'Metal' producer and engineer Colin Davis

“Have gear, will travel”

'Metal' producer and engineer Colin Davis.

Is your band musically ready to record at one of the big studios with one of the big producers? Well you better have the big money because these guys know they have something rare and it doesn’t come cheap!

Recording a top notch album with Andy Sneap, Fredrik Nordstrom, Colin Richardson, etc will cost you tens of thousands. Add to that the cost of transporting the band to their studio location and putting them up in a hotel, and you're in debt big time. Or maybe the label is paying for it, well you’ll probably die before that budget gets recouped!

Aren't there other options available? "Maybe we can record some of the tracks at home and then have one of these guys mix", you think to yourself. Or maybe there are other guys that are nearly as good that are a lot cheaper. Yes its true, there are those guys. But isn't it also true that everyone is using them and their style is getting old? Often they are so rushed, they can't offer you the time to really get it right anyway. Many times, even their costs are too high for your small label budget.

My name is Colin Davis. I am a recording and mastering engineer and my specialty is metal. I have been in the recording business for 11 years. But even before that I was an audiophile. Studying music has been my main focus since I was a teenager. I run a professional CD mastering and mixing studio called Imperial Mastering in northern California. Its fantasic being a mastering engineer and I love being able to go from band to band and style to style. It never gets dull.

But lately I have been producing and recording metal bands from the ground up again. Although I love mastering, I have always felt recording is more creative and personal than mastering. I have aquired some really great high-end gear, including vintage microphones over the years and I have a portable rig so I can travel with my best gear. I've got an itch to travel at the moment! I want to put myself in new and creative places and I want to be able to do something that can be a god-send for those of you that have great talent, but small budgets.

My intent is to get bands to sign on to a production deal with me and I will travel to their country or state and take care of the entire recording process from beginning to end. You can save a ton of money by not having to pay a high daily rate to a large studio and big time producer. And I will be there to guide the entire process. I will actually guarantee on paper that this process will be a complete success! Musicians that are trying to learn professional recording techniques will have the advantage of watching me work as well.

The big name guys have the big names because they have the talent and they have put the time in; many years. They know that they are rare and that there are very few that do what they do. This is why they charge so much. But I am in a different situation than those guys. Although I have studied metal recording for many years, I have been focusing on mastering over the last 6 years. I also play in a touring band and I am an independant researcher as well. I have purposely kept myself out of the daily grind of the recording studio business so I can conduct other business in my life. Add to this the fact that a lot of the work I do is in the extreme metal genre and I have had to learn to offer the higest quality for a reasonable price. There is not a lot of money in underground metal!

You the can benifit from this situation! I challenge anyone to find another engineer that knows this music and the pro techniques as well as I do and is offering the quality I am offering for a lower price. This is not me trying to be arrogant. That, I am not. I am just making my position clear!

There are many things that can be done to save money on recording and still get the exact same quality that a big studio can get. But then there are other things that you cannot do under any circumstances! But one example of a time and money saver is to record guitars at a musician's house with the 'Reamp' technique. With this technique, a guitarist or bassist can spend all the time in the world tracking their parts in their own comfortable enviornment and then at a later time during the mix, the actual tone can be captured professionally in the mixing studio. This is only one example of what can be done to make recording cheaper and more comfortable. But it cant be done by anyone that does not have an intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of recording in this way.

I can travel to your country or state and can work with you in a variety of enviornments to get all the tracks recorded for your album. Then I travel to one of two studios where I can mix and master the album. In Europe I have a partnership with Studio Froombosch in Groningen, Holland. In America, I have my personal studio in Pacheco, California.

I travel with an assortment of the best gear this business has to offer. Some of it is masteting grade that I pull from my mastering studio. Here is a list of my recording gear that I often take with me:

Neumann KM-84 and KM-184 mics (2 each). Neumann TLM 103 for vox.
Shure SM57 (2) , Shure Beta 57 (1) and Oktava MC012 mics (4).

PC Laptop computer with Nuendo 3.2 recording software. I have all Waves, Sonic Timeworks, and URS vintage plugins. I also carry a URS UAD-1 PCI card that I can install in a desktop computer for additional mixing flexibillity and quality.

I also carry high quality cables with me and additional items like noise gates, tuners, etc.

When we mix or use another studio, we also have the gear that they provide and we can use my gear as a supplement. We're not stuck with something low quality if they dont have what we need.

If you want a gear list or details on my personal studio in Califirnia you can visit the main page here: www.imperialmastering.com

My reputation is with metal bands. But this entire process can be done for any kind of music and I have an ear for other styles as well. As a mastering engineer, I study all styles and my personal musical tastes are vast. I can also do great work with acoustic, rock, funk, folk, new-age/ambient, blues, and world fusion. But I am not good at rap or punk. Tight hardcore I am good at, but sloppy punk is not my thing. Just letting you know.

Also I am not available for any band that can pay the bill. I really have to be very choosy about who I work with. There are lots really talented and special musicians out there. But sometimes there is something about a band's sound, their technique or something else that tells me that I am not the right guy for their recording. I only want to work with bands that I feel I can deliver a top-notch product to. Both of our names are going on it and I will not record anything less than the best! For this reason, I want to talk extensively to the band about their plans and intents. I have a clean and tight recording style. I mentioned those other producers because they have a style that is similar to mine. If you like the productions of those guys, then this gives you an idea of what I do as well. Contact me if this sounds good to you.

My prices are flexible. Plane tickets are cheap and if I am recording another band after yours, you only need to pay for half of the cost of the ticket. My rate for mixing is 200 E per day. My rate for recording at your location is 150 E per day but can be lower if accomodations are good. When we record at other studios, there will also be the cost of that studio. But most of the time, if I am doing all the engineering, the studio operator can go home and that brings the price way down. Also because I am there to see things through, and because I have my gear, we can often use inexpensive studios. Studio Froombosch is also very inexpensive but highly professional. I'm really glad to be able to work with them. There are many ways we can work together. Certainly, if you need just mixing I can do that too. Just contact me and we will discuss the options.

Here are some examples of my work in WAV and MP3 files. If you want a quick listen, check the MP3s. If you want to burn a CD to listen to these recordings on other reference systems, download the WAV format. On these recordings, I used the same gear, techniques and enviornments that I would use recording anyone else. Right click "Save Target As"

Classic 80's Bay Area band's first recording in 20 years. We modeled this recording after Accept's Balls to the Wall. Its got a modern but still slightly vintage tone that was made to sound good when turned up loud. This is a 6000 US Dollar recording. Compare this with recordings costing many times more.

Vore is a mid tempo doom/death band from Arkansas. This album was mixed and mastered by me but recorded by another engineer somewhere else. The original tones were not professional at all. I used the Reamp technique to re-record guitars and I replaced all the drums with samples.. This is an example of how I can repair a mix and make it sound totally professional. The cost to mix this album was about 2300 US Dollars.

This is my own band. This is an example of how I record fast extreme metal. Recording very fast metal is incredibly challenging. Compare with recordings by Colin Richardson, Neil Kernon, Fredrick Nordstrom that cost many times as much. If this were another band it would have cost about 6000 US dollars. If you are in Europe, the currency is much stronger than in the U.S. and you so can see that the costs to those using the Euro would be about 25 percent lower.

This is a mobile recording I made quite a few years ago in a church in San Francisco. Two acoustic guitarists sitting in chairs near the altar of the church. You may remember this song from the movie "Buena Vista Social Club" This is to show you that I also study other types of recording techniques. Whatever you want recorded, we will do it in a way that is highly professional!

If what I say here sounds interesting to you, please e mail me and we can discuss the options!