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Cathedral



Last Updated: 1/12/2009

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Status: Single
City: Long Island
State: New York
Country: US
Signup Date: 2/14/2007
September 21, 2007 - Friday 
"The Bridge" has been built. The big symphonic sound, the Mellotron, bass pedals, classical guitar, and dramatic themes have been carried over. Three years of experimentation and rehearsal have gone by, more than a year of recording, editing and mixing. Finally "The Bridge" is ready for the public. The classical precepts of progressive music were never far from our mind. The new work pays tribute to it's roots but is also a "bridge " to the Cathedral of the future.We literally had to rediscover our chemistry after thirty years of life experience and new technology. It has been a very challenging journey.
In 1978 "Stained Glass Stories" was recorded above the Palace Theater in the then wild and notorious Times Square of Manhattan. We had a week to do it. The modern Cathedral chose a more serene setting and pace. We spent much of 2006/7 at Ian London studios close to home on the South Shore of Long Island. Deer grazed on the back lawn but inside we were co-producing in the same passionate, intense way that we write our music. Our long time colleague and proprietor of Paris Recording, Brian Unger was brought in to engineer.
The future is now before us. We've already returned to writing, eager to put to use new ideas that have catalyzed from the process of last year.The chemistry is there, new compounds are forming, formulas evolving. Cathedral moves forward.
Molesome

 
Hey hey,

I have listened to some of the tracks...Did you use electronic drums on the album ?

Best regards,

Mattias
 
Posted by Molesome on March 24, 2008 - Monday - 7:05 AM
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Cathedral

 
Hi Mattias. Mac did use electronic drums on "The Bridge". There has been some criticism. What is your opinion?
 
Posted by Cathedral on March 24, 2008 - Monday - 4:14 PM
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Molesome

 
I think it loses a lot of the dynamics and the sounds aren't too hot either...Why did you choose them ? I know it is a unfair comparison but I have always liked the drum sounds on stained glass stories as they felt pretty unproduced and a bit rawer than on a lot of other more fusion sounding records...Maybe this wasn't a intended thing but it really worked in context.

// Mattias
 
Posted by Molesome on March 24, 2008 - Monday - 5:26 PM
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Cathedral

 
I suppose our drummer would best answer this but here is my take on it. Mac has been using both electronic instruments and acoustic drums from his work with "Industry" till now. I think he wanted to expand his palette of sounds in a very accessible space. In rehearsal the roland drums allowed us to keep moderate listening levels as both the bass and guitar were going through processing/modeling and direct into the console. I had hoped that, with proper treatments in the recording studio, we could give the drums some "presence" and ambience but I will be the first to admit this was not successful. There was an enormous learning curve on 'The Bridge". I certainly wouldn't record the mellotron the same way again. We've pretty much thrown out our modeling gear and gone back to real amps. Mac is still determined to experiment with the electronic drums but I think we will be probing different ways to make them sound better. At some point we hope to remix the Bridge, reamping as much as possible and doing some submixes onto audio tape. I am not happy about the keyboard sound or levels at all at this point. Your ideas are always welcome-TD
 
Posted by Cathedral on March 25, 2008 - Tuesday - 4:47 PM
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Molesome

 
I have actually no Big " vintage " or " all analog " flags to wave. I think everyone should use what suits them best...I have just felt that the electronic sounds often are a bit limited in their vocabulary. Unbeatable when it comes to volume and space issues though... Great for effects stuff but there is something about the physical aspect of every hit being just a bit different depending on where in the song you are et.c on the Änglagård albums you can actually hear the snare drums pitch sinking throughout the song due to some young kid hitting it as hard as he can for 11 minutes.

What I like to do in cases like this is to do an A/B test. Record a guitar line with a line 6 pod and then mic a real amp and switch in between. If everyone likes the pod better...Hooray ! We have saved shitloads of time and space..

BTW how did you record the Mellotron ?

// Mellotron
 
Posted by Molesome on March 25, 2008 - Tuesday - 9:13 PM
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Cathedral

 
the snare really is the big problem for me. There seem to be very few layers of oversampling going on on the Roland kit and it effects the dynamics of the music quite a bit.
the mellotron, my m400, was recorded straight into the console. I was using the m400 3violins tapes and we brought the high end up quite bit trying to get more of a MKII sound. I've been doing the reverse of this lately, using Streetlys MKII 3violins and dropping the high end. I've been splitting the signal, running one half dry and the other through a hammond reverb unit into an amplifier and miking that. On "the Bridge" I used some sampling for Chamberlin sounds but have since gotten my favorites on racks from our friend Markus.
 
Posted by Cathedral on March 27, 2008 - Thursday - 1:31 AM
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