Hawthorne's Curve (Part 1)

Many of my neighbors have been asking me if my band is getting back together. While it's hard to say if that's true, I have been recording bands at my home project studio. This past week, I had the pleasure of producing Hawthorne's Curve, a North Carolina based modern rock band.

The four piece band arrived last Thursday. We tracked drums on the first day, all guitars on the second day, and completed acoustic guitar tracking on the third day. Also on the third day, we completed one master vocal take. It was a complete joy to work with these guys.

I tracked everything reasonably flat, meaning no audacious EQ or undoable compression settings. I'm finding that the tracks will require a little bit of thinning out, but that's a good problem for a mixer to have.

The band has booked one additional day to finish up vocals.

The band is a fairly traditional four-piece rock band. The drummer, Timmy, had a second snare drum. I wondered about how that would affect the imaging, but it really didn't change much in the big picture. The extra texture seems nice in the rough mixes.

The bass player, Rhob, plays a five-string Tobias bass. The extra low string added a nice dimension at times. He's a seasoned player. His tone was very well rounded on the bottom end. I even had to roll a little off, as you can see to the right.

Roger, the guitar player, was very skilled. He played mostly through a 50 Watt Marshall with vintage 30's. He performed all of the songs with one or another variety of Les Paul. A Shure 57 Mic sounded great on his rig. The morning he arrived to track his parts, he ran into the control room shouting "You boys ready to melt some faces!" He was excited to record and his tracks have a lot of life.

John Hawthorne, the group's leader, principle singer and acoustic guitar player, tracked most of his stuff on the third day. I used a DI line and a front mic on the acoustic guitar to give it some stereo depth. He usually plays with some chorus effect on his acoustic guitar. The DI line lends itself well to that purpose. We completed one master vocal take and plan to finish up vocals on the next recording date. His vocals have a lot of grit and personality to them. I've never recorded a heavier band, so this will be very fun for me to finish.