Talking Tech With Dashboard Confessional

Dashboard Confessional

Chris Carrabba talked with Newsweek about the tech used on his new album:

My home studio is Pro Tools based. My new record is centered around acoustic guitars, and I found that a mic chain that I knew I loved for recording vocals seemed to also work really well for tracking acoustic guitars.

I tracked both vocals and acoustics with my Wunder CM7 microphone through a Vintech Audio 273. These two pieces of gear really were outstanding.

Another great piece of gear was one that I used during the demo phase. I was trying to do things really quickly, to demo the songs on acoustic guitar to give the producer James Paul Wisner what I had in mind for us to work on together. I didn’t want to send him lousy-sounding stuff he couldn’t enjoy listening to, but I was also trying to work quickly. I was able to do both by using the Fishman Aura DI. It’s more than just a simple DI [direct input]—it does microphone simulation, creating a bit of air and space and depth to your DI sound and replicates a microphone incredibly well.

Review: Dashboard Confessional – The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most

Dashboard Confessional - The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most

Who would’ve thought the lyric from “Saints and Sailors” of, “Wandering this house, like I’ve never wanted out / And this is about as social as I get now” would take on new meaning during these strange times? But alas, we’ve come to the 20 year anniversary of the breakthrough emo classic record by Chris Carrabba, better known for his affectionately titled project Dashboard Confessional. Flashing back to this time period brings back a flood of memories of bands just waiting to explode onto the mainstream. What gets lost among the shuffle of the bad haircuts, skinny jeans, and ultra-tight t-shirts is the fact that the music coming out of this time period has stayed the test of time. Dashboard Confessional was not the loudest band out there, not the flashiest, but damn if Chris Carrabba couldn’t write a hook that would stay in your mind for days on end. The mostly acoustic guitar-based project was a tough sell initially since most touring bands didn’t know how to properly market a solo singer-songwriter in this scene. However, Chris consistently won over crowds night after night and it was clear that Dashboard Confessional was immediately going to be the marquee band that others would have to open for.

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