51m0n

Yep, lots.... The drums on this were recorded with an H4n, using a Sennheiser e835 for snare and a BlueBall on the kick for The Individuils, changed that for a Red5Audio kick mic for the other two to get a bit more low end off the kick:- [url="https://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/your-mouths-are-killing-you"]https://soundcloud.c...are-killing-you[/url] [url="https://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/the-individuils"]https://soundcloud.c...the-individuils[/url] [url="https://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/harvest"]https://soundcloud.c...izontal/harvest[/url] Placement is as always crucial. In this case IIRC the H4n was placed such that the kick and snare were dead center in the stereo field, above the kit (about 2' above the toms, pointing straight down at the snare). Kick mic was right at the hole in the resonant head of the kick pointing (as best as you can with a blueball) at the beater, the snare was mic'ed about 3" above the snare at the rim, pointing at the contact point of the stick on the batter head. A few listens to make sure nothing was terribly wrong and away we went. Comes out rather well considering it was recording on a showstring budget in a avery guerrilla fashion

Cant do a Funk thread without some mad Japanese funkateers, it just wouldn't be right! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piMRpOjwm9w[/media]

Just seen this, top stuff! I'm snowed at the moment (and for the forseeable) which i swhy I've almost disappeared off BC recently. Best of luck all of you who have a crack at this, I will try and give your efforts a proper listen and a vote when the time comes....

[quote name='muttley' timestamp='1387560784' post='2313432'] I'd say the first modern recording was the one that had a convincing stereo soundstage. In other words, you can play it back over a decent quality system and have the impression of the musicians/instruments in the room with you*. That was probably some time in the 1960s. * Better still, an impression of being transported to the venue where the performance took place. However, as we all know such a performance rarely actually exists so I'm really not sure about that part... [/quote] Then you'd be looking at Telstar by the iconic Mister Joe Meek....

Look for a second hand Zoom R16....

What is the definition of modern sounding? Because anything in that sounds classic 80's (Rio for example) sounds immensely dated to me. In comparison Autobahn by Kraftwerk (1974) sounds infinitely more modern and hasn't aged in the same way at all to my ear.....

Dynamic mics dont need phantom power but it wont harm them, condensor mics need phantom power (normally 48v), ribbon mics are a different kettle of fish however, if you stick phantom power through a ribbon then in all likelihhod you will release the magic smoke....

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1386781911' post='2304476'] Wow, yeah, it just arrived and I've been playing about with it on a synth arpeggio. Really, really, [i]really[/i] nice. [/quote] Yep

Hey excellent news! Thought I was losing my marbles then FMR is very nice for clean compression especially on special mode (or whatever they call it) - watch out for the speed of it though, the attack can get very very fast and will show up distortion as a result. Also IIRC wiring them in can need some special leads made up. Other than that its a great piece of kit, and a very different kind of comrpessor to the JM one you have, enjoy it!

Another track from the same session:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HMHZrsiWXc

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1386257221' post='2297818'] Oooh - it's Blackbird. Presumably it's not the room Rush did Clockwork Angels in, 'cos that sounds cack. [/quote] No I dont think it is...

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1386255067' post='2297782'] That is down to the engineer to explain though. If you have a band turn up and expect to spend a day in the studio and walk away with a finished track, he should be advising them to the contrary. We went into the studio. 2-3 hours of setting up and getting levels. We knocked up about 10 live tracks during the rest of the day. He gave us a live cd of the bare-bones recording to take away and listen to. As you say, that's where the fun starts... Having the band at the mixing stage is asking for trouble, but it's difficult to explain to non technical musicians that they've done the recording and it cost £x for the day but it's now going to cost £y for another 3 days of engineer time. Most of them just don't get it. [/quote] Agreed, mixdown is generally under estimated by a large margin for a professional result. The less well equiped the studio is in terms of live space, the harder the mix down, and the more that will need to be overdubbed. The only thing more underrated in terms of time than mixdown is backing vocals, they are utterly misunderstood and misrepresented by moist bands, and really do make the difference between a demo and a professional recording in a lot of cases. After that its guitar doubling. After that its drums and bass.... You want a demo? I can record your demo with 8 to 10 tracks live, in a day for an EP, and mixed. You want a saleable contemporary product? I need 8-10 tracks for the drums, 2 tracks per guitar part, more often than not (style dependant) 2 or even 3 guitar parts, more for heavy stuff. 2 tracks for the bass. Then theres n tracks for keys/samples/pads. I may comp a lead vocal together from 15 takes (one track each effectively), but getting the right vocal setup may take an hour to begin with (and I have a pretty limited choice of mic and preamp to start with!) if the vocalist isnt great, although 2 or 3 would be more usual for a decent performer, who will every now and then get a great first take (Soft Cell's Tainted Love was first take all the way through - brilliant performance). BVs, another 6 tracks on an average pop track, I've handled 50 tracks of BVs on one song before now though. You think that can be mixed in a couple of hours? Realistically if I'm mixing someone elses project, there is 3 hours work tidying it up and getting it ready to be mixed, often more. If more people spent more time getting their stems prepped up properly that time would be saved. On top of which all the rest of the mix is an iterative process, it takes hours to properly mix a song, days sometimes, and bands dont realise that in the real world that is the time spent by their competition to produce their music, you better be ready to do the same or you arent going to have a competitive product!

Here is an example of a band all in one room doing tracks in one full take, that sounds frankly incredible:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exQRfHbSwn0 Thats George Massenburg in there at the desk, he is a bona fide recording legend (he [i]invented[/i] parametric eq ffs!). He is an exceptional engineer. Notice anything odd a bout the room? Yup, its the only room of its kind in the world, completely diffused space, those diffuses are 4 feet deep at their longest! Sounded incredible apparently. George helped design it. Funnily enough its in Nashville. UNfortunately they didnt dig the way his stuff turned out so much, and he let it go, the diffusion has been removed now, Now your average little project studio doesnt have a space like this to get everyone in the same room, and frankly trying to minimise spill with gobos is more often than not doomed to failure if the spill pick up is a bit poor, or the off axis pickup of the ic isnt going to work with the on axis pickup. I've recorded in a similar way a lot, generally you need a really really big space to do it in, say a barn sized space, that way you get seperation through distance first of all. If you dont have a very big live room then you need seperate booths, and the sound wont normally be as natural. I tell you what though, GM is a mean mixing machine, he really know how to dial it in, and given that he owns GML he has access to as many GML eqs and compressors as he wants, often using both sides a stereo GML EQ, one either sidef of a GML compressor. These pieces retail at several thousand dollars a piece. You better believe this had many hours spent on that mix!

[quote name='AntLockyer' timestamp='1386109862' post='2296046'] I'm in the other camp. Stuff shouldn't take ages to do unless you want it to sound different to what actually works. This is why everyone uses session guys in Nashville so you can do an 4 track EP in a day [/quote] Thats just not the case IME. If you have a player per track in the song and no overdubs then you can get a whole band down in one take if they are [i]really[/i] good. Usually you will then overdub the vocal - even in Nashville. Then you get to mix, and that will still take upwards of 10 hours for the first track in the EP and if the instrumentation or feel changes much between each song, then subsequent mixes will take as long as likely as not. It can be less you're right, but when it is its because everything worked in the room, and there was no need to make any arrangement choices, not even to help the dynamic though the track, no issues with any of the tracks siting in the mix correctly, and the way you tracked every instrument was such that you needed no real filtering at all. In truth, thats mighty unrealistic IME. And I believe whole heartedly in capturing the sound you want as best you can at the mic!

That was a ridiculous amount of time to estimate. A [i]serious[/i] mix takes at least 15 hours for a single track. If you have a truly complex track (the single off a Pink album had over 120 tracks on it!) then you could well double that especially if you include the pre-mix tidying up. So one of two things was wrong, eiither you guys intended to essentially do a live recording with a pretty straight mix down of the songs, nothing more than a rough balancing, no automation, basic effects and eq, no overdubs, no extra bv's or widdles. A demo in other words. Or you woefully understimated the time this all takes to get something a bit more shiny than a rough demo.. Most likely once you'd got the basic rhythm tracks down the guitarist and vocalist realised that a rough demo wasnt going to cut it and started adding the necessary 'shiny sh*t' to make it sound a bit more pro. This doubled the time without taking into account the extra mixing required I would think. Any which way I hope you're after a 'live' and 'representative' sound, because the mix down is going to have to be pretty straightforward given the time frames. Consider this a lesson well learnt, if you need to save studio time work every single thing out in advance, and no you cant do that in a rehearsal room, but you [i]can[/i] record every rehearsal and get people to work out every single bit of 'shiny sh*t' they intend to put down in the studio. This is called [i]pre-production[/i] and is absolutely [i]vital[/i] if you want to get a great result in the studio without going more than 50% over budget!

[quote name='uncle psychosis' timestamp='1385543742' post='2289399'] I think I've only ever met one superb funk-disco guitarist. Having said that, he's not too shabby at all. Goes by the name of Nile Rodgers. ....sorry, I just had to do that. I still break into a huge grin when I remember that I have shaken his hand [/quote] Interestesingly my current guitarist's long time guitar hero is Nile, and he does [i]that[/i] feel particularly well. He's never been too bothered by playing lead, and has spent years really getting into rhythm guitar. It certainly shows!

Post the recording, we'll tell you gently if its the bass or guitaror drums not getting the groove on right. My bet is its the rhythm guitar, why? Because in twenty years I've only met two really superb funk/disco rhythm guitarists, and about a hundred who think they can do either but cant. Met a lot of bassists who do a better job of grooving than guitarists.... No amount of reverb on bass will make it work better, like no amount of reverb on a crap vocal makes it less apalling to anyone who can listen, yet crap vocalists do tend to like a lot of reverb to try and hide their inadequacies. She may not be aware of the correct technical solution, but she seems fairly aware that there is a problem to address...

Bizare, the JM compressors I've used you can really push and get some noticeablye compression on, I've definitely used a JM half rack jobbie and got drums pumping off it (as a parallel comp effect). Sounded great. May not have been this exact one, there have been several revisions....

Dont know how servicable the tube is, how hard can it be really though? Apparently its an ECC81 which is equivalent to a 12AT7 (IIRC). I doubt very much you'd ever need to change it, depends on how high the plate voltage i to a certain extent I guess...

Result! Love to hear your thoughts on it once its sorted. I love JM compressors on bass (some are better than others) if you dial them in they are awfully squidgy and yummmmmmm....

Pffft.... What reasons did they give for 3/5 exactly? Its definitely one of the better compressor pedals out there, true vari-mu tube compressor for a start, very unusual in a pedal. Probably the 'best' compressor pedal money can buy is the [url="http://www.origineffects.com/Cali76transformer.php"]Cali76 [/url]with output transformer. Its very expensive, closely matches a rack 1176 in action and circuit by all acounts and has excelletn metering. FEA do some great pedal compressors too, the OptiFET being the opposite of the Cali in that its all warm/dark and fat... The MXR M87 is OK, has reasonable metering, but unfortunately the lowest available ratio is 4:1, which is virtually a limiting action to me, for bass playing, far too obvious for a gentle leveller/'warmer-up-er-er' which is what I'm after. The Aguilar may sound great, but frankly it has no useful metering and so unless you really know what compression sounds like its pretty much a useless device IMO (same for absolutely any compressor with no metering at all on it, or a single LED, you cant tell what its doing properly because you cant hear subtle compression unless you have spent years playing with compressors) Go read all the [url="http://www.ovnilab.com/"]ovnilab compressor reviews[/url] fo rthe real info on the se devices. The[url="http://www.ovnilab.com/reviews/markbass.shtml"] Markbass Compressorrrerererere[/url] does very well - I think he refers to it as 'pure gold'!

Cant imagine why it woudl behave like that if it was working correctly. The 1/4" input is line/instrument unbalanced (according to the manual) so it should be easy to drive it, cant say I remember having issues with getting some comp action out of one of these (way back when, I may have but it doesnt ring a bell). Optical compression has a different (slower, non-linear) attack/release action to a VCA compressor, it can sound musical but definitely should be a noticable thing if its working 'right'. Doesnt sound right to me.....

I would never have described the Joe Meek units I've used as having a subtle compressor at all. I havent used that specific unit since the mid to late 90's for a single piece of music I was working on, so I cant remember the sound of it specifically, or if it has an LED that signifieds GR is being applied. But normally the JM compressors add gobs of lovely pumping loveliness as you set them higher. Point to note about the VC3 Q it has a fixed internal threshold on the compressor, if you want more 'action' turn up the input gain. So in order to hear it straight away put the attack as fast as possible, middling release, maximum 'Compression' (which is ratio by any other term) and then crank the input until you hear it compress, switch the compressor in and out you should really notice the dipping just after the transient of the input sound. Play with attack and release to get the action pleasing, then drop the compression to a sensible level. See if that helps....

Several times I've dabled in this. And every single time I've just had to cave in and go back to Windows/Mac based machines. Linux is a fantastic OS, but its really not geared up for, or ready to do, pro standard recording IME. Last time I tried was several years ago, I admit, but at that point I gave it up as a lost cause. When there is a DAW that truly rivals Reaper running on Linux with seamless integration of all VSTs and VSTis that are available out there, that hooks up to my RME interface perfectly, and can import Repaer projects perfectly out of the box, then I may just consider it, if I have a month to spare to configure the damn thing. IME Ubuntu Studio is no exception to this at all. I tried it and 4 or 5 other distros last time. To much faff for me by far. Good luck in your endeavour, though, and I am very interested to read how you get on with it!