cheddatom

Thanks for all the info Garry, i'll check it out. We used to use Kontakt at uni which was loads of fun.

[quote name='lowdown' post='1351111' date='Aug 25 2011, 11:02 AM']Any VST'i Synth strings sound pretty awful. If you do not want to go down the sampler route, Sound fonts are your next good bet. They are Audio files and sound pretty decent, certainly better than Synth Strings. Just google free sound fonts, hundreds of them around. Try the link below for a start - you can download a free sound font player and a full bunch of Orchestral sounds, with a few articulations , Its dead easy to use. A free Convolution IR Reverb will help as well. [url="http://freesf2.com/"]Free SF & Sound fonts[/url] Garry[/quote] I'd never actually heard of Sound Fonts. If I find I can write string parts then i'll start messing about with the sounds. My CPU usage is already at 80% on this particular song, so something "light" is what I need at the moment. Are Sound Fonts just as light as VSTis? I have used Reason in the past with ReWire but that dominates my CPU too.

Cheers 5imon, you just keep on giving!

[quote name='dood' post='1349707' date='Aug 23 2011, 11:27 PM']Not necessarily for the pro market, but check out the YouTube videos for the handheld Zoom Q3HD. I bought one secondhand from a fine fellow here on BC and it is brilliant. It records in stereo and does not distort, even when right up against a drum kit - I see you'd rather take a feed from the PA instead for sound, but for a way of recording a gig quickly, it is rather good! ;o)[/quote] I just bought one off here too! I've only tried it at practise so far. The audio quality is amazing, and the auto-gain levelling was very quick. I wasn't too impressed with the picture, but I bought it for the sound quality as this is what's often lacking in live videos.

I'm looking for a VSTi for strings. I don't need the world's best sounds, just something better than the microsoft MIDI voices. Is there anything free?

I've just been catching up with this thread, some of these links are ace. That Ben Harper song above - they have it on a live DVD where Juan sings along with his solo, I think it's a better performance, but then there's not much more funk on the DVD so if you were buying it for just that it'd be a waste. Maybe someone has put it on youtube somewhere but I didn't find it.

[quote name='TomTFS' post='1350242' date='Aug 24 2011, 01:45 PM']Very similar ideas and effects, but its like saying all distortion pedals are the same and trying to encompass distortion/OD and fuzz all together. Wah is actually a band pass, so it cuts off frequencies below and above the point you set. It works well on guitar since a guitar is mainly midrange anyway. A low pass filter will do the same kind of thing, it just keeps all the low frequencies in, hence being better for bass. The rate of cut off is the slope, then you have resonance which adds a boost/peak at the cutoff frequency. After that theres all the madness of adding LFO's a trigger that senses your playing.[/quote] I use my wah on the high part of my blended signal chain, so when mixed together it works as a low pass rather than a band pass. So the main difference then is the resonance?

[quote name='BottomEndian' post='1350186' date='Aug 24 2011, 01:04 PM']Heavens, no. There are different filter slopes, resonant and non-resonant filters, different bandwidths of the resonant peak at the corner frequency... not to mention the differences in methods and circuits used by different manufacturers, even if they're aiming towards the same goal. It's like saying that every Jazz-type bass should be the same. As an example, Spectrasonics' soft-synth Omnisphere has at least a dozen low-pass filters to choose from, and they all sound different.[/quote] oh I thought it was just the same as a "low pass" as in just an EQ that cuts off everything above a certain point, and you can change that point with an EXP pedal. I know there are differences between the rate of cut-off (no idea what the proper name is) but they don't have resonant filters or anything. Clearly I have no idea about electronic music. I use my wah to create the kind of effect I thought we were talking about, where you go from a very dull sound and gradually fade to a bright sound.

As far as I know, any LPF should be the same, so if you have on available already it's just about putting the right signal before it in the chain. I'm sure Shep will correct me

doesn't the M13 have a wah model you could set to a LPF?

oh that's an idea. The song i'm doing at the moment is just verse chorus verse chorus to a click so I can use each half with the opposite half. Nice one!

I'm so jealous! I do have my own "studio" but the view is concrete.

I've never had this happen on bass. A couple of times on drums i've felt that "blank" moment, but on drums it's pretty easy, just keep a beat going at the right tempo. I agree it looks unprofessional when band mates glare at each other, but most bands i've seen tend to just laugh at each other, which most people won't realise is a sign of a mistake. I think it takes a little f*** up to get you into the gig. Sometimes i'll be incredibly nervous, and then hit a note slightly off or something - to me it sounds like a massive mistake, but I know no-one else cares, and that's when I start to relax into the gig.

yeh I think so

[quote name='51m0n' post='1349080' date='Aug 23 2011, 03:31 PM']Ideally you wouldnt use a simple delay at all, because it will cause comb filtering and phase issues. The editing the second track will significantly improve the situation. It is time consuming but it can certainly be done and really quickly in today's DAWs. In place of that then anything else you can do to change the nature of that second track a bit (without turning into something pants in the mix of course) will really help. Remember the ideal is a true multitrack. But even then you can treat the two differently to a certain extent.[/quote] yeh when we record properly I double track most guitars. I play in a sort of "jam band" type thing where we just turn up and play, and I record these. There are no vocals so I quite like dominating the centre of the mix with bass, but that requires panning the guitar, and there's only one track. It's not important enough to chop up the guitar track and make it sound like another take (although i'm kind of lost trying to imagine what i'd do - cut it into 5% chunks and stretch some and squash the others time wise?). Is there any way to easily avoid the comb filtering etc? Like pitch shifting one of the tracks or something?

I tend to find phasing issues when doing this, so I play about with the delay between 3 and 20ms until I get a sound I like. If I were to EQ or compress one of the tracks differently would that somehow stop the phasing issues?

I do the doubling thing quite a lot, just because we do a lot of "live" recordings so only one track of guitar available. I tend to just nudge one track slighty forward. I fnid that the one that comes in earlier tends to have more presence so I have to cut a bit of presence from the early track and boost it on the delayed one.

there's a thread [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=533"]here[/url] which has some info

I never really talk about basses, and i've only lusted after one is the past few years. I bought that bass and it's re-invigorated not only my quest for the absolute perfect tone (which i'm very near) it's also re-enthused my playing. So yeh, talking about and looking at basses won't necessarily further your music, but buying a new instrument can be inspirational!

for the whammy there's a footswitch which will switch modes. I think it's called "molten MIDI" or something

Hmmm, I was smoking a delicious herbal cigarette the other day while a wasp pestered me

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1348072' date='Aug 22 2011, 03:29 PM']My point is simply that what determines your strengths and weaknesses is what you have and have not practised...[/quote] People do have a lot of physical a psychological differences though. I'm perfectly happy to accept that I would not make a good footballer, no matter how many lessons I had. That's not to say that football can't be taught, but it is to say that some people can't reach a certain standard. I used to think that every human being started life a "blank slate" and from then on only their experiences would shape their personality/life choices. Now I tend to think this attitude is a bit naive. but yeh, i'm sure anyone who [i]wants[/i] to learn funk could master it, even if they didn't have the dexterity to wow us with their "chops".

[quote name='EdwardHimself' post='1348052' date='Aug 22 2011, 03:04 PM']You've got the wrong thread [/quote] HAHA I have indeed. What a mook

When I play live I have a guitar amp for the top end and have this mic'd, and a DI out of my bass amp. I'd always recorded in this way until I got lazy one day and DI'd straight from my pedalboard. It's never sounded better. So now, I take a dry signal just for clean very very low end, and then a full range signal from my pedalboard (which has a bit of clean blending going on) and it's the best sound i've ever had, and way easier than position mics etc. [quote name='fretmeister' post='1347931' date='Aug 22 2011, 12:48 PM']I don't like cross-overs. I think they sound "fake" or "Disjointed" at the cross-over point. I much prefer to EQ instead.[/quote] I wasn't criticising! It's just that we were talking about using guitar amps to create dirt for the top end only and it doesn't look like you're using a guitar amp? IME they're very different voiced to bass amps giving you much more high mids.

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1347877' date='Aug 22 2011, 11:56 AM']To suggest any 'skill' is a natural gift that some have and others don't is a dead end.[/quote] I totally agree, but I think the point was that you can't learn funk from lessons, you have to learn it by yourself, by listening to a lot of funk. Personally I don't agree with that as I consider myself to be seriously f***ing funky and I hardly ever listen to funk, but then i'm sure my head's too big