Tag: Recording

Suck It, Jimmy Page

I just put backwards echo onto two guitar tracks in GarageBand.

By reverse echo, I don’t mean the digital signal effect that sort of makes an echo sound backward, I mean the real deal.  I mean instead of having a sound followed by an echo, I have the echo preceding the sound.

Jimmy Page claimed to have invented the technique when he used it on Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (Waaaay down inside… Woman… Youuuu need… Loooooooooove)

Les Paul actually invented the technique using a couple of reel to reel tape decks.  Les Paul was a genius.  Jimmy Page was great, but he weren’t no Les Paul.

I took two tracks of guitar, reversed them, loaded them up with shit loads of echos, exported the segments to iTunes, reimported them into a new track in GarageBand and reversed them again.

Boom.

The echo comes before the sound.

Now I am going to mix that new track in with the original tracks so that it’s kind of subtle, but you can bet your sweet ass it’s there.

I love messing with backward tracks.  I just freakin’ love it.

May Music Update

Things are a little better than the last time I mentioned May Music.  When I lost a days worth of changes due to a backup snafu I didn’t lose the new lyrics.  Those were copied into my Trello card for each song.  The tracks with the melodies were gone for good so I had to come up with something new that fit the lyrics.  I was able to take care of that over the last couple of days, as well as add a couple more songs.

This morning I was able to record two songs worth of vocals.  Not much, but a good start.  Here’s where I stand overall.  Two songs have vocals and are ready for lead guitar.  Five songs have the lyrics and melodies written and are ready for vocals.  Three songs have all of the music written but need rhythm guitars.  One of those three have lyrics and a melody already.

Today is May 18th.  Plenty of time remaining.

Lost

I did some good work on May Music last night. Four songs got lyrics and melodies. When I finished I backed everything up. Today the computer crashed and I had to wipe it. I lost yesterday’s work, but I had the backup.

Nope.

The backup didn’t save correctly. Yesterday’s changes are all gone for good.

Good and Bad

I recorded some guitars today, which is good, but while I was doing it I missed a Richard Thompson live stream, which is bad.

Go to royalalberthall.com to watch the recording… I’m watching it now.

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Backward

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My new Klone pedal has been added to the May music project.  I put rhythm guitars on three songs and used my birthday-present-to-myself on all of them.  It sounds so good it’s silly.  I needed to goose the treble knob up a little higher than I do on the KTR to get a nice sweet spot, but I haven’t been able to use it on a high watt amp at volume.  It will all change when I use it for real.

I did something else with one of the songs that’s also silly… and fun… and awesome.

The rhythm part is just hit a chord and let it ring for two bars, more or less over and over.  After I finished the actual recording (double tracked, one panned left and one panned right) I added the first of two extra tracks.  First I recorded an additional take of the last eight bars of the song.  I then reversed the track.  That was a guide.  Next I muted the bass and actual guitar tracks so that all I could hear was drums and the backward guitar.  After that I used the second extra track to record myself trying to play along with the backward track.  It wasn’t easy and it came out pretty wrong, but at least I had the same chords playing on the two tracks.  One was forward and the other was backward but they more or less rang out correctly.

The last step was to delete the first of the two tracks, reverse the second track, and pan it right in the middle and unmute all the muted tracks.  Now when I play it back I have the normal parts and an additional backward part kinda playing along with each other.

It didn’t work out as I had planned it but…….

Coolest thing I’ve ever done.

One Note on Logic Pro Remote for iPhone

Normally when I work on a MIDI instrument track in GarageBand I use the Logic Pro Remote app on my iPad to access the piano keyboard/drum pads/fretboard.  Tonight I had an idea for RPMay Song #5 but my iPad is in the other room and I was too lazy to go get it.

What did I do?

I installed the app on my iPhone.  The last time I tried to do this I couldn’t find it in the App Store.  I thought that, as a new user, I would share the answer to the one question I had to look up.

When you open the app and you’re looking at the mixing board channel and you want to switch to the piano or the fretboard or whatever you need to turn the phone on its side.

Portrait mode = mixer
Landscape mode = pretty much everything else.

You’re welcome.

COVID Blues

246/365

Three songs in the pipeline right now. I put guitars on all of them. Two of the songs seem okay so far. The third is a sloppy awful mess. It’s a 12-bar blues. Should I call it The Covid-19 Blues?

Decibel Levels

I just did an experiment with the two amps I have in my bedroom right now.

I plugged into the Bassbreaker 15 with the same setup I used for lead guitars on the April music projects.  I had the free decibel meter app on my phone running.  I hit the mid 90’s a couple of times.  The average was in the high 80’s.

I then switched to the Bassbreaker 18/30 with no pedals.  I started on the 18 watt channel, which I used for the February music.  I lowered the volume all the way and then slowly raised it until I actually got a steady, consistent sound out of it.  The decibel meter was showing high 90’s and low 100’s.  It peaked at 103.

Well, there goes that idea.  I did the same thing on the 30 watt channel and it was averaging higher but the peak was only 104.  Regardless, With all the headroom that amp has, when I plugged in my pedal board the volume level was absolutely going to go up.  I could try to set everything at unity gain, but why bother.  I shut the 18/30 off and went back to the 15.  This time with all the pedals.  There is a distinct possibility that I might do this whole month with just the Klon KTR for gain.  I’ll have the Fulltone OCD and the Wren and Cuff Tri Pi 70 there if I need it, but that KTR is just perfect all by it’s lonesome.

One thing I might do different though is I might put the small amp on top of the big amp.  with it sitting on the floor I can’t quite get the mic stand low enough to get the mic in front of a good place on the speaker.  If I put the 15 on top of the 18/30 I won’t have that problem.

We’ll see.

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