Writers Block

Radial Engineering Re-Amping Kit

Alan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:03:33 +0000

I like it when something just works, but I always feel a bit ambivalent when I can't really notice it working.

The Kit

In this case, I've just been using the Radial Engineering Reamping Kit. It consists of two main components (the J48 active phantom DI and the X-Amp amp driver) plus a power supply for the X-amp and a plastic box to hold it all in.

Plugging In for Re-Amping

I read the instructions, mainly to figure out what happens with signal levels, plugged the Radial X-Amp in and in less than 5 minutes I was recording a guitar track again. It really was a case of plugging a mic XLR lead between the audio interface and the X-Amp, connecting up the power supply to the X-Amp and plugging a normal guitar lead between X-Amp and guitar. It's worth reading the manual for the order of connections and powering-up. I spent longer configuring the software mixer for my audio interface to output the guitar signal on a separate channel than I did connecting everything together.

Advantages

I can record the clean, DI signal no matter what the amplified sound is (ok, this is just using a DI box).
I can then re-record many times the clean through a number of guitar amps and/or cabinets with different eq and gain settings.
I find it goes a long way to reducing the lifelessness from direct recording into software amp emulation.
I can record a clean sound at unsociable hours, knowing that I'll be able to crank up the amp when it's more socially acceptable.
I can play with mic placement and room acoustics in a way that I can't when I'm the guitarist and recording engineer.
Allows me to record a heavier, overdriven version of the same track and blend this is with a clean recorded sound.

Disadvantages

You have to be disciplined or you can spend a lot of time tweaking the amp settings and re-recording the same track many times.
That's it, the components seem to work so well, I don't notice them working.

Overcoming Lifelessness

I mentioned the lifelessness of a guitar track recorded using software amp emulators. I believe they can produce great results, but for me as a guitarist, it doesn't feel the same as playing through a pure valve guitar amp and a 4x12 loaded with Celestion Vintage 30s (that just happens to be my longest-running preference). Some of my best guitar tracks have been recorded using software emulators, I only wish I'd been able to record them with at a mic'ed amp at the time.

I think it's down to the interaction between guitarist, guitar and amplifier/cabinet. Guitarists adjust their playing relative to what they hear coming out of the speakers, hence guitars recorded direct through software amp emulations can miss out the way that the guitarist changes their playing. Actually I think it's further than that, the guitarist changes their playing to suit the software emulator, after all, it's just another amplifier/cabinet combination to handle.

This kit goes a long way to helping me overcome the lifelessness of the software route, while still giving me the flexibility to record when I want to. It does not overcome it completely; you can't beat using the guitar, amp, speaker, effects and mic combination at the time of tracking that you want to hear on the finished song.

So in this case, the product's great and it does the job it's designed to do well. My ambivalence comes from the fact that it's such a simple job that, from that perspective, it has to do that it doesn't seem worth spending the money on. From the perspective of having something that works and does the job well, then you probably can't beat this re-amping kit.

Using Compressors to increase attack - Musical Creativity 45

Alan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:30:37 +0000

Compressors are regularly used to tame errant dynamics or to increase the perceived volume of a track. As well as squashing the audio, the compressor can be used to bring out some elements more than others.

Letting the attack through

Remember when you were learning about compression? You probably wanted the attack at 0ms so that the whole signal was compressed equally. But it ended up in a squashed mess. The output sound had a different quality to what was put in. The guitar no longer sounded like a guitar, but like an old keyboard emulation of a keyboard. So we all gradually learned to allow the initial transients through with delays of 20ms upwards, depending on the instrument and the wanted effect. This allowed for a natural sound.

Reverse your thinking

Usually we're using a compressor to tame peaks or increase the perceived volume of the track by decreasing the dynamic range. This time we'll focus on increasing the dynamic range and still using a compressor.

Set the compressor to have a longer attack, e.g. 30ms to let the initial strike of a guitar string through. Set the compressor to moderately reduce the dynamic range of the rest of the signal. What you'll see if you compare the input to the output is that the initial peaks where the string is hit or plucked are louder in comparison to the rest of the signal.

Additional Options with Software

Pre-empting

The problem with hardware compressors is that they can only react once they receive the signal they receive. Software compressors have the advantage of being able to look-ahead at the signal and react before a hardware compressor could. That's useful for enabling the compressor to act on the initial transients.

Sidechain

You can also eq the input signal to trigger the side-chain. Some allow you to do this in the plug-in itself. For others you'll have to set up an aux/bus track and route the signal in parallel through that and eq the aux channel. This can be done in hardware as well if you eq the feed going into the sidechain.

Using Other Processors

Expanders

Expanders are built for job of increasing the dynamic range. Effectively, they're compressors with upward compression. And so should be more suited to increasing range. However, sometimes I prefer to use a basic compressor.

Enveloper

These react to the envelope of the sound. Think back to the basics of synthesis with every sound having Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release (ADSR). Envelopers provide a way to change the gain at the various stages. The one in Logic allows the user to change the gain at the Attack and the Release stages. So you could potentially just change the gain of the attack and leave the rest of the signal alone.

Gain

This doesn't increase dynamic range. I've included it because I had to increase the gain of the guitar track to match the results of the effects.

Results

I recorded a steel-string acoustic guitar using an x-y pattern of 2 small diaphragm microphones. These were routed to a bus (aux in Logic) and the effects were applied to the bus only. The main output for the microphone channels were removed, meaning that the signal was only going through the bus. I applied the following effects in turn: compressor, enveloper, expander and gain. For each one, I spent about 2 minutes changing the parameters on a part of the track that was of roughly average volume. Then I bounced the output to a separate audio file.

It's important to note that I only spent the time configuring the parameters for one part of the track. There were louder and quieter parts elsewhere in the track.

Rather than play the whole 5 minute track, I've extracted three parts; one quiet, one average, one loud.

The Screenshot

The screenshot shows the unprocessed as well as the results of having each of the compressor, gain, enveloper and expander applied in turn. The order from left to right is Average, Quiet and Loud.

Download a larger version of the image here

What you'll notice is that there's not that much different between most of them in the average and quiet. However, the compressor did a good job of using the dynamic range available. The gain effect just made everything louder, as it's meant to, but doesn't bring out the peaks. The expander and enveloper both coped well, but I prefer the compressor.

In the Loud section, we see the issues with applying parameters for one section only. In all reality, we'd probably be riding the faders or at least automating the fader/effect parameters. But for the moment, it gives us a good idea of how flexible the processors are. Most of them are showing clipped waveforms for the loud section, indicating too much make-up gain. The compressor waveform still has thin ends to the spikes indicating a more managed approach. And the sound does reflect that.

Quiet

Unprocessed

Gain

Expander

Compressor

Enveloper

Average

Unprocessed

Gain

Expander

Compressor

Enveloper

Loud

Unprocessed

Compressor

I've only published a few of these files in case anyone risks damaging their speakers. I haven't published the files with square ends, e.g. the "gain" and "expander" files.

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 18:22:07 +0000

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.

Revamp - Musical Creativity 40

Alan — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:48:37 +0000

Take an old track and change the style of it.

I'm amazed how many tracks can be given more life by changing the style of music. I pick tracks that I've never fully finished to my satisfaction and apply a different musical style to them.

Identify the original style

What's wrong with the original track?

Did it just plod along?
Lack of melody?
Lack of interest?
Too much repetition?
Didn't fit the video?

I usually pick a style that will help fill the gaps. For instance, if it's just plodding, I'll add something with a groove (e.g. motown). A few ideas:

Add some distortion to the drums (better still route them through a send with a guitar amp simulator) and blend the clean and processed signals. This may only be needed for a bar or two rather than the whole song.
Speed the whole thing up a few bpm will give it more energy.
Slow it down a few bpm and you may find that you can play with the groove more.
Change the starting key
For guitarists, look at playing with open versus fretted chords. I find that changing the key on a guitar can make a large difference to the tone. Consider the standard Am chord played at the nut compared to the tone of the same shape chord with a barre played at the 5th fret forming a Dm. Every decent guitar I've played provides a drastically different tone for these two chords. Same again if you move up another 5 frets.
Modulate
Change the dynamics
Change to double time - The change is about 2 minutes into The Stand-Off
Pause/Break - The change to double time is provided by a break, complete with drums keeping time
Play it on another instrument and focus on the rhythm or melody - does it highlight any issues or any ideas?

A good way to approach this is as a remixer or as a band about to cover your music. Ask the following question:

What could another band do if they had to cover your music?

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

Move the focus of the rhythm from on to off the beat - Musical Creativity 39

Alan — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:25:43 +0000

I guess most drummers will know this, but if you program your own drums or use loops, think about using a different groove for your song.

The basic pattern

Standard drum pattern that most of us learn is a 4 beat combination of bass, drum and hihat. Hihat every beat, bass on the first, snare on the 3rd. And repeat ad nauseum.

Then we get to add more bass, use 8th notes and so on.

What's the focus?

I was collaborating on a track a couple of months ago and as we we browsing the library of drum loops, we just couldn't find anything that suited. We ended up creating one ourselves and it was interesting to see the differences in how the two of us approached it.

I approached it very much from the basic, rock drumming angle, laying down the main beats first. My collaborator took a different approach and focussed on the choked hi-hat pattern. I then had to place the other beats around that.

Which was better?

It all fairness, neither. But here's the crunch, they drastically changed the feel of the music. It changed the feel so much that when I recorded a new part (say a guitar melody over the top), I played that differently.

So we recorded both sets.

One became the music for the opening credits, the other became the closing credits. We were also able to switch between the two main rhythms in the middle of track to change the feeling yet again.

Live Drummer

It's a common trick. Drummers will regularly change the rhythm pattern, if not you may as well use a drum machine! Using a live drummer means they can respond to the way the music's going. Moreover, they can change the rhythm, turn that around to drive it in a different direction. The difference for us was that we'd applied it more excessively than usual, but it still worked.

Ahead or behind?

Is this the same as playing ahead or behind the beat? No, it's neither. It's just syncopated, we were still playing at a regular syncopated interval. The choked hi-hats were on the "ands" of "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" for most bars/measures instead of on the beats of "1 2 3 4".

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 18:52:56 +0000

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.

Use random notes - Musical Creativity 38

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:28:37 +0000

Create a random part and modify it until it becomes musical. I'll describe a few options for taking a random parts and the processes I use for making them more musical.

1. Creating the randomness

I set Logic on a 4 bar cycle and hit keys at random on my keyboard. I chose a clean electric piano sound since they highlight any dissonance. It's not truly random because it's difficult to unlearn how to play, but after cycling through the 4 bars a few times it did become a mess of notes.

I could have used the humaniser function of Logic with the notes set at random (oddly, to de-humanise the part) . Didn't think of this until afterwards.

The glue part was because I was recording twice. I had to glue the parts together. There was no need to hae done this, it was just because of where I'd started and stopped recording and what I'd wanted to include.

2. Lengthen the notes

I changed the notes to half-time, doubling the length of each note. I expanded the region and the cycle region to account for this. So now I've 8 bars instead of 4.

3. Deduplicate overlapping repeating notes

If an event has a closely following event of the same pitch overlapping, this will turn them into two events, but the first will finish just before the second starts instead of overlapping.

4. Quantize

The placement of the events was a mess, they were all over the place with no real rhythm. I played with the grid, visually assessing which grid seemed to fit best. This was purely a quick estimation. I also changed the quantize value a few times and I settled on 24ths (triplet semi quavers). I also liked 12ths (triplet quavers) but it seemed to rigid, especially for having come from random notes.

5. Process length for overlapping notes

I did this, then decided to undo it. I liked both, but decided to keep the longer notes ringing. This option means that Logic will identify chords and ensure that the events are the same length. Without it, some notes in a chord may ring more than others.

6. Humanise Velocity.

I processed the midi, running it through the humanise function focussing solely on velocity. There wasn't a major change here, just slight enough to add some odd stress patterns. Maybe a groove template or similar would have been a better feature. Not sure.

7. Effects

These are in the order I added them (they're in a different order in the signal chain)

7a) It was crying out for a rotary cabinet emulator. Didn't need much, just something to take the edge of the louder, higher pitch notes.

7b) Guitar Amp emulator. I like using guitar amp emulators on non-guitar instruments. It's rare they need the full-on, high-gain distortion models, but mostly, just a clean or slightly overdriven blues amp can make a massive difference to a sound. For this one, I went with a clean amp.

7c) Overdrive - to have more control over the tone of the overdrive than provided with the guitar amp emulator, I went with a separate overdrive effect. Again most of the effect was dialled out to avoid losing the music in the distortion.

7d) Compressor - again to take the edge off and make the sound shine through more.

Some other ideas?

To be honest, add any effect and see what the result is. I tried a few that didn't work out in this case.

Delays can work well at creating rhythm out of random notes, especially if only on some of the notes
Use the random notes to trigger an arpeggio or other sequence (either directly into a virtual instrument or using the arpeggiator in the environment)
Pitch change processors - ideally you need a polyphonic processor. I tried running it through Logic's Pitch changer with variable results, not expecting much. Mainly I knocked out a few notes from the scale, but I wasn't happy with the sound
Use the midi filters to process some of the events but not all. For instance, you can select just the highest or lowest notes and split them out to a different channel and/or instrument. Then quanitise them differently to the rest of the events.
Most of the modulators will muddy the sound, reducing the sharpness of any dissonance from the original notes.
A tremolo will work similar to the modulators by reducing the sharpness of any dissonance but also provide a rhythm. Can be used on all notes or focussed on range.
Trigger the notes via another method, e.g. use a gate or a compressor with a sidechain to create a stuttering or pulsating effect. At least you can then bring the notes in line with the rest of the rhythm.

Gallery of Screenshots for each part of the process.

Want to do better?

I've attached the midi file so you can try for yourself. Let me know how you get on.

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

Find your common themes - Musical Creativity 34

Alan — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:07:46 +0000

Aim
Listen critically to your compositions and spot the similarities. By identifying what you commonly do, you can start to change and improve your range.

My experience
I did this a couple of months ago and I found a lot of my compositions started with same two chord sequence but often using different keys. These were compositions that I'd approached by playing randomly on guitar, not by a more thought-out and planned approach. If I liked the sound, then I'd move to the next chord and so on.

Oddly enough, I don't write the same sequence if I'm planning a composition.

The pattern
What I'd noticed is that the verse started with i-VI (e.g. from D minor to Bb major). I've treated the starting point as the minor chord in a minor key due to the mood of the rest of the music, all moody, rather than thinking of it in F major.

It was only by realising this pattern that I managed to overcome it. It had been hidden from me for a while due to starting in different keys and with different rhythms and styles. After all, it's not immediately obvious that a rock track Dm-Bb is the based on the same foundation as a funky groove in Am-F but just in a different key. Both work well, especially when the VI is lower than the i.

The change

I decided there were three options I could take:

Start the verse on a major chord. A big hint here: If you find yourself composing or even playing primarily in a major key, try a minor instead and vice versa. It's usually enough to get you out of a rut and stop you sounding you turn out the same stuff. Works for soloing in a live band as well.
For the songs starting on a minor chord, I ensured that the following chord wasn't a 6th away from it.
Plan the composition in advance.

The first two steps were simple methods for excluding what I'd done before. It doesn't stop me using the trick in sequence in future but at least I'll be more aware of it.

I already do the 3rd option, but I like the combination of mixing planned compositions and compositions I find by just playing where my fingers (and experience) takes me. So I'm not willing to miss out on the random playing.

Other tracks
Since I noticed the sequence in my own compositions, I've noticed the same chord progression in the chorus of RHCP's Bump de Hump and in Christina Aguilera's Can't Hold Us Down (feat. Lil' Kim).

It's not just chords, there are other patterns you can pick up on. I'll cover another one in the next article.

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