Blumpy: A Logical Way to Musical Freedom
In addition to switching mics, Blumpy uses his Mac to push new effects. “We’re playing with the way acoustic guitars are used,” he explains. “For instance, we’ll take an arpeggiated guitar part and run it through the Logic plug-ins Tape Delay and Rotary Cabinet.” The latter simulates the rotating speaker cabinet that produces the Leslie effect, the sound of the legendary Hammond B-3 organ. “So the guitar turns into this textured, almost synth sound for a bed track. The grinding, blurring sound of the Leslie creates a constant musical movement that never takes your attention from the vocal, but it makes a mood.”
Open Minds, Open Ears
Blumpy hopes the Hedges record will appeal to music lovers whose minds — and ears — are open to new auditory experiences. “A lot of people enjoy hearing records that sound different, not just in the songwriting, but from the engineering perspective — in the recording itself,” he explains. “There’s an art, as well as a science, to sound engineering.”
“It’s not like we sit down, listen to the band and say, ‘Okay, make it sound like this.’ We’re exploring during the recording process.”
Blumpy definitely likes to mix things up. “Effects like the ones we’re using on Joe’s record give us a different palette,” he reflects. “It’s like fusion cuisine — it’s not the way you would normally do it. But when you do something totally crazy, even if that particular effect doesn’t make the record, it influences everything else. And some of that you keep. We’re throwing out the rule book.”
Blumpy’s Wiseacres Studio, located in Northern Michigan.
Mobile Recording Studio
For the first phase of recording, Blumpy is traveling with Joe Hedges to Wiseacres, his family’s 1920s-era lakefront resort in Northern Michigan. There, they’ll take over a couple of cabins and make lots of music.
Next, Blumpy heads to Ohio to capture the cello part and to Kentucky for the drum and bass. “Logic is unique because I can make a record anywhere,” says Blumpy. “The rest of the band isn’t coming to Michigan, so I’m taking my whole ‘recording studio’ — my PowerBook! — to them.”
A Backwards Workflow
Throughout the recording process, Blumpy and the musicians will use what he calls “a completely backwards workflow.” On most rock records, he says, “you start with a band in a room, playing live, then you redo everything step by step, focusing on each instrument.
But we’re starting with just the guitar part — no drums, just a click track — and then adding the bass and slowly working our way into making the actual song. After we do all the instrumentation, we’ll do the drums. Then we’ll go back and re-record the first instruments to get them right.”
It’s a process that keeps the creative mystery alive for Blumpy and his musician clients. “We’re going in with no knowledge of what the ultimate picture will be.” he says. “It’s not like we sit down, listen to the band and say, ‘Okay, make it sound like this.’ We’re exploring during the recording process. And Joe’s songs really lend themselves to working this way.”
Hedges will travel to Wiseacres having written most of the lyrics and music. But, Blumpy notes, the final result won’t sound like that. “The way the songs end up will depend on what happens during the recording sessions, in the instrumentation and on the Mac.”
The Sound of Logic
To Blumpy, sound is everything. “The thing I love most about Logic is the sonic quality,” he sighs. “Logic doesn’t sound like any other DAW. It has a much warmer, punchier sound in the low end, much more of a rock sound. That’s what has always been the struggle for me as an engineer — getting that punchy low end from a computer. And Logic just seems to have it already.”
Blumpy calls the Logic plug-ins “phenomenal — they let you sculpt your sound so you can make whatever you want of it.” His favorites include Compressor, Ensemble, Enveloper, Enverb, Linear Phase EQ, Rotary Cabinet, Sculpture, Space Designer and Tape Delay.
Track Folders Saves Time
When he sits down to mix, Blumpy gets revved about Logic’s unique Track Folders feature. “It’s a different way of working, and it saves me tons of time and frustration,” he says. “In other DAW’s you have to go through and edit all 24 or 48 tracks, group them and copy and paste them back and forth, following this whole complicated thought process.”
But Logic keeps it simple. “When I’m recording a band live, each musician plays to his own track,” he explains. “I record all the tracks into a folder, which might include three or four different takes of a song. Then I cut the folders in the Arrange window. All I do is move them onto a new track, comp them, glue the edited regions together, and I have my compiled takes.”
