Recording Eva Castillo: 3 hours later

I first met Eva at a jam session at the old Funk Box in Baltimore, Maryland sometime back in 2004.  I was playing in a funk-jazz combo, "The Deathburger Thing," and Eva was performing her solo pieces.  The guitarist of our band, Jon Cylus, asked Eva if she would join us on a tune called "Banana Fungus."  To say the least, Eva's soulful voice and funky music left an impression on me.  Flash forward about 8 months:  I have returned from a semester abroad in Barcelona, and I find myself setting up a small home studio in my apartment, and inviting Eva over to record some tracks.  We found a drummer, and start playing out.  One of Eva's many strengths is that she can hold her own as a solo artist, or put together a band to fill out her sound for a club or festival gig.

The Funk Box (a.k.a The 8x10 they have changed their names so many times I have lost track), invited the Eva Castillo Trio to be the house band for their open mic sessions.  At this time, we were playing with our friend and drummer Zach Williams.  Eva won some studio time at The Bunker Recording Studio, where she cut her first record "Day By Day" with musician and producer Chris Bentley.  Zach eventually left Baltimore, and we played some gigs with drum master Shareef Taher. 

 Eva was invited to perform on WTMD's program promoting local talent, "Baltimore Unsigned," hosted by Sam Sessa January 16, 2006.  We were interviewed, and performed live in the studio to 2-tracks (One room studio, Shure mics into a Mackie mixer).

Our first recording session for Eva's second record, "3 hours later," was on April Fools Day of 2007.  Alan Munshower was on drums, while I played bass and reached for the record button in the basement of our rowhouse in Baltimore.  Alan and I were in the same room, separated by a small baffle, and Eva was in the laundry room laying down some scratch vocals and guitar.  We recorded all the basic tracks to a Tascam 38 8-Track 1/2" reel-to-reel tape machine.  Drums had small omnidirectional mics as overheads, a Shure52 on the kick, and an sm57 on snare.  

The bass had a cardioid MXL mic suspended in the bridge with a velcro apparatus.  After all the basic tracks were done, we bounced the bass and drums into 4-tracks of ProTools, and began the overdub sessions.

We recorded Eva's guitar twice.  The first time, I used a stereo array, trying to give the guitar the feeling of space.  We found that the guitar sound was too weak, so we tried again with a single large diaphragm microphone on the body of the guitar, and the result was much warmer and detailed.  

Blake Mobley's keyboard overdubs were played on Fender "Sally" Rhodes, or a Nord Electro, going through a Fender DeVille Tube amp, micd with an sm57.  I also took my laptop and some mics to a grand piano in a practice room

 to lay down some piano tracks.  The percussion overdubs were done in the basement with 2 sm57s.  Alan and I did nearly the whole record in one take, only occasionally stopping to tune a conga or grab a different shaker.

The real magic happened at the vocal session.  I brought Eva and a portable workstation to the spiral staircase at the Peabody Conservatory.  I had her singing into an MXL large condenser mic, and I strung another mic three floors above her to capture the natural reverb.  The sound was angelic.  She did the whole record in one or two takes.  

She composed and performed her harmonies on the spot, always in key.  Beautiful.  She said that she felt so natural performing in a space that made her vocals sound so good, which gave her the confidence to sing her heart out.

The vocals and guitar for "Powerless" were recorded on a cassette 4-track.  It was risky using this format, but the end result is charming.  I added glockenspiel, guitarron, and shaker.  It was a challenge to mix, because the texture of the vocals and guitar on tape was drastically different from that of the direct-to-digital overdubs.  Imagine a painting, where the subject is painted onto a canvas (tape), and the background scenery is painted onto a piece of glass (digital).

For "Dice In My Hand," I played a Yamaha fretless electric bass.  I thought the track should be a bit funkier, so when I bounced the drums to digital, I used the pitch knob on the tape machine to slow down the tempo just a hair, and make the pitch of the drums a touch lower.  I then re-did the bass lines, and we worked from there with the other overdubs.  I used a similar effect on the "3 hours later remix," where I slowed down the tape, I added a delay to the snare drum from a guitar effects pedal (thank you Sandlord), and crafted a new concept for the tune:

I loved listening to the reverb on her voice, and I started listening to her harmonies in absence of the instrumental tracks.  At some point, a very striking harmony absolutely floored me.  Eva embellished a vocal melody and matched herself with the embellishment a fifth higher so perfectly it sounded alien.  I wanted to highlight this, so others could hear the amazing thing I heard.  For this reason, I have the vocals completely alone for this section of the song (if you have a copy of the "3 hours later remix," listen around 2:56).  The rest of the song is drums, bass, and vocals, until the last chorus when everything is piled on - piano, keys, guitar, percussion, strings, and effects.  I had to trick the session musicians into recording both the normal version of the tune, and then the last chorus of the remix.  If I had an orchestra at my disposal, I would have arranged the shit out of the end of that tune.

Mixing the record was a true pleasure.  I used a little digital reverb to make some of the instruments glue together a bit, but the natural reverb on the vocals was the true yum.  In mixing, I avoid automation as much as possible.  I treat mixing as a performance art.  I listened and took my time dialing up eqs, compression, and reverb, but the fader moves were all played live.  The tape imbued it's own personality on the record - there was a give and take there with capturing great sounds and performances, but having to deal with some inevitable tape hiss.  

Ed Tetreault mastered the record.  He used some very tasteful peak limiting, and pushed up the dynamics just a bit on each track.  That way, the dynamic range was retained, but more detail can be heard.  He also found a buildup at certain frequencies (probably due to the dimensions of my basement), which he equalized a couple of dB using large Qs (translation:  he used subtle methods to make it sound better). 

The CD release party was at the 13th floor of the Belvedere Hotel March 30, 2008.  Investing myself in this project from start to finish was a pleasure because of the people involved.  I have found that in life, it does not matter much what I am doing, but who I am doing it with.