Automatic Double Tracking

Sobre la popular técnica de ADT en el disco Revolver de The Beatles en el fórum Gearsluts:

I was curious about the Beatles use of ADT (automatic double tracking) on Revolver. Lennon loved it as it meant he no longer had to sing twice to have the double tracked sound. On many songs, the original vocal and ADT'd vocal are mixed together "like "Taxman". But on some songs, like "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "Dr. Robert", they are panned hard left and hard right. So I imported the songs into Pro Tools, and set upon finding out the amount of delay by running a ddl on one side. It turns out the number is approximately 29.4ms. I can't say exactly. I did try to phase reverse one side and get it to cancel, but it wouldn't. Probably because they don't sound exactly the same, as one has another tape generation on it. Anyway, if you ever wondered how much delay ADT produced, now you know.

¿Qué hace Perfecta a una Canción?

De New York Magazine: Four Musical-Theater Composers Explain What Makes a Perfect Song

Cole Porter, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”

 Chosen by Gabriel Kahane (February House)

“There’s no love song finer / but how strange the change from major to minor / ev’ry time we say goodbye.”

It could only be written by someone who does both music and lyrics. It’s in the final sixteen bars of the song, and “major to minor” is on the subdominant and the minor subdominant—the four to the minor four—and it’s a thriller. He’s coloring the lyric in an incredibly clever way and also a way that’s really emotionally satisfying, in addition to having gorgeous harmony and a great tune.

Frank Loesser, “Joey, Joey, Joey” from The Most Happy Fella

Chosen by Michael John Lachiusa (Queen of the Mist)

“Like a perfumed woman / the wind blows in the bunk house / like a perfumed woman / smellin’ of where she’s been / smellin’ of Oregon cherries / or maybe Texas avocado / or maybe Arizona sugar beet / the wind blows in.”

It tells you everything you need to know about the character: his choice of words, color, his mood. The character himself is sort of louche, and there’s a sensuality to the music; you hear his longing and his desire to move on. He’s got a great appetite that can never be filled, and you feel that void. It’s a novel in a nutshell.

Stephen Sondheim, “If Momma Was Married” from Gypsy

Chosen by Marc Shaiman (Hairspray)

“Momma / please take our advice / we aren’t the Lunts / I’m not Fanny Brice / Momma, we’ll buy you the rice / if only this once you wouldn’t think twice.”

It’s so complicated but effortless. Look at all the inner rhymes there—“once” and “Lunts,” and all the “ice”s, and the wordplay of “once … twice,” you have to wonder what comes first. As a lyricist, I know you often start with the last line and work backward. And the playfulness of the Jule Styne music, a melodic waltz, is perfectly matched.

David Yazbek, “Here I Am” from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Chosen by Jason Robert Brown (The Last 5 Years)

“I’ve been kinda missing Mom and Daddy / sort of been a spin since Cincinnati / the morning flight, a major bore / but then they open the cabin door and / zut alors! Here I am.”

Yazbek has to introduce this person, Christine, whom we don’t really know, set up that we’re on the French Riviera, and establish that she’s a klutz. In five or six lines, and you can understand it. The music has weird harmonic shifts you don’t expect, the melody itself rising in a very satisfying way: “Mom and Daaaddy, Cincinnaaati.”

¡Restringe Variables!

Brian Eno habla sobre retringir variables, instrumentos y estilo:

In modern recording one of the biggest problems is that you’re in a world of endless possibilities. So I try to close down possibilities early on. I limit choices. I confine people to a small area of manoeuvre. There’s a reason that guitar players invariably produce more interesting music than synthesizer players: you can go through the options on a guitar in about a minute, after that you have to start making aesthetic and stylistic decisions. This computer can contain a thousand synths, each with a thousand sounds. I try to provide constraints for people.

Una Cuerda entre Cuerdas

Brad Barr de The Barr Brothers utilizando una cuerda como arco para guitarra.

Cinco Ingredientes Secretos del Pop

The Five Secret Ingredients for the Perfect Pop Song

When it comes to truly universal pop songwriting, there are elements which separate the golden pop nuggets from the disposable, future residents of the discount bin. While the pop consciousness is always shifting and evolving, specific elements have remained important staples through the decades. These qualities stand out and create the memorable from amongst otherwise ephemeral pop wonders.

While there’s no formula to crafting a perfect pop hook, the presence of these elements can make or break a song’s impact.

(...)

5. Say it and get out.
4. There’s nothing wrong with repetition.
3. Be specific!
2. Don’t be afraid to play with dynamics.
1. Strip it down to the essentials.

Tips de Mezcla con Andy Wallace

Andy Wallace, ingeniero extraordinario revela algunos trucos de mezcla en la revista MIX:
Sobre efectos y compresores:

You use very little outboard gear: A few digital chambers, a symphonic effect more or less on the bass, a couple of delays, but, by and large, you stay with the compression and gating on the SSL. Is this for ease of recall or because you prefer the SSL sound as compared with older equipment like Pultec or UREI?
It's a little of both. The primary concern is not so much ease of recall, although that's definitely a good benefit, but I like the way the SSL compressors sound and, for the most part, I'm happy with the gates. I have been known to patch in Drawmer gates from time to time, just because I can fine-tune them better and they have nice ducking abilities and that sort of thing. But for the most part, I'm happy with the onboard compressors. I don't really know if I would say that I prefer them to the old gear, but I guess I don't prefer the old gear enough to warrant fiddling around with it.

Sobre la mezcla ajustandose a la dinámica de la canción:

I listen to the song and try to get a feel for it. If it's a rock song that has a section that's really rockin', I'll sometimes go to that first and just work on that section, getting the band to really kick ass. I'll do that just to kind of make sure that that's my level. Then I'll work it down and build up from there, but that's the place that's really got to be rockin'. And that's usually where I find out how hard I want to hit the quad compressor.

Sobre mezclar con el compresor:

I've noticed you consistently set at 4:1 on automatic release.
Pretty much.

And you usually leave the makeup gain at unity?
To my ears, the gain makeup sounds like a noisy amplifier. I suppose it's paranoia, but I figure I can achieve the same end by how hard I hit the compressor. As long as I can get a reasonable output, which I can, I'll usually only use seven groups to put everything on and then I assign all those groups to group number eight, which serves as kind of a universal pre/quad compressor trim. So I can adjust how hard I can hit the compressor by moving that without having to adjust the makeup gain.

From watching you in past years up at Bearsville, I was under the impression that you ran your compression between -2.5 and -4 at 4:1. I was surprised to see it running between -4 and -6 on the 3 Doors Down Seventeen Days album. That's pretty slammed in there. How would you advise a young kid mixing today to handle stereo compression without ending up with a tiny mix? It's a trick.
Yeah, it is. I don't really know. I mix through the compressor right from the beginning — maybe not the very beginning, but while I'm still working on that loud section.

Sobre ajustar la dinámica de la mezcla en las diferentes partes de la canción:

I noticed that you ride the overhead tracks of the drum kit up in the choruses. Having seen it, I've listened for it and can hear it in other albums that you've done, so it's obviously a dynamic thing that you bring to all your mixes. When did you start doing that? I mean, did you just find that you were burying the cymbals with guitars?
Well, first of all, I ride them a lot of times because sometimes a cymbal won't be as loud as another cymbal or something. So there's that. But also, in a greater sense — and I think that this is what you're referring to — every cymbal crash will be ridden up maybe 5 or more dB.

Sometimes I will feel that I'm hearing more ambient stuff in the overheads than I want to hear in the mix. So when I get that loud section rocking the way I want, I'll end up with the overheads balanced where I want to hear the ambience and sometimes the cymbals simply won't be loud enough to have the impact that I want.

Sobre aumentar el ambiente con samples:

I use the samples more to drive reverbs. If you killed the reverb, you'd still hear the sample. And the thing I like is that I can EQ them so that I can really tune the ambience and where it sits in the whole frequency response.

Again, more so than I can with the overheads because I usually EQ those so that the cymbals sound the way I want them to sound. Not always, but often, when the cymbals are sitting where I want them to sit, I'll hear more ambience from that. I'd rather keep that down and be able to shade with a little more control using my ambient sample.

Sobre efectos para mezcla estéreo:

You pan your delay on the vocal slightly off to one side and then make up the difference on the other side with reverb return. Then you crack the pan on the vocal just off detent to open up the middle of the record.
Yeah. I do a lot of little things like that where I don't put things down the middle. Just moving them a little bit sometimes seems to open [the mix] up, which is one of the reasons I like to use the symphonic [effect]. Not so much as, “Dig the flange on that bass,” because I kind of prefer that nobody even knows it's there. Sometimes it gives it a growl, which is kind of cool. But a lot of times, I use that just to open things up a little bit so that everything is not kick, snare, bass right down the middle. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but sometimes it feels sonically a little more interesting to me.

Sobre compresión para la radio:

Primarily, I mix so that the thing sounds good to me, which I guess translates to how the CD sounds. But I grew up with radio and I guess I kind of like the way mixes sound on the radio with that compression, which is why I probably have gotten a little more aggressive with it over the years. Years ago — 10 years ago — I probably rarely drove the SSL compressor beyond that -4 mark. But I found that occasionally I'd get things hitting harder without even realizing it. I'd say, “Oh gee, I'm getting 8 dB of compression here,” and I'd say, “I better back this thing down.” But when I backed it down, I didn't like it as much. It was rockin' that way.

A long time ago, I learned that the great amount of compression in radio broadcasts was seriously changing how the low end [of my mixes] sounded and the balance: how much low end was there, how much of the bass I could hear and other things. That's when I really started experimenting with a substantial amount of stereo compression. And I found that if I had something compressed ahead of time and was happy with the sound of it, the additional compression from the radio station had less effect. So I sort of felt that I was doing damage control, as well as the fact that I liked the sound.

I found that I was automatically compensating by bringing up the bass in my balance, and I don't know if this bears out in reality, but it seemed it was true that the mixes I compressed more aggressively and then compensated for in the process of doing the mix held up better with additional radio compression.

Aprende Música con Estrellas del Rock Potosino

Con el increíble Fernando Charó:




Y el poderoso David Juarez:



Muchas lecciones como éstas (con celebridades locales de la música) en el canal de YouTube y el website de www.virtuosso.com
¡Apoya el talento local y aprende música!

La reverb de Abbey Road

Desde el excelente blog de Bobby Owsinski el secreto de la reverb de Abbey Road:

Regardless of whether the reverb was from one of Abbey Road's fine chambers or one of their plates, the secret is in the high and low-pass filters placed on the reverb send. These were set to roll-off everything below 600Hz and above 10kHz, since physical reverb tends to have trouble with low and very high end frequencies.

La canción de Bowie Ideal

El psicólogo Nick Troop ha escrito la canción "ideal" al estilo de David Bowie usando los procesos psicológicos y linguísticos que componen su obra. En éste video el científico explica su metodología y canta la canción "Team, Meet Girls" en 4:24.

¿Cómo suenan cuando están solos?

Los tracks aislados de varios éxitos en Studio Multitracks.

Plus: El equipo de Kurt Cobain en estudio y en giras.
www.kurtsequipment.com

Guitarra Ampex

Steven Wilson de Porcupine Tree habla sobre sus experimentos con grabaciones de guitarra en la revista Sound on Sound.

I do a lot of stuff where I slow things down or speed them up, then cut it up, throw all the pieces up in the air, metaphorically speaking, and then put them back together again. For example, I’ll record a guitar solo, speed it up and fly it back in so I have something that’s not necessarily in time, but floats over the top. And often I get wacky effects by chopping solos, making almost random cuts, and then shuffling the pieces. I love to experiment — those weird effects, for me, are what computer-based recording is all about. You can do those things using tape but it would take weeks!

Pídele al mono que vuelva

Bob Dylan recomienda que sus primeros discos se escuchen en mono.

Super Armónicos con Badi Assad

Badi Assad.

Moda, Creatividad, Inovación, Propiedad Intelectual

www.readytoshare.org
En donde se habla sobre las virtudes de la carencia casi total de propiedad intelectual en el mundo de la moda. Entre ellas:

• Aceleración de la inovación creativa
• Democratización de la moda
• Establecimiento rápido de modas globales
• Obsolecencia inducida

Y cómo se protege la industria de la moda de la piratería por medio de la inovación y la dificultad de copiar sus materiales y técnicas de producción.

Como tocar el piano como Phillip Glass

Grabando Batería en 2 Tracks

En el increíble Ronan's Recording Show:

¡Reamplifica!

Sunn 0))) opina sobre la reamplificación en la revista Guitar Player:

(...)

It's shocking how much you can mod out your amp by only changing the preamp tubes. You can get an incredible range of levels and harmonic overtones.

GW: You're playing music that requires high-output amps and creates subsonic frequencies. What challenges does that present as far as the recording setup?

ANDERSON: It's a challenge to record. The main thing with this record (Monoliths and Dimensions) was to make it sound vibrant and live. All of the heavy stuff was tracked at full volume. Re-amping is something we learned a few years ago on Black One. Since we have no drummer and no meter, it's really frustrating to overdub. So what we do is track everything clean, and afterward we can send those clean tracks back through the amps to create the sound we want.

Analógico vs. Digital. Rudy Van Gelder Habla.

Rudy Van Gelder, ingeniero extraordinario opina en la revista Mix:

"I believe today's equipment is fantastic," he says. "I wouldn't want to face a session without the editing capabilities of digital. There are still maintenance and reliability issues. Tech support helps. From my viewpoint, the essential difference between analog and digital is that analog does not like to be copied," Van Gelder continues. "After the original is recorded, edited and mixed, then what? You need a digital delivery medium. In that sense, the final product can be much higher quality than in the '70s."

Gear Spotting, The Killers: Shure Beta 58A

Brandon Flowers de The Killers usando un Shure Beta 58A durante la grabación de Live from Abbey Road. Los tracks "Sam's Town (Abbey Road Version)" y "Romeo and Juliet" de esas sesiones aparecen en el álbum Sawdust.

Poder Plugin

De la revista EQ:

Five Essential Guitar Tones
By by Matt Blackett, Associate Editor, Guitar Player

Need to produce great guitar tones for your tracks, or someone else’s? Here are the five you can’t afford not to know about.


En este artículo se revelan detalles interesantes como que "Sultans of Swing" se grabó con un Fender Twin Reverb y un Roland JC-120 con el chorus apagado y que SRV usaba el Tube Screamer como un boost con una ganacia baja y el volúmen alto.

Todos los plugins que necestias están en SimulAnalog y son gratis. También puedes probar la simulación del Tube Screamer de bteaudio y utilizar el demo gratis de Guitar Rig. Excelente noticias para el sonido de guitarras.