I’ve recorded a lot of very loud bands — including my own — in cramped practice spaces, using a mobile rig that I bring in for tracking. It’s a challenge, but it’s kind of cool. And laptops have gotten powerful enough that even older ones can loaf through a 16- or 24-input session.

But a few years ago I started getting bit by a nasty problem: intermittently, my DAW (Cubase) wouldn’t stay in record for more than a few minutes. A few minutes into a take, Cubase’s hard drive performance meter would freak out, then I’d see a “Too many tracks recording” dialog as recording stopped. This is the Nuendo version of the same dialog, but you get the point:

This really rattled me — how can you focus on what matters if you’re always worried about your recorder failing? — and it was hard to track down the cause. I had upgraded some hardware and software on my laptop, and the problem was very intermittent. But it always seemed to happen during real takes (ugh).

Steinberg support said it was probably the 5400 rpm drive in my old Thinkpad. I know you’re all saying “Of course! You can’t record with a slow HD!” but I had used a 5400 rpm internal drive for many sessions prior and never once seen a glitch.

But one or two fucked up sessions later, I gave in and upgraded my 7-year-old Thinkpad to a fairly recent Macbook Pro. You can’t have something like this threatening to ruin sessions.

And during my first session with the new machine, I got The Dialog. I felt sick. What the fuck?

I borrowed another Macbook Pro for a session and saw it there too. Three computers?!? Maybe Cubase 4.5 was a dog, or RME’s drivers had somehow regressed. My gut, based on 20 years as a professional computer nerd, told me it was neither, but you never know.

Here are some suggestions I got from friends, the internet, Steinberg support, etc: Never record to the OS partition. Never record to an internal drive. That’s what you get for using Cubase. Try trashing your preferences. Try adjusting the pre-record time in Cubase. I was sure that none of these was my problem. Three computers and two OS’s? Something was just wrong.

I couldn’t repro the problem at home, ever. I was usually recording 18 inputs, which should be a piece of cake, but I also saw it with 2-3 tracks sometimes. In certain sessions it never happened. In fact it sure seemed like recording only crapped out while really loud things were going on nearby. Wait a minute…

I started googling with the “loud sounds” thing in mind, and found a few forum threads mentioning the same problem. Eventually I found this Apple support page: Apple Portables: Advanced tips for Sudden Motion Sensor. Here’s the money excerpt:

In some environments, such as live concert halls, recording studios, or dance clubs, external vibrations may be major enough to cause the module to unexpectedly park the hard drive heads, resulting in interrupted sound or video playback.

Bam. That would explain everything. The SMS is there to prevent your hard drive heads from bouncing on the drive platter if you drop your computer. High SPLs can trick the accelerometer into thinking that the machine is being dropped. The protection system parks the hard drive heads, and recording is in trouble.

It turns out that Thinkpads had a similar feature, though not all hard drives supported it. That would explain why I didn’t have any issues with my Thinkpad’s stock HD, but did after upgrading it.

Now, learn from my pain.

I let Steinberg support know about this; they hadn’t heard of it before. Avid’s optimization guide covers it: “If you’re recording in a loud environment, this optimization will prevent the Sudden Motion Sensor from kicking in and throwing a -9073 error in Pro Tools.”

It’s interesting, the “common sense” problems were not the problem. Recording to an external drive probably would have masked this problem, but also probably would have led me to wrongly conclude “yep, internal drives / OS partitions are no good for recording”. My personal feeling is that a lot of these well-known tweaks are folklore left over from the early days of digital recording. They may still matter if you’re trying to get 2ms latency with 80 inputs, but not for tracking 18 inputs of 44.1/24 with no plugins or latency concerns.

Anyways — if you always record in a control room, or if you use a desktop machine, this shouldn’t affect you. But if regularly have 500 watts of pissed-off tube amps pointed at your laptop, this may save your session. I’m still testing, to feel 100% sure that I have a fix, so please report back.

Here’s the last time it hit me. My laptop was three feet in front of the Marshall cab.

Bonus trivia: when the drums abruptly cut off at the end of “Yowie”… yeah. We said fuck it and left it.

Reaper – My interview with Justin and Christope is in this month’s Tape Op. Good read for music nerds and software nerds.

Tigon have a few splits out with the songs we did this spring. We tracked basics at Sharkbite in Oakland, and did guitar/vox overdubs at good old TTJ. I love this stuff. Dense mathy punk, sludged out heaviness. Listen.

Kowloon Walled City – If you missed it, a few months ago we did a split with Fight Amp and Ladder Devils. We tracked at Sharkbite. Download/buy. (Also, tour was great. Lots of pics.)

Cartographer – I recently finished a full-length with these fine gentlemen, tracked at Mr. Toad’s in San Francisco. This record rules and you should hassle Ben about releasing it promptly. Carto.

Here’s the top 20:

Dark / Darkness – 649
Black – 637
Death – 574
Blood – 320
Dead – 318
Hate – 221
Eternal – 218
Dawn – 210
Silence – 186
Soul – 181
Hell – 175
Funeral – 168
Pain – 162
Chaos – 154
Evil – 153
Angel – 146
Fear – 142
Beyond – 139
Flesh – 138
Fire – 137

We set up shop at glamorous Turk Street on a Friday night, then wrote and recorded basics over two long days of gear failure. Things that fucked up: my recording laptop, my backup recording laptop, Pace’s Ampeg, my VTM60, the Laney Supergroup we borrowed, two mic stands, Cubase, a 1spot power supply, my 2-ch A/D converter. On our first afternoon I was sitting in Jeff’s car, installing Cubase on a borrowed Macbook Pro while we drove back to the space. It’s like Abbey Road around here.

Gear problems or no, we got basics done. We spent the next few days writing and tracking vocals and guitar overdubs in my basement whenever we could find time. I uploaded a gig of files to Greg the night before I left town, and listened to his mixes on headphones in a hotel room. I thought the roughs were really good, but Greg just killed on the mixes. Next level shit. How does he do it?

Anyway, here’s the result: Ten songs about bigfoot(s). Narration by Friday the 13th author Victor Miller. Mix desk manned by a genuine Grammy winner. Mellotron. Riffs. Feel it.

[mandelbrot set] Hotel Magnolia – Croatian noise rock with a psych bend. These guys tracked everything in Croatia and shipped me a pile of DVDs to mix. Great record and the package is beautiful too — 12″ clear vinyl with an included CD. I’m not quite sure how to get a copy in the US — ask the band. myspace

The Scrams – Four-song 7″. Good times garage rock, a la The Oh Sees or King Khan. Tracked in an Albuquerque garage, mixed by me. Buy it here, download free mp3′s here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2. Every time I watch a video on Chasing The Moon, I want to tell all of my friends to carve out an hour and watch every episode on the site. CTM is a video series of San Francisco bands/artists performing at Hyde Street Studio C. Beautiful photography, beautiful recordings, and great performances. I watched the Sonya Cotton episode last night, and it’s gorgeous. Also, 421 as vocal mic!

3. I recorded 4 songs for Farticus a few months ago, and Aquarius just gave their CD a great review (between a serious beating about the band name, heh):

…holy shit, these four songs are intense and brutal, tons of low end, the guitars chugging and churning, occasionally getting all twisted and warped, evoking prime era Butthole Surfers, the drums pounding and chaotic, and the vocals, shit, a wild banshee screech, sounding like a Riot Grrl all grown up ready to kick your ass. Reminds us a bit of classic SF weirdo rockers, Tragic Mulatto, in fact, if you can imagine the Buttholes, Tragic Mulatto, but with Unsane guitars, that’s what this is all about.

This year it was SNAILFACE. Here’s the back story, and here’s where you go to download the record.

Also, Pace somehow found the time to do his own RPM record, as The Talls. It’s a concept album. About beer. It is fucking great. Go, journey to Trappisttown.

Bradee and I are working on another Big Red Boots record too, but it’ll be a few months. KWC is recording in a few weeks so we’re hustling to get our act together for that.

• Helms Alee – Night Terrors. A few years ago my favorite record was Autolux Future Perfect. This is like that. Burly, but hooky and pretty. Like Autolux it’s all there: tones, production, songs. Really nice.
• Young Widows – Old Wounds. Mathy noise rock. Cool production, great record.
• 2 Foot Yard – Borrowed Arms. Smart and musical, as expected.
• Akimbo – Jersey Shores. I love a good side project. Which this record isn’t, technically, but it feels like one given how it was made and how it came out. Total ass kickage.
• Torche – Meanderthal. Yeah, this record is on pretty much every other top 10 list this year. I prefer the In Return EP, but this one’s pretty great too. Heavy / hooky.
• Baroness – Red Album. Yeah, 2007. But I listened to it like crazy this year. Riffs, followed by additional riffs, interspersed by jams.
• KEN Mode – Mennonite. I just found out that this record exists. The band released it themselves with little fanfare. It’s not as consistent as Reprisal (which blew my mind) but it still rules.
• Made Out of Babies – The Ruiner. Spastic, heavy, weird, good.
• Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid. I love these guys. They’re like a British Radiohead. No, wait. Anyway, they made another really nice record. And they produce themselves. Respect.
• Leatherback – H is for Hospital. My friend Sean made this record in February. I admit that my take on it is colored by knowing Sean, but so what? Like I said a few months ago, “it’s a mostly instrumental wide-eyed take on King Crimson and lo-fi pop, and I really love it”. It’s free, go get it.
• Cursed – III: Architects Of Troubled Sleep. Distorted distortion. Yes.

Honorable mentions:

• Black Elk – Always A Six, Never A Nine
• Clouds – We Are Above You
• Kaki King – Dreaming of Revenge
• Portishead – Third
• Black Ships – Omens
• Wetnurse – Invisible City
• Meshuggah – ObZen

When we blew the original deadline, we just put the project away. But it’s been driving me nuts that we didn’t finish it. So we wrapped it up last week (it really was almost done).

If I had to describe the result, I’d say “half-ass pop songs”. Bradee and I wrote most of it, and friends chipped in on a lot of songs.

Download it here.

And no recording project is complete without photos.

Ah, relief.