I've been parodied

Sent my way via myspace



compare



I don't know why people even got into these videos in the first place. I never liked the whole "out of the box" concept myself but for a while I had a boss who pretty much said I had to do it. When he was out of the picture I stopped doing that part of the video and I started getting emails and posts to forums asking me to do them again. The whole gear fetish thing was always pretty confusing to me. I always just wanted to hear the pedal.

Also, while employed there I would ask my bosses to let someone else host the videos and just let me worry about getting good sound. Now, I'm no slouch on the guitar but what I do best is write, record, and play with other musicians. Playing by yourself and not being completely repetitive is something I never got so good at doing. I was always self-conscious of my playing and admittedly it was pretty sloppy at times. However, I got paid and supported myself by doing these things fast and cheap.

And what about this guy? He tracked me down on myspace and sent me a message with a link to the video he had made. Obviously he's seen a few of the videos and read pretty clearly into the subtext, that being I hated my job. I like the fan blowing and the use of the fuck word. I just wish it somehow could have been a little funnier. He did however get the audio and video to sync up on this one. All I can say to him is keep it up and perhaps he could make something of his talent for parody someday. Also, thanks for giving me something to post.

Audio Damage Liquid

Click the picture for a full description fron the Analog Industries blog.

Although Audio Damage has put out some very interesting (and pretty) plug-ins I myself have never bought one. This one might change that based on the mp3 sample they've provided. From Analog Industries:

So what does it sound like? In a word, Liquid. Here is a short MP3 of Liquid in action. The first sound is a dry pad from my MKS80, then the same pad through Liquid, with big depth and slow rate. The second is some dumb drum break from the latest CM cover DVD, then the same drum break with Liquid on slightly faster mod settings and higher feedback.

They call it a through zero flanger. Now, if you know me you know that I loathe flange effects, especially on percussion. But this "different kind of flanger" seems like it might actually give me something I can use. Of course, I know exactly what a through zero flanger is but I don't feel like describing it myself. If you feel like learning more click the pretty picture and read it for yourself from the site genius.

Chocolate Rain v. Mega Man 2

Odds are that if you have found your way to this isolated corner of the internet you've at least heard of the song "Chocolate Rain" which has meme'ed its way across youtube like a goddamn wildfire. Well if you haven't:



I guess I can get away posting this without going too OT since it does reference an interesting way to minimize breath noise in your vocal track. Well anyway, the video's author, Tay Zonday, has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel's TV show in a clip that is slightly less entertaining.

An effect of all meme is the spawning of copycats, tributes, and satirists. Not surprisingly, it is the third type of offspring that this particular vid has inspired. This one was of particular interest:



As you may know from a previous post of mine I am a bit of a video game fetishist. I also love the 8-bit music genre with all of my pixelated heart. Mega Man 2 happens to be the only game in the series that I owned and beat. So anyways, leave it to the internet.

Zoom H4 PWNS 4-track Recording

So I've had this Zoom H4 for a little while now. At first, all I used it for was to record some band practices and a couple of shows. It performed pretty alright. I would always just use the built in mics which actually don't sound all that bad. More recently I've been using to record field sounds and fx for a movie and couldn't be happier with the results. I feel kinda funny plugging my U87 into it but damned if it doesn't sound great.

So a day or two ago I had some free time and decided to try out the four track function. I ended up recording about eight projects. Mostly they were just quick recordings of ideas but it couldn't have been easier.

My GF brought me an mbira back from her trip to Hawaii so I recorded a quick track using the built in mics. It isn't anything special but I think it speaks for the overall quality of the recorder.


The best thing is that when you hook up the H4 to your computer via USB every project appears in its own folder and it is simple as pie to bring them into your DAW and mix there. The built in mixer ain't bad though. The other best thing is there is no save function. When you lay something down, it's there, and stays there even after power down. I felt a lot like I was recording to tape, which was a very good thing.

The H4 records onto flash media and I highly recommend getting a 2GB card. Although recording at mp3 bit rates will never fill this up I recommend sticking with wav files because the quality is a lot better. You will especially notice this when in 4-track mode where resolution imperfections will only multiply track upon track.

Battery life is very impressive. I haven't done any scientific measurements of how long the two AA batteries will last but under the conditions I've been using it under I have no complaints. A nice addition is that the display will prompt you when battery life gets low. You can also use the adapter, but that kind of takes away from the charm of walking around your apartment humming four part harmony with yourself.

I only have two gripes. First, there doesn't seem to be a way to add effects. They can only be applied to an incoming signal so you can't change them after recording. Also, the metronome is not perfect when I tried punch-ins. The click was at the same tempo but fell between beats. I got past this problem by either turning the metronome off or starting from the beginning of the project and waiting for the section I wanted to punch in for.

You can also use this as an audio interface apparently. I've still yet to try that. Bottom line is the Zoom H4 Handy recorder does a lot of things and does most of them very well. At $300 it is something many people can afford. For me, it will be a way to get my ideas quickly recorded. The ease of integrating these tracks with my DAW will make the path from my brain to finished product much shorter. That alone makes it worth it.

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Video Games and Beefheart

Being a nocturnal creature I get bored as shit sometimes. The girlfriend, as well as most of the regular friends, have day jobs so on weeknights when I'm not working I usually de-compress by traversing the net. Lately, the choice for passive entertainment has been watching video game videos. That's right, watching videos of other people playing video games.

As sad and pathetic as it sounds there are actually some pretty successful sites that feature just this. The Speed Demos Archive and Next Gen Walkthroughs are the main culprits for my late night time wasting. At these sites you can see people play through the first Super Mario Bros. for the NES in five minutes or watch the entire marathon length run-through of a modern title such as Gears of War for the XBox 360.

Well, tonight's online hangout ended up being Youtube and I found something strange that I couldn't help but share. It is a few incoherent clips from some game called Runescape with one of my favorite Captain Beefheart songs playing underneath.



Leave it to the internet to completely weird you out. But this weirded me out in a nice. . . special way. It make me want to put Mithril strings on my strat and make ready for a battle the the fell dragon Smog.

Anyway, I couldn't help but also post this live performance of the same song. The audio goes out of sync at the beginning but it is still an inspiring performance for me.



Although Beefheart was known for his more out there shit (which I also really enjoy) I think he did the conventional styles as good as anybody. Thanks Don.

Hardware Powered Plug-in Comparison: UAD-1 vs TC Powercore

Ok, so maybe you read my last post about the new computer. One thing I neglected to mention was that I included two UAD-1 cards in the mix. For those of you not familiar with the technology, the cards basically power specially designed effect plugins that emulate vintage gear. The plug-ins are greatly lauded within the digital audio community and are available only when you have the cards (PCI or PCI-e) installed in your computer. I purchased two since I got a deal from a friend and also they came with lots of credits towards buying the premium plug ins.

Anyway I have been using the plugs and have been greatly impressed. Unfortunately, my monitors are still set up at my old DAW so I've only listened through headphones. Speaking of the old DAW, I had installed another hardware powered DSP processor that I liked on that one, the TC Electronics Powercore. Since I was feeling like taking a break from my current project I decided to do a quick little mixing test to help me get aquainted more with the UAD-Plugs.

I put together a very simple and short little diddy with no effects and then went into mix mode. I tried to stay as close as possible in the applications of the effects while still trying to make it sound good. Here are the results:

Mix with UAD-1 plugs


Mix with Powercore plugs


Of course this isn't exactly scientific but i feel like the UAD-1 plugs had a bit more balls while the TC plugs were a bit smoother. The powercore in the old computer is not even available anymore but it seems that they offer the same plugs on their current Powercore models. You can buy more plugs for the powercore but with the amount of credits I got to spend at the UAD store I ended up paying about the same while getting some of their premium plugs.


UAD-1 Plugs used:

• Neve 1073 EQ - lead guitar and right channel rhythm (very nice for shaping)
  
• PulTech Pro EQ - across the drum loop (really brought out the snare)
  
• LA2A - bass compression, (sounded awesome)
  
• Plate 140 - verb send, mostly lead guitar and a little drums (smooth, very nice)
  
• Neve 88RS - Very light compression across the master buss and slight HPF, no eq.

Powercore

• EqSat - same as uad only with "saturation" enabled for lead track only (didn't like)
  
• EqSat - also across drums but with "saturation" enabled (harder to get setting I liked)
  
• 24/7•C- bass compression (definitely prefered the UAD version)
  
• ClassicVerb - same as with UAD (I love this plug and it is easy on CPU)
  
• Vintage CL - tried doing some slight master bus compression, it was ok.

Overall the UAD wins in my book. The plug-ins are straight forward and powerfull. I particularly like the interface of the eq's. One can get used to working in a DAW environment where every eq has 6 or more bands of fully parametric crap that really doesn't do anything. When you are presented with a three band eq like the UAD-1's Neve 1073 that actually has a lot of power to shape your sound it is very refreshing.

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The New Computer

Well, the old box just wasn't cutting it any longer. For those of you who may not know I'm a PC user and have been with the same Pentium 4 2.1 GHz for going on 3 years now. I've done countless projects on the old machine and she has seved me quite well. However it has become apparent that rendering times have become ridiculous and I am needing render submixes of groups just to be able to progress on larger projects.

With a lot of help from the good people at Micro Center, various forums (particularly Cakewalk's) and sites like this, there is now a bleeding quick (at leat by my stantdards) monster in my basement ready to devour the audio insanity I am about to barrage it with.

Brief Specs:

• Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.8GHz
  
• Intel D975XBX2 Extreme Desktop Board
  
• 4GB RAM
  
• 10,000RPM System Drive 100GB
  
• 750GB project drive
  
• 300GB sample drive
  

Building it was a bit of a daunting task but luckily I was not alone. My father and I took a few days to put it together. His experience goes back to when a 3.5" floppy drive cost about as half as much as what was spent on this entire project. This however was a new animal even to him. Of course when we were done building, getting XP (yes XP, we ain't touching vista yet) installed was quite a mess. Apparently when installing a fresh OS on a machine that is otherwise blank the only way to get the OS to install is to boot off of a floppy drive. WTF!?! Luckily my dad was able to donate a spare drive he had lying around and problem solved. Now the thing runs like a dream.

The one bump in the road is that the old single processor has a fairly large long term project working on it. I could just role the entire project over to the new machine but there are a few important plug ins in the project that I don't have on the new one. Plus, the idea of changing horses in mid stream just kind of irks me. If it were just a recording session I would do it but this is a fairly involved composition and sound design project.

If anybody would like to share experiences of building their own machine please do in the comments section. I would like to hear about it.

Hi, Blog time

Okay, so if anybody ends up reading this you might know me from another website where I talked about music gear and recording techniques. Well, I thought I might do a bit of that in my free time and hopefully someone might find it useful.