Validation

[anthonypayton]

Oh yeah he definately had other stuff on the tracks... CLA LA2A, 3A compressors, all of his tracks had hella stuff on them, but then again he was mixing live drums...
On the vocal tracks I can't remember what chain he had, but we didn't really get that far... He was just showing some ins and outs of Logic... He said he learned everything from Logicninja on youtube (for those interested in checking the "ninja" out)...
After I left his crib I wen to the music store and bragged about him while I was getting my sales guy to price out some gear for me... Ryan told me Mike rented their studio(the music stores, they run Protools and Logic, of course with high end gear) for about 2 or 3 weeks and just watched youtube videos and learned a bunch of stuff using their equipment before he bought his Mac and Logic...
But yeah he had a truck load of stuff on all of his tracks.... But he still said that while he was recording vocals for a project in Nashville... he would ask engieneers questions about recording and they all said, put the bulk of your money in pre-amps...
I still have a lot of visits I know...

[trodden]

I wonder how much of what you were hearing had to do with room treatment.

I also wonder if what you were listening to had been finalized in some fashion (ie the final mix had been compressed/eq'd/limited/reverbed/etc.).

yep. i've said it many many times before on here and gotta say it again.. the difference I noticed between $2300 spent on some API's and the $300 spent on control and live room treatment was night and day. I noticed the treatment WAY more than the preamps..

but i love those preamps a lot...

[Nick Sevilla]

Oh yeah...

SNIP...

Ryan told me Mike rented their studio(the music stores, they run Protools and Logic, of course with high end gear) for about 2 or 3 weeks and just watched youtube videos and learned a bunch of stuff using their equipment before he bought his Mac and Logic...
But yeah he had a truck load of stuff on all of his tracks.... But he still said that while he was recording vocals for a project in Nashville... he would ask engieneers questions about recording and they all said, put the bulk of your money in pre-amps...
I still have a lot of visits I know...

So, you're admitting to learning from a guy who learned to "engineer" from Youtube?

Aight, time to break out the timeless engineering videos, courtesy of the now very famous, Tad Donley.

http://www.ehow.com/videos-on_3542_set- ... tudio.html

Cheers

[Jay Reynolds]

yep. i've said it many many times before on here and gotta say it again.. the difference I noticed between $2300 spent on some API's and the $300 spent on control and live room treatment was night and day. I noticed the treatment WAY more than the preamps..

but i love those preamps a lot...

I don't want to have sex with sound. I want to have sex with nice gear.

The problem is that I'm married to sound.

[Snarl 12/8]

yep. i've said it many many times before on here and gotta say it again.. the difference I noticed between $2300 spent on some API's and the $300 spent on control and live room treatment was night and day. I noticed the treatment WAY more than the preamps..

but i love those preamps a lot...

I don't want to have sex with sound. I want to have sex with nice gear.

The problem is that I'm married to sound.

Pretty good analogy. I really thought you were going to say "I want to have sex with a nice engineer" though. Wouldn't that solve both your problems? Then you could just focus on the song writing and playing.

[Jay Reynolds]

Pretty good analogy. I really thought you were going to say "I want to have sex with a nice engineer" though. Wouldn't that solve both your problems? Then you could just focus on the song writing and playing.

In the case of my own material, that would take care of several birds with one stone, so to speak. After years of being exposed to my audio nerdery, Mrs. Werd Clock is pretty good at identifying phase issues (which seem to be rampant in live television). She's fairly modest, though, and I'm not sure how the interns/cleaning company would take to tidying up the space after a long "session."

In the case of getting hired as a recordist, it would make for an interesting studio tour:

"Here's studio A. As you can see, it's a nice and open space with a couple isolation booths. This is the mic loker. And in here is the control room. Nice pres and comps, you know, the usual stuff. And here's the engineer I'm going to be porking while we try to record your songs.

Any questions?

Oh, by during, I mean during. It's how I get my 'sound'. Where do you think you are, Electrical?"

[EggyToast]

Oh yeah he definately had other stuff on the tracks... CLA LA2A, 3A compressors, all of his tracks had hella stuff on them, ...
On the vocal tracks I can't remember what chain he had, but we didn't really get that far...

Do you put compression on your current vocal recordings, Anthony? I don't mean to be blunt, but in your other threads you've mentioned that your own recordings seemed quieter and less "up front" compared to industry songs. Compression is one of the most important effects available, I'd argue more than reverb (because you can record natural reverb; you can't do that w/ compression). Compression is also relatively complicated because it can do odd things to a sound and is less straightforward than a lot of other effects/techniques.

I mostly bring this up so you are chasing the right thing, rather than pursuing a dead-end. A great preamp will give you a good recording, sure. But when it comes to being upfront, that's largely EQ and compression -- EQ isolates, compression brings it up. At least in my limited experience.

[decocco]

... he would ask engieneers questions about recording and they all said, put the bulk of your money in pre-amps...

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Tad Donley! Yes!

[junomat]

It is extremely rare for anyone to be highly proficient at all three things. Michael Jackson is the only example that comes to mind. Snarl is right that you should focus on one aspect and find someone at your level in another aspect that you have good chemistry with. It will take years to make it, but the payoff will be big.. expect to grow like you've never grown before. Otherwise, you will be mediocre at everything..

But would MJ have even been MJ without his dad and/or Quincy Jones having an early influence on him?

hmmm. not to be argumentative, but MJ? Really? Did he have any studio skills? i'd give him 2 of three, at best... did MJ ever produce anyone else?

if anyone of the MJ era, it would be Prince... Prince was a madman in the studio. produced for dozens of other artist and also wrote for dozens of other artists...

but i am biased as i am a huge (read: obsessive) prince fan.

m.

[Nick Sevilla]

It is extremely rare for anyone to be highly proficient at all three things. Michael Jackson is the only example that comes to mind. Snarl is right that you should focus on one aspect and find someone at your level in another aspect that you have good chemistry with. It will take years to make it, but the payoff will be big.. expect to grow like you've never grown before. Otherwise, you will be mediocre at everything..

But would MJ have even been MJ without his dad and/or Quincy Jones having an early influence on him?

hmmm. not to be argumentative, but MJ? Really? Did he have any studio skills? i'd give him 2 of three, at best... did MJ ever produce anyone else?

if anyone of the MJ era, it would be Prince... Prince was a madman in the studio. produced for dozens of other artist and also wrote for dozens of other artists...

but i am biased as i am a huge (read: obsessive) prince fan.

m.

Hi Anthony,

Not to toot my horn here, well a little bit anyways :

I know two engineers who worked with MJ along his career. He never touched a button in the studio. Ever. So to assume that he was a great producer, is a big disservice to the people who were behind him, such as the already mentioned Q Jones, along with Bruce Swedien, and other talented musicians and engineers too.

He was an AWESOME performer, and he would perform while recording as well. you can actually hear him dancing in his recordings, if you pay attention. No one could really touch his performances, not even to this day. I do admire his artistry.

Cheers

[anthonypayton]

Noeq:
I didn't know if you were implying that I thought MJ was a great producer. I said the he wouldn't have been anything without the team around. At least that is what I thought I wrote. You may have been just stating some more examples of MJ not being a producer... Yes I realize that he had a great, great team. no dought

Learning from someone that learned from youtube:
Mike was a good engineer before the youtube videos. I was just saying that he rented the studio to test out some high end gear and learn logic before he bought it. In the past we had the exact same set up. The VS2480 and all that... I didn't work with him because his whole thing was around putting live drums to mixes... At the time I wasn't concerned with that... I was more concerened with arranging... not live drums...for the most part that was his sales pitch...

Eggytoast:
Yes I use compression on my vocals. When I use the VS24, I think my vocals sound great. I lose quality in the mix down. The master meter reads -1 but the over sound comes out at about -4 or -6. Then I have to bring the entire sound up in another DAW.
I would be satisfied if I could use the VS24 with my computer, but right now(workflow- the reason why I want to upgrade) I have to record vocals in the VS24 and then dump those tracks to Ableton. Which takes time.
The process:
Record the vocal and the back ground tracks. Bounce them (has to be done in real-time) after the are bounced, I have to Bounce them to a master track and then export them to a CD.
Or you can export the wav files but then you won't have your effects, (compression reverb etc) it will just be a dry signal, which defeats the purpose and it takes about 20 minutes to do.
In order for me to do a youtube video I have to record in the VS24 then move the file to a DAW and convert it and time it up. vs just going right into the computer. On video from start to finish takes about 4hrs to do...


Werdclock
Great Analogy

Whats new:
Last night I went to my First singer songwriter night. It was pretty good. Two guitar players. Folkish type sound. They were doing their thing. But, I couldn't hear a damn word they were saying. I mean you could hear their voices really well but it sound like" Life is love and mmmm when you mmmmm so we can mmmmm with a littlemmmm aha ma maaaa. hey." My wife was like what are they saying- the entire time. She would whisper it of course.
That would drive me nuts. See things like that aggrevate me. I feel if people come to hear you sing, you need to be able to understand the words. But I may be wrong. That is probably how its done...
The guy that was running the show took a break while the other guy sang. My wife was like"go talk to him go talk to him..." I was like I am going to wait till he comes by the table... As he walks toward the table, I am playing with my wifes hair (flirting) and missed eye contact. Shit my timing sucks... So I go up to him at the bar "Hey Mr Flanigan, you sound great.... This would have been a great time for Polo's and business cards because he didn't have a lot of time to talk because he had to get back to the set. The polo would have took some of the words I had to use and the business card would have been a point of contact.
He told me to email him so we could figure out some dates, as he is walking away backwards while I am trying to write his email down in my phone and could find the right damn buttons... It was a good time though

I also talk to a pizza spot called cliftons, they want me to do something in a few months. Only me and the piano, the guy doesn't like background tracks.

Today I am going to try my best to finish building this room in the basement. I have to build two walls, then I am going to move to insulation, and then dry wall. I will have to get and electrician to run some electric to the room. All my stuff seems to short the entire house. The basment is freezing in the winter. It will be 80 up stairs and freezing down stairs. So when I plug up a space heater, boom, "Hey! flip the switch in the garage"...

Didn't proof read:

[Nick Sevilla]

It's all good Anthony... a little tongue in cheek every now and then to keep your posts "light".

Now, here's an exercise I want you to try out :

For every post containing more than 100 words that you post, I want you to write ONE song lyric, completely done. So, go back and do a word count on all your previous posts, you owe me a few songs by now!

This should keep you on the right track.

Cheers

[suppositron]

It's all good Anthony... a little tongue in cheek every now and then to keep your posts "light".

Now, here's an exercise I want you to try out :

For every post containing more than 100 words that you post, I want you to write ONE song lyric, completely done. So, go back and do a word count on all your previous posts, you owe me a few songs by now!

This should keep you on the right track.

Cheers

I was gonna say- Jesus Christ, dude. You need to spend less time on this board and more time making music.

[anthonypayton]

Yall are funny... Who do I send the songs too?

[Nick Sevilla]

Keep them to yourself, until you have enough to really put one together, and then approach the artist that you think would be the best interpreter of that song.

HINT : contact the artists' management, not the artist directly. This is more professional.

HINT : Do you know about the web service TAXI? Check it out when you get a chance. It can be useful to place demos, lyrics, songs, etc in the right hands.

Cheers