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Post by Roger... on Jul 28, 2010 19:45:32 GMT
Hi All, I have been revisiting some of my older recordings and changing and tweaking a few things here and there (new recordings). This is the second one I've revisited. All comments, good, bad, other, etc are most welcome (it's the way we learn, innit). www.4shared.com/audio/Lz9pFS2c/Peace_Pipe2.htmlKind regards Roger
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Post by tonybiker on Jul 28, 2010 19:49:06 GMT
Hi Roger.
What a great sound! This is as good as it gets. Expert playing!
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Post by Charlie Hall on Jul 28, 2010 23:06:28 GMT
Hi Roger, Great sound on the normal parts, not quite so full sounding on the damped sections. Maybe you could add some mids or something to just those damped parts to be fuller sounding? I don't think it needs a lot, and too much would probably spoil it. Regards, Charlie
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Post by Len on Jul 29, 2010 3:43:33 GMT
Hi Roger, That was very good Roger. The tone and overall sound were just about right I thought. It is an excellent recording to my ears and very close to The Shadows sound I think. To be honest, I wouldn't have noticed the damped sections unless Charlie had mentioned it. I think he is right but I don't think it needs too much to make those damped notes sound a little fuller as he also said. I'm sounding like a bit like Charlie's parrot there, aren't I? ;D Cheers, Len
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Post by Roger... on Jul 29, 2010 14:12:41 GMT
Hi Tony, Charlie, and Len,
Tony: Many thanks for listening and your kind comments, much appreciated.
Charlie and Len:
Many thanks for listening and your comments regarding the 'damped' sections. I have a bit of a problem here, which I think I need a little help with.
My set-up goes like this:-
Track one of my stand-alone recorder carries the backing track. Track two is the input from my guitar/effects/amplifier etc.
After the number is played, I then 'bounce/mix' the two tracks together to form one track. I then generate a 'WAV' or 'MP3' file from this track, to download into my computer. As you can see, once it's in the computer there is very little that I can do to individual parts of the track (guitar or BT) as they are 'as one'. I usually do all my setting of echo's, guitar tones, compressions etc, prior to recording. So what you hear on the Forum Website is 'as recorded'. There is no post-doctoring/tweaking etc. The only way that I could do any post recording tweaks, is to record the BT and guitar lead as a stereo track. Then, when I download it to the computer, the BT would be separate to lead guitar. I could then possibly tweak the lead guitar only. I know there are many players on this Forum site that play their guitar straight into the computer 'dry', then apply effects, tones, reverb, etc, but unfortunately I record mine a different way, and what you hear is as it comes out. I very much appreciate your pointing out the 'damped sections' being a bit thin. I'm a bit puzzled as to what to do about it. If I alter the overall tone, I'm afraid I will lose the sound of the current track (which I like). I am not very experienced at this recording thing, so any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
I have noticed in recent years, that when the Shadows play numbers live like 'Wonderful Land'. In the 'damped section', the rhythm and drums and bass all seem to lay back and play quieter, and then pick up again when Hank leaves the section (just an observation).
Kind regards Roger
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Post by claude on Jul 29, 2010 16:58:46 GMT
Hi Roger, Great sound and very well played. Which pickups and strings did you use? Regards. Claude - Brussels
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Post by joeboy on Jul 29, 2010 17:03:54 GMT
Hi Roger Very nicely played, good sound too, I enjoyed it
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Post by Roger... on Jul 29, 2010 19:22:48 GMT
Hi Claude,
Thanks for listening and your kind comments.
Information as requested: Guitar: 1979 US Strat. Neck pick-up. Tone (middle knob) set to about 5½. Strings D'Addario 10-46's. Amplifier: Bass 50%, Middle 90%, Treble 75%. Yamaha MagicStomp, Charlie's patch U13 BOSS CS-3 Compressor Level 55%, Tone 50%, Attack 0, Sustain 50% BOSS GE-7 Graphic Equalizer +4, +5, +7, +10, +12½, +5, -5, Level 35%.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by Roger... on Jul 29, 2010 19:25:36 GMT
Hi joeboy,
Thank you very much for your kind comments and for listening, much appreciated.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by Charlie Hall on Jul 29, 2010 19:27:32 GMT
Hi Roger, If there is no way to alter the recorded track other than to alter its level, then you are a bit limited with what you can do. If you post the lead guitar track as a wav file on 4 shared for me to download I could then process it for you and post it to 4shared for you to pick up. But I am not sure how you would get it back onto your recorder for mixing with the backing track. Which backing track did you use? Regards, Charlie
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Post by Roger... on Jul 29, 2010 19:57:42 GMT
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for that. I will try and get the 'lead' file onto '4shared' for you. I will leave the lead-in timing on the front end so as I can re-synchronise it again.
Do you want a 'wav' or an mp3, I can do both?
I think on my recorder there is a facility to convert from a 'wav'/'mp3' to a song file, so it may be possible to to do a re-mix.
The backing track is from UB Hank Vol One.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by Charlie Hall on Jul 29, 2010 21:08:11 GMT
Hi Roger, Please put a wav file of the lead track alone on 4shared and then email me with the link. No need for the count in at the beginning, I can sync it without. I have the UBHank backing track so I can do the mix for you too. When done I will put the wav file on 4shared for you to pick up. I can also convert that to mp3 for you. If you can do that tonight I will work on it immediately. I might be getting too busy to do it if it takes longer to pick up. Regards, Charlie
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Post by loujones12 on Jul 29, 2010 21:14:16 GMT
Hi Roger. i think you have done a real good job. if there is to be any nit picking if you like, maybe the muted parts need a little more POP to them. but quite frankly don't get to worked up about it. as said its a very good file. well done. regards Lou
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Post by Roger... on Jul 29, 2010 21:40:17 GMT
Hi Lou,
Thanks for listening and your kind comments. I don't actually hear the problem with the muted bits, but your the third person that's mentioned it so it must be there. I am now trying to address the issue, but it's not that easy. I set up all my equipment and tones/effects etc prior to recording, then record on an external stand-alone recorder. So what you hear on the forum site is 'as it comes' with no doctoring. There is very little that I can do with it post recording, only re-record the tune with different settings.
As mentioned in a previous post, in recent years when I've seen the Shadows play live, Ive noticed the rhythm, bass, and drums lay back and play more quietly in the muted passages, and then bring the volume back up when they are finished. This has been noticeable in 'Wonderful Land' and 'Atlantis'.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by claude on Jul 30, 2010 7:24:10 GMT
Hi Roger, Thanks for your helpful reply. Regards.
Claude
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Post by Roger... on Jul 30, 2010 18:24:22 GMT
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Post by loujones12 on Jul 30, 2010 21:32:06 GMT
Hi Rog, well it's top draw. and you can here the muted parts actualy POP now. very well done. Now all we need is for Charlie to spill the beens and tell us how to make all our sound file Sparkle like this!!! How about it Charlie? time to spill it out.. again well done Rog.. cheers Lou
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Post by Charlie Hall on Jul 31, 2010 2:53:15 GMT
OK, here goes. This might end up a long reply. For those who have not heard the kind of sound heard from good studio monitors or very good hifi speakers, then they should try to hear a few of their favourite recordings played through similar quality speakers, but not JBLs, they always colour the sound too much for my liking. Older Tannoys and B&W, are good speaker brands to listen to. One of my favourite recordings to test a sound system is Babylon Sisters by Steely Dan. Click on this link to see why: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cik4GSY-B6wMy home speakers are 2 way Wharfedale Deltas. Nothing special, and the crossover networks were designed to make them sound all bass and highs by sucking out the mids, so I modified the crossovers to fill in the mids that were missing, which I did basically by ear until the mids sounded balanced with the bass and highs. I have a pair of Sennheiser HD424 phones, about 25 years old. They have very good detail but being open design they lack bass. I tried Beyer phones, the ones that everyone reckons are used in studios (DT100?) but I found them lacking in the mids. My solution was to set my hifi tone controls differently when using the Sennheiser phones. I just set the bass and treble controls until I thought they sounded as close as I could get them to the sound of my speakers. The control settings I decided on are bass +4 (out of 5 click positions from flat to maximum), treble -1.3 (out of -5 click positions from flat to minimum). When I listen through the speakers I set the controls back to flat. Using this approach I can do all the work with headphones at night and the results through the speakers the next day sound pretty near the same. When we recorded at a local studio about 2 years ago, the engineer had a plugin called Harbal, which means harmonic balance. It basically could correct the EQ of a final mix with one mouse click. I was told that it works by comparing the response of the recording with several reference tracks of various music styles, and that it did not work well all of the time. I thought about buying it but was not convinced that it would be an ideal solution. I knew that an ideal master recording's frequency response was flat from the lowest frequency up to 500Hz, then above that it should roll off at 6dB per octave. Basically it looks like a flat road on the left side, then a downwards hill to the right. This can be seen with a frequency analyser. There is a free plugin called Voxengo Span. This can display instantaneous responses as well as average ones from the beginning to end of a whole track, not only that, it can display the responses of the left and right channels separately or it can display the composite response of both channels which is how I usually use it. It has frequencies marked on its graph but also when the mouse is pointed at any part of the graph the frequency is displayed. Any bumps or troughs in the response can be corrected by applying EQ that is the exact opposite of what is seen. I use a parametric plug in for correcting these. Sometimes I need to run several of the plugins to get the result I want if there are many corrections to be made at different frequencies. It is very useful to look at the responses of various commercial recordings to get an idea. Checking the EQ of backing tracks and individual instrument tracks is a bit different. It takes a bit of practise to know what certain instruments and the various tones they produce should look like on the graph. The level response below 500Hz and the falling slope above 500Hz I consider to be a flat response as far as a recording curve is concerned, everything else is compared to that shape. If a recording had equal average energy at all frequencies it would destroy tweeters and high frequency horns. Lead guitar tracks can fill in a lot of midrange so backing tracks usually need a trough in the midrange so that when the lead guitar is added the overall response will be fairly close to the required curve. Not all recordings follow this curve exactly. Different music styles can have some treble lift or bass boost or both. But everything is compared to the ideal response even if the end result is not matching it. When I checked the response of Roger's guitar track it looked pretty good compared with what I wanted to see. It had most of the energy between around 1KHz and 2KHz, falling sharply above 2KHz, similar to many guitar responses I have seen in Shadows recordings. Except that there was a lift at around 12KHz and upwards. This might have been noise, and is pretty useless for most electric guitar sounds so I EQd it to get rid of most of it. Otherwise, I was happy at that point to leave the track without EQing it further. The backing track was a different story. There was far too much bass and highs, and also some nasty overtones from the acoustic guitars. I was able to EQ the backing track to get rid of most of the nasty parts and the curve close to looking as I wanted it, with some mids reduced for the lead guitar to fit into. I then ran the backing track and the lead guitar track together, did a rough mix, and was able to decide what to do next. The backing track sounded lacking in stereo effect so I used another free plugin called C Super Stereo to look at the stereo width, which is displayed in picture form of the signals left and right and phase differences. There was hardly any width at all so I widened the track by the maximum of 200%. Unfortunately the bass guitar had been previously converted to stereo (probably an artificial conversion) and sounded a bit false after the widening, so I used a bass setting in that same plug in to narrow the width to mono below about 200Hz, leaving frequencies above that in stereo. The result at that point gave the lead guitar more space in the centre of the mix. I looked at the wav file display of the guitar track. I saw that the damped sections had about half the energy of the rest, although none of it was particularly even. I decided to use compression to even it out and then I could decide if more needed doing afterwards. I used a soft knee setting with the fastest possible attack time and a release time of about 200 milliseconds, set the compression ratio to about 2.5:1, then ran the track and set the threshold so that the damped sections would indicate a slight amount of gain reduction. When I was happy with the sound I increased the output level so that it was as loud as possible without overloading the guitar track. After the compression processing I noticed that the damped sections were nearly the same loudness as the rest, so the levels were looking good. Most notes, however had a very tall looking attack, so I ran a maximizer plugin which is a limiter. I always set the release time to 10 milliseconds on that plugin. This allows the attack peaks to be reduced without affecting the rest of each note. I set the output of the plugin to - 0.1dB and the input to increase the level by about 3.5dB, which I thought was the approximate extra level of the peaks. After that process the peaks were reduced and the overal guitar track level was increased by more than 3dB. I ran the whole recording several times. One single damped note was far too loud compared with the other guitar notes. I made a copy of the guitar track. I then found the frequency of that single note with Voxengo Span and reduced the EQ with a high Q filter of that single note. This was applied to the whole of the copied track. I then set a gain line from beginning to end of each track. This line can be changed at any point to make part of the track quieter or louder. I found the exact point of the start of the note, then put two node points close together at that point on both tracks. Just before the beginning of the next note I put another node point on both tracks. Further back from this point I put another node point on both tracks. This gave 4 node points on each track. On the normal track I pulled down the middle two node points to silence the single note, the distance between the last two points gave a slope to the line and therefore a gradual increase in volume instead of a sudden one. On the copied EQd track I did the exact opposite. I pulled down the line before the first point, and also after the last point. This gave a track with a single note with a gentle fade after the note. Playing the two processed tracks together gave the original sound of the track, except that the single EQd note came from the copied track and the changeover of the notes was virtually seamless. I then mixed down those two tracks to end up with a single guitar track again. I played the backing track with the guitar track again, and it sounded much better than before, on the note that was previously too loud. I ran a noise reduction plugin on the guitar track as it sounded a little raw, from a recording point of view. I then set up a mastering 3 band compressor to process the whole mix. This allows a separate compressor to work on each frequency band and can make any instrument or sound in the mix more even in tone. Every recording is different and needs different processes to get a suitable result, but this should give some idea of the way I approach a mixing and mastering process. When I played the finished track on the speakers today it sounded close to what I expected it to. This confidence is gained by trusting the Voxengo Span plugin. It is well worth learning how to use it to get good results. It can substitute inexperienced ears up to a point, although some experience is needed to know what to do with it. Experience is only gained by trying different processes to see which things work and which don't work so well. After some time, the experience gained will allow better recordings to be made. I really would be nowhere near where I have got so far without the Voxengo Span plugin and I regard it as one of the best plugins I have. Regards, Charlie
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Post by Roger... on Jul 31, 2010 5:57:49 GMT
Hi Lou,
Many thanks, and thanks for listening.
Hi Charlie,
I must applaud you for such a very, very detailed explanation, and the time that it must have taken you to prepare it. Your dedication and expertise truly takes my breath away. I do not think a lot of forumites (including myself), would have any idea as to the depths and detail that goes into in trying to make a 'perfect' recording.
Brilliant, and thank you Roger
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Post by zager on Jul 31, 2010 21:29:10 GMT
Hi Charlie, im exausted after reading all that.To much for me to take in and I would expect a lot of others members as well, and I thought it was going to be easy. Regards Tony. ps by the way well played Roger. Good recording
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Post by Roger... on Aug 1, 2010 10:14:51 GMT
Hi Tony,
Many thanks for listening.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by Len on Aug 3, 2010 11:08:06 GMT
Hi Roger,
It sounds better now with those muted parts standing out more. I know that I can vouch for the fact that Charlie certainly knows what he is doing when he makes such changes. I certainly have used the advice he has given regarding other plug-ins and benefitted from his guidance in their use.
I wouldn't mind finding something like Voxengo Span that works with the recording program I use; Audacity but then it would probably take me years to learn how to use it. The difference can certainly be heard with the ears in your case. Thanks for posting the results and thanks to Charlie too I guess.
Cheers, Len
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Post by philc on Aug 3, 2010 12:40:34 GMT
Hi Roger, You've done a great job on this one And with the help of Charlie, it really shines ;D ;D ;D Phil
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Post by Roger... on Aug 3, 2010 17:10:42 GMT
Hi Len and Phil,
Thanks to you both for your kind comments and for listening.
I agree, Charlie truly is very talented. I am trying to play catch-up as fast as I can, but somehow I think I'll come up short. When I left school (can't remember when...hmm), I started out in Radio & T/V servicing, and went to technical college for three years to get my City & Guilds. Unfortunately the place where I was working, closed down just before I achieved it (I then had a career move into electronics design and stayed there until I retired). As Radio and T/V was a hobby as well, I did gain enough knowledge to build about three or four simple guitar amplifiers to my own design. They were not very good but worked ok. I was also on extremely tight budgets. The speakers were retrieved from old radiograms etc, as they were the largest I could find. Anyway the knowledge learned at that time has stood me in good stead over the years to be able to tinker with bass- treble networks and frequency filters etc. Now I have discovered Charlie's website a whole new horizon has opened up for me. I am really enjoying learning lots of new knowledge from Charlie, and all you other forumites. My sincere thanks go out to you all. I just have about 30 - 40 years worth of catching up to do. Still, I'm giving it a go, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by specky on Aug 5, 2010 17:38:42 GMT
great recording and even better after Charlies help and knowledge the recording really shines now congrats
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2010 8:07:16 GMT
Thats a very good sound Roger and playing file Roger and lots of info in there to. Nice one. Tony
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Post by Roger... on Aug 6, 2010 15:11:42 GMT
Hi specky and Tony,
Thank you both for listening and your kind comments. Charlie really is an icon of information, and can bring out the very best in a recording.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2010 22:19:52 GMT
Hi Roger Good enough for me. I thought it was terrific. Saved it in my favourites on 4 shared. Hope you are OK with that? More please !! All the best George
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Post by Roger... on Oct 14, 2010 15:31:32 GMT
Hi George,
No problem at all. Thank you listening and for your kind comments.
Kind regards Roger
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Post by 93strat on Oct 15, 2010 10:04:14 GMT
Hi Roger, Fantastic sound very well played thanks for posting. Cheers Alex
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