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BENJY
KING is an all-encompassing producer, arranger, scorer, engineer, singer,
songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His formative years were spent on
the road in the bands of legendary artists such as RICK DERRINGER, LITTLE
STEVEN (BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN), and SCANDAL with Patty Smyth.
One of his most interesting projects was arranging and conducting the
musical '20th CENTURY POP' starring Marianne Faithfull, Darlene Love and
Merry Clayton.
With his main focus deep in record production, Benjy has slowly collected an amazing array of high end recording equipment, including vintage microphones and compressors as well as dozens of guitars and keyboards.
One of his latest additions is the Transient Designer 4. Here is why:
BENJY’S
TRUE LIFE TRANSIENT DESIGNER STORIES
THEY MADE A MISTAKE
I have NEVER used anything quite like this. I was set to mix a young bands
VS-1680 tracks I had bounced up. To my dismay the drums were very poorly
recorded. I asked the drummer to show me where he had placed the snare
mic. About 4 inches inside, over the top of the snare, pointing down towards
the center*. It really couldn't be much worse. In 2 seconds, with the
only 2 knobs it has, The Transient Designer got the snare spankin'. And
I'm NOT exaggerating. It's completely ridiculous.
I
MADE A MISTAKE
I have been recording an entire album of Dylan-esque, 3/4 time songs,
using various three microphone setups on the drums. While listening to
rough mixes with my wife she commented that the drums sounded “Too
far away” on one song. I got defensive and stated, “I like it”.
She replied, “Well then, you should put ‘someone’ else
over there with them because they sound like they’re across the street!”
I became more curious (because she has NEVER been wrong). I went to look
at the track sheet. HA! What a jerk. On that track I had *accidentally*
turned the front of the kit mic, a ribbon in figure 8, sideways: in essence
micing the gold records on my wall!! O.K., Sparky...rationalize that!
Do you know that with one turn of the ‘sustain’ knob I brought
that drum kit right up into my face**. And this is NOT a rationalization.
*So, how can that be? How can you get control of something that seemingly is not there? The microphone placed where it was, captured a very midrangey, tennis ball tone, therefore ‘masking’ any transients (you know: high-end. Real high-end. i.e. Squeaky bus brakes are transients on KILL!) With a turn of the sustain knob you can instantly find these ‘missing’ transients. Kind of like sending a damaged Zip disk to a data recovery service. Like magic, they find your data.
** Have you ever spent an hour (thinking it’s been ten minutes) tweaking a gate on a drum kit: only to take a break and come back to listen to unusable results. One turn of the sustain knob. One turn of the attack knob. All finished. No unwanted artifacts. Nothing but greatness.
Yours truly, Benjy King
