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Post by jjinvegas on Feb 6, 2017 17:32:51 GMT -6
I think the biggest factor in the recording I just heard was how that drum hit established sort of a baseline room size. Now the vocal in comparison does not seem as wet as it would without that aural clue to the implied size of the space. To get that seemingly drying out effect, in that you really only hear the verb on the trails after the vocal phrase, you run the verb on the same channel as the voice and compress at the end of the chain, while using the dry/wet baalance on the verb and the threshold of the compressor until the comp brings up the verb trails, but they disappear while the singing is going on. Cappiche?? I agree that the drum hit established the baseline room size, depth. Thanks for the compressor advice. A question: On basic drums/guitars/bass songs, what instrument(s) do you use to establish your base room size? I think your mixes sound great btw. Bravo! Well, your typical band, the drums seem to be the most likely place to have some kind of room suggested. I do use a lot of reverb on guitar, but it is more to satisfy my sense memory of all those years playing Princeton Reverbs. And those are almost always Pod Farm spring reverb, I am not sure if it is even a good or mediocre emulaton, but it is what I have and the GUI LOOKS like an old reverb box.....smile. Reverb can be really great or a complete smear, and a lot depends on tempo and the density of the arrangement. Often times I am using delays, one set synced at quarter notes, the other longer to give the vocal the feeling of being somewhere, and I usually record vocals in omni, and my room has some reflective qualities. And I will typically fire a reverb off one of the delay returns, whichever one seems to suit. One little thing I have been doing for a while is I put up a tube condenser about 2 feet in front of the kick drum, about the level of my head when I am on the throne, angled down at the snare to get a snapshot of the kit. It gets some reflection from behind the kit, plus all the racket, and then I use that instead of feeding verbs of the individual drums so that it doesn't seem so corny. It also can be a sort of dryer, in that if you experiment with polarity and moving that track around at the sample level, nudging it around, sometimes something magic happens, and the kit gets all focused. This kind of thing can also lead to head scratching quandaries that only bourbon mixed with coke have any effect on, moderation is suggested. And some days I decide that dry is king, most of my favorite rock records are not INXS-styled celebrations of automation and keyed verb tails. I tend to like those mixes longer, and typically choose those down the road when I am sorting. Same basic answer offered as usual, IT DEPENDS, MAN.....hahahahaha cheers!!!!
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Post by jjinvegas on Feb 6, 2017 3:53:53 GMT -6
I think the biggest factor in the recording I just heard was how that drum hit established sort of a baseline room size. Now the vocal in comparison does not seem as wet as it would without that aural clue to the implied size of the space. To get that seemingly drying out effect, in that you really only hear the verb on the trails after the vocal phrase, you run the verb on the same channel as the voice and compress at the end of the chain, while using the dry/wet baalance on the verb and the threshold of the compressor until the comp brings up the verb trails, but they disappear while the singing is going on. Cappiche??
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 28, 2017 10:32:46 GMT -6
Well, I did check out their available audio, hmmmm, probably could have saved a million dollars with a Wheatstone inline console and dbx 166, in all honesty. Here you have this console crying out for someone to light the fuse, and instead it might as well be a Mackie. Really, what good are tuned rooms and soffit-mounted mains? If you turn them on enough to move air, you can't make any kind of accurate judgement until tomorrow, your ears are already stretched. Strictly for clients while you take a break. I am trying to figure out who they could attract if you can't let your hair down enough because later the little sisters of the rich are going to be making an un-gospel LP, with Joel Osteen narrating. Okay, a bit harsh, but it isn't a mixing console, it is thirty something channels of very cool front end if someone isn't afraid of voltage. The "live" rooms seemed so non-vibe that khakis are mandatory. I am sure they read some book that said that gain reduction beyond 3 db at a slope of 4/1 or more is verboten, when a console with 30 db of head room never smacks a meter. All that beautiful distortion available, never to be heard......hahahahaha. Strictly a porn display for gear lust, you don't actually get to touch anything......and whenever I see a c-12 VR in a collection I know for a fact that the buyers are a salesman's wet dream.....
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 24, 2017 2:25:27 GMT -6
That parking lot guy is pretty useful. Serve enough of those Yokahama beefstakes to your hipster friends, and maybe they will actually follow through on their New Year's resolution to become vegan, and beef might get affordable enough for the audio crowd. Changes are always incremental. He also has added a Sennheiser clip repair to his inventory, manufactured by Duck industries, and residue remover for your big Ebay liquidation by Ron-sun. Petroleum fumes may cause cancer, breathe deeply....
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 24, 2017 1:58:12 GMT -6
Shipping concerns are less troublesome than what you are shipping. If I was considering a machine, my first concern would be how robust the support industry (you can cross cottage industry off the list, we are talking rabbit hutch) is to keep it alive. How long has it been since Ampex manufactured their last multi-track? Scully, 3M? MCI? Otari and Studer made Hondas, reliable, always started, zero mojo. To my ears they were digital with tape hiss. Under the threat of gunplay I would find a gently abused JH 16 with some kind of head report. I would ingratiate myself with George Mara, and pray that the electro-mechanical side of the machine stayed viable for another five years. That would give you enough time for your patience to run its course, and nostalgia for pet rocks and other artifacts of a more innocent time to have passed....
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 23, 2017 2:36:59 GMT -6
I'm just gonna throw this in... I tracked a record at Welcome to 1979 a few weeks ago on the MCI gear using GP9. I'm mixing it at my place on the 440B using RMGI SM468. S**t man...it's gooey as hell. That 468 is nice sounding tape. I'm capturing "no tape" mixes as well, kinda just for this thread. I'll post up some A/B stuff for you guys soon. I wonder if that is the same formulation as the AGFA 468, I had heard that one of the new tape sources had taken over the AGFA plant. Probably it is, the media houses all used it, the rock places used AFGA 469 as it set up the same as 456. If memory serves, they were underbiasing it, at least cmpared to the 469, they swore by it because it was less noisy., and as they weren't all deaf from Marshalls they were very concerned with intelligibility issues on top with a lot of spoken word oriented ads and such. I am also trying to get darker sonically, (and I guess Spiritually...smile) for this LP I am doing with Bobby Jones, a very interesting blues singer who took Junior Wells' place in the Aces back in Chicago's heyday. So he had Buddy guy as his guitarist, and Muddy Waters as his taskmaster. I am writing the songs, being the band, and recording as well. So it is down to me yo not mess it up, Bobby is mid-70s and this may be his last LP and I want to suggest his pedigree without actually aping it too much. He is a total pro when it comes time to do a take, we both admire the Sinatra idea, sing it once or twice, and make it count. I was just trial mixing a song to see where we are at, and there is some discipline involved trying to resist brightness...... not there yet, but closer, maybe. Love the playing bit, and the writing, the mixing aspect is a bit of a challenge....ideas? clyp.it/n2sgthar
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 22, 2017 21:24:24 GMT -6
Well, it appears that the original premise I offered, about how with the easy alignment of takes on the DAW one could use a half track or full track quarter inch machine and get some kind of oxide mojo seems like a do-able thing. Because that was the really the underpinning of the discussion, whether there was a need to have two-inch expense if all you really wished was to get some of that analog distortion going. Because INHO the things that benefit from tape are bass guitar due to the roll-off, which made most console manufacturers decide there was no real need for HPF even on pretty spendy consoles. And drum tracks, except for Overheads, got some brickwall even if unintended due to slow ballistic meters. The other elephant in the room with the two inch thing is that so many of those machines were not stellar in the erase department, they were designed before 256/456 formulations allowed a hotter recording level. that is why you used to be able to buy one-pass tape at a pretty good discount, We have all grown accustomed to a far lower overall noise floor that used to mask ghosts and cross-talk when you had 16 or 24 channels of tape hiss disguising it. And then a whole range of very cool sounding machines come into play without worry about so many channels of maintenance and/or rehab/repair. Scully 280 machines havw a very sweet character, the Ampex 300 series tube machines have a very recognizable warmth, JH 110, and my personal favorite due to the transformers and FETs, 3M. Very few of us have Svart's electronic knowledge, so babysitting 16 channels of Austin Healy might give us remorse, two channels is less stressful....cheers....
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 20, 2017 7:55:44 GMT -6
Okay, let's just think for a moment. When you say the Beatles were forced to make decisions and then react to those while creating, well, how many takes do you think they did? A lot more than your typical digital session. I read an interview back in the foggy past where John Lennon was defending Phil Spector's production of "Let It Be", where he mentioned that Phil waded through over one hundred hours worth of tape to come up with forty or so minutes. So the idea that they made snap decisions and then rolled on is just nonsense. Four track recording, but how many tape machines are in play? As for engineers claiming that the order of transfer as it pertains to the effect of oxide compression is discernibly different if you go to analog first, and then digital, I I bet the difference is negligible. If you take a program material, e.g., and run it into your typical pro-sumer set-up choosing which is the clone even with an analog conversion on the way in is not readily apparent. Since so many people are enamored with analog summing and inserts which are basically putting the audio through the same process, and claim negligible or inaudible differences, why is this particular order different? I am calling bull droppings on it, without some actual data. And yes, I have done just a wee bit of recording to pro formats and know this, you can talk yourself into anything. You think your voice sounds bad on one format over another, that is more than likely preconceived notions affecting your opinion. The placebo effect is verifiable, do you think it is any different on something like audio perception, as opposed to actual disease abatement? Here is something I think, I like the Beatles, but their recordings sound not so good anymore. Sorry, I wish it weren't true, they are the shot across the bow and the impetus for so much of what we take for granted, but that doesn't change all the fog and swampy vague imaging. Or is that analog magic? ? hahahaha
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 17, 2017 8:29:51 GMT -6
Ill get some clips that I feel match the clips you posted soon enough. As far as passion, Im with you on that. As the special brand of crazy behind Zulu not just in gospel but in verse and scripture, my goal was and is still the sound of tape without the issues. Your prints convinced me that my efforts werent in vain. We will get some Ampex targeted prints up soon enough. Thanks -L. As long as this thread is still current, I think if would be very interesting to find out if a previous comment about the order of analog tape to DAW is actually discerible. Maybe a bit of a hassle, but if as I suspect printing a source to digital and then flying it to the tape machine versus printing to tape and then transferring is exactly the same from a blind test. If you set it up so that a source feeds a channel in the DAW and then routes to the input of the tape machine, and from the output of the tape machine back to the daw, that should give you identical levels for each result so that you aren't fooled by volume changes. And then post them here without revealing which is which, I think would be very interesting. Because I have considered having a half track machine around to treat some things with oxide compression, and I truly believe, okay, suspect, that nothing changes with whether you hit tape first or hit digital first. Now the need for multirack machines and expensive tape is taken out of the equation. May be you will be bored enough to try it sometime, Noah........
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 16, 2017 4:12:53 GMT -6
I guess what I am trying to convey is that there are other ways to use a recording skill set that are less dependent on whether or not bands have day jobs. Actually, I prefer they have day jobs, they are more likely to have some money to record. That passive "set up the mics and run the board" approach is too easy to emulate by a newcomer with a GC credit card. You are going to have to offer something else. Adapt, or punt. It is not who came first, chicken or egg, it is called breaking eggs to make a different omelette. Most traditional places were loathe to get into the sandbox and get involved with composition and affecting someone's music, it was risky and messy. But lots more fun than mixing in a forever twilight control room, at least for me....
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 15, 2017 22:19:11 GMT -6
That's pure conjecture, it doesn't answer the question posed and it's an amalgamation of words irrelevant to current times. I was extremely busy from 2002 onwards taking on anything I could (FOH work, mixing, recording, technical analysis work, audio support, gigging whilst at college) and it's all dissapeared into the ether. Look, I'm trying to waz on anybody's corn flakes here but anecdotes and positive thinking does in no way shape or form equate to a decent business plan. You say there's always the need to record, ok, sure and they do that by buying a $100.00 interface with a $100.00 microphone. Sing covers of well known songs and stick it up in youtube to gain more success than they ever would recording with you and their own original material. So from any depths of logical reasoning why would they come to you? You must of missed the part where even well known bands in Europe have day jobs, they can't survive off the money that rolls in from music alone. How does "adapting" bring back all the shut down live venue's? How does "adapting" bring money into artists pockets so they can spend it on your studio, when they recieve no actual revenue in todays markets? Even the pro audio shops round here don't EVEN SELL pro audio gear, because they straight up said there is no demand for it. It's all relatively cheap stuff bought by college students.. I mean how much has to happen before you take the hint? I'm not jaded about the whole affair, it was fun whilst it lasted and if I could find a sure fire way of entering the music industry whilst retaining a modicum of stability there would be no decision to make. Well, I opened up my first studio in 1981. so I have maybe a different perspective and expectation. I owned four different places, and never had a listed telephone number for any of them, and I would get phone calls from people who passed my phone number along. Before relocating here in Nevada i had places in Kansas City, and I had clients who would come from Chicago, eight hundred miles away, St. Louis, about 250, even Nashville. We are not talking some fancy pants Studer/Neve/SSL type place, far more modest, okay basically shitholes. It really had less to do with audio than it did with music, I identify what is special or unique about someone and then showcase that. When something isn't completely baked, I have numerous ovens I can call upon. I have helped lots of people get noticed, small deals and such, sometimes bigger. I made low-budget records that got national release. I get into the bones of their songs, I am a producer. You can't buy that from Amazon or Guitar Center. Here is the song i wrote yesterday, finished it up earlier today, sort of rocks... clyp.it/nnqtdhm0
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 15, 2017 17:21:15 GMT -6
You can complain about the new realities, or adapt or punt. Adapt to what? The music industry here is dead and buried, it doesn't exist.. It all stems from artist's not getting paid due to mass saturation, next to no live revenue and no actual interest in a resurgance. If artists don't get paid, studio's don't get paid and it's as simple as that. There is always going to be people coming up with a need to record. But I didn't say exactly what adapt might mean, it might mean finding something else to occupy your time. I sold all my gear in 1992 after a demonstration of the ADAT, so I have been sort of ahead of the curve on what may come. Oddly enough, after I started free-lancing I was the busiest I had ever been, to the point where I could have booked myself 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. But it came with a price, I had nightmares (seriously) about NS-10s and Mackie monitors, my ears would actually turn red, and I eventually took a sabbatical that turned into a decade-long re-assessment. I had been preparing to produce records since I was in eighth grade, learning how to play every combo instrument, fooling around with tape recorders, and listening, always listening. You know, it is kind of interesting how even smart people get confused when they see someone who can do something, and assume they have talent. Instead of recognizing the hundreds of hours some pursuits involve to become fairly accomplished. It is why I often smile when I see posts on this and similar sites where conjecture has replaced actual experiences. Because unless you are willing to become totally immersed, and risk all comfort for an unconventional path that may lead nowhere, you just are not going to know if you can really get there. Those who do and stick are always going to work, if they can keep the passion they had when they first heard voltage moving cardboard. Most of the people who have the gift, however, also can do many other things, and many find that their needs are better met in other fields. Adapt......
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 15, 2017 10:51:03 GMT -6
I really think that if you are going to stand out, you have to have some auxiliary skill set to offer. Or a lot of them, more likely. I get gigs because I can hack up a combo emulation in short order, handy for songwriters. Others I sort of do a fair amount of writing for, as I find that I can finish things that get started lots easier than may be common, it is sort of like crossword puzzles to me, so that comes in handy a lot. And I had the good fortune of some credits that helped with certain genres for bona fides. But the most important skillset you can learn is how to be someone that people like to hang with a bit, being a coolio mack elegant slacker long-time rocker dude is super helpful, And confronting lots of different challenges that are outside what you might think would be the norm gives you some perspective when things go sideways. If you react negatively, or let them see you are frustrated, it is highly contagious. Far better to be "What, Me Worry?" Newman, keep it nice and slightly chilled out so that your coaching and shaping (inevitable if you are doing your job) looks less like Mussolini and more like just having fun with songs. They aren't going to know you have been using that same relative minor move for a variation for decades, it is all new to them.....smile.....cheers
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 15, 2017 4:50:26 GMT -6
You can complain about the new realities, or adapt or punt. Here in Las Vegas, for example, not thought of as a recording hot spot although there has always been places of varying quality, three different "education" enterprises are currently teaching the fine art of applying for student loans, er, I mean digital recording. I am sure this is the situation in every metro area. Even as there a no advertised openings for even your intern/janitor. Promoting their programs on television, even. And I guess that even if there is a disconnect between opportunity and the worth of their certification, it would seem a little selfish to deny others their wish to know more about what many here enjoy or pursue professionally. And if you sign up for anything related to recording, be it Facebook groups or even look at the gear on Amazon, e.g., you are going to eventually be targeted with opportunities to spend money learning from all sorts of folks, some well-known, some hopeful, some just possibly opportunistic. This should give a person pause, when someone who has won multiple Grammy and AES awards for engineering or production, and they are on youtube tutorials instead of working. The idea that these people flooding the market with inexpensive services should just clear out so that those who previously had a clearer path is wishful thinking at best, and smacks of elitism more likely. The barriers to multi-track experience created by the sheer cost of hardware is a distant memory, and really is a gift to creators, even if some find the business unpalatable now. In the final result, it will create better engineers and producers, as they will invariably be forced to learn more roles to work, and as the competition is greater, so also will be the skillset required to rise above. Okay, in truth it kind of sucks, because supply and demand is huge in what you can command in the market. Better get awfully good, and be very steadfast in developing relationships and staying a step ahead on some front. It is clear that without musical ability, it is going to limit what you can do. If you are still fairly new at the game, learning to play piano is not a bad idea, the marriage of MIDI and audio is the true revolution and you can't really exploit that without some keyboard knowledge. And despite some people's protestations about what is fair and smart in terms of acquiring customers, I had a more practical "guerilla" mentality when a building and more hardware was required. I wrote a recording column for a weekly under a nom de plume, just to have a pretense to call the competition and find out who they were recording. Not so much for poaching immediately, but lots of times projects don't make it to release and it was handy to know people who were willing to spend money for future reference. Obviously before the advent of CL, I used to work the bulletin boards at music stores and call everybody who was looking for a member, not necessarily to pitch them on recording as much as to just meet new and possibly interesting people. I had a big "bible" with phone numbers of hundreds of various people that I would call to chat when i wasn't working, just being interested and friendly. Trust me, it works. If you don't like people, or artists, and identify with their struggles and care to lend a helping hand whenever you can, you are not cut out for this life. And if you aren't perceived as caring about projects ten times as much as the customer, while actually caring twenty times more, eventually that is probAbly going to spell your eventual phasing out of a scene. Or you could become a Walmart greeter, probably more money in the long run....smile....cheers....
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 15, 2017 2:03:55 GMT -6
No doubt that tambourine is one instrument that just doesn't work as well on digital. Ampex is a lot like Checker, who makes the cabs, durable, heavy, and they do evoke a sensibility, albeit for different reasons. I really loved the sound of my 354, also, but although in amazing condition it had some limitations that you could put in the charming category, or pain in the rear, depending on the vantage. And the 440 I had in a Russ Lang roll-around served me well, also, but if you think it has a sound compared to 1/2 at 30 on 3M-M79 it was suddenly in the corner for the occasional safety. I did have one of those capstan sleeves for 30 ips, which did eat more tape, but didn't really sound much different. And the look on a newbie's face when I would start examining razor blades and degaussing them after their imaginations ran wild with suspicions of drug-fueled studio romps, i would start cutting their song into pieces All good fun. But what does a pancake cost now, 30 bucks? 15 minutes, at 30, yikes. I am guessing people are rediscovering the superior bass response on their two inch masters at 15 ips, at 300 plus a pop you could probably learn to love it.
But this thread was based around a business proposition, will tape pay dividends.
The best format sonically is 16 trk, and I did a bunch of it. And was always trying to figure out what i could sacrifice to a pre-mix. Or do i lose the front kick mic, or room mic, or the cardboard on the bass, maybe do the background vocals very early and bounce them. In other words, compromises galore, that some defend as a workflow that yields better results, I am calling bull droppings on that whole idea. I used to work on other places tapes, where the usual M.O. was to do four tracks of drums, with a stereo mix of toms and OH, invariably wrong. I would go crazy watching other people using the locator to park after short journeys, but I still would slit my wrists now even with my very nimble transport and punch in fingers. Weeks of my life wasted in rewind mode. Listening acutely to singer's breathing to get a natural punch. No comp available, no tracks left for such luxury. TUNING ISSUES, once they went to voltage controlled DC transport motors, if you didn't print a reference tone to set your tuner to, if you happen to have a fairly musical ear you were going to go slowly insane. Beimg at the mercy of the various fairly grumpy dudes who had bought up the parts inventories of the various manufacturers is a singular joy. your worn out widget has become their retirement plan. Some were very cool, Randy Blevins comes to mind with MCI, other not so much. These are just the realities of a cottage industry with a finite supply. But here is the kicker, that roll of tape, which I heard was pretty uneven at first, even compared to the scandalous problems with 256 and 456 batches. I am not sure what formulation they are using, but if it is 499, well, that tape sucks. And in these days where you are not only fighting against Garageband on a freaking cellphone, but a shrinking demographic with a smaller percentage of kids within that group who are fighting the good fight, well, I want that three hundred bucks, or six, most of your typical music clients are not to the manor born, the tape cost is typically their entire budget with the new pricing. I just think that the recovery from Bush America has been slow to come to artists, even in the best of times the people who were the most rewarding to record on an artistic level were completely unrewarding when rent came due. You compare all this to the benefits of oxide compression, well, make up your own mind, but my results are so much better now. And one of the main reasons is I am liberated from the stress of depending on something that is reminiscent of an Austin Healy Sprite, only the parts are even more rare, and there's a whole bunch more of them at risk......
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 14, 2017 18:44:51 GMT -6
I am going to make a few assumptions here for the sake of clarity. The main one being that the romance for tape-based recording is typically from people too young to have actually experienced it, but have read about it or obviously heard all kinds of records. But what are they really wanting, is it actually the machines themselves or is it an aesthetic consideration? Considering the impractical and expensive nature of the format, I believe it is all about aesthetics and production values. So what do you think impacted the recordings they favor, the format or all the other factors which are all about production decisions. Truly, it has a lot more to do with how you approach songs and your knowledge of various styles and your ability to call them up. Here is a song I did today, which sounds like it was done on a tape recorder, but not even a tape sim in sight. Just guitar, bass, drums, bit of organ, and a lead, recorded in your typical seventies manner. I think it has more to do with equalization to bring out more harmonic information is ranges that are era-appropriate, compression settings, and arrangement, and also a bit flashier playing style. But if anyone thinks that putting through a tape machine or simulator would make it more enjoyable i am all for it and will happily supply a WAV file for anyone who wishes to do it..... Here is the song.... clyp.it/agn2mhm0
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 12, 2017 20:49:28 GMT -6
As a thankfully liberated owner of Ampex 350,354,440, Sculley 280B, MCI JH10-16trk, MCI JH-24, 3M-M79 two inch and half inch, Otari, Tascam, and worked on every other conceiveable pro machine, Stephens, Studer, Aces, IMHO you could roll the whole lot off the dock in the bay and I would say, be sure to tie a rope on those boat anchors in case of strong winds. Anybody priced an MRL reference tape lately? Every nickel a client spends on tape is a nickel you didn't get, and their budget becomes your money, why spend it on tape when what they really need is more time to perfect their art. If you want to do something really great with your money, consider it merely as time. Find the MOST IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL ARTIST IN YOUR AREA AND RECORD THEM FOR FREE. Spare no effort to do something undeniably awesome, with the agreement that financial considerations are private between you and artist. Local band scenes are monkey see, monkey do, and then monkeys break up and form new monkey outfits that remember who did them a solid. You may also gain the patronage of said artist and as this is completely a people business they tend to go where they feel comfortable and confident about the result. This small act of self-promotion disguised as goodwill will take about as much time as wiring up and going through the various miseries of whichever museum piece you might decide on, and will be LOTS MORE FUN. If you really think that there is some kind of magic in oxide, there is really no need to have more than a full track quarter inch machine, as you are not locked into linear limitations. You can send the kick and snare to a tape recorder and saturate to your heart's content, and fly it back. The Ampex machines from yesteryear were locked into 60 hz for their motor speed, they had no VSO option bult in, so they are not prone to drift as long as your power compamy is steadfast, and you clean the pinch roller now and then, so fly in, fly out, very little if any messing around with makrers or stretching necessary. Or you could do a very honest appraisal of your local market and decide how much work is being paid for, why you don't get more of it,(if you aren't) and consider what busier places (assuming they exist) are doing that you aren't. I checked out your work, fidelity isn't your issue, btw, Lines get blurred in various recording shacks, what we are ultimately selling is help. Sometimes that help is just making someone feel good about what they do, sometimes it is helping someone with their song, or intonating their instrument, or coming up with that missing chord that clicks the song into gear, or fill in your own blank here___________ Cheers!!!!
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 7, 2017 23:15:10 GMT -6
Bad intonation does not equal feel, and perfect pitch does not equate to no feeling. Bad intonation makes me feel nauseous. There are singers out there who use gradients of pitch for expression, they are in the minority, okay, extreme minority. If you take your duty to a client seriously, as in making them sound as good as possible, anything in your toolbox is not only recommended, it is required. However, how much correction equals an improvement can certainly be a matter of taste. Does anybody else wish that somebody would have helped Robert Plant in the chorus of "All Of My Love"? I dunno. I hear a lot of commercially produced music where the tuning is extremely unobvious that makes me say "Too bad they tuned all the life out of it. It could have been a great song." Now it could be possible that the singer just has a really uninteresting style and delivery, but I find it hard to believe that. And no, I'm really glad that nobody "helped" Robert Plant in "Whole Lotta Love". REALLY glad. "Help" like that is one of the major problems with a lot of today's records. Well, "whole Lotta Love" is just a wee bit different than "All Of My Love", innit. One, full of juice, the other spent. I never use it on my own vocals, partly from a technical consideration as I sing with monitors on and mic set to omni, but also I use gradients of pitch for expression. But if you really want to know the truth of the matter, the reason why so many singers can't sing is a question of numbers. At one time in our musical history, EVERY significant musical recording at any given time could be offered in a wire rack about three feet by five at the local drug store. And even limited to about forty spots for 7' vinyl, most of that was disposable. Now, another filter has been put on the feed, the addition of video means that Aretha and Ray Charles and many, many others just don't translate as well as some sort of okay-sounding but very attractive wannabe to TV. Combined with an insatiable appetite created by shorter and shorter attention spans, the very high bar to get to the drugstore has been lowered musically, to the point where how someone measures up to previous standards is meaningless. Combine that with Artists and Repertoire departments that have a "right now" mentality and turnover that would eliminate most of the great tastemakers of the past who took many attempts before their bones were made, and you get our current tasteless and cookie-cutter diet. Willie Nelson released over FIFTY freaking LPs before he "arrived". I can easily tell you how many LP's that red-headed step-child would get to make now. None, as in nada, zero, nothin' honey. Not sexy enough, even in his prime, voice too different, teeth need work, etc.
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 6, 2017 10:43:15 GMT -6
Bad intonation does not equal feel, and perfect pitch does not equate to no feeling. Bad intonation makes me feel nauseous. There are singers out there who use gradients of pitch for expression, they are in the minority, okay, extreme minority. If you take your duty to a client seriously, as in making them sound as good as possible, anything in your toolbox is not only recommended, it is required. However, how much correction equals an improvement can certainly be a matter of taste. Does anybody else wish that somebody would have helped Robert Plant in the chorus of "All Of My Love"? Ha, imagine the whole "All Of My Love" track start to finish in perfect equal temperament, all the guitars (steel included,) vocal in tune, and all the drums and fills beat detected and moved right onto a fixed tempo grid. You'd have today's pop music defined. Now, get off my lawn, you kids! Aw, those kids are mainly still in law of the mighty dinosaurs. But seriously, the first time I heard the chorus of that song I just cringed. The other radio song from that LP sounds like it has a auto tune set to tea PAIN on that line about feeling blue, or whatevah, can't remember the lyric. I may be A little harsh, but I didn't set their very high bar with LZ II, that was their doing.....
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 6, 2017 7:59:22 GMT -6
One trick that seems to work pretty well for me is using a stand-alone amp for monitoring what i am playing, in my case the freebie Pod Farm. It seems to defeat the latency issue as you are not listening through the DAW, evidently the round trip through a stand-alone amp is faster, even set at 256 it is really fast. But at 128 it is quicker than an amp on the other side of the room. I think amp sims are just like any other tool, if you mess with them you can become very adept at getting what you wish to hear. I have some very nice glass bottles and very aged cardboard that I never bother turning on, because i think my freebie sims sound better than amplifiers, quite frankly. Here is yesterday's fiddling, three piece band, nowhere to hide an unconvincing sound, the whole song is the guitar bit. Verdict? clyp.it/ya3wayv4
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 6, 2017 7:16:43 GMT -6
Bad intonation does not equal feel, and perfect pitch does not equate to no feeling. Bad intonation makes me feel nauseous. There are singers out there who use gradients of pitch for expression, they are in the minority, okay, extreme minority. If you take your duty to a client seriously, as in making them sound as good as possible, anything in your toolbox is not only recommended, it is required. However, how much correction equals an improvement can certainly be a matter of taste. Does anybody else wish that somebody would have helped Robert Plant in the chorus of "All Of My Love"?
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 28, 2016 14:35:21 GMT -6
After seeing Snowflake's post I added Malwarebytes which is blocking whatever is messing with us. I did a rootkit scan, but every time I reach for the scroll on the right something pops up (now blocked, but still). It did promote a mouse move I should be using anyway, with the dial, old habits die hard I guess. I have done an earlier restore, scanned it with Avast, Malwarebytes, Windows Defender, I am getting sort of annoyed with this quite persistent and pernicious hitchhiker.
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 28, 2016 14:26:28 GMT -6
I like the RE15 because the sound of the beater (usually used inside) has that EV thunk instead of that click which I grew weary of. Actually, the fact that it is bass shy is a good thing in this application, as you can turn up the thunk loud enough to actually cut through for definition without further crowding the bottom. Although I like MD421s, as I am no longer running a commercial facility it is hard to justify their cost for their typical role, there are lots of mics that sell for a fraction that can do a fine job picking up the occasional tom fill. I really like an unlikely choice on toms, the Samson Q7, intended as a 58 alternative at Sam Ash, they don't look as cool as a 421 but they have this little presence peak that brings out the stick, supercardioid but not obnoxious off axis (although I typically gate them, where that pattern really helps with false triggers). I see them all the time for about 25 bucks. Less than the price of that semi-fragile mount on Sennheisers. How after 40 years they haven't improved that is a mystery, but maybe they like selling them.....smile....
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 28, 2016 0:38:14 GMT -6
I personally feel that the kick drum sound can lend a LOT to the overal feel of a song. It all comes down to serving the song. For the drums I personally own, I have different heads. Ported, non ported, big holes, small holes, dampening system, etc. Each of these, in combination with the beater type and how the bass drum is played and tuned are huge variables. When Im using a non ported head, many times I'll add a felt strip on the reso head to tame the boom a bit, but it's not always needed. If I can't get the sound I want out of a single mic on the front of the drum, I'll either change the beater, the head, or the drum. I don't see any sense in trying to fight the drum or the head in order to get the sound im after. The whole thing about this drum was how it influenced the approach I used as an arranger. I had an acoustic guitar part, and then I played with that as a guide to the changes, but nothing was spelled out. So the whole ba dum ba dum ba dum sort of thing in the song is because of the decay of the kick, once that was in place the rest of the roles were obvious. Then the laconic nature of the beat suggested the lyrics, so in a way the kick drum is the crucial creative element. It is the best of times, and the worst of times, for writers and creators. We can create and react to recorded material in a way that used to be the exclusive province of the creme de la creme, but that ease is countered by reduced value put on the creations. I guess this site is more about the technical side, so Mr. Eppstein, that is an RE-15 dynamic, the poor musician's RE-20, and I chose the Rode over my usual AT-AE3000 because it has more "bloom" in the envelope. But the room microphone, with a gate controlling its envelope was most predominant, even with a sealed front the kick is quite loud and when it barked it sounded alone even from six feet from the kit. I react to sounds as i write, which is why I am so pleased to find myself surrounded by tools with their own signature, the guitar I picked up to play lead on is a neglected Hagstrom Viking, I hung it back on the wall so I would remember to use it now and then, it alters my playing style, as did the Oberheim/Viscount weighted controller I had put in the closet due to its large, heavy cumbersome nature. But there is nothing like a traditional wooden weighted keyboard to take you back to the feel of an actual piano, it forces a certain technique. Don't tell my long suffering girlfriend/reality check that I am on the lookout for a Leslie 142, there is only so much she can take......
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 27, 2016 8:08:12 GMT -6
I would put an SM57 near the beater 180 degrees out of phase to capture click and a decent bass drum mic out in front and blend them to suit the song. I didn't have a mic stand that would work in that spot when I cut the track, but I have used that method when I encountered this before. But now that we are not linear-locked I think every DAW should just eliminate the polarity switch entirely. If phase cancellation is present, rarely, if ever is polarity reversal the best remedy. Just put the wave forms next to each other and nudge the channel with the microphone most distant from the source until the waveforms hit peak voltage at the same time. Once you figure this out, another lightbulb goes off, what if something sounds more pleasing and complex with some degree of cancellation? Think about the most amazing bass cabinet of all time, the SVT 8-ten inch comb filter factory. Now you know why i don't sleep much at night....smile...
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