Tag: Recording

Not Going to Share

I finally did it last night at band practice.

I set up mics on the drums, on the bass amp, and on the guitar amp, and ran a line out from the PA, all into my Mackie board, then into my Lexicon USB interface, and then into GarageBand in stereo. It worked!

But I ain’t sharing any of it. Not this time at least.

The bass guitar is UBER loud (although the tone has a nice snap to it). The drums are really, really quiet and have no bottom end at all. The guitar is a little low compared to the vocals. Kevin’s voice is a touch on the loud side but not too bad. My voice is WAY low in the mix (just how I like it!) and needs to come up.

In other words, the mix is all but unlistenable. I knew that would happen though. I will make some adjustments on the board next week and see how it sounds, and then repeat the process the following week until I have a mix I can live with. I don’t want to take time out of practice to adjust things, so I will just do it week to week based on what sounds bad on each successive tape.

Also, I don’t think we were terribly good last night. After the last two practices being really great. I am pretty disappointed in myself. Listening to a nice clean recording just makes my shitty playing all the more obvious.

Next week I hope to have something to share. Maybe.

What to Do

Our bathroom remodeling is scheduled to start on Tuesday.  We are trying to fudge our work schedules so that at least one of us will be home each daY the work proceeds.  I get one telecommute day per week, and I can probably sneak in another.  Jen, my beautiful bride, can probably sneak in a couple as well.  In an attempt to not over do the extra TCing, I decided to take my last available (for now) vacation day on Tuesday.

That means I’ll be home all day with nothing to do while the work is happening.  What should I do with the day?

Last night before bed an idea came to me.  A musical idea.  I’ve done all of the Internet album in a month challenges, but I’ve never done one of the album in a day deals.  When Jen, my beloved wife, goes to sleep on Monday I’ll bring up GarageBand.  I’ll goof for an hour or so and then go to bed.  When she gets up at around 5:00 am I will get up as well and start cranking.  I’ll go to bed on Tuesday at the same time I started playing on Monday night.  Hopefully at that time I’ll have about 30 minutes worth of new songs.

I’m such a nerd, and there’s no way I’ll manage this… But it’s fun to consider it.

Boy Does Robbie Need a Hobby

Two band practices ago I recorded the whole thing. I used the iTalk app on my iPhone and just pointed the mic in our general vicinity. It worked well but it sounded like sludge.

Last band practice I recorded the whole thing again. This time I brought my MacBook, my USB interface, and one microphone. It worked well. It sounded pretty bad, but 100 times better than the phone.

Now how do I one up myself? Let’s see. We have three vocal mics, a guitar amp, a bass amp, and a drum kit. Also the USB interface only has two outputs. I won’t be able to record each source onto it’s own track. The best I can do is record a stereo mix. So how do I get that stereo mix? Three mics for voices, two more for the two amps, and let’s say two overhead mics on the drums. Seven microphones. What to do, what to do……

Untitled

I haven’t used this puppy in four years or so. It is a dusty mess. If things come together I’ll need a lot of compressed air to get the channels clean. I just performed an experiment. I plugged Larry’s piano directly into channel one. I plugged a guitar directly into channel two. I plugged a mic into channel three. The piano panned left, the guitar panned right, and the mic straight up the middle. Now unfortunately the PA we’re using does not have channel outputs. Mr Mackie here does. So we’d have to plug the vocal mics into this, then direct out them into the PA. So to test that out I direct out’d the piano track into the little toyish Marshall amp. Next I plugged the board’s stereo outputs into the USB interface and plugged the interface into the MacBook and brought up GarageBand. I hit record and strummed with one hand, banged on the piano with the other, and gabbed into the mic.

Success.

A stereo recording in GarageBand with the guitar on one side, the piano on the other, and the mic in the middle, and the piano coming out of the little amp. Now the only thing left to do is try and clean out the channels because there was a lot of scratchy dust induced interference that needs to be eliminated. Then it’s just a matter of setting everything up and tweaking the mix to tape as we go, although that would be more of a week to week thing because I don’t plan on listening to play backs until after practice. It’ll do though. Even better, when the day comes when we buy a real power amp to use for PA, the board will already be in place and everything will be ready to go.

This is all upside, right?

I’m not alarmingly obsessed, right?

Right?

Oh did I mention though… I don’t have enough microphones to actually pull this off. To the music store we go!

Note to Self

Here’s a little reminder to myself.

I own two good pairs of (sort of) noise cancelling headphones.  From this point on I must remember to use one of them when recording guitars through my amplifier.  This morning I recorded all of the guitar parts for one song, playing my Les Paul through my old Fender amp (just like when I was in the band Prime Meridian, oh the memories).  I literally had the volume set to 1, but I was using ear pods to listen to the playback while overdubbing and, well, the amp on 1 is much loader than the ear buds can comfortably drown out.

My ears are still ringing, but I got a couple of decent takes.

There are five songs in progress right now.  I’m thinking I want to record 20.  I will (probably) finish these five before starting any more.  Well, finish not counting re-recording the drum parts with actual drums.  I’m still on the fence about wanting to do that.  Everything else though, guitars, bass, vocals, will get re-done.  Three of the songs have keyboards.  Those will probably stay midi, unless I want to bring in someone else to play them for real and they are way too simplistic to insult an actual keyboard player by asking for that.

I will bring the Squire P Bass I loaned to Mike the Bass Player home with me after the next band practice, assuming Mike doesn’t need it for a while, and after all the bass parts and Fender amp parts are done I will bring the Marshall home and re-do all of the guitars again using that amp.  In the end I’ll have all of the rhythm parts quadruple tracked using two amps.  The Smashing Pumpkins fan in me is drooling at that potential of such a layering of fuzz.

The Final RPM Post

Here’s one you’ve been waiting for. The Final Official RPM Challenge Post for 2015.

My project has been uploaded into the RPM Challenge Jukebox. The final step is complete!

My Jukebox Page

There are still listening parties and stuff like that, including one in second life that I’ve always been curious about visiting, and a Portsmouth radio station is going to spend a full day playing nothing but RPM music from all over the world. That will stream online here. It’s scheduled to start at 12am on March 29th and run right straight through to midnight on the 30th. 24 hours of RPM music. Insane! I might check that out too.

Other than those things though, the annual craziness that is RPM is now officially finished.

Songs to Rerecord

Ive been thinking about which songs to rerecord, assuming I want to go through with that idea.  I want to stick to songs that I don’t hate (there aren’t many) and maybe make some changes here and there.

I’m thinking of starting with this one from 2013’s RPM.

This is mostly okay, but I don’t like how it starts with the verse.  It should also have a new ending.

What Next

All of the music for RPM is complete (see the previous post).  I need to burn a cd.  Do I have a cd?  I need to find a cd, then burn a cd, and then print out the cover (front and back!  Fancy!).  This year my beloved wife, the love of my life and woman of my dreams (I will never get tired of calling her those things.  Swooooon) and I are going to drive to headquarters in Portsmouth, NH and hand deliver.  

That leads to the inevitable post February question:  What next?

Well for starters, I’m not going to do an RPM a month for the rest of the year.  I’m also probably not going to take part in 50/90 again, though the jury is still out on that.  What I was thinking of doing next is a little more complicated.  First and foremost, the band takes precedence from this point on.  No more recording when I’m supposed to be practicing.  That doesn’t mean I’m done recording, it just means I’ll do it after practicing is done.  

Second, I think it’s time to upgrade from GarageBand to Logic Pro X.  It’s expensive, but it just seems time for something new, and being a total Apple nerd, that’s where I want to go next.

Finally, is it time to collect the highlights from 8+ years of home recording and make a best of album?  Maybe, but it has to be something different.  I figure 15-20 songs.  I’ll record them the way I normally do, with midi bass, drums, and keys, and simulated amplifiers, but those will be scratch tracks.  After everything is arranged correctly I’d bring my Marshal amp home after practices and replace the guitars with actual amplified noise.  Next, maybe it’s time to bring Mike the Bass Player into the fold and let him replace the midi bass parts with the real thing.  Maybe I could do the same with Greg the Lizardfish Singer.  That would leave drums.  I’d like to have Kevin the Lizardfish drummer replace the midi parts, but recording real drums is an absolute bitch of a process, not to mention the overwhelming majority of drummers puke at the thought of overdubbing drums onto an existing track.  Neil Peart does it all the time, but he’s part genius, part human metronome, and part god on Earth.  He’s the exception to say the least.  I’m not sure that I’m up to the challenge of live drums.  Technologically I know I’m not right now because I don’t have enough microphones, and I’d probably need a bigger USB audio interface.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about.

PS, we aren’t driving to Portsmouth.  I’m going to mail the cd like I always do.