#GEARTALK with Electric Lecture

Electric Lecture recently released their new single What if? and they shared with us all about the process of making the song, the gear they used and more. Be sure to check them out on Spotify!

By Chris RoditisMusicngear Lead Editor

Article photo - #GEARTALK with Electric Lecture

 

Electric Lecture is a powerful collaboration between 3 musical masterminds: Greg Ansin, Bronson Taalbi, and Anthony J Resta. Each artist brings their own style and expertise to the table, resulting in an electrifying experience.

Their latest single What if? is taken off their forthcoming self-titled album out this fall, and the band shares all about the process of making the single, the gear they used, and more.


The making of What If?

The story of the production song What if? started some 5 years ago when Anthony J Resta recorded his Duesenberg Starplayer TV Black guitar through a Gibson 1960’s Maestro fuzz pedal onto his iPhone and then uploaded it to Instagram. It was a great riff. Electric Lecture decided to base a song around the riff. The date was February 13, 2020.

Bronson Taabli, Greg Ansin and Anthony, got together in their rehearsal space in Lawndale, California. It started with finding the tempo of the riff which was 148 and then sampling and looping the file from Anthony’s phone. That was done in Avid Pro tools. Anthony opened Ableton live and made four different beats which then were imported to that same Pro Tools session. Bronson and Anthony then wrote a counterpart to the guitar riff and recorded each part. Bronson played a 12-string Guild JF-30. Anthony played a Jerry Jones Neptune 6-string baritone bass through a Marshall Origin 20.

To finish out the day, Anthony played a Guild S-200 T-Bird Burst guitar through a Fender 65 Princeton Reverb to double the sampled guitar riff.

The tracks were recorded on an iMac with Avid’s ProTools with the Universal Audio Apollo 8 as the interface. The 12-string was recorded with a Shure SM81 microphone going into the Universal Audio 2-610 preamp and then to the Empirical Labs EL8 X Distressor compressor. The baritone and electric guitar were recorded with Shure SM57 LC and the same preamp/compressor set up.

“All day as we’d been working on the track, the whole time Anthony had been saying ‘My favorite conspiracy is.” Said Greg.

Covid hit the world.

On November 5th, 2020 they were back at it again. On that day Anthony played drums, a Duesenberg Starclassic. The kick drum and room were recorded with a pair of AKG 414 into a Joe Meek Twin2Q. The stereo overhead with a pair SM81 into the 2-610 preamp and Distressor compressor. On the snare was SM57 into a Mackie board and then into ProTools.

More time passed.

Article photo - #GEARTALK with Electric Lecture They started writing words around Anthony's ideas of “my favorite conspiracy.” They wanted to keep a positive spin on the songs. It was hard. And then at one writing session, Anthony blurted out “What if it all works out? That’s my favorite conspiracy,” And that was it. The rest of the words flowed from there.

January 2022, Electric Lecture moved to a new rehearsal space in Laurel Canyon to finish their album. This song had to be on the release.

Bronson recorded the lead vocals on EV RE20 RE-Series microphone into the 2-610 preamp and Distressor compressor. Anthony and Bronson sang together for the background vocals using the same microphone/compressor setup. Greg recorded the bass track on a custom JML Guitar (bass) direct into the 2-610 preamp.
The last element that was recorded was the guitar solo. Bronson played a Kauer guitar into Chandler Limited Germanium Drive pedal and Hermida Audio Zen Drive that then went through Radial DI and then to Fender Princeton. Both guitar signals were recorded with the 2-610 and disterror.

The recording was done!

The Protools session was then sent to Karyadi Sutedja for mixing thus ending the production for Electric Lecture.

So...What is your favorite conspiracy?

Connect With Electric Lecture
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Send all music submissions to Chris Roditis <chrisroditis@musicngear.com>.
To increase your chances of inclusion to one of our features, please include as much information as possible about the gear you used in the recording and production of the songs. We are open to all genres.

About Chris Roditis

Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.

Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@kinkl.com

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