Bottom Freezer Update – arrangement finished, first fridge solo recorded

Ok, a first roughmix for Bottom Freezer has been recorded – including my first-ever (and possibly the world’s first-ever) fridge solo.

Work on the arrangement had been a little tricky insofar as while I was happy with the introductory part, I didn’t fully enjoy the verse (i.e. the part where the fridge solo goes). The design methodology was then defined as follows:

• The existing version was called the mainstream
• There were two additional ideas for the verse, which ended up in two development branches:
  • branch 1, which used the same meter as the mainstream for the verse (21/8), but a transposed chord progression from the intro
    • this was further branched (1a, 1b) including or not including the fancy bridge motif.
  • branch 2, which used the same meter as the intro part (12/8), as well as the same chord progression

This way, I was simply able to look at all versions side-by-side and assess them how they worked, alone and guessing how they might work with the fridge solo.

Days later…today I again listened at the different versions, and found the right one to be branch 1a (with the fancy bridge and 21/8 in the verse).

So far, the guide tracks (reading: bass and guitar played on a s/w synth) were already in place, and as I am still hoping to talk some people into performing those exact parts, there was no use in recording some proper tracks myself. So after adding some synth (also a “guide” version – using a Steinberg Spector patch; the final version will most probably use the Yamaha FS1R), it was time for the fridge solo.

So how do you record a fridge? For guitar amps, acoustic guitars, lead vocals, drums and similar stuff, you’ll find lots of recommendation for equipment choice, like small-diaphragm condensers for the overheads, Sennheiser MD421 for toms, Shure SM57 for snare and guitar amp, large-diaphragm condenser vor vocals etc. For the fridge, I had to guess.

Adding to the choice problems (or rather helping, if you will) is the setup area: while when recording normal instruments, you usually are able to place them in a way that makes microphony easy, this is not the case with my fridge, as it’s integrated into the kitchen. So I decided on a combo of Rode NT1A large-diaphragm condenser and a Beyer M201 (chosen, among other things, for its small size) lodged into the area between fridge and wall. Both went through the RME QuadMic, the most “neutral” of my better-quality micpres [1].

Perhaps this is also the right moment to note that the noises I wanted to pick up was the squeaking door, not the compressor of the fridge (or motor driving the compressor), so a) I didn’t have to wait for an active cycle (which wouldn’t have been that hard, considering the outside temperatures of above 25°C), b) I had some options as how to play the thing musically.

The solo was the only part of the track which wasn’t completely written-out (I had merely made up my mind about some choices of phrasing), and so off I went in the usual fashion, recording three turns and then stopping.

One thing I had reflected on in advance was using Cubase’s VariAudio feature to tune the fridge-playing. This didn’t work as expected, simply because Cubase fails to detect a proper pitch for the fridge. So for a first mix, I simply used the unprocessed track (adding only some medium-fast compressor, OhmBoys delay and RoomWorks reverb), with the option to use some (tuned) synth filters later on.

And with that, I leave you with the first roughmix of the track, the finalized score and a photo of the recording setup.

Have fun!

Rainer

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Update: there may be a truly outstanding bassmaster performing on this track. Stay tuned for updates on that front!

1. You might argue that the pres of the TC Electronic Konnekt24D might be on par or even better than those of the QuadMic. However, there’s not a huge quality gap either way, and the Konnekt isn’t integrated into my studio setup, so the choice of pres.