PRODUCTION VALUES: Home Cooking with Cake

Mar 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Maureen Droney

Once you're sure you're using the right mic, it makes it easier to record. You don't feel as ambivalent about things, because once you understand the mic, it's all up to you as the player. You know what you're going to get out of it, and the rest of it — the tone, etcetera — is up to you.

It's important to spend a lot of time with a mic, to listen to it in different rooms and see how it's responding. That gives you a sense of consistency. That's why I went with the SM57. I understood it. With some of the other mics there seemed to be too many factors that went into getting the most out of them. A lot of times I had to play something really in the moment, without time for an elaborate setup. I didn't have to have to treat the mic gingerly. I could just slap up the 57 and go.

That's true with the board setting too. You want to know what's coming from the mic, and what's coming from the board. I have to admit that I didn't want to even begin learning about the mics. I thought they weren't as important as the performance. But that's not really true. There are a lot of subtle and not so subtle characteristics about mics. In this case, it was usually best for me to stick with the simple thing and concentrate on the performance.

Do you improvise your parts or write them out?

di Fiore: If it's a solo for a record, it's written out. This isn't a jam band; I want to be sure of what we're doing. Whenever there's an idea — mine or somebody else's — it's a real time-saver to write it out first and play off of the sheet music. That way, you can be consistent about your takes. You're not fishing around for the right notes. Since it's all right in front of you, it becomes about how you physically feel to perform it right.

What kind of preamp did you use on the trumpet?

di Fiore: Mostly we went right through the Mackie, with no compressor. Actually, my trumpet was pretty neglected [laughs]. There are no other horn players in the band, and we don't have a producer who's worked with horns. I end up going on the fly and hoping it sounds good. If it doesn't, we'll usually just rerecord my part and try to get lucky in some other way. We tend to go for the distorted sound, and then we make it more lush by overdubbing a second track.

Cake's arrangements leave space for the trumpet.

di Fiore: That's right, and that's different from most bands. In general, we make my horn parts sound not too good on purpose. Instead, they're kind of junky, not super smooth. That caters to the record and how it works with the electric guitars. Just like John plays his nylon string guitars through a Fender Sidekick amp, then overdrives it all the way so it sounds really grainy and scratchy and unnatural. It's a similar approach with the trumpet. We're trying to get good melody and rhythm, but we don't necessarily want it to sound too smooth.

The lead and backing vocals are very present. It sounds like you're not processing them at all.

McCrea: We don't put anything on my vocal, as far as reverb, effects, or delay. I don't think any of that works for my voice. I compress it a bit.

The other band members were more involved in singing background vocals on Pressure Chief than on past CDs.

McCrea: That's another really important advance that we've made as a band. It was a big hurdle for certain people in the band. Again, it could be a product of not having a stranger in the room.

Are the vocal parts written out?

McCrea: They're all in our head. We just listen to the song and imagine what will work. I think it's better not to sing the first harmony that you come up with. It's better to live with it for a week.

How do you record the background vocals?

di Fiore: We all gather around one mic. Sometimes we leave one person at the board, or one person presses play at the board and runs in the room to get on the mic. We usually use a Sennheiser or a Røde NTK [in omnidirectional mode] and try to match each other's timbre a bit.