BILLY 'THE JACK!' – the Rock and Roll DaVINCI

Hostages are a five piece hard rock combo, noted for their wild stage shows and high energy antics. My goal was a stripped down, under-produced and raw recording.

I do play in this band (rhythm guitar—no leads), but I am not the leader nor do I make any of the decisions; the other fellas just let me produce the record.

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Excerpts from Hostages “Sunday Suicide” EP / total time 5:02 / with “Sunday Suicide”, “Evil Eye”, “Hold Me” and “Berlin Love Letter” / Written by The Hostages ©2006 DIStORtED Media / Produced, Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Billy ‘The Jack’

Production Notes

The real trick when producing music that i am personally involved with is to separate myself the guitarist from myself the record producer, but its no trick really; my ego is greater satisfied with a great sounding record as a whole instead of my meager part in playing on said record.

I used a self-realized process to create natural ambiance throughout the record. The drums were close miked with a condenser set up in a sweet spot in another room. I got the natural reverb sound by soloing whichever instrument needed it (find a sweet-spot by walking around, with your finger in one ear, until you hear what you’re looking for, then place a mic in the exact spot pointing in the same direction as your ear was; record it onto a blank track {try this with one guitar: pan the dry signal to the right and the reverbed track on the left}; then move the reverbed track forward by about 20 to 35 milliseconds: and viola! home made reverb). For a nice sparkling lead sound, record three or four mics in different sweet-spots; pan the solo in the middle, and the rest of them in various places in the stereo spectrum, but remember, always mix the effects at a lowest possible volume.

I mastered the album using a process called “stub mastering” (I can’t remember where I first heard of it, and when I do, I’ll give credit where credit is due), which will be explained in the future.