Post Your Coolest Recording Gimic or Trick

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getreel
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Post by getreel » Thu May 10, 2007 1:40 pm

Reamp a vocal through a silverface Fender Twin, then blend with dry track to taste. Can give you that full be slightly brittle and excited sound if the timbre of the vocal works with the amp tones. I use my silverface Twin that's unmodded since it's so clean and has a ton of headroom. I'm sure many have done some variation of this with all kinds of guitar amps.

I don't know if this counts as technique or not but...
I work with several indie/experimental bands and we use found sounds and strange setups. One thing we did recently was with an old stuffed animal cat. It's batteries had run down to the point where when you squeezed it to make it meow, it make the most awful clicking and grinding noises. We dangled this old, dead cat in front of an LDC and let it swing back and forth to create a natural automated volume swells and changes. I labeled the track "dead cat" and we blended this in at various points in this sound collage of a song we were working on. We did lots more crazy stuff like recording rainstorms, trains, and all kinds of found sounds. I once recorded my 7 year old jumping on bubble wrap from some package I had received. Using a good condenser and a fat pre(Great River), it sounded like gunshots or firecrackers! I've been wanting to get into some of the circuit bending stuff out there too for this kind of music when I'm working on it. I've heard some sound samples that are so cool from this hacked gadgetry. Also thinking of getting a Cracklebox!
I love sound!

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Post by japmn » Fri May 11, 2007 9:20 am

record vocal.
speed up tape and record 100% wet reverb to another track.
return the tapespeed to normal and listen to your weird stretched out reverb sound and mix with the original vocal to your liking.
Springs sound really cool this way due to the random snaps and other artifacts.
also puts that spring reverb hum low enough that rolling it off is less aggressive. Also works well with organs through distortion. the grain of the distortion gets spaced out and growls more.

I miss tape and wish I got to use it more.

Tape is my best recording trick.

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T-rex
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Post by T-rex » Fri May 11, 2007 9:57 am

The headphone on the guitar trick looked sweet!

I always try to throw up a few mic's in weird places but on the last batch of songs I recorded I finally got a really usable sound. I put a 4047 in a tiled bathroom with the door closed. The bathroom is down the hall and across from the drum room, so it was like 30 ft away from the drums and it sounded amazing. I can't really explain it other than to say, it sounds like the albini drum sound, which was perfect for that song. I just finished the mix and I couldn't be happier. That one mic without comp or any serious EQ is the majority of the drum sound. It just has this awesome smack to it and I would have never guessed that would work.
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MoreSpaceEcho
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Fri May 11, 2007 9:59 am

oooh i like that slowed down reverb idea a lot. good one.

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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Fri May 11, 2007 10:03 am

and yeah the headphones on the guitar is ace as well.

*takes notes*

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Post by cgarges » Fri May 11, 2007 1:36 pm

This is hardly my coolest "trick," but this past week, I recorded several vocals with an EV 635A inside a rubber shoe with holes in it. It sounded pretty great. It turned out that the singer's girlfriend (who owned the shoe) was going to get rid of them anyway, so I wound up with the shoe for further use. I also recorded some vocals on a porch in the middle of the night and that was pretty great for that particular song.

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bap
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Post by bap » Fri May 11, 2007 1:42 pm

cgarges wrote:This is hardly my coolest "trick," but this past week, I recorded several vocals with an EV 635A inside a rubber shoe with holes in it. It sounded pretty great. It turned out that the singer's girlfriend (who owned the shoe) was going to get rid of them anyway, so I wound up with the shoe for further use. I also recorded some vocals on a porch in the middle of the night and that was pretty great for that particular song.

Chris Garges
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Do they call that 'Crocs Rock'?
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Post by cgarges » Fri May 11, 2007 1:49 pm

bap wrote:Do they call that 'Crocs Rock'?
I'm putting my foot down and saying, "No puns!"

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Post by Dingo » Sat May 12, 2007 1:32 pm

I'm putting my foot down and saying, "No puns!"
So get back to work you loafer!
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Woodeye
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Post by Woodeye » Sat May 12, 2007 7:06 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:explain yourself newcomer!

seriously. this sounds cool but i'm dim so i'm not following what exactly you did. the micing the fan bit i get. it's the tapping things in the room bit i'm confused about. help me out.
It was another 'happy accident' - I think I probably set a glass down on a table, or something like that - the percussive noise was picked up by the microphones, and the cumulative effect of the flanger resonance and the echo created a sort of tuned 'twang' in conjunction with the drone of the fan. Another way to describe it might be 'a rubber band through a Marshall stack'. Tapping different surfaces (wood, plastic, glass) produced slight variations to the sound of the 'twang', adding expressiveness to the sound.

I'll have to try and dig up the original, but I have an awful feeling I'll just have to recreate it if I ever want to get around to putting it together with the song that I had in mind originally.

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Re: Post Your Coolest Recording Gimic or Trick

Post by radical recording » Sat May 12, 2007 7:11 pm

I have a Kay tenor guitar made in the fifties with a killer pickup inside it. I use this as a "room-mic" for drums--sounds like the kit's set up in the bottom of a canyon!
On a recent session we had a guy playing a National Steel guitar and he said he wanted it to sound far away so I set the tenor guitar right in front of him--he looked at me as if I was nuts but then shrugged and played the song. When I played it back it sounded like a freight train heading the opposite direction. The guy's jaw dropped and he said "That's the exact sound I was wanting!"
I've tried this trick with other guitars but so far nothing sounds cooler than that old Kay.
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Ivon
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Post by Ivon » Sat May 12, 2007 9:55 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:and yeah the headphones on the guitar is ace as well.

*takes notes*
Yeah, that's awesome. A couple of years ago, I kept noticing this odd sound on my kick drum when I would play back tracks...as if there were some string/reverb on it. I have some acoustic guitars hanging from a wall opposite of the exit end of the kick drum in my recording room. The kick was making the guitar reverberate and the mic picked this up. A mistake and walah!... a poor man's pianoverb.

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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sun May 13, 2007 10:21 am

that makes me want to hang like a dozen acoustics up in my big room, all tuned to some nice open chord...

would it sound like angels singing when i play my drums?

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MusicEuphony
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Post by MusicEuphony » Sat May 26, 2007 3:01 am

getreel wrote: I've been wanting to get into some of the circuit bending stuff out there too for this kind of music when I'm working on it. I've heard some sound samples that are so cool from this hacked gadgetry. Also thinking of getting a Cracklebox!
I love sound!
If you've got a soldering iron you should just dive into this, especially if you have a taste for these kinds of crazy sounds. On my first try I ordered a toy guitar off of ebay that had buttons for guitar licks, buttons for drum loops, and buttons for keyboard jams as well as a couple demo tracks and two sets of sounds for each button. Popped that thing open and ended up adding a photo-sensitive resistor that controlled pitch and a knob w/ on/off switch that would make the gadget pitched WAY down and terribly distorted. Recorded it through its original crappy speaker and added a 1/4" jack to play through my amp. I gave this to my friend as a gift so now all I have is a short sample of some of the crazy synth-like noises it made and a picture.

http://geocities.com/disturbedobsession ... guitar.jpg

The best part about this thing was that it required a flashlight to play :rofl:

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floid
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Re: Post Your Coolest Recording Gimic or Trick

Post by floid » Thu May 31, 2007 11:21 am

rulesforradicals wrote:I have a Kay tenor guitar made in the fifties with a killer pickup inside it. I use this as a "room-mic" for drums--sounds like the kit's set up in the bottom of a canyon!
On a recent session we had a guy playing a National Steel guitar and he said he wanted it to sound far away so I set the tenor guitar right in front of him--he looked at me as if I was nuts but then shrugged and played the song. When I played it back it sounded like a freight train heading the opposite direction. The guy's jaw dropped and he said "That's the exact sound I was wanting!"
I've tried this trick with other guitars but so far nothing sounds cooler than that old Kay.
yeah i've got an old guyatone that does that one great. sing into it, mic another guitar (amp), kneel in front of the kick during a feedback solo, or in front of a drum-machine amp...
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