Vibrato

Adding Acoustics to Welcome Home

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:18:38 +0000

After listening to the tune a bit on my iPod I really got the sense that the last chorus needed a lift. I thought about maybe adding an organ part or electric guitar part but that seemed a bit overbearing for the track so I decided to try some acoustic guitar. My Bourgeois Slope D is great for strummed tracks. Pick selection is also very important especially with acoustic instruments. In this case I wanted an airy quality to the sound so I selected the old standby Fender Medium celluloid pick. I had thought originally about putting acoustic guitar as the basis of the entire track but that would not have filled in too many of the holes. So, here is the acoustic guitar track I recorded. I recorded two tracks and panned on hard left and one hard right. I used an Audio-Technica AT4041 condenser mic, about 2 feet away from the upper 14th fret point back at the body. Because the track was to be a background part I didn’t want a lot of bass of fullness in the sound and putting the mic a little farther away helps. Also, I eq’ed the track with a shelf tapering off starting at around 300 Hz. Here are the acoustic tracks by themselves…

Acoustic Guitar Tracks

…and here is how they sound in the track…

Welcome Home with Acoustic

So, that’s in for now on this track. I will come back to the track to do a final mix and mastering later on but now its time to start work on another of the tunes recorded that fateful Friday in July.

First Guitar Track

Adding Electric Guitars to Welcome Home

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:31:09 +0000

Time to add some guitars to the track. With vocals being the focus the tone of the guitar has to stay away from those midrange frequences. I selected my Telecaster through the Swart Atomic Space Tone. I took a quick picture of the rig before recording. The item on top of the amp is an attenuator that sounds pretty awesome and reduces the volume of the amp. Check out the Night Light from the Swart website. It’s a great alternative to having an amp with a master volume. Sweat tone. Here is a sample of the guitar sound I started with…

First Guitar Track

Here is the track with that first electric guitar in it…

Welcome Home – Rhythm Guitar Added

To balance this first guitar track a second stereo part recorded twice, one mixed far right and one mixed far left…

Welcome Home – With Additional Rhythm Guitar Tracks

Now for the intro, solo, and outro…

Welcome Home – With Intro, Solo, and Outro

The mix isn’t final and the vocals have to come up in places. Parts still need to be placed properly in the mix but something is missing in the choruses…but its late, that will have to wait until next post.

Compression on the Vocals for Welcome Home

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:56:12 +0000

The vocal track is very brooding and breathy on this track and so I wanted to accentuate that in the mix. There are a few notes that are slightly out of tune so I tried to AutoTune just a few spots but it just using AutoTune can sometimes kill the spirit of a track. In this case I decided to just leave it alone and instead play on the vulnerability of the vocals. I selected the Vintage Channel plug-in and set it to some relatively radical settings and turned on the DeEsser feature to take some artifacts out of the vocals that I found not as pleasant after using the compressor. Take a listen.

Matt Horner – Welcome Home – Compression on Vocals

After this step its clear to me that the vocals will have to be very much front and centre in the track. This will effect how I play the guitar parts as you will hear in my next posting.

Fixing the Keyboard Track on Welcome Home

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:03:19 +0000

The keyboard track was recorded using the TruePiano plug-in so the recording made was that of the MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) messages being sent to the plug in. So, I am now able to edit the keyboard playing not just the audio. This allowed me to fix the timing. The picture here shows the track prior to fixing the timing of some of the playing. I was able to remove erroneous notes and sustain notes in the intro that were accidentally played staccato. So take a listen to the fixed version of the track with the revised keyboard and hear how it locks in with the bass and drums.

Matt Horner – Welcome Home – Fixed Keyboard Track

Adding Bass and Drums to Welcome Home

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:15:14 +0000

The first thing I did was to find some real drummer loops to put on this track before laying down the bass. I have been using Drumcore to avoid that programmed drum sound. I choose a series of loops recorded by Lonnie Wilson. You can see Lonnie recording grooves for Drumcore on YouTube. I then added the bass sound using my trusty MusicMan Stingray Bass direct into my Presonus Firebox interface. I will tweak the tone of the bass later.

Matt Horner – Welcome Home -Added Bass and Drums

Once the drum track was in the tune you can really hear the push pull of the tempo. Next step will be to modify the keyboard track to synch up more with the groove.

Resonate 2010 – Rough Tracks

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:27:20 +0000

Mary MacLean has been holding a 3 week intensive course in worship and song writing called Resonate 2010. On Friday I recorded the rough tracks for 12 songs from the participants in this course. I’m going to blog the evolution of one of those tracks into a more complete song.

The first tune I’ve selected to do this with is Matt Horner’s Welcome Home. Since I only had 9 hours to record 12 songs we did not have a lot of time to be picky. Matt was not super confortable with playing the keyboard part. Dispite the fact that this was recorded at around 8 am I think it has some real potential. Here is the rough track.

Welcome Home – Rough Track

Unchain My Heart at the King’s Head

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:24:15 +0000

In this clip from the King’s Head gig on Dec 17, 2009, I used the GigRig to switch between two primary patches. The first patch is the sound I use for the “clean” chorused sound of the single note rhythm figure. The GigRig was configured to select the Rhythm Channel on the Tone King Metropolitan. The signal chain goes into a Durham Sexdrive pedal to add compression and a small amount of grind and then into a Diamond Halo Chorus pedal; a great sound for that old school 80′s funk feel. The second patch was used for the distorted shots and solos. On this patch I’m still using the Rhythm Channel but it is passing through a Fuchs Extreme Cream overdrive pedal and then into a T-Rex Replica delay. The result is a ripping lead sound. The Cream Supreme pedal is similar to an old Ibanez Tube Screamer but with a high quality FET boost section, much smoother and with a full range of frequencies. Bet SRV would have loved this pedal.

Katherine Penfold is fantastic on this song. She really lays it all out there. I love the grind she is getting with her voice on those bends. Dave, our bass player, comes in and the feel is a bit odd. I asked him about that later and he told me that as the evening progressed he developed a huge blister on his finger and was struggling to play the part. Ouch. Playing hurt, what a champ.

Unchain My Heart

THE INSIDE SCOOP: Watch for early ticket purchasing information for a great show at the Park Theatre on May 28, 2010. Get on Katherine’s e-mail list at www.katherinepenfold.com to get first crack at only 225 tickets. There will be some fabulous special guests and Kat will be singing many of the songs from her Journals CD as well as Jazz, Rock, and Celtic material. Also watch for us at Neepawa Homecoming on May 15th.

Mustang Sally at the King’s Head

contributor — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:23:03 +0000

On Dec 17th the 3 bands I’ve been working played at the Unofficial, Unsanction, Holiday Party at the King’s Head to a full house of over 150 people. All the bands did a great job and people were on the dance floor all night. I multi-track recorded the proceedings and we video taped it. So guess what I did all Christmas Break? I mixed and merged audio with video. This last Friday the bands got together at my place for the “world premiere” of the recording (soon to be a fine commemorative DVD set). It was quite a challenge merging input from multiple tapes, dealing with the glitches in the video, and syncing everything up. In the end the bands were very satisifed with the end product and I’m pretty happy as well. However, I did have Don Voth make a modification to my amplifier after studying the results. I had an external switch added for the bright switch on the amp so I could run more treble from my overdrive pedals. I love the bright shimmering sound of the Metropolitan’s rhythm channel but when I put pedals in front of that for alternative lead sounds it was just too sizzling. Here is the final tune of the third band’s set, Kat and the Soul Dogs, with the fabulous Katherine Penfold on vocals, Gary Brenner on keys, Hal Ryckman on drums and vocals, Dave Christianson on drums and vocals, and Greg Boettcher on percussion.

On this track my signal chain is the guitar into a Durham Sexdrive Pedal, into the Tone King Metropolitan for the rhythm sound. For the lead sound I’m using a Diamond Boost-EQ pedal instead of the Sexdrive. I have a new GigRig switcher that allows me to control the amp and pedal in patches all at once…more on that in another post.

Mustang Sally

The Mountain Goats Practice Recording

contributor — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:34:31 +0000

Last Saturday I decided to multi-track record one of the band practices for our HP (non-official) Seasonal (non-Christmas) Party (read, many disclaimers, etc, etc) on December 17th at the King’s Head. This band is one of three bands we have put together for the event. They are called “the Mountain Goats”. Reason for the name… our office has moved to Mountain Avenue, yes, there is a Mountain Avenue in Winnipeg, don’t ask why they would call it that given it seems to me to be one of the flattest streets in one of the flattest cities in Canada. Google searches have not revealed which city is actually the flattest though my guess is props will have to go to Regina. The “Goats” part of the name, well, not sure, if one of the band members can comment on why they call themselves “Goats” it may be helpful. There are no spring chickens in the band.

The line-up is:

Tim Grant – vocals
Mike Dyck – guitar (left)
Jean-Yves Pelletier – guitar (right)
Adam Halstrom – bass
Greg Boettcher – drums

Here’s a sample track…

Sanctuary

HP (unsanctioned, non-official) Party Bands

admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:21:26 +0000

I work for HP as the manager of the Microsoft Practice for Canada. This year is our second annual employee funded work party for HP in Winnipeg. Last year I put together 3 bands and worked for 6 weeks to whip them into shape. I played bass in two of the bands and guitar in the last band of the night. The party was a huge success and the bands did great. This year we got a bit more of a head start and a few more band members. I’m the musical director but the bands are a lot more independant. I only play in one of the bands and I’m leaving the bass playing to someone else in the other bands. The bands are sounding great. We have been recording the practices first with a Zoom H2 and now with a laptop loaded with Cakewalk Sonar. This week we introduced a new song to the band I play guitar in, Kat and the Soul Dogs. This is a bit rough as its just a direct recording of the practice but I love the spirit of it. This really captures the party atmosphere these guys are creating.

Love Shack