Switchfoot - Hello Hurricane

[audiomichael]

I'm loving the new Switchfoot record. Is Mike Elizando, Adam Hawkins, the band or the tracking engineers around, and wanna talk about how it all went down?

[ProducerBoy]

Man, those guitar sounds are so raw! I'd definitely love to peak behind the curtain.

[fhames]

Awesome band and vocals.








Bryant - Hames Music

[arrowood101]

Mike doesn't come on here, but Adam Hawkins is on GS, he mixed the album and engineered some of the songs. Will send him a link. I work with Mike and Adam regularly, and assisted on the album. The band is some of the most fun/pleasant people to be around in the studio! Maybe if someone posts some questions Adam will answer them.

[audiomichael]

Cool!

The mixes sound great. Was this mixed at Mike's studio? The band had LOTS of pre-production for the album (according to the DVD). How much of that was kept, vs. re-recording everything from scratch with Mike E?

Thanks arrowood101,
M

[Audio Enginerd]

I've been listening to this album a good bit lately too. I'm a big fan of Switchfoot! I've met the guys several times and opened up for them before, so I've been following them for a little while. This album is definitely a little different than what they usually produce... I would also love to hear the ins and outs of of what went down on this latest release. (How many prepositions can I put in a sentence?)

[thebeatless]

Thanks for the introduction Brent!

I'm very glad people are digging the record!

I'll gladly answer any questions I can!

I'll start with the interest in the guitar sounds. The sounds that I tracked were always tiny vintage combo amps. Mike has a great collection of tiny old combos! A little Gretsch was the most popular choice throughout. The band brought in some little white combo too. I think White is the brand name. I don't really remember what it was, but it was killer!!! Usually to save time, the band would audition amps, and then we'd throw up a 57 and 421, maybe a 121, sometimes a U67. Sometimes I'd pick a single mic, sometimes use the combination. When using one mic, I'd use the Chandler Germanium 500 pre, to 550a, then normally to a distressor (6:1, just tickling the GR meter, and Dist 3). When combining mics, Mike has an old BCM10 that was modded to fit into the rack. I'd use the 1073 pres in that, and send one side of the mix bus to the 550a and distressor. I love the way the api eq's work on guitars! I usually just use the distressor to add a touch of attack, and the Dist 3 setting adds a little something special.

The band did a lot of the tracking at their place outside of a few tracks. When it was mix time, we did do it at Mike's studio. I'd get an hour or so to sort through their session and get a mix started. Then we'd do some overdubs. We did redo some guitar, bass, vocals, even drums during the mix sessions, but a lot of the original parts were kept. Then I'd finish the mix that night. It was an extremely difficult and exhausting way to mix a record!! Probably couldn't have done it if they weren't such awesome guys!

Thanks again!

Adam

[audiomichael]

Hi Adam!

Great work!

So this was mixed ITB?

The bass tones are huge on the album, and the guitar tones are smaller (in a good way). Making for a huge beefy wall of sound. Was the overdrive bass tracked that way or an effect added later? I'm sure that getting great bass tones must be a prerequisit when working with Mike.

John Foreman has a very unique timbre to his voice. Did this pose any interesting challenges come mix time?

[thebeatless]

Not mixed in the box. More of a hybrid mix. SSL AWS 900 and a good amount of outboard. Some tracks were summed together ITB and sent to a stereo pair on the console, but most the important stuff got it's own channel on the console.

As far as bass sounds, I think it was mostly just a di and a b15 on the songs tracked at Mike's. I'm not sure what the guys did at their studio. I probably hit all of the bass pretty hard with a distressor on mixdown with a combo of API 550a and/or channel eq on the SSL.

[benshea]

can you tell me a little about how you got that drum sounds?

Awesome work!!!

[thebeatless]

Originally Posted by benshea

can you tell me a little about how you got that drum sounds?

Awesome work!!!

Thanks again!

Pick a song, and I'll see if I can remember what I did with it, or maybe Brent can check the documentation. (Sorry Brent)

For tracking, I generally use the same basic setup that I posted a while back in a Rilo Kiley thread, but I didn't track the drums on some of these songs.

Mix wise, I'm pretty sure Kick got AWS ssl dynamics and EQ, maybe 1073 EQ if I didn't track it. Snare, waves ssl for the expander, an 1176, AWS SSL EQ, again maybe 1073 if not tracked by me. The rest was probably just AWS EQ. Parallel Chandler Abbey Road edition TG1 in limit mode is probably the key ingredient to most of the drums on the record. A few songs got a kick or snare sample blended in, but I usually hate to do that, so I avoid it when possible. I don't know if it's just laziness, or what, but I always put off adding samples.


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