Mixes of Epic Proportions

Thank christ that's over, note you can only see about 2/3rds of the tracks on the edit window, and about half on the mixer. Not to say bigger is better, but it's certainly my most intense mix yet, sounds great though, the songs should be released soon!

The computer just couldn't handle it at all however, and the only way to open the session was to bypass plugins (by holding shift as it loads) and then enabling them one by one and praying that it did not crash, or refuse to play with DAE errors. :( Really is time for a new computer I think :/

Muse - Undisclosed Desires

sm57 saves the day!

I'd heard great things about wrapping a Dynamic microphone in some sort of cloth and pushing it down behind the bridge/tail of an upright bass. I didn't know anything else about it, but at a recent location recording faced with my first upright bass, and no really capable condensers, I thought I would give it a bash. I was as sceptical as everyone else at the recording, and wrapped up my kick drum mic in a shirt to an array of pulled faces. Unfortunately, it was just too fat to squeeze in there, and the DI on the upright bass was dodgy at best with a pretty weedy tone, so I tried it with a 57 and it sounded average in the cans, but did pick up a surprising amount of bass for the size of the mic.

The true gold came out when I got home, and realized the 57 behind the bridge had worked a treat (at least enough for me). The low end is very solid, and it also captures great what I'd call "wood frequencies", which really distinguish the tone. Add a touch of RBass which makes some great sounding sub-bass and the end result was brilliant. (If only i could have got a larger diaphragm down there, could well have scrapped the RBass) The only downside was a lack of really high frequencies, which would have been better for solo passages perhaps. The line up was just the upright bass and acoustic guitar/vocals which let me keep the bass's character a lot more than in other line ups perhaps. It was a small house concert with a great vibe and I hope you can pick up on that from how the 57 performed on the night. Recordings here:

Little Gaps.. Huge Difference!!

Just working more on some mixes for my friend Greg, and thought it was worth highlighting how much difference leaving space in the bass line can make to a groove. Take the first example, the groove as I received it. Notice there's no rests in the line at all, but it does follow the kick drum quite nicely :

Audio Clip - http://www.liamgaughan.com/nogaps.mp3


However, just adding a little rest before the second note, really helps those first two kicks punch a lot better:

Audio Clip - http://www.liamgaughan.com/gaps.mp3

The technique was really brought to light to me by Dr. Dre and his bass player Mike Elizondo who commented once in an interview that Dr. Dre really opened his ears and showed him how effective the space could be used. It can be heard in use all over the first two Eminem albums, and 2001. There's a tidbit for the day.

Liam

Transcription : Jamiroquai - Seven Days in Sunny June [Bass]

Made this for a student, and thought it was worth a share. Great work for looking at 16th rhythms and really being in the pocket with the kick drum. Also has a great set of chords, plenty of theory to chew on for the harmonies. Oh yeah, it also is great fun to play!

Working on Ashananay mixes.. and the joys of Pro Tools.

I think everyone who has used Pro Tools for more than a week has shouted some pretty impressive obscenities at it, at one time or another, and today has been no exception. Aside from random lock ups, and spikes in the CPU usage which make recording nigh-impossible after inserting one EQ into the session, I've been presented with this more than once, today being no exception:



Of course you can remedy this by trashing prefs, but why should we have to do that every time we want to just get on with some bloody work?! And why does it even happen in the first place? No one has any real answer, apart from regurgitating Digidesign spiel which covers their lazy asses for having such a buggy program.

That aside, I did manage to get a decent mix going. Mixing works okay (for the moment) as I can just crank up the buffer size and get to work, but if I want to track anything that's a different matter. I have to load a new session and record the new tracks there, and use the Import Session Data command to get it into the mix. I hate working this way, I had none of this trouble using a USB MBox2 Mini, and Pro Tools 7. Now I use a Firewire M-Audio interface (yes with the recomended Digi firewire card as well) and it's always been a real mess or various errors. It's about time they scrapped the entire program and started again seeing as some of the code is over 11 years old, and on top of that the developers have admitted themselves on the DUC that they daren't change some of the older code because they have no idea how it works. Great. To think I rely on this program to make some sort of a rep for myself, and sometimes even keep a roof over my head, continues to perplex me. It's certainly a love/hate relationship

New News/Blog Page

Hello there world! This is my first post to my new blog, which will hopefully replace the news page on my website. I also hope to offer the odd tutorial, lessons, sheet music etc. Just random musical offerings of all shapes and sizes.
Thanks for reading
Liam