Posted on August 9, 2008 by arman. Categories: music.
Recording electric guitar can be a pain in the butt. Guitar amps that use tubes for their preamps and power amps generally need to be cranked up really loud in order to get a nice interaction between the pre/power amps and the speaker.
A while back, I posted about an guitar isolation cabinet called the Axetrak. It is a very small and almost dead silent solution for recording guitar. It sounds good for many things and is very simple to operate … you plug in your amp and you plug in a mic cable and you’re done. This has many advantages for people that just want to track guitar parts. Ultimately, I found that I just couldn’t get some of the sounds I needed out of the Axetrak.
I (maybe unfortunately) have a deep curiosity when it comes to exploring different sounds so I turned to the Grendel Sound Dead Room. I looked to be of a better build quality than the Randall Iso cab, cost about the same (at the time I purchased it), is made in the U.S.A., and has loads of speaker options.
After an extended ordeal that I don’t wish to go into at this point, my Dead Room showed up last week and I started playing with it. I like that it has two mic mounts so that you can double track your guitar with different sounds and mic placement. I will say that it was a pain in the butt to get the enormous Blue Ball mic and a 57 to get along inside the cab. The mounting bracket that is built into the Blue Ball was really loose and I had to take the mic apart and rig up a system to tighten it down so that it wouldn’t sag.
Anyway …
I’m not going to post any sound samples until I get a handle on this thing. Once I feel competent, I’ll probably run my Bitmo modded Blackheart 5 watt tube amp into it and the Axetrak and post some comparison samples.
Posted on July 20, 2008 by arman. Categories: music.
Today I broke out the soldering iron and fixed (for the fourth time) my favorite pair of headphones - The Optimus Nova 71. Yes, these are Radioshack headphones. I am not insane. I have had many pairs of headphones in my life and I have always ranked these up towards the top. They don’t sound 100% awesome. They are more like 82% awesome. But I enjoy listening to them. They are fun.
I worked selling high end hi-fi for a while (see this post) and had a chance to listen to the high end Sennheiser and Beyer phones. I own a big honkin pair of Sennheiser HD 280 Pros (the 64 ohm model). The 280s are good and pretty clean. They cup your ear so that you are isolated fairly well (good for vocal takes).
The Nova 71’s deliver (at least for the price). When I was working at Radioshack (see this post), they were discontinued and I bought three pair for $6.95 each. One pair went to my buddy Dave. They broke and he threw them away (&*%#@)! I’ve gone through five or six pair and I am down to my last two. Liz uses one pair every day and my pair conked out on me a few weeks ago. Tonight I replaced the cable and it’s good to go.
So if you ever see a lonely pair of Nova 71’s just hanging out somewhere … let me know.
It is hot. I am melting. My studio room is 88 degrees right now.
I did manage to get some more work done on the lyrics for “Brain Games” after going for a swim at the pool with a million little kids and getting cooked alive.
I plan to get back to work on the “Combat” video tomorrow and I’ll be posting some more stills and possibly some clips from the movie this week.
I may also be getting some help from my colleague Gideon Klindt for a couple effects shots in the film. Maybe. I’m going to try and get the shot with some models first, before I resort to 3D.
Yikes … which reminds me … I still need to shoot the bomber sequence for the beginning of the film.
I had a better day today. I wrote some more lyrics for the song “Brain Games” and even recorded the intro vocals. They sound good enough to me so I’ll keep them for the record.
I scrapped together a little mixy-mix for the ol’ blog so here you go:
We’re testing a way
We’re testing the same way
We’ll give it a name
We’ll give it the same name
Just seconds away
Just seconds the same way
Our method explains
Our method estranges
In other news, I blew the dust off of the “Combat” video and started hacking away at the footage again. Gotta keep that one alive.
Did I ever tell you about the time I made these zombie puppets with my friends and planned this epic zombie video?
I woke up thinking that I might just cut this song from the record. I went down to get my morning cup of coffee at the Green Frog and popped on a rough mix on my D2. I thought to myself … “How am I going to make this song make sense?”
My goal in writing songs for “Bits” has been to keep the songs simple and true to my mindset I had when I first played these games. “Brain Games” is easily the most bizarre and complex of the bunch.
I pulled the song out of the muck today and I feel pretty good about it. I transposed some guitar lines from the beginning of the song into a point further inside the song … changed a bass line … created some melodies …
It’s starting to make sense…
In some ways, it’s very straight ahead. I had to lose some angular chords. I recorded with my Delta Blues 210 cranked to $h1t and all the overdrive came from blasting the clean channel with tons of gain from a Zinky Master Blaster.
Listen to the a short clip of LOUD guitars from “Brain Games” {lacking vocals … of course}
Brain Games clip:
Trust me on this one … it will all work out … really!
Tracking is going well. I worked on the song “Warlords” today. It is a great four player game.
The song is one of two that are still without lyrics. I think I ‘m going to stay up for a while tonight and try and work some out.
I used my 414 on the Blackheart amp once again … in tandem with a line out to my isolation cabinet. I’m a little concerned because my amp fizzled a little on me today. Very unsettling.
The intro to the song is a sequence of cut up guitar feedback. Working on it has inspired me to create another VSTi. I need to create a chromatic sample bank of various forms of guitar feedback.
Here is a very rough idea of what the intro to Warlords will sound like:
The final version will make some sense of the chaos….
Demon Attack is the final song on my new record “Bits”. It is mostly acoustic guitar with some rockin’ electric at the end.
I started out tracking with my Delta Blues 210 and a Danelectro Daddy-O pedal for just a little overdrive, miked with a Blue Ball.
This quickly went out the window when I tried to get a good tone for the final chords of the song. It just didn’t have the right midrange. I switched everything out for the Blackheart with no pedal. Miked it off axis with a 57. Worked great.
I finished the lyrics for the song today and as I was recording vocals, my sister came over to use the internet. She was in the room right next to mine and I was blasting out some pretty weird words about demon attacks. hmmmmmm……..
Towards the end, the harmonies get pretty stacked so I find it helps to lay the tracks out in a symetrical fashion like this to keep track of the arrangement.
I have decided to post a little bit of Demon Attack here. So this is how it will all end … “Bits” that is. It’s getting there that’s is all the fun.
