Breakfast With Steve

Sitting on a bench on the corner while angela eats ice cream. Today has been relaxing and great so far. It’s pretty awesome to be away from Toronto for a while! That is all

So, here I am after a year or so, writing to you on my new iPhone. I’m about to head to Vancouver with Small Sins for a week of shows. I’ll try to write from the road, and take some pictures on the way.

I plan to do at least two as-it-happens breakfast blog posts complete with before and after pics.

Yay!

I figure it’s time I started talking breakfast over here at Breakfast With Steve. That’s right, I’m talking two eggs any style (scrambled, over easy, or medium poached depending on the day) some sort of fried meat or alternative, homefries, toast and coffee. It’s really the only way to start a kick-ass day of rockin’ on the road.

This particular breakfast went down October 5th, 2006 and is one of the breakfast highlights of last year. Small Sins has played the Doug Fir Lounge a few times, and I can only describe it as an “Indie Rock Resort.” What other motel/resaurant/venue can you eat every meal at, get a haircut, buy sunglasses, get a massage, play a show, have some cocktails, do laundry and sleep comfortably in?

Anyways, on to the breakfast. The eggs were perfectly fluffy, cooked just right, and served hot. The toast was a delicious multigrain, pre-buttered (a must for melting the butter) and served with jam. The peppered bacon was equally delicious, nice and thick without being too chewy. Lastly the homefries were seasoned with some sort of herbs (rosemary, methinks) and were slightly crispy and mealy at the same time.

The Doug Fir has great coffee, and someone is always checking to see if you need a refill (free, natch) and every table has a big bottle of water as well. The servers are smart with out being smart-alecs, and the decor is beautiful, like a futuristic log cabin. I can go on, but I’m just getting hungrier. If you are passing through PDX, do not miss Breakfast at the Doug Fir!

Angela and I have been wanting to keep a diary of the wine we drink for a while now, and last night I had the bright idea to keep our results in a blog format. Thus, Nicegrapes was born.

Of course, we no little to nothing about grapes, regions, vineyards, et cetera, but we know what we like. And, in keeping with our naive palettes, the bottle must cost under $15. Stay tunes as we review the finest, cheapest wines we could find in Toronto, with intoxicating results.

Cheers…

Tomorrow, Todor and I will be tracking some drums at his place in Little Italy. His room, actually a converted living room in an apartment, has supplied some my favorite drum sounds as of late. You, too can get amazing drum sounds armed with a small pro tools rig, some mics and a couple of decent preamps! Here’s how we do this shit:

Get Realistic – You are probably not going to get a massively ambient drum sound in an 8×12 bedroom. Listen to your drums in the room, and decide if they sound good before sticking mics everywhere. You should be trying to capture the rooms natural tone, not escape from it. If you don;t already hear what you are going for, record somewhere else. It’s also crucial that your drums are tuned in a way that’s pleasing to your ears (sometimes, that means out of tune, with totally dead heads and a hole in the snare)

The room we track in has 12ft ceilings with some fabric hung to control some of the reflections. there is carpet on the floor and a tiled, empty hallway right next to it. The hallway sounds great, almost like a lacquered chamber. The kits we record are varied, and inevitably, the modern DW kit will sound “modern” and the vintage WFL kit will sound “vintage.” If you can’t embrace the sound of your kit, ditch it, and borrow something decent.

Mic Selection – Like us, most people recording at home don’t really have that many options for mics. We have a few cheap Apex Mics, the 460, a variable pattern large-diaphram tube condenser, the 430 a large-diaphram cardioid condenser, and the 210, a figure-of-eight ribbon. Albini would scoff, but he’s not around so we’ll use them anyways. these will for the basis for our drum sound. we can get a great drum sound with just these mics, but usually they are reinforced by some close mics, usually a Sennheiser 421 or AKG D112 for kick, a 57/58/beta57/beta58 for snare, and ATM Pro 25’s for toms. It’s also fun to add a mic in the hallway for a more ambient room sound.

Positioning - Our three Apex mics are set up in the Glynn Johns fashion: each four feet from the centre of the snare drum, one directly overhead of the snare, another over the floor tom, facing the snare, and one in front of the kick drum aboput 5 feet off the ground and looking at the snare. You can capture a great drum sounds just like this. The kick drum mic will usually hover around the soundhole in the kick, looking at the beater, but it’s sometimes micing the front head of the kick (a condenser or ribbon will usually work better than a dynamic mic in this case)

Preamps / EQs /Compressors – If I had my way, I’d rent an API lunchbox for the close mics and some Neve stuff for overhead and room mics. But budget is usually a main concern, so I’ll put the gold channel on the mic I find most important to the overall sound of the kit, usually the front mic. Usually we rent/borrow a Vintech x81, four channels of Millenia, and a bunch of Art preamps. I tend to leave eq and compression for mix time, but if I compress, it will usually be the front mic, kick, and/or snare. And, speaking of eq, the Slipperman Tutorial has helped me immensely in knowing how and why to eq and compress.

So there you have it. If this sounds overly simple, it’s because it is. While it’s possible to obscure a good sounding kit in a nice room on recording, it’s impossible to rescue a bad sounding kit, or a bad room, or a bad performance into sounding great. If I can do it, so can you.

Scuba Maps is the best!

Scuba Maps is our nickname for Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 with GPS Locator [DVD]

I don’t know how we got by before GPS navigation. The QEW was all blocked up, so we took a little detour through picturesque suburban Hamilton.

I’m really into old Jingles (pre globalization of advertising) When we used to drive by Dryden, Ontario on our way out to Winnepeg, they had a radio station just devoted to welcoming you to the City of Dryden. It just plays a 5 minute loop which goes through the history of Dryden’s Incorporation, it’s mascot, Maximillian (or “Max”) the moose, it’s many attractions, and directions to the hospital from all points of entry to the town. It used to conclude with a jingle, which was later cut from the loop. Here are the lyrics I remember:

We’ve you everything under the Sun,
You can do it all in Dryden.
Shopping selection second to none,
Get it done in Dryden!

There’s a smile to welcome you
Always something fun to do
We’ve got everything under the Sun
you can do it all in Dryden!

These aren’t exact, but pretty close. If anyone finds an mp3 of this, I’d love to have it.

I’ve been screwing around with Ableton Live 6 for about a week now and I’m hooked.

Now, I’ve been using SAW software for 13 years now, and Live is the most radical shift for me since I started using VSTi instruments. Finally a program that takes away the learning curve and lets you just CREATE!

I started out using Live with DJing in mind. I imported the Simian Mobile disco remix of The Klaxons’ Magick. This tutorial I found on Youtube showed how easy it was to “warp” the track, which basically means setting up the tempo of the track and allows it to be stretched. (Thanks, “clowwny”!)

Then I did the same thing with another song ( Audion – Mouth to Mouth) and within a minute, I could cut freely between them, loop a section, and add audio effects instantly.

The included effects range from pretty standard (eq, compression, reverb, delay) to pretty innovative. My favorite is Beat Repeat. This effect capturers frgments of your audio clip and repeats it in sync with the track. There are endless possibilities with it’s controls for pitch, duration, filter, and segment size.

I’m really interested in using live to write music. I’m gonna take Live on the Small Sins tour, and hopefully I’ll have a track to post by the time I get home.

Sorry for the lame Train 48 reference. It is appropriate, though. I’m currently racing along at 100km/h on the early morning via train bound for Ottawa. Angela is moving to Toronto on Monday, and I feel since I’m sort of responsible for this whole ordeal, the nice guy thing to do is to help her pack and move.

This week I got a call to play on a couple of ads down at Pirate. This is notable for a few reasons.

Most importantly, It marks the first time ever, I think, someone has ever been hired for their clapping expertise. Kevin Hilliard, otherwise known as “The Clapper“, is simply, a genius. What started out as a joke, years ago, has turned into a serious endeavor. I mean, anyone can clap their fucking hands together, but Kev turns into a sublime art. He is REALLY GOOD!

Secondly, I feel lucky to have been involved in an upcoming ad for Listerine. As a massive Will Ferrell fan, I loved Blades of Glory. It’s too early for me to tell, but this movie just might be even more funny than Anchorman. This commercial depicts those two listerine characters (you know, the toothbrush and the mouthwash bottle) doing an amazing ice skating routine. The music is a total send up on 80’s action-rock, complete with synth-tom rolls, orchestra hits, and a sweet guitarmony line played by yours truly. The track was written by my old pal Ian Lefeuvre, and it was a pleasure to work with him again.

Ok, so I woke up this morning and decided I was going to revisit this blog, and try to post in it every so often. A lot has changed in the year and a half since the last post. Ladies and Gentlemen signed to Astralwerks and, for legal reasons, changed our name to Small Sins. Our album came out in May 2006 to critical indifference. I met Angela around the same time.

Small Sins went on tour with Radio 4, the Scissor Sisters, and the Little Ones. I joined Galore, and started playing shows and recording with them. Lately, I’ve been designing websites, writing music for commercials, and generally enjoying being self-employed.

The original purpose of this blog was to post pictures of me eating breakfast in places around the world. I hope to actually start doing this soon! For now, I have a site to finish, a room to clean, and then I’m off to Ottawa this weekend.

Peace!

We are sitting in a TV studio in Vancouver waiting to play on some show. We all look pretty haggard, but this is nicely covered by makeup.

Had a nice relaxing evening in last night. I watched Dead Man with Johnny Depp. Pretty awesome. Gotta go