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Rehearse & Record on the Road

Black Tide gets hooked up with a custom rig from JBL, Soundcraft, AKG, dbx, Crown, Lexicon and Digitech

The dilemma is the same for every touring band: How do you rehearse, write and record new material for the next record, while you’re out supporting your current album?

The solution became very clear for teenage metal wunderkinds Black Tide on March 21st, 10:30pm at Guitar Center Seattle, after a packed show at a local venue. That’s when the band first plugged into their new custom touring rehearsal/recording rig, hand-selected by Harman International U.S. Sales Director John Larabee and producer Johnny K. (Staind, Three Doors Down, Disturbed, Finger Eleven). The dream rig is comprised of choice gear from JBL, Soundcraft, AKG, dbx, Crown, Lexicon and Digitech.

Black Tide, made up of guitarist/vocalist Gabriel Garcia, guitarist Alex Nuñez, bassist Zachary Sandler and drummer/keyboardist Steven Spence, has rocked Ozzfest, toured with Avenged Sevenfold, and is currently touring in support of their new album, Light from Above, produced by Johnny K.

"They’ll be touring probably for the next couple of years to support this album," Johnny K. says, "and during that time, they’ll have to prepare their next one – rehearse, write songs, record demos, all the things that bands need to do."

The challenge is: how do you stay creative while you’re on the road? Many new bands face the dreaded "sophomore slump" when it’s time to make their second album. "Bands think they can write one song a month while touring, but I’ve seen big acts get home after 18 months and not have any songs," warns Johnny K., "It’s wise for any band to be able to capture song ideas while on the road. The trick is to do that in a way that meshes with rocking out nightly on tour, which is a whole different mindset than being methodical in the studio."

Drummer/keyboardist Steven Spence agrees. "By the end of this tour," he reflects, "people will expect a new record, so we’ll have to write while we’re playing tons of shows."

"To create an environment similar to what the guys are used to onstage," said Larabee, "We went with JBL MRX512M wedges, because they’ll encounter similar stuff in a lot of the clubs they’re playing. We added the AKG IEM-4 in-ear system, so they can be more mobile onstage. We also gave them three AKG WMS 450 wireless guitar systems so they can get up close and engage their audience.

"The JBL speakers are powered by Crown XLS 802 amps. In front of that is a Soundcraft MFX 20 mixer, with 20 XLR inputs. Sometimes they’ll mic the drums, and record their amps both mic’d and direct, so they’ll need a lot of inputs. It also has two monitor sends and a third send for the built-in 24-bit effects by Lexicon, so if they want some reverb or delay for vocals as they rehearse, it’s right there." A pair of JBL EON15 G2 15" powered speakers, driven from the Soundcraft’s main outs, can be used for side fills, or as mains for private gigs.

"Between the mixer and the amps is the dbx DriveRack PX. It’s a speaker management system that suppresses feedback, EQs the mains, monitors to the room [using the included measurement mic], and does dynamics processing. This is especially important if they use the in-ears, to avoid sudden peaks.

"We included a host of AKG mics," Larabee continues, "For the kick, the venerable D 112. A couple of new D 40 instrument mics. Three Perception 170 mics for drum overheads and snare/hi-hat. Four of the new D 5 vocal mics. The D 5 and D 40 have what we call a Laminate Varimotion capsule. It lets you get a lot more clean gain before feedback, which means more volume out of your stage monitors.

As the GC crew set up Black Tide’s new sound system, the band members ran around the store trying out various guitars, basses, and amps, which we expected, because these guys live to play. What we didn’t expect was that Steven would start busting out lightning-fast arpeggios on a Yamaha YPG-625 digital piano as Gabriel sat to his left, playing thunderous bass octaves in perfect time. We realized we were hearing their hit "Warriors of Time" – as Beethoven might have imagined it. After that, they improvised so many memorable hooks that we wondered if they had a whole other album’s worth of songs up their sleeves already.

"Not really," shrugged Steven, "I just come up with stuff. I just play what sounds good to me – sometimes I can sit at the piano for hours. It’s fun to write on piano, too. At home, I move from piano to drums and back, then I’ll learn the stuff on guitar to show Gabriel what I’ve done."

That’s why it’s important to have easy-to-use recording gear at arm’s reach, as Johnny K. knows: "I’ve walked in on rehearsals and asked the band ‘What was that song? It was great!’ They go ‘What song? We were just jamming.’ Back in the day, bands used to leave a cassette boom box recording in case something good happened."

No boom boxes here. Black Tide’s new recording tools include the Lexicon Omega, a four-channel USB audio interface to let them take feeds off the Soundcraft mixer during full rehearsals, and track them using the included Steinberg Cubase LE software. In addition to offering amp modeling and effects, the Digitech RP500 (also bundled with Cubase) and RP350 guitar pedals are USB interfaces as well. When the guys are playing on their own, they can capture ideas that might make it to the next album into a laptop, or overdub onto rehearsal sessions.

DAW software sometimes takes heat for the way that editing magic can take the place of a solid performance. Used in the right way, though, it can also help teach solid performance, as it did for Black Tide in the studio.

"Given that the guys were young and had lots of enthusiasm, sometimes they’d overplay," says Johnny K., "One thing I did was to show Steven the waveforms of his drum tracks in the software, next to a click, so he could actually see where his beats fell in relation to the click. Then I’d show him a studio pro’s tracks next to that click. You can see the pocket – it’s not quantized like a drum machine, but there’s a regularity to the push-pull a pro drummer uses to create the right feel for the song. Steven worked really hard for his tracks on the album, always trying to get better, so it was great for him to see his goal, not just hear some producer guy criticizing him."

Band founder Gabriel Garcia, now 15, sees another virtue in having recording gear, as well as the Digitech VL4 vocal harmonizer and Lexicon MX200 multi-effects unit that round out Black Tide’s new system. "We used a lot of effects in the studio. Having this gear around will give us a better idea of what we’re gonna do in the studio next time. We can do more pre-production on the road now."

Ultimately, the band finds it poetic that Guitar Center is who hooked them up with Harman and their new rehearsal-meets-recording system. Why? Because they spent a lot of time there before they had any notoriety or money to buy gear.

"Zach and I used to just hang out in Guitar Center for, like, six hours at a time," recalls Alex.

Zach chimes in, "I’d call him up after school and be like, ‘Wanna go to GC?’ It was our equivalent of hanging out at the mall."

"We wouldn’t even see each other after we walked in the door," laughs Alex, "It was like, ‘See ya!’ because we’d be just playing."

Maybe it’s the good memories, but neither meticulous studio recording nor marathon touring has dampened the band’s enthusiasm for a good hang at Guitar Center. "We even did it while we were making the record," notes Zach, "Whenever Johnny came with us, he’d always leave with a new guitar!"

Steven sums up, "To this day, when we pull into a town for a show, I’ll punch up the GPS and see if there’s a Guitar Center within walking distance. I can go into the drum department and probably hear some sick drummer and learn something. It’s still like being a kid in a candy shop for me!"