I recently picked up the latest Adam Rogers DICE trio album and it’s a lot rockier and funkier than anything else he’s put out before. For me, it’s some of his most interesting playing and strongest writing.
What’s really interesting about this album is the production. In a Guitar Player interview Adam said:
There’s no reverb, compression, or EQ on this record.
He then clarified a little in another interview and said:
I should say that I did a bunch of post-production, played clarinet, layered loops. There’s reverb on the post production. But the basic tracking had no reverb or EQ or compression. I didn’t start out with that concept, though I never planned to do much processing to the recording. I had the engineer set up a lot of room mics during the session, set up with some distance from the instruments in the room. They picked up the ambience, the reverberation of the space. There were a bunch of mics on my amplifiers, and then five to eight mics in the space, and the same deal in the drum room. When I started to edit the record and create rough mixes, I just turned up those mics as I saw fit. In a way, that organically represented the sound I was seeking. When I went to mix it, I tried different things, and we sort of realized that sound was the best representation of the band.
So, did he treat the production of his new album sort of like a classical album?
Here is some of the best footage I have found of Adam Rogers technique on YT. His style is very smooth, lyrical and flowing. He’s one of the greatest edge pickers out there.