Almasy Productions music production & engineering

Tuesday

Mar162010

Galway, Ireland - March 15, 2010

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 07:41AM

Crooked Still's March 2010 European tour is underway! Last night we played at Rosin Dubh in Galway to a full house. A fantastic show! The band even garnered a standing ovation, and then a SECOND encore!

I've brought along my Portico 5015 preamp/compressor for Aoife's vocal and it's performing flawlessly. The power supply takes 240 volts so only an adapter is needed to use it in Europe. I've been finding, at least to my ears, that limiting works better than compression on Aoife's vocal. So my ratio is pretty high - varying from 8:1, 10:1, or even higher, with fairly fast attack and release times. I've also been experimenting with running a second channel into the board, and re-compressing that channel as well, then mixing it into the mix to suit. I can use that second channel to add a lot of body and substance to her vocal, making it stand in the mix and take up a good amount of space.

Tonight we are off to Whelan's in Dublin, Limerick on Thursday night, and Ireland's famed Late Late show on Friday - can't wait!

Erick Jaskowiak |

1 Comment |

Monday

Jan252010

Portico 5015 alt use

Monday, January 25, 2010 at 11:36PM

I bought the Portico 5015 for use on the road on vocals with Aoife O'Donovan of Crooked Still. This unit, designed by the famous Rupert Neve, features a Neve preamp and compressor in one half rack space unit. The amazing part of this box is there is a separate output directly from the preamp, and another output from the compressor, both of which can be used simultaneously. I use the compressed signal for my FOH vocal channel and the preamp only signal for monitors. Works like a charm. and the compressor is SUPER smooth.

I'm cutting tracks tomorrow for Treva Blomquist at Compass Studios and had a revelation last night on using this Portico box. My favorite compressor on snare is the 1176. But I always prefer to use that during mixing, leaving my tracked snare unprocessed. The idea came to me to use this Neve preamp for the snare, giving me TWO channels - one completely straight from the preamp and one compressed as much as I want from the compressor. I'll record each signal to its own channel, and they'll be perfectly aligned. Brilliant! I'll find out tomorrow how well my theory unfolds in reality.

Erick Jaskowiak |

2010 - New decade, new website, new blog

Monday, December 14, 2009 at 03:54PM

2010 is upon us and I've been busy! Welcome to my new website and blog. I've been working on this a long time and glad to have it up and running and looking sharp. I'll have lots of great info here - bands I'm working with, studio projects I'm mixing and recording, tours I'm traveling on, and gear reviews. Upcoming posts include project updates for Jubal's Kin, tour updates from Crooked Still, and gear reviews of the Neve 8816 analog summing mixer and the Blacklion Audio Digidesign 002 conversion, which I'm getting done the end of January. Very excited!

I'm currently on the road with Crooked Still in the northeast, in and around NYC. I recently purchased a Portico 5015 for Aoife's vocal channel. AMAZING. Portico is Rupert Neve's current company, and this thing lives up to the Neve tradition. Super smooth preamp with tons of headroom combined with a HPF and a beautifully transparent and fast compressor all in a solid half rack sized unit. Best feature: dual outputs! One directly from the preamp (I use as a monitor channel) and one after the compressor, which I use for my main channel. I built a snake for it and this unit is proving its weight in gold (and it's heavy!). This unit combined with my Neumann KMS105 and her vocals are stunning (not to mention her out of this world talent).

I'm looking for topics and gear to review - what do you wanna see? Don't hesitate to send me an email, I'd love to hear from you!

Here's to a GREAT 2010!

ERock

Erick Jaskowiak |

1 Comment |

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