I think I may have figured out why my PC has been a bit temperamental lately, it's looking like the original 1Terabyte System HDD I had in it was in the process of failing, and it finally dropped it's bundle yesterday afternoon, been working on it ever since and I've just finished sorting it out.
last week i got hold of a 2nd hand Dell optiplex 980 for next to nuthin. its 4-5 yrs old but seems ok
now i can use the tascam 2x2 interface without lag or the general inferior pc pains
so far so good, trying out free software - presonus studio one prime, overloud TH2 and reaper...much learning i need.
great to toy around with late at night when real amp volume is of an issue at home.
wish i could spend more time with it but this earning a living (job) thing gets in the way...necessary evil for the fun tokens i guess
For $60.00 USD you can't go wrong with Reaper, it has a multitude of pretty good VST & JS plugins as standard more than enough to get you through almost any situation, these plugins are also pretty resource friendly.
Workflow varies from DAW to DAW but they all do the same thing so my recommendation would be to spend a bit of time learning one and stick to it.
Some time in the next day or two I'll put up something I have done bottom to top in Reaper, I've got about a dozen tracks that are pretty much in the bag but we added pedal steel over the weekend so I have to edit and remix them all.
There is blues, ballads and country all harmony heavy so something for everybody.
Most of the projects have at least 20 tracks and the 10 yr old Toshy laptop struggles a bit with the big ones but the i5 PC that i do all the mixing on sails through.
cheers Dave, reaper was the first one which i got TH2 vst to work so its a winner so far...and good to know of your positive feedback re usage.Originally Posted by dave.king1
whilst i love nothing more than cranking up the old and new amp setup when permits, i also really like the ability to record and 'jam' along with drums bass etc as ive never really had the whole band experience, only primitive jams with mates and now son.
i guess it all takes the time spent on learning....best hobby ever!!!.....
love to hear some of your work too....mmmmm bluesy steel please
Last edited by Guvna19; 27-07-2017 at 08:46 PM.
The mix is getting close, my reference track for the steel sound on this one is Marshall Tucker Band - Fire On The Mountain
Brown Bottle, Max Richards / Dave King composition ( 2017 )
Max Richards - lead vocal
Bob Browne - backing vocals
Wes Grady - pedal steel
Dave King - guitars & bass + drums / organ / strings VSTi programming ( guitar is Squier Thinline Tele with 52 Blackguard pups through Fender Mustang using AC30 emulation )
Recorded & mixed in Reaper using native VSTs except Waves SSL E Channel on vocals, 3rd party VSTi for organ, drums & strings
Mastered in AAMS
Still not completely happy but close enough to let friends have a listen, enjoy and any feedback more than welcome
https://soundcloud.com/suthol/brown-bottle
Last edited by dave.king1; 28-07-2017 at 07:09 PM.
Respect !!!
my music taste is wide enough to appreciate that fer sure Dave.
and cause i got no band exposure, i make the mistake of being all about (my) guitar sound. and i know i need to learn to leave room for all the instruments to work together. like that song does
in saying that, im liking a bit more 'dirty rock aggression' for my blues ie George thorogoodness, black keys
love the flute too
Remember when you are mixing that a lot of the instruments share the same sonic space as the voice so you need to spread them to build a nest for the vocals.
Typically I put the drums & bass down the middle along with the vocals, keys to one side and guitars to the other at about 60%, lead instrument moves to the middle of the mix in the solo.
Another trap is backing vocals, put all parts to one side by about 30% and the level will depend whether they are backing or harmony vocals.
In Brown Bottle there are 9 individual tracks dedicated to the drums, mic top & bottom / back & front etc and then mixed into a master, the snare has a smear of reverb and then the master has a bit more.
When we recorded the steel we did three takes end to end, plus another two endings which gave me plenty to cut and paste to get the final track, until a few months ago Wes hadn't played for 40 years so I reckon he did a rather good job with an unfamiliar style in a key that is quite left field for steel Dm.
Every track has a noise gate, EQ & Compression in that order and the EQ is High Passed at 40 Hz because anything below that is inaudible mud and will chew up you headroom.
Lead guitar & vocals all have delay slapback with the length set at 0.08, typically I use about 30mS of preverb on the reverb to allow it to settle.
Reverb as well as adding colour is also used to move parts back in the mix
All vocals have pitch correction because 70+ Yr old voices ain't what they used to be
After applying the noise gate the first step before any sound treatment is to align the parts to the grid, in Reaper the basic tools you have are nudge, cut and move or stretch / shrink and regardless how good a player you think you are a lot will be off the grid, once the alignment is done normalise the volume on each track which will simplify the rest of the processes.
EQ & Compression are your main production weapons but don't go heavy in one hit, don't be afraid to cascade them or do parallel compression.
Volume automation is the icing that finishes the cake.
All of the above is relevant to any DAW
There are others on here who also do the recording thing so maybe we should start another thread that is dedicated to recording, I spend a lot of time on TDPRI and there is a sub forum called Recording In Progress that has a number of recording professionals on it which is where I have learned a massive amount over the last 12 months
Last edited by dave.king1; 28-07-2017 at 08:16 PM.
Dave, you can improve your sounds even more by not sticking to a fixed 40Hz low pass filter, but moving it up to the bottom of the audio range of the signal, especially on miked recordings but even on pre-recorded samples. E.g. A lot of vocals really have nothing much below 200Hz, (obviously some low male voices will have stuff down to about 100Hz so you need to listen and move the frequency point to where there's no audible difference) whilst there can be a lot of extra noise picked up below that which can muddy the mix and also falsely trigger compressors. Do it on several tracks and it is amazing how much clearer your mix can be. You can also employ a low pass filter on the higher frequency sounds to help reduce extra noise.
It's also often useful to use an EQ that has adjustable HP and LP filter slopes. Often the built-in ones have a mild 12dB/octave roll-off, which can still leave audible noise below/above the cut-off point. Something like the Tokyo Dawn Labs free TDR Nova dynamic EQ http://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-nova/ will give you the options of much steeper slopes. The paid-for Gentleman's Edition version (which I use a lot) goes even steeper. This can be really useful on some problem tracks with a lot of bleed from other instruments.
Also, don't forget that at the indicated filter cut-off point, the signal is already 3dB down, so for bass guitar (low E fundamental at 42Hz), with a high pass filter at 40Hz you are reducing that fundamental slightly. So you've either got to set the cut-off point lower at say 35Hz, or use a filter at 40Hz with a much steeper slope so that the affected area above the filter cut-off point is much smaller.
Bottom E on a normally tuned guitar is at 82Hz, so you can set a filter at say 75Hz to cut off all extraneous noise below the guitar. Especially with gentler filter slopes, the higher up you can put the filter, the quieter any sub-sonic noises will be. E.g. with a 12 dB/octave slope set at 40Hz, any noise at 20Hz will be reduced by 15dB (because the filter is already at -3dB at 40Hz). But if you can set the filter at 80 Hz (an octave above 40Hz) then any noise at 20Hz will now be reduced by another 12dB, so will be 27dB quieter.
Or you can have the same effect by using a 24dB/octave filter set at 40Hz, which if then set to 80Hz, will reduce any 20Hz noise by 51dB, making it pretty much negligible.
So I tend to use this EQ as the first insert on most of my tracks (let alone using its other EQ and dynamic functions).
Good point on the LF hi pass Simon, I was generalizing a bit because I do look at the fundamental range of each track before setting the point.
Cymbals, guitar and other instruments that generate higher harmonics I hi shelf to keep the shimmer.
Basically trying to lay down some basics to get folks out of the blocks
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