Archive for the ‘Gear’ Category
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Last week I was recording a song here at Epic Sounds that was just acoustic guitar and vocals. It felt a bit empty in parts and we had plenty of time to experiment so that’s what we did.
The perfect $1 shaker
First we looked for a shaker sound, not having a real “store bought’ shaker wasn’t an issue because my kitchen has a cupboard full of spices and other things to shake. My favorite shaker turned out to be sesame seeds in a plastic jar. I believe it came from the dollar store. Depending on what the song needs, try peppercorns, rice, sugar in plastic or glass jars.
I recorded the sesame seed shaker with an XY spaced stereo pair of AT 3035s with a pop filter in front (highly recommended). For processing I used BX solo with the width at 300%, a bit of EQ to take off the lows and very top end, then sent into some reverb. It was a great sound, but it didn’t make the final mix.
Cardboard percussion
Another thing we tried was a cardboard box hit with drum sticks. It was cool but needed a lot of processing to make it fit with the acoustic guitars and shaker so again it was scrapped to give us more time to focus on vocals. You should definitely try it, it costs nothing but a bit of your time.
Guitar case kick
And finally a sound that did make the final mix. We wanted a sort of deep drum sort of sound, but without a kick drum around or digging into the sample library we found the perfect thing. The acoustic guitar case! We laid out a thick blanket on the floor, turned the empty case upside down and tapped the top until we found the ideal spot (there is a ton of tonal variations on a guitar case believe it or not) and marked the spot to hit. To fake a soft mallet I wrapped the end of a drumstick with a guitar cleaning cloth and secured it with a twist tie. Recorded it in mono, did the typical kick drum EQ stuff and had a cool sound that worked really well for the final climax of the song.
Just do it
So the point I’m trying to make…try anything! Your favorite shaker of all time might already be in the spice rack, mine was. If not go down to the dollar store and try things out, guaranteed you’ll find something you can use.
Have a listen to what we accomplished in that afternoon.
Killer Green - Fly:
Download
Posted in DIY, Gear, My Sessions | 4 Comments »
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
I’m kinda disappointed with everyone this year, there’s really nothing that blew me away or was even very interesting announced this week at NAMM.
Winter NAMM 2010 started this past Thursday and as I sat in my pajama pants reading about all the new product announcements as they come in through RSS, I can’t help but feel underwhelmed by what’s coming out. Nevertheless here are some of the more notable items announced this week.
MOTU ZBox – A $40 device to improve your ITB guitar sounds via impedance balancing
New Waves plugz – New Chris Lord-Alge, Eddie Kramer and Jack Joseph Puig signature plugins (no pics yet)
Muse/Peavey Musebox – Some competition to AVID’s Eleven Rack a live guitar processor that runs VSTs
Ableton/Akai APC20 – A smaller version/expansion of the very cool Ableton controller APC40
AVID Pro Tools Virtual Instrument Expansion Pack – The biggest disappointment of the show, this is all AVID had to announce and it’s the type of update to VIs that should have been free.
IK Multimedia Amplitube 3 – Lots of new stuff in this one
Tonehammer Microhammer sample packs – Tonehammer makes THE COOLEST sample packs, now they’re cheaper but smaller
Akai MPD18 – compact pad controller
For more in-depth coverage of NAMM 2010 as it happens get the news the same way I do:
Synthtopia
CDM Live from NAMM
Sonic State
Posted in Gear, commentary | 4 Comments »
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
To be honest I’ve never given much thought to USB mics, I never understood why you’d want one instead of a proper mic and interface. Then I was in the situation where I could buy a Blue Snowflake for just $20 and I opened up my mind a bit. Blue is a pretty respectable brand and strangely less than an hour earlier someone showed me the Blue Icicle which was pretty nice for what it is. The # 1 thing I liked about the Icicle was that there was zero effort required to get it working with a mac and condenser mic. The # 2 thing I liked about it was I could use the built-in headphone jack on the mac for monitoring, essentially using to interfaces at once, it worked just fine.
So a guy offered to sell me his Blue Snowflake for $20, (I think he needed booze or drug money) and that’s a pretty good deal even if I only ever need it once. So the dude that never thought much about USB mics now owns one.
http://www.bluemic.com/snowflake/
So now that I owned it, I needed to figure out if I had any actual use for it and if it sounded even marginally good. My expectations were low, but there are much worse things I could have spent the money on. Let’s look at some Pro and Cons of this particular mic.
Pros
- Very portable, small & lightweight
- Inexpensive
- Very simple to setup
- Sensitive condenser mic
Cons
- Only 16 bit/44.1kHz
- Gain is computer controlled (not that bad with ‘Sound Source’ for mac)
- Thin USB cable will eventually wear out
- Sound quality not as good as a real interface + mic
Possible Applications
- Pre-production demos
- Field recorder for ‘found sounds’ out of my studio
- Skype
- Better mic for screencasting (tutorial vids for you guys)
So how does it sound? Well for under $100 I don’t expect much from anything. This is pretty decent I suppose but I didn’t directly compare it to a proper condenser mic at the time. Below are some examples of the co-op student at work playing acoustic guitar, comparing the Snowflake with the built-in mic on the Mac Book Pro.
So what do you think?
Posted in Gear, Microphones, Review | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
Over the past several months I’ve been struggling with my bass guitar tones when recording, fighting with amp sims and trying out every combination of preamp and DI, finally coming to the conclusion that it was largely the bass that was really holding me back from getting the sounds I’m looking for. The bass I had been using for the past year or two was an Ibanez SR 500, a mid level bass, Mahogany neck and body, rosewood fingerboard and active Bartolini pickups. A nice easy to play bass, but what it was missing is some excitement for lack of a better term.
I guess I can define excitement in a bass guitar as plenty of punch, growly mids and highs, a controlled low end and dynamically responsive. When I’m recording I want as much excitement as possible.
One of the characteristics of Mahogany and Rosewood (read all about guitar tonewood here) is a compressed midrange and reduced highs. That was really working against me in the worst way. So Mahogany was out, and possibly Rosewood fingerboards as well.
Time for a change. That bass went up on Craigslist and was quickly sold. I went down to my local independent guitar shop, The Guitar Shop and started playing everything. I was open to anything not made from Mahogany. I tried several Fender & Squire Jazz basses, a Squire Classic Vibe P-Bass, a Yamaha BB414 (Actually quite good for the price too), almost all of which would be an improvement tonally, but perhaps not in quality. Then I noticed a couple Sterling basses. Sterling is the new, more affordable line of basses and guitars from Music Man. Music Man makes some seriously badass basses, but they can be pricey. The Sterling line is assembled in Indonesia and inspected in America, this allows them to use quality parts for half the cost.
In the shop there were two very similar basses, they were both Ray 34 models (MM Stingray design), one was black with Rosewood fingerboard, and the other was a natural clear gloss finish with Maple fingerboard. Same price. The Ray 34 model has a single massive humbucker, Volume, 3 band active EQ (High, Mid, Low with center detents). Tonally they fairly were similar, but the natural finish one was a couple pounds lighter and had a touch more excitement. With Swamp Ash I think it’s better to go with lighter (lower on the tree). After going back and forth between those two and the Yamaha I made my decision, made a deal and walked away with the Ray 34 Natural.
It looks just like that, but the color is just a shade lighter, less yellow. Because this is an import model you’re probably guessing that there are some quality or quality control concerns. Well there are, but in this case there are only two very small issues with this particular bass.
As with many brand new guitars the fret edges (especially in the winter) stick out a bit and had to be filed down. They did this at the store for me free and most shops will do this for you if you ask.
The second minor issue was a couple of the screws for the tuners are not in fully and the screw heads are stripped. I don’t think this will affect anything as nothing is loose.
Very minor things IMO. You will want to try these out because the density, weight and tone of Swamp Ash can vary quite a bit.
Included with the bass is a soft gig bag, padded and faux fur lined and 3 hex keys.
Alright, to bring this long post to an end. This bass is SWEET/SICK/AWESOME/ADJECTIVE/CAPSLOCK really it is. A massive improvement.
I highly recommend this bass for recording. Most people will say Fender P bass or Jazz bass…NO, get this one. LOL
Note – This review is after just 1 day owning the bass. I’ll update if I run into any problems or change my mind about it. I’m having a ton of fun with it so far.
Any questions?
Posted in Bass, Gear, Review | 2 Comments »
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
It’s nearly Christmas time so I feel like it’s my duty to make some gift suggestions so you guys don’t end up with a Cosby sweater or socks this year. Everything on this list should be under $200.
Books & Education
Gear
Accessories
What do you want for Christmas?
Posted in Gear, commentary | 1 Comment »
