51m0n

The more you can mute with your right hand the less you [i]have [/i]to do with your left hand. Floating thumb on a 5, moveable anchor on a 4; tho I havent picked up the 4 for ages and would probably find myself floating on that too now as its so much easier to play that way now....

Audacity is OK, my biggest moan would be the inability to use vsts in real time, you have to select a vst or effect listen to a tiny snippet and then commit or not. IMO you'd be far better off spending the princely sum of about £25 or £30 on a Reaper license, its a very very good DAW indeed, dead easy to use, with a great manual.....

Expect the truth Expect it to hurt in some places and heal in others Expect to feel very positive afterwards, and slightly daunted The bass you take is utterly irrelevant....

The focusrite compounder is an excellent compressor - I got mine for about 250 on ebay. The markbass compressore has the same set of controls for compression as the compounder, it lacks an expander/gate (good if you ahve a lot of background noise, and it is trivial to set up), and the knob that lets you feed some bass around the compressor, and a limiter section (which you need if you are going to set up any serious compression so that you can tame the transient at the leading edge of the sound). If you want to learn how to set up a compressor get a fully featured one, it should have at least the following controls:- threshold ratio attack release makeup gain Preferrable knee as well, and a limiter (IMO). If you arent sure what you are doing then you absolutely must have decent metering, you need to be able to tell how much gain reduction is going on, the input and the output levels. Otherwise you are relying on ears you havent trained to hear something particularly difficult to analyse. No pedal I have seen has decent metering, I would not recommend one to anyone who is inexperienced in setting up a compressor fo rthat reason alone.

Squire Vintage series second hand springs to mind, either a Precision or Jazz

[quote name='ziggydolphinboy' post='1279800' date='Jun 23 2011, 04:47 PM']good comments guys anyone know about the alesis 3630?[/quote] [url="http://www.ovnilab.com/reviews/3630.shtml"]ovnilabs is your friend[/url]

Rack:- dbx160a Focusrite Compounder (VCA compressor - will give you the most options) TL Audio Ivory Series (tube jobbie this, not that that is particularly relevant) Expensive Rack:- Summit TLA 100a TubeTech C1 La2a (silly money) 1176 (silly money) Pedal:- Markbass Compressore Joe Meek FloorQ TC Electronics NovaDynamics (digital, but it features a multiband comp you may dig)

Any chance we can figure out how to embed soundcloud in attachments like we can youtube clips??? Or have I missed something really obvious (no change there then if I have!)

[quote name='sweavo' post='1276083' date='Jun 20 2011, 05:07 PM']I'm keen to try a separated, [b]possibly even click tracked,[/b] recording, as much to get everyone in the band more experience at working that way as to hear the results of working with strongly separated tracks. But so many outfits seem set up to deal with kick, snare, hats, guitars, vox that it's nerve-wracking to hand someone cash. And listening to previous work is difficult when you're the only band making this style of music within 80 miles! Thanks for all the contributions so far![/quote] My advice, use a handclap, not a click, or a sidestick or what ever. A handclap 'sits' in the acoustic space of a live band better, its more natural as an addition to the overall sound, and it can impart a bit of swing. Get a cheap drum machine, program in the correct clave for the track in question, set the tempo, whack it through the PA and let it go. Get the entire band practicing with this tool and they will tighten up in no time, like you wouldnt believe. Variations of this have worked for me in loads of bands, usually in the funk bands I play in getting the clap to accent the 2 and 4 really heavily forces uss to bring the ONE, which imparts more swing and tightness. I woudl imagine that using the right clave would be the ting for latin. After an hour or two practicing with the clap, turn it off and play the set, better yet record it once before you use the clap, and once after. The result can be very eye opening!

Analogue vs digital is yet another huge can of worms. Either can sound like rancid vomit tastes. The simple truth is the guy in control and the band making the music determines in entirety the quality of the final product, more than the tech used.

Given a good enough acoustic space there is nothing wrong with an ensemble recording in a single space without headphones. The trouble with less seperation (which always follows from the above) is that the ability to polish the sound at mix down can be compromised significantly by the spill. Also the recording will tend to have a very strong imprint of that particular acoustic space put on on it by the spill, which may or may not be desirable.

I think people look at recording music as the entire process. Rightly or wrongly. The process of tracking is the bit where you guys make music and someone commits it to a machine, so the actual recording of the session part. As seperate from the mix, where the tracks are all put together into a stereo file for playback on hifis and stuff. And mastering, which is a whole other can of worms.

SOunds like you've got a lot of the routing stuff pretty much sorted. However have you noticed that you can add audio channels to a track? So you can have track 1 as an aux send for a reverb say. Then if you have a drum kit in a group that is track 2 and your bvs in a group that is track 10 you can add channels of ausio to each group (one for each contained track that needs to send to the reverb), then route the send through the channels on the group and from the channels on the group to the reverb aux. This is useful since it means that the level of signal sent to the aux track is dependant on the level of the group fader as well as the level of the send fader on each track within the group. That way when you change the level of the group, you change the level of the reverb generated by the group. This means you can get some fx outside of the groups they work in, which can save a lot of CPU as you dont have to repeat the effect. Its great for reverbs, delays, parallel compression (not so much, but I have bothered with it before). The routing does become more complex to set up, but the behaviour of group fades becomes far more as you would expect.

[quote name='lanark' post='1275476' date='Jun 20 2011, 01:20 AM']Okay - that makes sense. Could 1) (perc, keys and vocal guide) be done earlier and then the horns, real vocals, extra bits and bobs added at a later session? I'm thinking that the horns etc could then take a few weeks to practice to the rhythm tracks and make sure that they can nail everything as quickly as possible when they eventually get into the studio. Part of me is also thinking that the more people there are in the studio at any one time, the longer everything will take to get done. I know that we want that "live" sound that you only really get when playing as a unit, but if it takes an extra few days in the studio because of all the faffing about, it might be worth sacrificing.[/quote] Absolutely. The studio should be perfectly happy to run you off what is essentially going to be the headphone mix as a 2 track for the horns to work to. I would be encouraged by any band making that kind of suggestion, I dont think I've ever heard of an engineer who enjoys tracking a load of fluffs and retakes. If the rhythm section do wok to a click track then get a version with click and a version without. Another big big hint is get the band used to being recorded, any means you can, a dictophone, an iphone, literally any recording device at all, put it in the corner of the room and do takes in rehearsal. Nothing worse than getting to the studio to discover that one or more memebers of the band suffers ternminal 'red light fever' whereby as soon as the record button is pressed they forget how to play their instrument to some degree. Splitting the recording into sections in no way guarantees a lack of the 'live' sound.What is that anyway? Assuming you play without a click, and the percussion, keys and vocals practice giving the songs there all as that section (as if the horns broke down on the way to the gig and you had to do the first set without them) there should be no loss in energy whatsoever. Equally the horns section will have to practice to the recording of the rhythm section and guide vocal so they can get takes quickly. Nothing kills a live sound like too many takes, whether the band is playiong as a whole or not. You need to aim to be able to get a great take in 3 attempts, or the band will naturally start to reign it in to guarantee a good take, and that loss of exuberence comes across as a more mechanical sounding take. Once you have the rhythm horn sections down look to spend as much time again on lead and backing vocals. They [b][i]are[/i][/b] the song for the punters, they will only notice the rest of the track if its amazing, but if the vocals are even a little bit pants then the average punter can pick up on it straight away. A blinding vocal will get you noticed more than anything else. Work the backing vocals and harmonies out beforehand too. Yes even if you dont have any live you need to put them down on the recording, they make the vocal stand out, and they are the accepted sound of vocals in songs - especially with larger bands. Get your vocalists practicing, hard. Michael Jackson used to spend 3 hours a day on the phone with his vocal coach, and would then take a couple or three takes to get his vocal down in the first instance. Not that that ever stopped him spending more time on vocals when he needed to (often overdubbing all the little vocal ticks that were his trademark style), but he was considered by Bruce Swedian and Quincy Jones to be a stellar vocalist to record in the studio. If it was good enough for him its good enough for your vocalists too. The pet monkey is optional however. The more rehearsed you are for this the quicker and easier it will be on the day, get the band really tuned up for the recording and the process will be slick, the results slicker, and the cost lower.

Which sounds and feels best for you? Personally I like transparent compression, I dont like to feel it or hear it solo, my bass is more even in the mix. I use very low ratios and very low thresholds as a result. For a more overt rock punch I would start with about 4:1 ratio, attack set about 100ms ( to really let that pick through), release as short as the songs require, down around 50ms is usually ok. Set the threshold to get a steady 3dB up to 6dB of GR, such that with the makeup gain set right you can hear it fattening up. Of course you can also (if you get the threhold exactly just so, and the songs are similar in tempo and dont have too many fast passages) extend the release (up to 350ms area) and set the threshold a bit higher. This works as follows, the threshold is crossed, and 100ms later, after the pick transient is on its way down, the compressor engages and stays engaged, even though the level is below the threshold, just because the release is long. This pulls up the level of the body of the sound, adding punch and girth. You may need a limiter after these longer attack settings though....

[quote name='lanark' post='1275162' date='Jun 19 2011, 07:54 PM']So - to keep the budget down as much as possible, and massively increase the range of options we can choose from as far as recording studios go, would it be possible to: i) record the rhythm section and vocals first (assuming that we're extremely well rehearsed and the length of any horn solo are known in advance) - to avoid bleeding into the percussion mics, we have the bass and keys DI'd straight to the desk and the band wearing headphones to hear the rough mix live as we play. We then take this away and the horns practice with this rhythm section recording and later .... ii) the horns come into the studio at a later date, to record their sections to the pre-recorded rhythm section recording, which they'll be listening to through headphones to avoid the earlier recording being heard on the horns' mics. Have I got that anything like straight? The two sections would then be taken away and mastered (what on earth goes on in the matering process by the way - and does it come before or after the "mix"?) and mixed or whatever black art gets practised on them before you get the shiny silved disc? Would that sort of thing be practicable, as we've ascertained that for an unsigned band of our size, it would take a friendly millionaire to bankroll the ideal recording setup.[/quote] Close. Process is more like this:- 1) Track the main percussion, keys and a guide vocal 2) Overdub the horn section 3) Overdub the real vocal 4) Overdub any backing vocals, assorted odds and sods of extra percussion, the kitchen sink etc etc 5) Mix down of the track, where the myriad individual tracks are blended together into a 2 track stereo recording 6) Repeat 1 -> 5 for all the songs 7) Send all the songs to be mastered, where they will be balanced together for volume and frequencies, put into a final running order, faded together or split wiht the required amount of silence and an ISO and disc burnt with UPC code and PQ codes. Ready for.... 8) Duplication, the process of making many copies of a CD - you also need to provide artwork for this....

[quote name='Finbar' post='1275435' date='Jun 20 2011, 12:02 AM']If I use too many VSTs in a project on Reaper, my playback starts stuttering, which makes it hard to do much more. If I turn stuff off, then it works fine again. I'm cool with that, as I don't need everything on all the time. But is there a way of seeing which VSTs use how much CPU, so I know which ones it is most efficient to leave off etc? I use Reaper. Thanks [/quote] ctrl-alt-p Or View-> Performance Meter Will give a complete breakdown of where the load is. Learning to group tracks and st up aux sends to tracks to conserve CPU power is really vital, Reaper is particularly superb at this kind of routing shenanigans. A good read of the excellent manual is a very good idea!

[quote name='lanark' post='1273652' date='Jun 18 2011, 12:23 PM']Perhaps it would be easiest to organise a live gig recording and overdub any serious fluffs / audio issues. But then I imagine that would open a whole different can of worms.[/quote] IMO if you want to get a reasonable recording for getting gigs in the first place you would do a lot worse than buying a Zoom H2, setting up in a nice sounding practice venue (make sure the vocal is dominatingly loud through a good PA!!!!!) and record that (make sure the levels are good) If you are looking to get something for merch at gigs then you need a 'proper' recording, however that is achieved. Recording a gig is really really hard to do, and overdubbing is not at all easy, not a plan I would suggest at all.

[quote name='PapillonIrl' post='1272485' date='Jun 17 2011, 10:23 AM']While I would agree with your approach regarding instruments being tracked first, I would not not be so quick to dismiss headphones entirely. If the bass amp is heavily isolated as you say, one or more of the musicians may find they need to hear more of it while tracking. Sometimes headphones are a vibe killer, sometimes multiple headphone mixes are what is needed to make a band comfortable. ----///-----SNIP---///---- It is nice to have options in case one approach isn't working for some reason though. I would look for a space with a decent sized live room, good mic selection, one or two separate booths or small rooms in addition, and at least the capability to provide a few cue mixes if you hopefully won't need them.[/quote] Err I didn't dismiss headphones at all (have another read of the first bit of my post), quite the opposite I suggested they would be required, precisely because the bass will be isolated, in another room, DI'ed (who knows). The keys will in all likelihood be DI'ed too. No need for extra spill in the percussion from a keys amp unless its a Hammond, in which case get it out of the room if possible. Unless the studio has either a massive live room or a separate second live room then the horns will have to be overdubbed, otherwise you will get a mass of horn spill on the percussion and vice versa. Given the OP's question I would imagine this is self funded, and therefore the budget isnt stratospheric, so they probably aren't looking at studios with huge live rooms, or multiple large enough live rooms. SO back to getting the rhythm section down minus the horns. Of course you could also track a guide horn part from the control room if the engineer has some ear defenders....

Always room for another Brightoner!

[quote name='PapillonIrl' post='1270757' date='Jun 15 2011, 10:21 PM']More than likely a click track is not appropriate, as stated above, but what if (assuming live tracking)there is an electric bass which everyone wants to hear while tracking, but there is to much bleed from the bass amp into the instrument/drum mics, and the bass player wants to be beside the drummer, who has a 6 piece kit ? All of a sudden you may need to track with headphones and isolate the amps in another room, which potentially means a studio with 10 headphone mixes and 32 channels of input. That should narrow down the selection somewhat.[/quote] This will need to be tracked with headp[hones, bleed from a bass amp would need to be prtetty heavily isoalted IMO unless you are in a really great space, with an amp that sounds perfect. "Fixing it in the mix" will not be possible to any great extent without compromising something else. [quote name='lanark' post='1270884' date='Jun 16 2011, 12:39 AM']When rehearsing the only amplified instruments are my bass, vocals and an electric piano, but obviously when playing live, everything - including percussion and horns - are mic'd up. Line up: Rhythm Section: Bass (most important, obviously) Timbales Congas Keys Miscellaneous percussion played by vocalist or timbale player (maracas, clave, cowbell, guiro eto) Horn Section: Trumpet Trombone Sax Flute Plus vocals (including backing provided by other instrumentalists)[/quote] I would expoect to need to put down at the very least the following:- Rhythm Section: Bass (most important, obviously) Timbales Congas Keys Guide Vocal In one go. Ideally I'd want the horns down as well, but you are looking for a huge live room to do that, and this is almost certainly outside your budget. Could the horns overdub their parts??? Their being able to do that is really going to make or break the result.

Oh boy, you will need a BIG room. It must sound great. You need a veryugood tracking engineer, who understands how to get the necessary amount of seperation, not too much not too little. You then need a guy to mix the tracks who knows the genre at least a little, who understands the technical requirements completely, and has good ears. The question is how can you tell all this? Visit the studio. Talk to the engineer, if he is all about mic selection, placement and room acoustics, he is your man, if he's all about the spec on his computer, he may not be. Ask him to try and record as clean as possible of he starts gating the kit a lot ask why, its something you can choose to do later at mix down if you want, but you cant undo then so he'd better get it bang on for every track (a lot of fannying about that!). They will need a fairly big desk/bunch of pre's, and good mics (and lots of them), check out the gear list on their web page. Doing a big salsa band will challenge a lot of project studios, if they start talking about overdubbing all the percussion you may be in the wrong place, its hard to capture that feel when you arent all playing together - at least the core of the rhythm section should ideally put down the basis with a guide vocal IMO. Click tracks may not be appropriate - certainly not if anyone cant play to one in the band. Make sure the studio is happy for you to take away the stem tracks from the session unmixed. Back in the day you could walk out wiht the multitrack tape if you paid for it, this is the equivalent thing, it means you can get someone else to mix it later if you dont like the studios efforts. A protools or logic project/session isnt as good, its tied to a specific piece of software you see, you want the individual wavs at whatever quality they recorded them at, with no fx on at all.

[quote name='tauzero' post='1269519' date='Jun 15 2011, 12:51 AM']Can a dual compressor (I have a dbx 266xl to hand) be used as a compressor in stage 1 and a limiter in stage 2?[/quote] It can get close. Output from channel 1 into input from channel 2 for a start, channel 1 is your compressor, channel 2 is you limiter. Bypass channel 1 for now. A lot of compressors can be set to be rather like a limiter. Its not difficult. Turn the threshold all the way up (such that nothing is happening) Turn the attack as fast as possible, we want to catch transients! Turn the release to be fast. Turn the ration up to infinity:1 Bring down the threshold until you see some GR action on the meter. A couple or 3 dB would be plenty, you shouldnt really hear it though. Leave the make-up gain alone, on 0dB. Now you are catching peaks. The reason its not a true limiter is the action will be slower than the fastest limiters, and the circuit that senses if a signal has gone over the threshold will be looking at a longer average RMS value typically. Bypass the compressor n channel 2. Set up your compressor in fornt of it on channel1, pay attention to the makeup gain, then turn on channel 2 again. You should see channel 2 catching some peaks when you dig in still. You shouldnt hear it. This is more headroom, at this point you can bring upyour makeup gain on the limiter by maybe half the GR you see on the limiter meter, if you really need to.

I still have my Wonbles vinyl too.... Tobermory was a great track

[quote name='slobluesine' post='1268949' date='Jun 14 2011, 05:53 PM']yeah, yeah, but???? would you pay/want to see them at Glastonbury? now! really!!![/quote] If the audience rushed the stage and ripped them apart? Hell yeah )