Scott Ferrell, half of the St. Augustine, Florida-based duo Autumn's Grey Solace, spoke to Gearwire about the techniques and gear he used on the band's four releases (three on New York City's Projekt Records). A great deal of the band's charm is in the vocals, and the recording and placement of those. Ferrell talked about his philosophy for capturing the band's sound.

"I try to capture the feeling of the vocal. I like to record a song soon after it is written, because the emotions are still there while the song is being performed. This method is crucial for music that has "depth," but I don't think this spontaneous approach would be necessary for 'superficial' types of music," says Ferrell. "I'm also trying to capture the purity of the voice. I don't want any room ambience or background noises contaminating the integrity of the vocal. I have an acoustically treated room that is reserved exclusively for recording vocals."

To record vocals, the band use an Alesis AM61, large diaphragm tube condenser microphone from Groove Tubes.

"It has a unique character when used with female vocals, and captures a 'fairy dust' quality in the high end when I use it on Erin (Welton)'s voice. I'm also considering getting an AKG C14BXL2 microphone in the near future." says Ferrell.

The mic is usually placed 6 inches to a foot away from singer Welton, and in line with or slightly above the mouth. They use three pop filters to reduce the "puhs" and "puhs" and to reduce sibilance.

Once the vocals are down Ferrell turns to the mix.

"I usually have a lead vocal and I make that "big" with reverb and time based effects. Then I often have an ambient vocal with 100 percent reverb with a long decay and around 30 to 40 percent dry level. Sometimes there are vocal harmonies that I pan off to the sides a bit," he says. "I can be heavy handed with the effects on these or I may mix these vocals so low that they are almost subliminal."

When he records guitars he generally has some kind of clean arpeggio or rhythm in the foreground floating on a sea of ambient guitar sounds.

"I tend to mix the bass and drums a little lower (in relation to the vocals and guitars) than most would expect, but that's how I like it. I'm not a fan of obnoxious sounding drums that are made worse by over-compression." he says.

When it comes to pieces of gear that are special to him, Ferrell says he likes his FX processors. These include the Rocktron Chameleon and the Alesis Quadraverb.

"One of the setups I used on Riverine was a Rocktron Chameleon guitar FX processor running into an Alesis Quadraverb. With the Quadraverb, there are eight blocks of effects that can be arranged in any order. After going through the Rocktron the sound was really wet, but by the time it came out of the Quadraverb it was just surreal," says Ferrell. "You can hear this combination on songs like Falling Sky, Dormant, and Cold And Empty Constellations. I also have a Digitech GSP7 guitar processor that was made way back in 1992. Most of the effects are undesirable, but the reverb sounds excellent when it has a long tail, 100 percent wet and 0 percent dry. It's funny, because you would think that an old reverb like that would be so grainy, but it's actually silky on electric guitar. You can hear it on the guitar melody that plays all the way through the song Cast To The Seas In Storms.

When it comes to a piece of gear he loves Ferrell singles out the Avalon VT737SP. This mic preamp/compressor/EQ is the device he runs Welton's vocals through when tracking.

"It takes very little effort to get a good sound from this piece of gear. That's the kind of equipment I favor. The kind that allows you to just go in and make music without getting too involved in the recording process. I feel sorry for recordists who spend a lot of time working with a computer and waveform editing trying to fix things that could be avoided with proper performance and recording techniques," says Ferrell.

"It's so much better to just be a musician and focus on the actual performance instead of trying to perfect something that is essentially mediocre. I actually own a few recording software programs but I don't use them in my studio. I prefer to use stand alone hard disk recording systems in conjunction with outboard gear, and I like to be surrounded by a multitude of knobs, buttons, cables, LEDs, and faders. There is a certain appeal to these things that makes recording more pleasurable to me."