I just put my 2nd full-length solo album up on Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/calewilcox/sets/love-songs
I've learned way more about recording from this forum than I ever did in "recording school." I just want to thank all of you for: crotch mics, dbx163s, fatheads, dmp3s, parallel processing, Pro37s, e635s, proper use of 1176 (plugins), and general awesome knowledge sharing.
Anyway the music is some random mish-mash of styles recorded all in my band's practice space. I played everything, which is why it is a solo album. I even mastered it myself. Hope it's enjoyable!
Using all of my TOMB knowledge
Moderator: cgarges
I'm liking what I hear so far, nice work!
How long did the whole project take you?
Go through your process a little bit, how did you construct the songs? What instrument did you generally lay down first? Did you play all of the instruments? What did you use to get your various sounds?
Again, very nice work.
How long did the whole project take you?
Go through your process a little bit, how did you construct the songs? What instrument did you generally lay down first? Did you play all of the instruments? What did you use to get your various sounds?
Again, very nice work.
"Politics are like sports, where all the teams suck"
Thanks E-money!
How long did the whole project take you?
About 8 months.
Go through your process a little bit, how did you construct the songs?
I would have a concept in my head, and lay down scratch guitars and vox to a click or programmed drums. Most of the time the words were about 50% written when the scratch vox went down, so I spent a lot of time with gibberish playing back while I sorted out the drum parts. After the drums were in I would usually lay a scratch bass. I feel like drums generally have to follow vocal cadence, and bass has to follow both drum rhythm and vocal cadence, so that's why I would work in that order. Once the scratch bits and keeper drums were in place, the song structure would be most of the way there and I'd start on replacing the scratch tracks with final tracks.
What instrument did you generally lay down first?
The drums would be the first thing that was a keeper. I'm teaching myself to drum (I'm a bass player by trade), so a fair bit of editing and trickery went into making drum tracks. I do all my editing by hand -no sound replacing or quantizing. I can get simple beats pretty close when I play them, then fudge what I have to to account for my playing slop. I think the results are convincing.
Did you play all of the instruments?
Yep. Some drum parts are looped because it was the sound I was looking for, and one track has programmed drums overlaid with some real drums. But all the guitar, bass, synth, and vocals are my own performances.
What did you use to get your various sounds?
My rack is an ART MPA pre, M-Audio DMP3 pre, Focusrite Octopre dynamic, ART Levelar comp, two dbx 163x's, and a Chameleon Labs 7720 stereo comp. I'd use various combinations of all that going into a 003.
Vocals were usually either on a MD421, Pro37, or MXL v67g. Seriously, I think the Pro37 is super cool for vocals. I found out sorta by accident when I used it for a scratch vocal track because it was on a stand near by, and totally dug the results. It's used on the lead vocal on the track "Drunk in the Park."
Bass was all direct, usually a Radial JDI into the MPA, into a 163x. Mostly a Jazz with flatwounds, but "Fine Now" is a p-bass with rounds because I wanted a snazzy Bakithi Kumalo sound on that track.
Guitars were mostly 421s on a fender tube amp, with a second mic blended in depending on what I wanted to hear. A lot of the guitars on "Fine Now" are the 421 and Pro37 side by side blended to various degrees. Fender Tele exclusively.
Drums were whatever I decided to throw over the kit. e602 on the kick mostly, 57 snare, Pr40 floor tom. Overheads varied. One setup I liked was an M/S overhead made of an e635 mid and Fathead side. That's on track one, "Caught Up." I think the dynamic/ribbon grit sounds cool for a sparse track. A lot of times the OHs were Pacific Pro Audio LD1's, a really swell $100 LDC.
All mixed in Protools on a MacBook Pro, using a lot of UAD plugins. I like the 1176, LA3A (especially on snare!), dbx160, Harrison eq, Space Echo, and the Fairchild on buses.
I mastered it myself by making a multiband compressor in PT out of 5 aux's with corresponding x-over points, each one followed by an LA3A knocking back a db or so on each band. Then the Fairchild in lat/vert mode squishing the center down a bit, then the Maxim loudness plug to get everything up to level.
Whew. I could go on about a lot of that stuff but I'll stop there. The real neat part is getting something done and saying, well shit, there it is!
How long did the whole project take you?
About 8 months.
Go through your process a little bit, how did you construct the songs?
I would have a concept in my head, and lay down scratch guitars and vox to a click or programmed drums. Most of the time the words were about 50% written when the scratch vox went down, so I spent a lot of time with gibberish playing back while I sorted out the drum parts. After the drums were in I would usually lay a scratch bass. I feel like drums generally have to follow vocal cadence, and bass has to follow both drum rhythm and vocal cadence, so that's why I would work in that order. Once the scratch bits and keeper drums were in place, the song structure would be most of the way there and I'd start on replacing the scratch tracks with final tracks.
What instrument did you generally lay down first?
The drums would be the first thing that was a keeper. I'm teaching myself to drum (I'm a bass player by trade), so a fair bit of editing and trickery went into making drum tracks. I do all my editing by hand -no sound replacing or quantizing. I can get simple beats pretty close when I play them, then fudge what I have to to account for my playing slop. I think the results are convincing.
Did you play all of the instruments?
Yep. Some drum parts are looped because it was the sound I was looking for, and one track has programmed drums overlaid with some real drums. But all the guitar, bass, synth, and vocals are my own performances.
What did you use to get your various sounds?
My rack is an ART MPA pre, M-Audio DMP3 pre, Focusrite Octopre dynamic, ART Levelar comp, two dbx 163x's, and a Chameleon Labs 7720 stereo comp. I'd use various combinations of all that going into a 003.
Vocals were usually either on a MD421, Pro37, or MXL v67g. Seriously, I think the Pro37 is super cool for vocals. I found out sorta by accident when I used it for a scratch vocal track because it was on a stand near by, and totally dug the results. It's used on the lead vocal on the track "Drunk in the Park."
Bass was all direct, usually a Radial JDI into the MPA, into a 163x. Mostly a Jazz with flatwounds, but "Fine Now" is a p-bass with rounds because I wanted a snazzy Bakithi Kumalo sound on that track.
Guitars were mostly 421s on a fender tube amp, with a second mic blended in depending on what I wanted to hear. A lot of the guitars on "Fine Now" are the 421 and Pro37 side by side blended to various degrees. Fender Tele exclusively.
Drums were whatever I decided to throw over the kit. e602 on the kick mostly, 57 snare, Pr40 floor tom. Overheads varied. One setup I liked was an M/S overhead made of an e635 mid and Fathead side. That's on track one, "Caught Up." I think the dynamic/ribbon grit sounds cool for a sparse track. A lot of times the OHs were Pacific Pro Audio LD1's, a really swell $100 LDC.
All mixed in Protools on a MacBook Pro, using a lot of UAD plugins. I like the 1176, LA3A (especially on snare!), dbx160, Harrison eq, Space Echo, and the Fairchild on buses.
I mastered it myself by making a multiband compressor in PT out of 5 aux's with corresponding x-over points, each one followed by an LA3A knocking back a db or so on each band. Then the Fairchild in lat/vert mode squishing the center down a bit, then the Maxim loudness plug to get everything up to level.
Whew. I could go on about a lot of that stuff but I'll stop there. The real neat part is getting something done and saying, well shit, there it is!
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