Plugin demo, that is.
I tried out the SPL Transient Designer and TwinTube plugins recently.
Anyone who's used a Transient Designer will know what a useful little tool it is - it can really rescue a less than ideal source.
I've had good results with it in killing nasty boingy rings on close mic'ed drums and easing down the attack on a hammered acoustics.
It's also very cool for subtle changes that can bring a track a little more to life - a bit more attack on a bass or guitars, or whatever.
I also figured I'd give TwinTube a whirl.
I think I've mentioned before how much use I get out of the URS Saturation plugin - just the other day I used it to add some grind to a drum bus for the first time in ages.. great sound.
The TwinTube offers a single saturation sound, but luckily its one that compliments the URS plug quite nicely - a somewhat smoother sound overall, but still very much able to provide plenty of dirt.
At the moment it's sitting on a lead vocal for a song I'm mixing and I'm quite happy for it to be right up front.
The harmonics section is one of those features thats just begging to be abused.
While it can be handy for adding some life to dull instruments or synths that roll off everything above 2khz, the way it reacts with the saturation section (read : brings the crazy) is almost certainly going to be roundly abused in the next few days to make some fun sounds.
The 'hell' part of the demo experience is that I initially only bought Transient Designer after the demo period expired, but those clever Germans at SPL promptly dropped an extra 30-day trial of that and their EQ Ranger plugin (haven't tried it, the last thing I need is more EQ).
This fiendish ploy has most likely gotten them an extra sale :/
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
It Lives!
I'm back on the Blog Wagon, so to speak.
Just finished up a single/7" for Hired Hands with mastering by Richard down in Wav Mastering.
Had a lot of fun recording them in their rehearsal space (a large church hall), a lovely room with nice ambience. In fact, the room was like an extra member of the band - in a good way, luckily.
I even managed to take a pic during the live tracking part of the session, although most of the juicy stuff is obscured - nice big pic here.. PIC.
Drums are hidden between two down n' dirty gobos (tables covered in blankets) with the guitar amps either side (one, a Vox, is visible to the right).
Bass amp is behind the Mac, facing away from the drums.
Drums were SM7 on kick, U87 snare, Royers overhead all into API.
An ATI 8mx2 took care of the other mics - 441s on guitar, SM57 and some MXL mic on bass.
Clarinet, Sax and fiddle overdubs were Royers with a little bit of U87 here and there.
Vocals were mostly SM7.
The next week or so will be mixing the new Land Lovers record at home, with finishing touches back in Nutshed Studios where the album was tracked in a fun but intense 5 days in March.
12 hour days with recuperation via rum leaves little time for sleep :)
Just finished up a single/7" for Hired Hands with mastering by Richard down in Wav Mastering.
Had a lot of fun recording them in their rehearsal space (a large church hall), a lovely room with nice ambience. In fact, the room was like an extra member of the band - in a good way, luckily.
I even managed to take a pic during the live tracking part of the session, although most of the juicy stuff is obscured - nice big pic here.. PIC.
Drums are hidden between two down n' dirty gobos (tables covered in blankets) with the guitar amps either side (one, a Vox, is visible to the right).
Bass amp is behind the Mac, facing away from the drums.
Drums were SM7 on kick, U87 snare, Royers overhead all into API.
An ATI 8mx2 took care of the other mics - 441s on guitar, SM57 and some MXL mic on bass.
Clarinet, Sax and fiddle overdubs were Royers with a little bit of U87 here and there.
Vocals were mostly SM7.
The next week or so will be mixing the new Land Lovers record at home, with finishing touches back in Nutshed Studios where the album was tracked in a fun but intense 5 days in March.
12 hour days with recuperation via rum leaves little time for sleep :)
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Long time no Update
A busy weekend coming up though, with gigs by Dreams of Violence and Hounds.
Sandwiched between the two, I'll be out in Beechpark with Yeh Deadlies. It'll be a big 6 piece band bonanza of live recording. Should be fun, although setup's gonna be a pretty big job.
This time there will be session pics.
I've been doing some mix work recently for Dollar Store Toys - excellent indiepop fun.
Hopefully that'll become a release in the next while.
I finally sold off one more principle in exchange for a copy of Melodyne. For emergency purposes only, damnit.
In other new product news, anyone looking to get one good preamp for their home recording needs (or adding a great pre to a collection) should check out the new Daking One Pre :
The Daking is great for Snare, Acoustic and a plenty more besides. It's got enough gain to keep your ribbons very happy, too.
The only thing I'd miss is the output level knob from the Mic Pre/EQ which you can use to get some beautiful saturated sounds with by driving the input hard.
Depending on how the euro price works out (or if you're visiting the US) it looks like being my recommendation for a preamp in the 5/600 price range.
More info here.
Sandwiched between the two, I'll be out in Beechpark with Yeh Deadlies. It'll be a big 6 piece band bonanza of live recording. Should be fun, although setup's gonna be a pretty big job.
This time there will be session pics.
I've been doing some mix work recently for Dollar Store Toys - excellent indiepop fun.
Hopefully that'll become a release in the next while.
I finally sold off one more principle in exchange for a copy of Melodyne. For emergency purposes only, damnit.
In other new product news, anyone looking to get one good preamp for their home recording needs (or adding a great pre to a collection) should check out the new Daking One Pre :
The Daking is great for Snare, Acoustic and a plenty more besides. It's got enough gain to keep your ribbons very happy, too.
The only thing I'd miss is the output level knob from the Mic Pre/EQ which you can use to get some beautiful saturated sounds with by driving the input hard.
Depending on how the euro price works out (or if you're visiting the US) it looks like being my recommendation for a preamp in the 5/600 price range.
More info here.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Cheap buys for a better tomorrow Pt.2
Ahh Moongel.
This sticky-icky gel can be your very, very best friend when confronted with a less than perfectly tuned drumkit.
One well-placed chunk of this stuff can banish those nasty rings and overtones that are making the snare sound like a rutting rhinoceros instead of the tremendous thunderclap you're aiming for.
I won't approach a drum kit without some in my back pocket if I can help it. Time is always in short supply on tracking days, so taking care of nasty rings quickly helps keep the session flowing, keeps musicians happy and makes for better takes.
Buy some!
This sticky-icky gel can be your very, very best friend when confronted with a less than perfectly tuned drumkit.
One well-placed chunk of this stuff can banish those nasty rings and overtones that are making the snare sound like a rutting rhinoceros instead of the tremendous thunderclap you're aiming for.
I won't approach a drum kit without some in my back pocket if I can help it. Time is always in short supply on tracking days, so taking care of nasty rings quickly helps keep the session flowing, keeps musicians happy and makes for better takes.
Buy some!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Cheap buys for a better tomorrow Pt.1
I just noticed that Thomann have started stocking Extreme Isolation Headphones.
These wonderful little fellas (and they're only €66) are fantastic for both tracking and monitoring at a live/location recording.
On plenty of occasions I've used them when other headphones just weren't getting the foldback to the player's ears right - usually when tracking live in one room, or even just when the player is standing in the same room as the drums.
The isolation means that you can use much less level, reducing fatigue over a day of tracking - not to mention helping get a more audible mix to the player.
These wonderful little fellas (and they're only €66) are fantastic for both tracking and monitoring at a live/location recording.
On plenty of occasions I've used them when other headphones just weren't getting the foldback to the player's ears right - usually when tracking live in one room, or even just when the player is standing in the same room as the drums.
The isolation means that you can use much less level, reducing fatigue over a day of tracking - not to mention helping get a more audible mix to the player.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Elastic Brilliance
So what's new?
I finally moved up to Protools 7.4 for one thing.
I'd gotten 7.4 with my new Lightbridge, but as luck would have it, I ended up having to pay for the updgrade anyway because you have to have the same version of LE and M-Powered to run the two on one PC.
Glorious.
So I'm stuck with having to buy upgrades for both until I ditch the 002 altogether.
Although I haven't gotten around to checking out all the new stuff, Elastic Audio is definitely worth a mention.
I had a chance to test it out on two different tunes - one that was pretty tight already but suited the welded to the grid thing, and another than was pretty much the opposite.
In both cases it did a pretty fine job once I'd gotten the hang of it.
It seems to do its best work on drums, and editing them this way is a relatively painless undertaking.
I did run into some trouble where I had guitar tracks that consisted of two microphones on one amp with the diaphragms as close together as possible for phase reasons.
On these tracks the shifting and warping would occasionaly knock the two mics out of phase with each other - I can only assume that this is happening across a group of drum tracks too, but with less readily audible results. Then again, it could be my elastic noobness letting me down (hints and tricks appreciated).
In new plugin news, I've been demoing the Abbey Road Brilliance Pack.
This consists of three plugins, all of which are based on units used in Abbey Road back in the day to brighten up signals in one way or another.
Two of them are functionally identical, providing plus or minus 10db in 2db steps at either 2.7, 3.5 or 10khz. The third has a fixed frequency of 8khz and only offers boost, again in 2db steps.
All of them sound pretty cool. A nice sounding boost in brightness is one of the most satisfying and useful tools to have at hand - in use where I regularly find myself boosting some high end (guitars, vox and particularly ribbon mic drum overheads) the 10khz boost delivered exactly what I wanted almost all the time.
The lower frequency settings seem to grab the midrange by the balls in a very cool way, handy at low boost settings for some things and probably a bit of a life saver with tracks that arrive to mix with no midrange/treble at all (usually those damn synth sounds that seem to fall over a cliff at about 2khz).
They're running an introductory $200 (about €130) offer until the 13th of July.
The bastards.
Pros :
I finally moved up to Protools 7.4 for one thing.
I'd gotten 7.4 with my new Lightbridge, but as luck would have it, I ended up having to pay for the updgrade anyway because you have to have the same version of LE and M-Powered to run the two on one PC.
Glorious.
So I'm stuck with having to buy upgrades for both until I ditch the 002 altogether.
Although I haven't gotten around to checking out all the new stuff, Elastic Audio is definitely worth a mention.
I had a chance to test it out on two different tunes - one that was pretty tight already but suited the welded to the grid thing, and another than was pretty much the opposite.
In both cases it did a pretty fine job once I'd gotten the hang of it.
It seems to do its best work on drums, and editing them this way is a relatively painless undertaking.
I did run into some trouble where I had guitar tracks that consisted of two microphones on one amp with the diaphragms as close together as possible for phase reasons.
On these tracks the shifting and warping would occasionaly knock the two mics out of phase with each other - I can only assume that this is happening across a group of drum tracks too, but with less readily audible results. Then again, it could be my elastic noobness letting me down (hints and tricks appreciated).
In new plugin news, I've been demoing the Abbey Road Brilliance Pack.
This consists of three plugins, all of which are based on units used in Abbey Road back in the day to brighten up signals in one way or another.
Two of them are functionally identical, providing plus or minus 10db in 2db steps at either 2.7, 3.5 or 10khz. The third has a fixed frequency of 8khz and only offers boost, again in 2db steps.
All of them sound pretty cool. A nice sounding boost in brightness is one of the most satisfying and useful tools to have at hand - in use where I regularly find myself boosting some high end (guitars, vox and particularly ribbon mic drum overheads) the 10khz boost delivered exactly what I wanted almost all the time.
The lower frequency settings seem to grab the midrange by the balls in a very cool way, handy at low boost settings for some things and probably a bit of a life saver with tracks that arrive to mix with no midrange/treble at all (usually those damn synth sounds that seem to fall over a cliff at about 2khz).
They're running an introductory $200 (about €130) offer until the 13th of July.
The bastards.
Pros :
- Sounds sweet
- Damned useful
- Now I have to buy it
- Will I ever have 'enough' gear?
Monday, June 9, 2008
String me up
I had two very different sessions in Beechpark last weekend.
One was a short vocal recording session for a pop/r'nb starlet and the other was assisting on a 12-player string session.
Chalk 'n cheese.
The vocal recording session was good fun.
Whenever I work in a slightly unusual genre for me, I'm always struck by how much fun it is to work on something different, and how one can transfer the same basic techincal and pseudo-psychological skills to a very different kind of song.
I could also rattle off a whole "what's the world coming to" post about singers requesting the use of autotune before they've even sung a note, but where's the sense in that?
The string session was for an entertainer popular with mammies all across the land. 12 players, conductor, producer, ambient micing and a lot of tea and coffee. Hearing a decent amount of players like that live is a lot of fun, and the hourly rate definitely gives extra focus - as if it were needed.
Got two projects back from mastering in the last week - first up was the Land Lovers record from Golden. Good subtle job done with this, he reined in the low end on one or two songs where I'd missed a bit of a build-up there, but overall it seemed that the tasteful application of mastering magic gelled the whole thing together like a good master should. It's nice to have a good reference for the ballpark I should be aiming at for high and low end in future with mixes in my room.
Rifle Fire Rifle just got back their master from Alan Douche's place this morning (I've forgotten the name of the engineer who worked on it.. will update) and again, a nice job, although I've only heard it on shitty PC speakers so far. Good feedback from the mastering guy over there - nice to know I got the mix into the right area.
Finally got the last piece of my new setup on Friday.
M-Audio Lightbridge > Lynx Aurora 16 > Neve 8816
Will report back with impressions as I develop them.
I must say, having finally moved to PT 7.4, I'm seeing much better performance from it.
A session that was starting to tax my system a bit on 7.3 jumped straight back down towards the 50-65% mark on the CPU meter in 7.4 - very cool.
Next up is a group vocal / handclap session for Stoat tomorrow night.
Should be a larf!
One was a short vocal recording session for a pop/r'nb starlet and the other was assisting on a 12-player string session.
Chalk 'n cheese.
The vocal recording session was good fun.
Whenever I work in a slightly unusual genre for me, I'm always struck by how much fun it is to work on something different, and how one can transfer the same basic techincal and pseudo-psychological skills to a very different kind of song.
I could also rattle off a whole "what's the world coming to" post about singers requesting the use of autotune before they've even sung a note, but where's the sense in that?
The string session was for an entertainer popular with mammies all across the land. 12 players, conductor, producer, ambient micing and a lot of tea and coffee. Hearing a decent amount of players like that live is a lot of fun, and the hourly rate definitely gives extra focus - as if it were needed.
Got two projects back from mastering in the last week - first up was the Land Lovers record from Golden. Good subtle job done with this, he reined in the low end on one or two songs where I'd missed a bit of a build-up there, but overall it seemed that the tasteful application of mastering magic gelled the whole thing together like a good master should. It's nice to have a good reference for the ballpark I should be aiming at for high and low end in future with mixes in my room.
Rifle Fire Rifle just got back their master from Alan Douche's place this morning (I've forgotten the name of the engineer who worked on it.. will update) and again, a nice job, although I've only heard it on shitty PC speakers so far. Good feedback from the mastering guy over there - nice to know I got the mix into the right area.
Finally got the last piece of my new setup on Friday.
M-Audio Lightbridge > Lynx Aurora 16 > Neve 8816
Will report back with impressions as I develop them.
I must say, having finally moved to PT 7.4, I'm seeing much better performance from it.
A session that was starting to tax my system a bit on 7.3 jumped straight back down towards the 50-65% mark on the CPU meter in 7.4 - very cool.
Next up is a group vocal / handclap session for Stoat tomorrow night.
Should be a larf!
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