14Jun

Review: Lynda.com Music Production Secrets: Larry Crane on Recording

Filed in Producing | Recording | Review | Techniques | Tutorial | Video 2 Comments

Last night I saw the announcement of Larry Crane’s (TapeOp Magazine, Jackpot! Studio) video tutorial at Lynda.com and I immediately signed up for a free trial to watch. I was pretty excited about this short course because of Larry’s extensive experience in recording and mixing, plus it’s filmed in his really fun studio. That’s right – a real engineer in a real studio moving the mics.

Larry_crane_video
While a lot of the content is simplified beginner recording concepts (what is a DI box, mic types), it covers a few thing I haven’t really seen in video tutorials before (how to find the best place for drums in the room, recording a faux ensemble), and interesting tips & tricks that anyone can experiment with (garbage can kick drum, damping drums with blankets). It moves at a pretty good pace never dwelling too long on one topic (the longest segment is only 13min) and we don’t hear the same examples and shootouts over and over. On the other hand, at times more detail, clarification and demonstrations would have been nice for certain topics that felt a little rushed. Larry presents the content clearly and in a fun and really encouraging way and most segments seem to be a single take, mistakes and all (phase/polarity).

Highlights for me are the videos on checking the phase of the drum mics/tracks on the console, mic positions for upright piano (loved the sound of the non-obvious underneath position), and the when they record the handclap ensemble and the one guy messes up every time. Larry has a lot of creative ideas and seems like a really fun guy to work with in the studio. 2hrs 20min flies by and I just want to keep watching. Not to diminish Larry’s great info and tips that will help you get better sounds in tracking but it’s not really a how to be a music producer tutorial that the title might make you believe. Hopefully this is just part 1 and we’ll see Larry hosting more courses for Lynda.com in the future and we’ll see more production and mixing ideas. I’d rate this 8/10, definitely recommended.

Go here to sign up and watch the videos

Lynda.com is a subscription service and for $25/month you get access to the entire library of video tutorials, which is pretty cool but not everything will be relevant to you.

13Jun

Simple Salvaged Wood Diffusor

Filed in Acoustics | DIY | Tutorial 5 Comments

This week one of my neighbors left his unwanted Ikea bed frame in the alley. Among the parts of the bed was a set of SULTAN LADE slatted base. In other words: 20 3/4″ pine boards for free. Keep an eye out for these because they can be used for a ton of simple DIY projects.

IMG_2613With these, I decided to make some super simple diffusors to cover up the bare wall around the closet at the back of my studio. The goal was to use the least amount of materials, hardware and effort. This design accomplished that and I didn’t even need to use a saw.

Each diffusor is made of 5 boards in a wide V shape. I used extra boards to get the spacing right, then held it firm with a pair of C-Clamps while hammering. The clamps were a huge help to prevent the boards from shifting around. I had just enough nails of the right length to build two diffusors, I would have built 4 if I had more nails. These aren’t very heavy so for now I have them mounted with a single drywall screw and picture hanger.

I’m sure an expert will disagree with the design as an effective diffusor. QRDs these are not. However, just holding it to the wall I could hear it was doing something far better than a bare wall. Unpainted soft wood like pine is porous and I could hear it softening the highs a little. Not sure if it scatters the sound at all but surely it is doing something more than the drywall was. QRDs are complicated, heavy and extremely labor intensive to DIY.

There are two downsides to building with free/salvaged wood like this.
1 – needing to remove staples, screws or nails before you can build.
2 – Sometimes the wood is warped which is hard to fix.
These don’t sit as flush on the wall as I’d like because of some warping.

I’m undecided whether I will leave these natural or stain them. If you’re looking for a simple wood stain, vinegar and steel wool left in a jar for a few days will give you a nice grey aged fence/barn wood look. Toss coffee grinds in the jar too and you can get a pretty dark almost chocolate brown stain. Teas, cocoa or spices can give you different colors. Steep longer and apply repeatedly for darker color. Again, super simple and practically free, but also it doesn’t stink up your house for days with toxic fumes.

I have some more ideas for diffusors which I will explore at a later date. One idea is to use the curved SULTAN LUROY bed slats and symmetrically staggering them at a few different heights and depths. Would probably look really nice and modern in a live room especially behind a drum kit.

Have you made a DIY diffusor? I’d love to see it, leave a comment and link below.

07Jun

Drum Kit isolation platform using tennis balls?

Filed in Acoustics | DIY Leave a comment

I stumbled across this interesting construction diary of an impact isolation platform for Electronic Drums that uses a couple layers of MDF and tennis balls to float the kit. This is a genius idea and it came out looking great and probably very effective.

This looks like a very inexpensive and effective solution for acoustic drums or on a smaller scale, loud guitar amps or subwoofers. I wonder how ‘squishy’ it feels to walk on this, it might be a good non-permanent solution for floating a small live room, or at least a toddler bedroom.

Click this link to read the build instructions and discussion.

 

03Jun

Electro Harmonix 16-second Digital Delay Reissue

Filed in Gear | Hardware Effects and pedals Leave a comment

I am the proud new owner of an EHX 16 second Digital Delay.  This thing is big, complex, and capable of some pretty crazy sounds.

I bought the pedal for a steal from an artist at the Mini Maker Faire in Vancouver this past weekend, to help fund a trip to Europe. The original MSRP in 2004 was $995, you can find them on ebay for closer to $400. I paid a lot less.

Electro Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay Pedal

Electro Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay Pedal

This is a delay and looper pedal with three modes. Continuous loop, single loop, and short delay (up to 1sec). The short delay mode actually allows for 4 minutes of recording. The looping modes have a 4 beat count in before starting. Continuous loop continues to overdub after the first loop. Single loop stops recording at the end of the set loop length. Once a loop is recorded it can be reversed, pitched down or time stretched without changing pitch. It also has built in Chorus/Flanger, input, wet, dry faders, footswitch jack and MIDI clock out. This is a ton of features, but unfortunately missing some ‘modern’ features we’re now used to, such as tap tempo, stereo i/o, loop undo, and double-tap loop setting. Setting specific loop lengths and delay times is a little tricky but the “Clix” audio click helps a bit.

Another interesting note about this pedal is it’s use of ‘magna-storage’ which can store the loop long term even with power disconnected.

I really like how this delay glitches, maybe that’s an odd thing to say but it’s just so much fun to mangle audio in this way. My favorite way is to set the delay to longest, full feedback, hit something on the guitar and then mess with the Pitch/Time switch while changing the delay time. You’ll hear that a lot in the clip below, creating an infinite echo, changing the pitch, changing the tempo, dropping the pitch again, over and over. The chorus sounds really nice to me too. I don’t have room for it on my pedalboard but I expect to have a lot of fun with it in the studio.

The audio example below is guitar direct into the pedal, then into DI to Reaper. No amp or other effects.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here’s a video demo from EH

24Apr

ART PRO VLA II tube swap

Filed in Gear | Shootout 3 Comments

I recently bought the ART PRO VLA II Stereo Tube Compressor for my studio. It’s one of the most affordable compressors on the market and packs a ton of features in a sturdy 2 space rack. In researching this compressor I ended up at Gearslutz multiple times. Over and over I was reading that you MUST change the tubes for it to be useable in the studio. None of the pros that used it for the Tape Op Magazine review talked about NOS Unobtainium KGB vacuum tubes, but I felt I needed to try for myself before I permanently rack mounted the VLA.

IMG_2270

I also own the PRO MPA II Reference Series tube preamp. It comes with lower noise, Chinese 7025 tubes that are also compatible with the VLA. Since I had a matched pair of 7025 and the stock 12AT7s, I ran audio through each set and recorded the results.

DOWNLOAD 24 BIT WAVES EXAMPLES

The audio source is 1kHz test tone, clap samples, acoustic guitar, and drum submix. The examples use a fairly heavy setting of about 10dB GR. Audio was going in line level and back to the daw. No other processing.

My opinion

The difference between the tubes is not as drastic as one might expect. They sound very similar in either the MPA preamp or VLA compressor. The 7025 tubes from the Reference Series MPA do sound a little tighter and about 1dB hotter output, and just a hair brighter. Self noise was about the same (extremely low) for either set. For me that’s not enough to immediately go buy a matched pair to replace the stock 12AT7, or even enough to spend more time and money on other options. I KNOW that I just swapped one set of cheap Chinese tubes for another, I don’t have any other matched sets to compare with. (send me a bunch of tubes and I’ll make time for a bigger shootout)

Trying out different tubes in my gear is something worth doing but not obsessing over. I tried just two of the hundreds of compatible tubes and it feels like I’ve spent all day on it. Either way it’s not magic, but it’s a solid compressor and great bang for buck.

09Apr

“I am sitting in a room, compressing”

Filed in Commentary; Rants and Jokes 2 Comments

Check out this blog post and the sound file where the author covers the Alvin Lucier avant-garde recording “I am sitting in a room”.

In the original recording, Alvin records his voice in a room onto tape. The recording is played back into the room and recorded again. This is repeated over and over and interestingly it doesn’t take long before resonances in the room and audio system start to jump out and overpower the voice.

In this version he runs the loop through additional mp3 encoding until the voice is lost completely. This is a pretty good demonstration of what is lost when an mp3 converted to wav, then converted to mp3 again. I’ve had to do that before.

I recommend downloading the large file and importing it into your DAW, RX or other editing program.

http://sounds.sterneworks.org/projects/alvin-lucier-cover/

sitting_compressing

Spectrogram of “I am sitting in a room, compressing”

Here is an excerpt from the 50min clip. The original file was over 100MB so I did not want to rehost it. It’s a flac file so there is no quality loss. First is the original, then first mp3 encoding, then 10th, then another closer to the end.

Download excerpt (4.9MB FLAC)

08Apr

30+ OSX Power User Shortcuts

Filed in Mac | Software | Tutorial 3 Comments

Inspector
Use ‘Inspector’ instead of ‘Get Info’
RT-click finder item then hold alt, “Show Inspector” will appear. Or use shortcut CMD+Option+i
This is like the Get Info window but it will not clutter up the screen and will show combined data for selections.

Resizing windows
Shift-drag will scale height and width of the window
Alt-drag will resize opposite sides at once with same center point

trashCycle options in dialog boxes
It’s a pain in the arse to move the mouse to click Cancel or other buttons in those pop up option windows. Hitting Return/Enter will do the default action. Use the TAB key to cycle the options, then hit the spacebar.

Hiding apps
The hide function works how minimize should.
CMD+H will hide the active window
Alt+click the desktop (or the will also hide.
Alt+CMD+click the desktop will hide all windows except finder
Alt+Cmd+click dock icon will hide all apps except the one clicked (and open it if not already open).

Close all windows
To quickly close all windows for an app: hold Option and click the X in the top left of the window

New Folder with selected items
I love this featured added in OSX Lion
Instead of making a new folder, giving it a name, grabbing items, and dragging them to the new folder, now you can just select the items, rt-click and choose “New Folder with selected items” right at the top.
CMD+Shift+N makes a new folder.

audio_controlsHidden audio controls
There are several ‘hidden’ functions dealing with your Macs audio options.
* Hold Shift to avoid the annoying click when changing the volume (or disable it completely in Sound>Sound Effects prefs)
* Alt + any volume button on the keyboard will open the sound preferences
* Alt + Shift gives you finer resolution on the volume control
* Alt + click the volume control in the menu bar to bring up a menu for quick input and output changes

Moving files
One thing that confuses many new OSX users is the lack of ‘cut’ function for files to cut and paste to a new location. On the system drive, dragging a file to a new folder will move it, but dragging to a second drive will duplicate it. Sometimes you don’t want a second copy. In OSX you copy the selected file, and use the ‘move’ command, CMD+Option+V
If you prefer drag + drop, just hold CMD.
In case you didn’t know the other files for dragging files: Option +drag will duplicate (and append a number to the file name starting at 2).

Color labels
You can color code files with the Labels function either through rt-click menu or adding the labels button to the toolbar.
I use Red for current projects, Green for recently finished projects that have been paid for, Purple for personal, Grey or none for misc

Arrange & Sort
Since OSX Lion, the Arrange function can be found in Finder. It’s great if you work in Icon view a lot, but not great if you work in list or column view. In fact there is a bug with color labels in column view, it doesn’t refresh correctly.
If you set Arrange to None, you can sort your files by name, date, label etc. by clicking the column headers.

Navigating files with the keyboard
I use Finder in List View almost exclusively because it is very easy to navigate through files and folders within the same window using just the keyboard arrows. Instead of double-clicking to open, you can use CMD+O or CMD+DownArrow. In list and column views you can use the left and right arrows to expand folders. If you push any letter key it will select the closest file starting with that letter. Pushing the same letter does NOT go to the next one though. Try typing the first 2-3 letters of the filename. Use spacebar to preview files.

OSX Lion Mission Control click to enlarge

OSX Lion Mission Control
click to enlarge

Navigate dashboard and workspaces
The Control key plus arrow keys allows you to jump to the Dashboard, Mission Control, and Spaces/Desktops. The Dashboard is where helpful widgets live. Primarily I use this for a basic calculator, a couple timers, and a unit converter. Get to the Dashboard with Control+Left Arrow.
You can have multiple desktops/spaces to work in. It’s a bit like having multiple monitors. You can assign apps to any desktop from the dock icon or just click and drag them around. Control+Right Arrow moves over to the next desktop.
Mission control zooms out and shows you all open windows, the dashboard and desktops at once. Great for finding that dialog box hidden under other other windows or for moving stuff to other desktops. Control+Up Arrow shows Mission Control

 

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