Show 126 – Creating Space and Depth; and more

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This week we talk about Creating Space and Depth in our mixes. In the Rapid Fire section we talk about: Our songwriting software; Adjusting preamp gain while tracking; and interesting sample libraries

Joining us for discussion this week is video game composer and sound designer Cain German

Download Show #126

LINKS
Cain German
Recording Hacks blog (Epic Ribbon mic shootout results)
The Haas Effect
AGZFX samples
Hiss And A Roar SFX Libraries
The Recordist Ultimate Glass FX library
Todd Woodesign
“Like” our Facebook page

14 thoughts on “Show 126 – Creating Space and Depth; and more”

  1. Ryan,
    I read your craigslist postings and came up with a recording question. I saw you were selling two patchbays, one balanced and the other unbalanced. I’ve always seen similar references on other gear’s inputs and outputs, but I still don’t have a clear understanding of what the difference of balanced and unbalanced is. Will you explain it?

    Thanks,
    Reid

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  2. one thing i like to do to get space with reverb :

    load two mono instances of the same reverb, plate for example

    pan them hard left and hard right then eq them exactly the same to get the sound you want then use damping parameters, you’ll get one side darker than the other and the sound you’ll send at the reveb will automatically pan on the brighter side.

    this is very cool with snare

    one thing i do when tracking vocal, i always record the vocalist at the warming stage so i can spot the change in the song where gain adjusting is needed.

    great show

    awsome ribbon mic shootout

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  3. Hi
    In the last few months i listenend to all of your shows and that was great fun. Thanks for the fantastic help !

    To get a more natural sound and room of my MIDI-drums I add some real handclaps, shakers or even hitting some other surfaces with hands or whatever comes my way that i record in a nice room in my basement. The recorded sounds or sometime only the roomy tail will then be layered the sampled snare or whatever.

    Reamping or Rerecording a whole MIDI-drumtrack is a very good trick I never thought of. Thanks ! I will try today.

    So guys keep up the great work. Best show on the web!

    When will Jesse come back ?

    Michael

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  4. Hi guys!

    In the last few months i listened to all of your shows. That was allway great fun. Thank you for all the fantastic information.

    I like to add some room an live to my VST-Drums layering the drums with some samples I took in my basement (Handclaps, Shakers, Hits on metal or whatever comes my way just to get some room information.

    Reamping a whole MIDI-drumtrack to record the room is a very great trick – I will try this weekend. (Thanks Jon)

    So keep up your great work. HRS is the best show on earth.

    Where is Jesse? When will he be back?
    Will there be a new mix experiment ?

    By
    Michael

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  5. I just wanted to drop you guys a quick line to say thank you for all your hard work. We have two houses, one where my family lives and another where I work. I drive between them weekly. I call this my Podcast time. I look forward to the new HRS to help me pass the time and learn something at the same time. I will be leaving a donation shortly. Even thinking about making it a regular expense for my studio. Thanks again for all you do, KEEP IT UP!

    Jay Josey,
    Audio Engineer,
    Forgiven Studios,
    Sayre, OK

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  6. hi, big fan,
    if i were to buy two ribbon mics to do a stereo, two mic recording of a full drum set, what two ribbon mics should i buy? i have about $300 to spend on each mic. is this enough money for some decent ribbons? should i just go for some condensers?

    thanks.
    keep the great shows coming!!!

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  7. I know its been a theme on a number of shows (not this one) but I said I’d throw my hat into the line 6 debate here. The pedal models are very useful in my experience. I have an M13, which models zillions of tried and tested stomp boxes, the usual line 6 bag, and I find them to sound very good. Originally I bought the m13 as it was on box that would allow me to patch and run pedals (all be it models) into eachother in all kinds of combinations, and I use the looping function in it alot. However, I’ve found that if I match the pedals to a nice tube amp, the pedals really come to life. This is much like the whole thing of reamping VST drums or keyboard parts for a real life x ffactor. So in my opinion, don’t trust line 6 to model an amp, bcause when you think about it, that really isn’t particularly possible anyway, there are too many variables. However, pedals must be much easier to get close to the real thing. I like their big muff emulation in particular, and of course, loads of the echos etc are very usable, but it is the overdrives and distortions that surprised me. If you want to trash a sound, run it out to a line 6 m13, bring up 4 tube distortion, fuz and distortion pedals in a chain, look away and twiddle the diles!

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  8. Something I’ve been wanting to try since I saw Ronan’s video on tracking vocals without headphones. I had forgotten all about it until I heard your show this week.

    http://ronansrecordingshow.com/2010/11/that-speaker-phase-trick-for-recording-vocals-without-headphones/

    In his video he tracks vocals with monitors on in the room, then re-tracks again without a vocals being sung to capture the room reflections. Then simply reversing the phase of the room capture to remove the room reflections in the vocal track.

    I had wondered if you could do the opposite. Run a track through monitors, or a guitar amp, to capture the reflections in the room. Then reverse the phase of the original track to cancel out the original sound and end up with only room reflections.

    Though you could compress, eq, or do anything else to just the reflections track and might get a cool effect.

    If I get a chance I’ll try it out and post my results.

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  10. Let’s beat a dead horse, shall we? Regarding Line6 and amp sims:

    1. Dann Huff (producer for Keith Urban among others):
    https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=116944648576
    “For the home studio, I’ll go the sacrilegious route. There are companies making virtual guitar stuff that’s stunning. We use it all the time. The Line 6 POD Farm. I’ve used Amp Farm since it came out. POD Farm is sensational. I’ve heard great things about [Digidesign’s] Eleven. It’s certainly a viable way of recording guitars, and in the right hands, in the context of a band with bass, vocals and drums, lots of times you can’t tell the difference if you tweak the sound up right. The tough part of the equation is in between sound. [Vox] AC30 sounds are matchless, the crystalline tube breakup, but depending on the setting, I’ve come close on a virtual amp and it works.”

    2. Amp/Amp sim comparison with some pros who’s credits include B.B. King, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, the Isley Brothers, Hall and Oates, Daryl Hall, Paula Abdul, B.B. King, Barbra Streisand, Fishbone, John Petrucci, Blue Oyster Cult, Anthrax, and David Bowie…
    http://emusician.com/tutorials/showdown-clubhouse-amp-software/index.html
    They talk about how they can tell the difference but are correct about which is the real amp 38.5% of the time.

    Could you imagine how good we’d all be if we focused on our ability to use gear as much as we focus on gear. On a completely unrelated note – That ribbon mic shootout was the best ever!!! It’s like crack for my ears….

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  11. On the comment “have you ever used sounds as convolution reverb” and I can tell you that I have… I noticed when I used a kick sample in TL Space and used it in parallel to the master bus(!), you can create a massive low end to the song with it if it is lacking in that department.

    Also I used this short guitar DI track and it became a delay, and also tried out the singers singing melody as the convolution and it became REALLY haunting sounding when combined with Kjaerhus autofilter, hear the clip in the beginning of this track:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2nQ73Ub4w

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