that you can plug another set of cables into and run that off into a second board or a separate part of your board. That, or if you take it off the board and then have a mic up in the back of the room to capture the ambient sounds too and then you kind of mix those two together. That can sound pretty good too.

Scott:
Yeah, that was sort of the problem with our show (Dialectics of Rawk present an Evening of B'Austin) It was all keyboards, vocals and, uh, drums.

Jake:
Right. And not a lot of guitar?

Scott:
Yeah. You couldn't hardly hear any guitar of bass. And in cases like that, the vocals sounded like crap.

Jake:
Yeah, that's really like when somebody has a disposable camera, and they take a picture of you. Even if you looked in the mirror and thought "I didn't look that bad!" It's something that makes you look worse. It's like the bad filter.


Scott:
*laughing*

Jake:
I mean, I have some board tapes from The Sunset that are like that too. Where I'm like, "Oh man, was it this bad?!"


Scott:
*laughing* Right! But it never is.

Jake:
Cause that's not how people experience it in the room. That's why when you used this rig and recorded me at The Crocodile, that was a good sounding show. That was a great PA. I mean, that didn't sound as good as it would have sounded if they had put a mic in front of my guitar too and split it out. You could have done a close mic-ed board thing with a very nice representation of how the room sounded...


Scott:
I've decided that that's the best place to record. I did a show at The Showbox, um, St Germain, and it came out pretty good until somebody threw their coat over the microphone.

Jake:
Yeah, I thought that came out pretty good.


Scott:
Oh, and then Ben's show, uh, Sanford Arms, and the Marc Olsen show. Which I didn't label those, either, so I need to go through them and find which is which. And then I did Clem Snide (at The Crocodile).

Jake:
That came out really good.


Scott:
Yeah, that came out pretty good.

Jake:
Yeah, that did. Well, Jim, who runs sound at The Crocodile, he's the only sound man, pretty much, they've had in the whole history of that club. So, I think when you have somebody who's done it pretty much everyday for years, and then you put that together with a really good PA.


Scott:
Yeah, it's great. They have that little ledge in the back. It would be nice to put the microphone up higher where you're not gonna catch the chatter. But I just threw it back there on the ledge that people put their beers on.

Jake:
In front of the soundboard?


Scott:
Naw, the soundboard is here (gesturing) and the bar is there... And every now and then you hear somebody say something, but not that much.

Jake:
No, it's cool.


Scott:
These things are great. Just solid machines.

Jake:
Yeah, I'd be curious to see what happens with mine. I've got to get it back from Ben. I don't know why I worry, cause I've screwed up more of his stuff than... It's an older brother thing kicking in. But when I'm really honest with myself, he's been a lot cooler with me than I have with him around that stuff.


Scott:
Is he using it for recording their shows?

Jake:
He wanted to take it to Maine this summer so he would have something to make demos with while he was there.

Scott:
What's he doing in Maine?

Jake:
Rosanne's sister and brother-in-law, they have a friend, who's family owns an island off the coast of Maine or something like that. There's a house on it. It's been something that Roberta and Roy and Allison and so on have done a bunch of times and Ben and Rosanne have gone out there periodically. They invited me to go out there once or twice, and I just couldn't get it together to go, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

Scott:
Do they go out for a couple of weeks?