Brian Spragg Recordings

Morgantown, WV

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About

Hi, I do recordings for friends' bands mostly out of fun but also to build up a portfolio to give people an idea of what I can accomplish with the limited gear. I completed the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, OH in Jan - Feb 2004. I have my certificate of completion and letter of recommendation.
Let's talk gear, shall we?

Apple iMac 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo 1.5 GB Memory
Presonus Firepod (8 Channel Preamp that records to iMac via Firewire 44.1 kHz - 96 kHz)
Mackie Tracktion 2 (for all mixing)
Presonus HP4 Headphone Amp

Shure Beta52A - large diaphragm supercardioid dynamic - kick, guitar and bass amps
Shure SM57 - the do-everything microphone - snare, toms, guitar and bass amps, vocals
Audio Technica Pro25 (2) - hypercardioid dynamics - kick, snare, toms, guitar and bass amps, and trumpet
M Audio Pulsar II (2) - small diaphragm condensers - acoustic instruments, drum overheads
M Audio Solaris (2) - large diaphragm condensers - acoustic instruments, vocals, drum overheads, strings

The recordings that are or will be on this Virb account will be some of the ones I feel came out the best, although I'm constantly experimenting with new equipment and techniques so everything is suject to change. I'll try to include various styles/genres.

The Dave Bello tracks turned out fantastic and everyone in the group was a blast to work with. They had saved a bit of money at a show and asked if I'd record five tracks for them, two of them appear here. This recording session was actually recorded on two different digital platforms, all the drum tracks (K, Sn, OH L, OH R) were recorded onto an Alesis HD24 Hard Disk Recorder with a Yamaha MG32/14 FX for the preamps, and the overheads with into an Alesis 3630 Compressor, just a bit so they wouldn't clip. I had then purchased the Firepod and decided to experiment with trying to the do the rest having never used any firewire/usb type of interface (also incredibly nervous because at the time the iMac had only 512 MB memory, so once we reached a certain point, Tracktion would stall a bit). Everything turned out spectacular and the guys in Dave Bello Band just decided to post the tracks as a free download.

Librarians are good friends of mine that I had recorded a song for about a year after I'd completed the workshop so they could post it on their website. The session was a lot of fun, but it was tiring doing all the tracks in one day including all overdubs. We recorded into the early morning and even during the tracking of the group handclaps, you could slightly hear the booming bass of a hip hop show going on in the venue underneath their apartment. These two tracks here are two of the three I just finished in August of 2007. we had some fun tracking three guitars with ebows and a glockenspiel for the bridge in La La Land and it really became an amazing addition to the song.

It's Birds is the music project I'm currently involved in, and the track that appears here actually is the mastered version by our friend Russ Fox of Broadmoor Recording. Drum tracking was almost a nightmare because this song was still pretty fresh in all of our heads and our drummer became very irritated at himself if he messed up during a take. He pulled through and it became one of the best tracks on our full length.

The Binge Mechanisms is a band the ex-It's Birds drummer Jim Rita had started as being a band that plays full musical movements and not separate songs. This is movement eight of the 28 minute long recording session called "Fops." It was interesting because at the time I was living in Martins Ferry, OH, and Jim had requested we recorded the whole thing at once, and unfortunately we had to track everything. with no iso booths (no iso anything!) all in my bedroom, the second floor of my parent's house. We had amps facing against the walls with the mics propped up to them, but cranked so incredibly loud that there was bleed through every mic in the room. Jim's amp had a 57 on it and the other guitar player had a Pro25 in front of his. Their noisemaker and tambourine player Nick had a cheap Strat copy plugged into a solid state Fender combo, the guitar was repeatedly jabbed with a drumstick and lifted the strings away from the body, it created the sounds of a creaking ship. I think the drumset turned out good especially since it was a carpeted bedroom and only two overheads and kick mic (one of the overheads even tilted down a bit while they were playing, but no one could do anything about it). You can see some of the video of movement 7 going into 8 on youtube if you search for Binge Mechanisms Brian Spragg.

"Kill Them With Kindness" is one of five songs I recorded with FOX Japan that will be on their Hell LP coming out this late Summer (2008). It was great working with them (even though I was a bit stubborn while recording overdubs) because we all have played shows before and knew each other well, so we all knew what we were trying to accomplish. The tracking of drums and all the main instruments went quick and then we got to go into overdubs. Charlie Wilmoth, the singer and guitarist (panned to the left speaker in stereo), played viola and it was a lot of fun recording that, but we don't have any on this track. BUT we do have some great group vocals yelling "Kill! Kill! Kill!" and "Die! Die! Die!" which is always funny because I just imagine my neighbors hearing a group of people saying that over and over again with no music behind it from the open windows of my bedroom. We also did my favorite overdub which is handclaps in the end. They're mixed a little lower than usual just so the drums can carry it, and we have two keyboard tracks on top. The keyboard was cool because we plugged a Casio into a Smokey Amp (Cigarette box turned into a 9V battery-powered amplifier with a 2" plastic speaker). The sound was pretty cool because the Smokey tends to respond to a guitar volume knob, but in this case was hooked up to a keyboard and it's volume slider. The Smokey is definately not the best tone in the world, but it's surprising some of the sounds you can get out of it (not to mention, you can power a 4x12 with it!).

manHAND is a side project of mine and Andrew Slater (from It's Birds and FOX Japan). It started mainly as a backup band to play shows if local support was needed and just to have fun. We recorded a full CD in a day and made some packaging and sold them, but then realized we should just give it away, so soon there will somewhere to download all the songs of it. "Scallion" is the opening track on the AND EP. What made this so fun was I played a standard guitar but tuned the Low E down to A, so that those big notes are that low A hit real hard. manHAND can sound kind of thin at times since it is just drum tracks and two guitar tracks to layer on, but no bass. So we were asked to record a song for local film-maker, Justin Channel, for a short comedy film. He asked if we could write some darker sounding music, so I used my brother's baritone guitar (which he had tuned down an entire whole step). "Ghost Vun" has a loop going throughout, except for the big part near the middle. We recorded the left guitar and drums at once in the same room with no isolation (it's surprising how little bleed you get if the mics set up one way) and then I added a second guitar track to thicken up those louder parts and accents.

Thanks!
Brian Spragg
singlewithcheese02 at yahoo dot com
myspace.com/itsbirds