51m0n

Everything there is to know about funk in one video.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4uO1aH-iFA

Bootsy giving you the simplest groove ever that really exposes this [i]long/short-accented[/i] groove thing perfectly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkVOmSpwyQ Learn this, its about 5 notes FFS! Play it exactly like Bootsy, really pay attention to the end of the notes, when they stop, where they are accented within the main line. Its funk gold...

Hey Redstriper mate, funk is just reggae but faster , I've heard your stuff, its got a fantastic feel that certainly grooves like a train. Seriously though there is a lot of correlation between the feels IME, there is that sense of pushing the first half of the subdivision longer, and accenting the second half. The difference is the size of the subdivisions, with a lot of funk being very much about the 16th note thing, and reggae being more about a very swung eight note feel. Scott's lesson is great (as always), but the feel in it is exactly what I was trying to explain. How many old school funk lines go something like :- ______DUP ||: berrrrrrrr DUP berrrrrrrr___ _____DUP_____DUP | _____ ___ _____ ___ _____ ___ _____ DUP :|| for instance? Note the clear gap between every note, in funk every note is a little short so that the next note is punchier, running notes to gether really leagato is harder to make sound funky. If you play [s]four[/s] and ||: one and two[s] and three[/s] and [s]fou[/s]r and | [s]one and two and three and four[/s] and :|| Dead straight it just isnt at all funky.

IME listen to a tonne of groove playing first. But listen fo rthe right thing about that playing. While you listen concentrate really hard on the way these guys are subdividing the beat. It is never, ever straight, they always push the first half of the subdivision a little longer than the second half, however often this is backed up by accenting the second half of the beat subdivision a little to make it punch through. There is a subtle berrrrrrDUP to each pair of subdivisions. If they dont play the first note in the paiir they still infer the extra time so you get ______DUP, and if they dont play the second note you get berrrrr__, the timing is always bang on. Especially in fills and fancy stuff, in fact they make simple things sound flashier just because they maintain this feel when playing simple stuff so well. This creates a 'skip' to their playing, its all about how you accent subdivisions and where you exactly you put that subdivision. Vic Wooten has an astounding groove to his less flashy playing, and if you listen to him grooving he makes this so much a part of his sound. If you dont do this naturally then you are going to spend a long time working on it. Take a track you love listening to that really shows this kind of thing off. Play along and really really pay attention to where your notes end and where they start within a beat. Now set up a metronome to quarter notes and play the groove to the metronome and absolutely nail its swing/skip/feel (insert whichever sounds right toy ou ). The notes dont matter, the feel does, in fact just play the rhythm on one note and nail it for the track. No one cares about the notes anyway , you cant hold no groove if you aint got no pocket!

T-Rex Chameleon has been someting of a let down for me

You should try putting a funk band together, its taken bloody years to find people!

A limiter also tends to be very interested in the shortest over possible (we are talking nano seconds), whereas many compressors are uninterested in the fastest peaks and actually effectively measure RMS over a small period of time rather than peak level.

Wow, already had 1 entry in, remember we wont be looking for a drop dead date until nearer the end of September so plenty of time left to squeeze every last ounce of fabulous out of your mixes

Looking more likely that I will be able to get there - woot!

Is the data from the old blog going to be in the new blog?

Just tried pointing someone at the recording blog and its not there any more... Sad now

Rack compressors are the canine undercarriage, there are very very very few pedal compressor that come close to the ease of use, metering and flexibility of a full featured rack compressor. I run a Focusrite Compounder, and I love it, its set up to be generally very transparent, but the limiter is set such that if I get too agressive with something it just holds the transient at bay a tad, so I can get that lovely compressed leading edge to a heavily accented pop, but all the time I'm playing it is adding a little beef, and smoothing everything out, glueing me into a mix nicely. At the same time it certainly has no detrimental affects on dymanics, I can play as quite as a mouse when I want to. This whole thing about compressors removing your ability to be dynamic is utter tosh, you never hear anyone saying a big tube amp prevents them playing with dynamics and its doing the same thing when you run it into driving. What is true is that people are used to using compressor pedals with no or utterly inadequate metering, and so over compress the nuts out of their signal - ie they can hear it clearly at work, and then wonder why its harder to play any louder than they are. [url="http://blog.basschat.co.uk/setting-up-a-compressor/"]You could do worse than reading my blog on setting up a compressor[/url] but the blog seems to be down right now ...

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1377077840' post='2182951'] Pre-rendering can even help with a single track..! I discovered the 'Performance' tool in Reaper, which shows the CPU usage, track by track. I had heavily treated one of the tracks, which only plays for about 20 seconds. This track, despite being short, was alone taking up over 10% of the CPU, due to the fx treatment. I rendered the track and gained an instant 10%..! Win..! Following the above advice, I also created a sub-folder for bv's, and applied fx to the folder, rather than to the individual tracks (this implies, of course, wishing the exact same fx on all tracks, which is my case...). This too freed up enormous resources, as well as simplifying and making 'neater' the interface. Given another few decades, I may even become rather good at this lark (modestly, of course...)..! Great tips, anyway; thanks to all. Keep 'em coming... [/quote] Absolutely! You can also route fx sends through the folder by adding channels to the folder and then each indivdual track within the folder can have more or less of an effect as you see fit. This is what I meant by taking it further, it offers absolutely the best 'bang for the buck' in terms of groups for ease of use and track specific fx sends, since you can have for instance a single reverb that everything sends to via its folder tracks which means if youturn down the folder you also turn down the fx send of every track in that folder. Bit of a headache to set up but absolutely brilliant once its working, and the absolute best way I havefound for get the most out of my mix lappie's hardware (yes I mixed this on a laptop, and I didnt need any track/folder rendering, largely because of how I set these things up).

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1377077548' post='2182943'] Simon - That's exactly what I want to do in Logic, but as far as I've gotten with the idea is to place things under groups Although my mixer is looking very tidy and organised this month. I have each part of the mixer assigned for different instruments, which all go into one group (Like drums). The worst part is when you decided that maybe only one little track needs to be turned down a little bit, and have to ungroup it, make the adjustment and regroup it. [/quote] Surely Logic has a concept of submix tracks/folders rather than you having to group tracks together for volume? This is not some new idea its exactly what a real mixer does, you send tracks to a group buss rather than the main stereo buss and can still affect the levels within the group by playing with faders. I havent used Logic in anger for well over ten years though....

Another way of setting up submixes and aux sends is detailed here:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-oA-B1YzEE

This might ehlp you to work out grouping in folders in Reaper - I find this one of the nicest things about Reaper, you can set up sub-mix group busses so fast:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dejEW5YjxbQ Group your bvs in a folder, get it sounding as good as you can for now, render that folder track and it mutes all the original tracks and gives you a new track with the rendered result in - which frees up your CPU from all the tracks in the folder too! Do the same with the strings in another group, the drums in another, the keys in another. In fact you can have folders in folders too, I tend to have very very complex groupings like this (ie a drum folder with a snare folder with a snare top and snare bottom track in etc etc). This makes level control a snap, I can raise the entire snare volume up or down easily, or all the kit or just the overheads etc etc. You can take this a very very long way indeed, but it starts to take a lot of time and effort to set the routing up. For me its worth it, but some people like to work without submixes. You can select a bunck of tracks and render them without being in a folder too.

Honestly you should Hear just the bvs off Russian Dolls mate Actually I sense a 'personal remix' coming on

At least in this case you can listen to the artists own final product, since Kit had massive input into the mix and final sound of the track - just follow the link in my sig. Of course you are encourage to take it in whatever direction you feel like!

Right all the BVs are now uploaded! https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y7rlfncmc2lw0ip/F-WJ8a5Kkw There are something like 18 or 19 tracks of BVs to download, so not too manyt on this one (seriously, theres 50 tracks of yummy BVs in Russian Dolls, and the result sounds utterly mesmerising). Knock yourselves out chaps!

Just to reiterate, that is NOT all the BVs I will upload the rest on Monday if I have time at wwork....

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1376693893' post='2178257'] I used to have the Thumb clone in fretless guise. Sold it when I got a proper Thumb for defretting, which had the nasty thick later Warwick neck which I had reprofiled to JD dimensions. So the Vester was nicer to play than a 2000 Thumb but not as good as a 1987 JD Thumb. [/quote] It wasnt just the neck profile, Thumb basses have a far too large gap between the string and the body for my liking, when you pop the string I find my finger goes too far under it. Really annoying! Also I've never played a Thumb that wasnt heavier than a pregnant elephant, the Vester isnt as light as my Roscoe, but its still a lot lighter than a Thumb.....

You'll probably have to pay for K-meter on protools I'm afraid

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1376573777' post='2176269'] Does it work with ProTools? [/quote] No idea Can't hurt to have a look see.... If not do your mix in protools, then load the two track into reaper with a k-meter get to get the final level right