Recording

Using an Octaver for Easy Funk - Musical Creativity 43

Alan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:23:43 +0100

Mention an octaver to a musician, especially a guitarist, and you're heading for a conversation about Hendrix.

It can be used for other styles. So here's a quick trick for writing funk. Forget the bass when you start. I half-expected to get lynched, but bear with me, at least until the end.

Background

I like the old P-funk of Funkadelic and Parliament. I think what made me hear it more was the inclusion of a distorted guitar in a funk show. This was often played in sync with the bass guitar.

Setting the groove

Find a sparse drum track. You want big drums (not 80s soft rock big though). Make sure it's a tight loop. Set it to loop as your background track. Now remove the click track if you've got one. You'll play better this way.

Setting up the guitar

We'll get the distorted guitar set-up first. That'll be a distorted guitar from the 70s, maybe even a distorted DI from the 80s. Keep the speaker simulation to a minimum. We're not looking for a modern hi-gain sound here so go for a raw guitar sound.

Next add an octaver effect. I've had better results recently with it placed after the amplifier/amplifier plug-in, but normally I'd place pitch effects before the pre-amp.

Set the octaver so it adds a note one octave (12 notes) below the signal.

Roll the tape

Now play and record. Use an extended pentatonic scale (i.e. blues scale with a few additional notes) to get started. The p-funk guitars had lots of semi-tone intervals.

Fill it Out

Add a second guitar with a modulation effect, most commonly a subtle phaser playing rhythmic, strummed part-chords.

Finish it off

I've added a club-type reverb to bond the 3 instruments tracks together, aiming for a live club feel.

Make it more complex

You could add the octaver as a send instead of a insert, allowing to mix the levels better and potentially (depending on the quality of the octaver effect) retain the character of the original signal with more clarity.

Make it more authentic

Put on the star-shaped shades, pick up the bass and record the part properly. The octaver gives you an easy way gets you started in the groove, but it really should be done with a bass.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

43 Reasons for Collaborating - Part 1 - Musical Creativity 41

Alan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:22:07 +0100

A short series of articles on collaborating with other people to make your music better, make it heard or to help them move their music forwards.

1. Recording

1a Engineer

It's so much easier to play, record, change settings, do another take and all those other tasks when there's an extra pair of hands doing the engineering. It means you can focus on feeling comfortable and ensuring that you play to the best of your ability without having to change position and move a microphone, listen to the output, try again, etc. The more you work with an engineer, the more familiar you'll become with their way of working.

1b New outlook

Work with other engineers will remove some of the familiarity of the recording process or familiarity with a particular engineer but will open up new ideas. If you're acting as the engineer for someone else, then it may force you to think back to basics and undo some of your own habits that work well for you in your setting, but no so well for others in their own setting.

1c New kit

Not only do engineers have their preferred choices of recording techniques and equipment, some will have that equipment to hand. It's at the beginning and aspiring levels that it can make more difference since it's at the amateur and semi-pro levels that you're still learning which combinations work best for you. Perhaps you work with an engineer to try out their mics and return the favour later by recording them using your kit. The reciprocal nature opens up new opportunities and learning experiences.

1d Location or studio

Just as the engineer may have kit and techniques, they may also have access to other locations and studios. Want a good drum room, then you're probably better off with a studio, but want a particular type of sound, maybe even just a decent vocal booth and you may have luck with other musicians and engineers.

1e Crowd and audience

If you're thinking of recording a live gig, then the engineer may have access to a different audience (maybe bigger) than you're used to. Lots of live-recording engineers will have regular gigs. Getting a slot in one of those, could provide a ready-made, if not totally accepting, audience.

2. Mixing

2a Remix

Letting someone else mix your tracks has a few of advantages

provides a fresh pair of ears to your music
means you can focus on recording and playing
brings a different tone to your music if you use a mix engineer who has their own sound

Sometimes the mix you have just doesn't work, giving it to a mix engineer may help you out of that rut.

2b Revamp

Think of this being the use of "remix" that's becoming more prevalent nowadays. Hardly mixing in the traditional sense of setting faders, processing and effects, but getting involved in cutting-and-pasting the arrangement. In this case, the re-mixer would be chopping verses up, perhaps interspersing them with samples from elsewhere. Is there a better word for this?

2c Mashups

Taking the revamp approach a step further for a more extreme result.

2d Different mixing skills

There are a few tricks to mixing for 12 inch vinyl. Although many of these may be properly found within the mastering engineer's remit, knowing about them from a mix engineer's perspective will help move things along more quickly.

3. Playing

3a Skill

There are times when you have to admit you can't play an instrument well enough to be able to record what you want to. This is where the session musicians come in. At the more amateur level, it's more about finding a friend or a contact who can do it for you. Just beware of contractual implications if you go that route.

3b Extra Instruments

An extension of 3a, sometimes you just want a different instrument in your recording; one that you can't play. The most common for these would be real violins or cellos to augment sampled strings, or real trumpets or horns to augment brass sections. While you can get friends to fill in, again beware of contractual implications.

3c Vibe and Groove

Different players have different styles of playing. Compare the rock bassist to the jazz/funk bassist. Different styles and often even a different sense of timing. Actually, that should probably read that they can have a different interpretation of timing. By bringing in a musician who can add a different vibe, you can dramatically change the feel of a song.

3d Name and Kudos

This is the guest slot. Having someone with a known name can introduce you to their audience, but also give you the reputation of being able to work with others.

3e Broaden your Horizons

Playing or working with other musicians is a great way to expand your own horizons. Watch what they do, how they set-up, how they approach the gig, what kit they use and how they use it to produce the sounds requested of them. And that's without learning from the notes they play or the phrasing they employ.

Other Pages

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Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

My composing workflows

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:52:56 +0100

I said in the previous article that I'd provide details of my most common composing workflows.

Sync to video Soundtrack

I'll get the video into a format ready for Logic Pro, mainly I'm looking for a QuickTime movie.
Import the movie into Logic, check the frame rate. Very important.
Set Logic to find the scene change markpoints. I'm having second thoughts about this process. I may revert to adding them manually. I like how some features are more obvious in Logic Studio 8, than in LP 7.2, so I'm going to play with these a bit more.
Read through the director's notes and play the movie. Start to get a feel of what I want to put in there while it's playing.
Set the tempo track up for the obvious places, hitting the markpoints at the right times.
Decide if it's an effect or musical soundtrack, then choose the correct instruments and play along. I'll probably want the clicktrack off when I'm not sure of what the timing should be. In that case, I'll figure out the time signature after I've played along to it a few times.
Tighten up the recording as I go along and improve the fit to the movie

Creating a library track

I'll usually start with a drum track
Add guitar riff and extend this
Add another guitar
Add bass
Add synth if necessary
Process the sounds, adding effects as appropriate
Mix
Create shorter edits and stings

Creating a bespoke track

Well, it depends what's been asked for. Difficult to say what I do until I agree the brief, but I may be more structured and layout a rough structure on drums, even if it's only marginally more interesting than just a click track. Usually there's a length of time to fill so that constrains it. Often I'll split it into three; the start, the theme and the end. I'll build up from there.

Creating a track in a new style

Get a reference track
Play the reference track and listen carefully.
Start to deconstruct what makes the reference track belong to its genre
Build up a track from that

In these cases, I'm more likely to have the idea in my head and then have to transcribe and/or record the sounds that I hear.

Extending a previous idea

If only a small extension is required, I'll try looping a few bars, missing out an instrument, introducing more percussion for a bigger ending, playing the main theme on another instrument. Quite typical tricks that work well for small extensions. For longer extensions and more complex pieces, I'm more likely to play it through on guitar (no matter what it was originally recorded/played in) and go from there. Sometimes I approach it logically, working out what notes should work next, other times, I'll just play and see what notes fit best. I discussed a few variations on this in an earlier article.

Challenge

Anybody's guess is good here. It really depends what the challenge is. Often I'll set a challenge for myself after hearing a piece of music and wondering if I could do that. The challenge is to create something similar but not the same. It's similar to creating a track in a new style, but the constraints of the challenge could be a lot more severe. Look at Jeff Yates' Norman Bates with a Briefcase. Fortunately he only had the title for his challenge, good job he wasn't told to do it Polka stye or something like that.

The usual

Throughout all of this, my standard route for composing is to have written most of what I want to play before I get to the recording stage. Sometimes I play with dice and figure it out as I record, aiming for a very live, spontaneous feel - something very similar to jamming. The difference is that I'll have played all the parts so far, so I've a good idea where the music's going. Often I'll have the majority created and just record the last few parts as spontaneous. I find that this way I end up with a mix of structured foundations and varied melody.

I can always re-record the added part if it needs to be more polished. Sometimes it works better that way, sometimes not.

I'm interested to hear if your workflow differs.

Arranging Multiple Parts for a Guitar - Musical Creativity 37

Alan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:49:34 +0100

As well as composing and recording, I play guitar in a band, playing a mixture of covers and our own originals. We don't stick too closely to the originals when we cover them, realising that we only have four members (guitar, bass, drums and vocals) so many songs have to be stripped down to work.

Going from a song that has many parts to a cover version with only four instruments can leave you feeling a bit naked when playing live. It doesn't help that as guitarist, I often have to play several parts at the same time.

It's just arranging

You've got 6 strings. So if you're adding in a piano part and a guitar part, then it's time to pick the most important notes. After all, you can only play a maximum of 6 at a time.

Listen

Listen to the music and pick out what makes the tune. A lot of notes are filler. The music sounds different without it, but that's ok.

Listen to other listeners

Not only listen to the track yourself, but ask the other band members what elements of the song stick out to them. Singers pick out different notes to bass players and so on. So there's me as a guitarist saying that some notes are missing from our arrangement, but no-one else has noticed. And it happens the other way around, where one of the other members will ask where a certain part is.

Who's the arranger?

If you are, then don't be afraid to ask the other musicians to try playing parts that they wouldn't have considered. I'm fortunate to be in a band with an accomplished and adventurous bassist. That's good because it allows us to swap when it comes to supporting the melody or the rhythm. The drummer's also open to new ideas. They, in turn, ask me to play other parts I hadn't considered.

The tone of the guitar

For notes played at the same time (e.g. chords), we've a limited tonal range. Each note in the chord has to be nearly the same tone and volume. There's some flexibility if you pluck with your fingers, but it's still pretty restricted.

If you look across the length of the song, then guitarists have access to a massive range of tone since we can vary it as we go along. The trick there is to tie the tone to a musical part, e.g. the piano lead.

Two at once

The guitarist can support the rhythm by striking staccato chords, but then there's an empty space for pads to ring. My way around this is to play the ringing chord and then play the rhythm on the low 6th string, sometimes with the 5th depending on what the chords are and how much I need to reinforce the rhythm. This works well clean or crunch sounds, not quite as well with hi-gain tone, but it can still work. Just depends on the chords being played and the rhythm that it needs to fit into.

Swapping between instruments on the same tone

To differentiate between two instrument parts, I've used upstrokes on one and downstrokes on another. Swapping between primarily plucked and primarily legato/glissando can help differentiate.

Try alternate strokes.

Similar to the ringing chords plus staccato rhythm above, the root notes can be played on the downstroke, then the ringing chords on the upstroke. Even more useful is the downstroke on the root, then several staccato chords using upstrokes. Not exactly special, but can be very useful for syncopated rhythms.

Let the bass play

If the bassist is playing the root notes, then the guitarist doesn't need to. Frees the guitarist up to play other parts.

Too much to do

Guitarists only use one pick at a time, but can use several fingers. So think about whether some finger picking would help. In addition, I use a combination, playing some notes with pick, then treble notes with fingers, often alternating, but sometimes together. Works well at emulating piano parts.

It's also the only way I've found to keeping the strength of the normal guitar notes while playing a melody on the higher strings. It takes practice but is well worth it since it opens up a whole new area of complexity.

Stretch

Bassists usually only play one note at a time. That's an overstatement, but stretch your bass player. For instance, if they play chords or at least octaves, they can free up the guitarist from chordal duties. Also the bass is a great instrument for filling in string parts. It doesn't sound like a string section, but fits in a live mix well enough, especially when played around the 5-9th frets on the A and D strings.

Composing

Why is this in the composition section? The more techniques a player has, then less restricted the music will be. By thinking how to deconstruct a song to a minimum of instruments, then you get to realise how much of a a song is superfluous. Look on youtube and you can watch any number of acoustic covers of songs, not all good mind you. The better versions have been arranged by musicians who have thought about which notes matter most and have fitted them into the composition.

Any other ideas

I'm interested to hear of other ideas or your experiences with this.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Use a compressor to break-up the signal - Musical Creativity 30

Alan — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:27:43 +0000

The main function of a compressor is to reduce dynamic range. They're not just used to increase perceived volume so you can achieve the loudest CD on the planet. That's in itself is worth remembering.

Most have a make-up gain/volume knob. The most common setting is to have the compressor set to reduce the volume above the threshold, resulting in the peaks being levelled out. That reduces the overall volume of the signal, so the make-up gain is increased to "make-up" the difference.

You can also increase the make-up gain beyond that to end up with an even louder signal.

Turn it Down

But it works the other way around as well. Turn the make-up gain down below the level of the incoming signal.

Now for mixing, turning it down isn't that useful. You can always use a gain plug-in or better still ride/automate the faders. Actually, that's a general rule: if you just want to change the volume of a channel, use the faders, not a compressor.

But for live use or for recording a guitarist, the compressor's volume/gain knob is useful for reducing the output signal from a guitar as well as increasing it. It does have other characteristics though, although they add a good quality to the sound.

From a guitarist's perspective

It starts with the setting of the clean channel on a valve amp. You mileage may vary with solid-state/hybrid amps, some are better at tube emulation than others. At least try one that uses a tube preamp.

1) To move into distortion

Set the amplifier's clean control just under the below where it starts to breaks up. It should have a nice clean sound when the compressor is bypassed.
Set the compressor's gain to increase the level marginally above the input signal.
Turn on the compressor and it drives the amplifier into a creamy distortion.
You may have to adjust the make-up gain to get that distortion. We're not talking about 6 dB of difference here, probably just 1-2dB.
The sustain introduced by the compressor gives more potential for holding notes longer.  Set just right, there's little noise introduced.

2) To clean up the sound

Set the amplifier's clean control just above the level where it breaks up.
At this point there's that distortion again, but without the sustain and sonic characteristics of the compressor.
Set the compressor's gain to just below the input level
Turn on the compressor to reduce the overall signal level of the guitar, resulting in a cleaner tone.
The compression element of the compressor introduces a fatter, jazzier tone to the clean channel.

It's not just a question of volume

The compressor is not being used solely as a boost/cut for the volume. If I wanted just a volume change, then I'd use a boost pedal or a volume pedal. If I've set the output signal closely enough to the input level, then the guitar's signal still comes through, in a reduced dynamic range, but close to the original volume of the guitar. By doing it that way, I can get a nice and usable variety in the tone, either moving into or out of the break-up range of the amplifier.

Why not use the guitar's volume knob?

This depends on the guitar. On most of mine, reducing the volume knob even by a fraction cuts the treble output from the guitar more than the middle or lower frequencies. I do use it to regulate volume and tone but I'm aware of the skewed effect it has on eq.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

What does process mapping have to do with Music, Audio, Photography and Moviemaking?

Alan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:49:53 +0000

The Short Answer

Everything

The Longer Answer

The longer answer is that every series of actions we perform can be thought of as a process. Understanding those processes will help us improve, even as individuals, whether we're concerned with Music, Audio, Photography, Moviemaking or what have you. I'll discuss each in turn and set the scene for forthcoming articles.

A Basic Process

Making a cup of tea is a process. It's a set of actions that have to be performed in sequence so that the end result, a cup of tea, is achieved. It's quite a complex process when you look at the detail and document it fully. But it's rare that it ever gets documented to that great a level. Occupational Therapists have a test for clients where they see if their client can make a cup of tea. Sometimes, the client forgets to heat the water, other times they forget to put the tea-bag (or other flavouring) in, or forget to put any water in and so on. The number of activities that we take for granted is astronomical yet we know by habit what the sequence of those activities is.

Every process can be mapped. It will take forever and may not be beneficial, but you can map any process. The trick is in deciding which processes to focus on.

Now back to the title, let's look at process mapping and the other facets of this website.

Music and Audio

Can you remember the first time that you compared your home-grown track against a commercial CD? It was quiet, probably very quiet. You may then have learned that you needed to get your tracks mastered. You may have also learned about dynamic compression and if you're still lucky, you treated it with awe as opposed to applying it everywhere and anywhere.

Mastering is a process. Some of the process steps are applying equalisation, manipulating stereo imaging, applying reverb and applying compression.

If you do this on the cheap at home rather than send tracks out to a mastering engineer, you're then into having to dither tracks yourself as well. Similar to the revelation you experienced with the quiet home-grown track, you'll have probably encountered that distortion resulting from when you reduce the bit-depth without dithering.

Where am I going with this?

There's a process in there. For every track, I follow the same process. Think about that. "For every track, I follow the same process."

If I can automate any tasks, I'll improve my situation greatly. Some of the benefits of automating regular tasks:

Save time
Reduce chance of error compared to manually performing the same tasks
Ability to process changes in batch
Ability to schedule changes
Ability to trigger changes based on events (e.g. inserting a card into a card reader)
Achieve consistency in results.

Learning

More important for me is that I can compare my process against that of others and learn from it. It may be that I learn I'm happier with my process than what others are doing, but at least I've decided on keeping my process. I'll go into that process in a bit more depth in a later article.

Music and Audio Recording

What are the steps to recording a track?

Choosing a suitable room, deciding where the musicians will stand, configuring portable acoustic treatments, laying out the microphones and cable, connecting to the recording equipment and so on. All fits into a process.

Look at most questions by recording newbies along the lines of "what's the best way of recording instrument x". They're looking for a description of the process, even though they may not know it. What the more advanced engineer knows is that the key to a lot of the questions is knowing the how the results from the basic processes sound and then figuring out a good solution from there. That solution may include changing the basic process to meet the client's artistic aims. The article on comparing how different pros recorded guitars provides great insight into this area (article is available to subscribers only at the time of writing this article, although I think it's released months after the publication date).

Photography

Digital Photography software is ripe with workflow. It's one of the few subject areas where I've really seen some real progress in workflow and implementing processes that can be used on a regular basis. Some make use of the operating system's specific automation features, e.g. OS X's automator andscript tools are great for this purpose.

Setting up a shoot is a process. Deciding on studio, lighting, props, models, camera bodies, lenses, positions, aperture, etc. All part of a process. On the other side, if you're hiring out studio space to photographers, you probably go through a process, including processing payment, booking and even the clear-up after the shoot. The more you know about your process, the more flexible you can be to client demands without undercharging them.

As a photographer, you shoot out in the field/on location, bring the images back to a computer. Do you:

Wrap-up

In the above text, there are a lot of questions. Largely rhetorical from my point of view. They're present to make us think about how we perform our activities. By analysing the process - or more plainly, just by thinking through the actions that we perform - we can improve how we work.

In the next few related articles, I'll pick up the specific topics and discuss them in more detail. I'll also publish my processes and workflows.

I've started a series on the Fundamentals of Process Mapping for a wider audience but still useful as background to this article.

Logic Studio 8 and Kontakt 2

Alan — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:54:26 +0100

I like to upgrade one thing at a time, knowing that I can reverse the upgrade at any point if possible. I like the look of Apple's Logic Studio 8. At the price, it's got to be the best value DAW currently on the market. I'm using Logic Pro 7.2 and relatively happy with it, but I'm beginning to feel the pull towards the upgrade.

The main 3rd party plug-in I use is Native Instruments' Kontakt 2. And I can't find any source that states that Kontakt 2 and Logic Studio 8 will work together. I have seen plenty of posts that state that the multi-output abilities from Kontakt into Logic are messed up. But they are in the versions I'm using, I just find my workarounds (e.g. automating the faders of the aux channels that I've used as outputs). It's not nice, but it allows me to do what I need to do.

The main trouble is that Native Instruments have also released news of their forthcoming Kontakt 3. That makes it more interesting. More importantly, I can imagine NI not continuing with patches for Kontakt2 soon. So at some point Kontakt2 will have got as far as it's ever going to get. Expect anything more and you'll have to upgrade to Kontakt3. I'm not complaining, that's the way it is with software. I can understand why, although I don't always agree.

My guess is that to get Kontakt to work nicely with Logic Studio 8, I'm going to have to upgrade to Kontakt3 as well. That'll mean two upgrades in a short amount of time. And even then, I'd guess that I could be in the same situation (having to automate aux faders to automate volume changes) just with newer software.

Add to that the forthcoming OS X upgrade to Leopard - which so far nothing is forcing me towards - and it becomes even more interesting.

Showreel 3

Alan — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:10:18 +0100

A piece of music from a few years ago, part of the Tales from The Olive Grove album, some of which was featured in Showreel 2.

There's something about this piece, Freedom, that I've always liked from a composition and performance perspective. Nowadays I'd play and record it differently to achieve a better sound and production.

For a start, I'd ensure that the recording system didn't introduce blurts (can't think of a better word, but you'll recognise them when you hear them). There are only two blurts and if you're not listening carefully, you may miss them or attribute them to something else in your environment. I'd also change the drums to something closer to the times; midi drums like that were fine then, but not now.

You never know, if I find suitable time on my hands, I may just re-record it.

More Pro Information

Alan — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:11:14 +0100

Adding to the short article on how the pros do it in the Learning the Ropes series, I'd like to introduce another book.

Behind the Glass gives interviews with top mixers and producers. There's a lot of insight to be found in the interviews, ranging from which kit they used, how they used the kit, through to how they have to interact with the people around them. Although you can't read it as a recipe-book (there are no detailed instructions), it will give you a lot of information about how you can achieve.

I referred to Bob Katz's book in an earlier article because it provides a great foundation in why we have to do things in a certain way. Read the two and you'd be well on your way to having a better idea of what you need to know.

Click Away - Musical Creativity 5

Alan — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:03:33 +0100

Click Away - Musical Creativity 5

I find click tracks useful when I use them as a metronome and solely as that. They help me keep time. The problem that I find is that they're boring, so I don't respond to them very well. I can play accurately enough along with clicktracks, but the end result to me is never as interesting from a creative viewpoint as what I get when playing with other musicians.

So I take a similar theme when recording even the most basic of tracks. I do away with the standard "tock, tick, tick, tick" clicktrack and instead use something with rhythm to start me off. The majority of the time whatever I use as a timing source doesn't end up in the final mix. It's there to breathe some life into the recording and to remind me that music isn't meant to be rigid.

For the attached file, I recorded 2 guitars with X-Y mics; one rhythm, the other melody. The drum loop was running all the time throughout recording. For this mp3, I've faded the drums in and out to give you an idea of the difference it makes. That was the loop that was running, but now there are the two guitars in place, I think the drum loop is wrong and I'd want some more acoustic if any percussion at all. Imagine getting that feel and rhythm with the standard clicktrack?

By the way, if you find the strings are rattling a bit too much in the recording, it was mainly because I was using a brass pick. I liked the brighter sound for a change and I have to admit I haven't used picks other than my standard Jazz IIIs for years now. Think I may have plucked a bit harder than usual as well. No eq applied (save for the preamp's HPF), minimal reverb applied and a few db of compression on the output bus.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.