anomie life

It wasn’t until Running Blind that I really felt really proud of something I’d recorded. Even now, I still can’t seem to be able to top that recording in my mind. I’m probably biased though sense I co-wrote it with Scott and played drums, bass, and guitar for the recording. But I think there were a lot of other factors as well.

The first thing that was a major change was the recording interface. I purchased the Phonic Helix Firewire 24 channel mixer (really more like 16). This gave me the usability of a nice mixer, but the mixing flexibility of a computer interface. I could essentially set my personal hearing mix to whatever I wanted and the computer just gets the direct outs of all the channels you’re recording on. Adobe released Audition 1.5 as well which had some nice additional features. And lastly I also purchased an inexpensive, but relatively nice sounding vocal condenser microphone, the Marshall MXL V57M.

That’s the “what” that changed, but another big change was the “how”. The first thing we did was record me playing drums and Scott playing electric for the whole song through. No cuts at all. Just one straight take. We actually got it really fast. All we did was a few practices to get the end right and one run through the whole thing with the metronome. Our second recorded take was the one that we decided to use. After we had the drum tracks down we just proceeded to simply layer everything on top. Scott and I recorded the rest of the instruments and vocals that day. Then David E came over the next day and we played the song for him and he added some of his sweet licks to it.

I’m still racking my brain trying to figure exactly what made that recording so great. I think part of it was co-writing the song overall helped me to produce exactly what I wanted out of the song. Ha. Playing most of the instruments also helped with that. I think part of it was also not being pressed for time or pressed for really anything at all. We were just seeing what we could do and having a good time with it.

I think the atmosphere really can have a major effect on the recording. We’ve recorded the last two songs in my garage, which gives us a much larger space (and we don’t have to carry everything upstairs), but there’s just something so dirty and cold about the garage. I really just wish I had my own studio. Now they’ve put so much junk in the third floor there isn’t even a prayer of making it a usable recording space.

I need a good tambourine… tambourines are the difference between a good rock song and a great rock song.

Every time a new season of American Idol comes on, I vow not to watch, but it seems, no matter what, my TV always finds it’s way to FOX whatever time it’s on TV. For some strange reason, watching people humiliate themselves on national TV is very compelling.

A lot of people I know with tender hearts hate the show, especially the audition process, because they can’t stand watching the judges crush the dreams and aspirations of young performers. The judges, especially Simon, can be very cutting, and many times he’ll go as far to not only critique their musical talent but just about anything else that he dislikes about them. In fact, a lot of the times the performers aren’t that bad, but their musical style just isn’t American Idol’s style, which is pretty much pure pop.

I used to not care about the humiliating of the contestants because I rationalized that many of them needed a wake up call if they really thought they were as great as many of the horrible contestants seem to think they are. But this season I’ve seen just about enough wake up calls.

I think its really gone beyond that, and American Idol auditions have pretty much turned into a freak show with the producers parading around the weirdest contestants they can find.

American Idol auditions aren’t as simple as getting in line and waiting for Randy, Simon, and Paula to listen to your performance. There’s actually a pre-audition audition where staff and producers decide who actually gets to sing in front of the Idol judges. One might think that these pre-audition are pretty ineffective since so many terrible people get through, but the fact of the matter is that the producers already know the bad people are bad. Even before getting to the judges, its pretty much decided who will make it and who won’t. The producers only let through the really bad people and the really good people. This has the effect of making the terrible people suddenly get a boost of confidence and make themselves look even more foolish.

This is only speculation, but I even think the producers have a lot of the terrible contestants come back later and sing particular songs in order to create a montage to radio hits such as “Don’t Cha“. I find it really interesting how during this particular montage most of the people couldn’t even get half the words right. Why would you sing a song that you don’t they words to? Maybe because you were paid to sing a particular song and sing it with your signature flare of suckiness that America craves.

One contestant, Nicholas Zitzmann, even has a different shirt on when he sings his version of “Don’t Cha”. Good job producers, you let that one slip by.

Hey American Idol producers, maybe you should make the show a little more positive and a little less about just making fun of all the weird people who show up to audition. I know its tempting because there are a lot of weird people out there, but eventually people will get tired of not even being able to look at their TV screen without a scowl of disgust.

The next step in my audio equipment upgrades was to go back to a computer-based system. I wanted a way to record multiple tracks simultaneously, but also have the mixing flexibility of using a program such as Adobe Audition. I found the AudioTrak MAYA1010 PCI based system, which seemed to meet my needs. This system is part internal, part external. It has a PCI card which you have to install in your computer that then connects to a breakout box with all the inputs and outputs.

It has 8 Line Inputs and 8 Line Outputs. All of the inputs and outputs are balanced 1/4″, which is kind of annoying since pretty much all microphones use XLR. Luckily, I already had a bunch of XLR to 1/4″ cable adapters from my previous mixer. The inputs are so close together that you can’t just use an adapter or transformer without putting the adjacent ports out of commission.

Notice how I said these are “line” inputs. That means that barely have any gain, except for 2 of the inputs. Those 2 support phantom power and have a mic preamp with adjustable gain (through software), which is good because condenser microphones almost always require phantom power. So you can record with all 8 inputs, but the signal on everything except the 2 condenser microphones is extremely weak.

2 of the outputs are also considered “headphone” amplifiers. This just means these are a little louder than the rest. But they’re not stereo ,so unless you get a special adapter, you only hear audio out of one ear. I ended up just using the computer’s audio out for headphones. I did use 2 of the other outputs to provide a signal to the studio monitors, which are already power, and that worked very well.

Practically, the MAYA1010 looked really good, but only having microphone preamps on 2 of the channels was really annoying. If I wanted to record vocals while recording the drums, I had to use one of those two channels, otherwise it was practically inaudible. Being able to hear everything while recording was also very difficult because you have little control of the audio.

We recorded a few things live, such as some quality Robotic Melee. It was just drums, bass, el cheapo casio keyboard, and screaming vocals. Good times Jimmy and Carl…. After making a purevolume site we actually had a few requests to play shows…. It made me sad that anyone would want us to come play that music anywhere.

Scott and I also wrote a song called “Confessions of a Broken Heart” that we attempted to record with the 1010. The problem is we recorded pretty much all the instruments and vocals before we recorded the drums. This made recording the drums next to impossible, especially since most of the instruments weren’t perfectly in time with the metronome. I learned to always, if possible, record the drums first. And then add in the rest of the instruments.

I remember a few months after I got my first guitar, I looked on Ebay and found a cheap wireless system for only $50. I don’t even remember the brand. It was quite old and smelled like cigarettes, but it worked and thats all that mattered. It was great being able to be anywhere in the house and still hear my guitar, although it was quite quiet when I was 3 or 4 rooms away. That wireless and I had a great time together… ahh the memories… and then one day I let my friend, Scott, use it because I was playing drums in that band. While plugging it in, he accidentally switched my bass distortion power supply and the wireless power supply. Sadly, the polarity on the two power supplies was the opposite of each other and it resulted in my precious little wireless giving a small puff of smoke. Never to produce a sound again…..

That was then, but a few months after that sad incident, I decided to upgrade to a new wireless system. I didn’t like the whole “bodypack” concept where you’re still attached to this little box, so I decided to try out AKG’s “guitarbug” wireless system. The wireless transmitter is only about 2 inches long and it just attaches right onto your guitar.

Well, it sort of just attaches right onto your guitar… On guitars such as a telecaster or my Musicman bass, the wireless works great because it hangs down and you don’t have to worry about it falling off. I’ve had this thing for over 2 years and used it live on countless occasions, so I’ve found that its not perfect, but it is pretty good. If you have a standard electric with an input jack on the bottom, then you might encounter issues if you decide to jump around too much.

The problem is that the swivel design allows the transmitter to flop around. This is bad because eventually it loosens enough that you lose connection with your guitar. It comes with some velcro, which is great idea, but who wants to stick a piece of velcro to the bottom of all their guitars. I usually just use some gentle electric tape to ensure I don’t lose connection, but this can be a problem if you use more than one guitar. Also, on one occasion, after jumping off of something off of something, I came down and hit the wireless and knocked the gold connector piece of the wireless. Luckily, it comes with a second, slightly longer one that I’ve been using ever since.

As far as sound goes, it takes a little time to adjust to using a wireless system. There’s a volume control on the receiver as well as a gain control on the transmitter. If you don’t get the gain high enough then you’re signal ends up being weak. If you set it too high then the signal will peak and sometimes distorts the sound. And, as I’ve found with all wireless systems, the environment you’re in can also produce interference and an audible hum, especially if you put crazy amounts of distortion.

The range is plenty long for anything I can possibly imagine. I think the stated range is something around 300 feet. I tested it about 200 feet one time and it worked great. once you get that far then you can actually hear an audible delay between playing and the actual sound coming from my amp arriving at my ears.

I seem to have this strange affinity for buying things that look awesome, yet are quite inexpensive. So while everyone has their little Crate 40 Watt 1×10 Combo I have myself whopping Behringer 400 Watt 4×12 Stereo Cabinet. And then I realize I’ve gotta power it with something, so I get a Behringer head. I was so close to getting a Line6 head, but then I saw Behringer’s V Ampire LX1200. Wow… 32 amp models, 125 configurable channels, and its $200 cheaper!

Yea, I admit it. I’m somewhat of a Behringer addict.-so many great looking things for such a low price. As I’ve found, the keyword in that sentence is great looking. (Disclaimer: I have never received products for free from Behringer nor do I receive compensation for writing about their products.)
So anyway, now I have a very impressive looking Behringer half stack. Well, impressive at least to me and the casual passerby, but I’m pretty sure any serious guitarist would snub their nose at running their guitar through anything with the name Behringer on it. I’ve found that although many people look down on Behringer products, many of their offerings are actually quite good and useful.

But $450 for the Behringer 400 Watt 4×12 and 2×60 Watt Head is really a great deal for what you pay no matter how you slice it, especially with some of the features that head has. One thing that would be regarded as great by some (Me), and disgusting by others is the fact that all of its controls except the main volume are digital. This means those knobs can be rotated all the way around and keep going forever. It also means that once you decide your settings you can save them and not worry about someone messing with your settings. The head can hold 125 channels. What this really translates to is 5×25 channels. You have 25 banks and each bank has an A, B, C, D, and E channel.

The head also comes with a foot pedal that allows you to go up or down between these channels, but it only has 2 buttons so you can’t directly select a particular channel. This is really, really annoying. I’ve had more than one occasion where I was playing on, say, channel D and I meant to switch to C, but really ended up on channel B because I accidentally tapped the pedal twice. Also, when switching from a clean channel to distorted channel, it takes a second for it to get to the full volume you had preset for that channel.

The amp and speaker models are mostly worthless. There’s probably about 3 or 4 amp models I like and most of the speaker models just muddy up the sound too. Personally, my favorite sound I’ve gotten out of this amp is using a clean channel with the Boss Metal Zone distortion. That sounded amazing, but it was kind of noisy.

One really nice feature about this amp though is that it comes with a settable noise gate filter that works very well. I’ve found sometimes when using a bunch of effects, combined with a wireless system as well, a lot of noise is created, especially when distortion is on. The noise gate filter is great at knocking this extra stuff out. It also has a built in tuner.-a very useful feature.

The 400 Watt 4×12 Cabinet I’ve found to be rock solid reliable. My only complaint though is with the casters Behringer packages with it. These things are just downright awful. They aren’t ball bearing based and with the 75 lb cabinet pushing down, they’ll roll, but not necessarily in the direction you want them to. Countless times when people have seen me pushing the thing around they’ve asked if a wheel was stuck, and I assumed one wheel was gimpy or something. But after detailed inspection I’ve found that all the wheels are just cheap.

So for $450, I think my Behringer half stack was definitely a great investment. It has its flaws, but overall it makes a great deal. Yes, I’d rather have Vox AC30, but I’d also like a Ferrari. Point being, I can’t afford either one. Who cares if you can get a better amp for $1200, this amp is $450 and its worth every penny of it.

My next incremental step in recording was the purchasing of some sort of external mixer. I thought, “mixing in the computer is great, but only being able to record 1 channel at a time is annoying.” At this point I had grabbed a drum kit off of Ebay, a Taye RockPro, and found out its tantamount to impossible to record drums with just 1 input.

So a friend of mine, that dabbled in recording at one time, had a few items she wanted to unload, among these things was a Yamaha MD8 Mixer. This was a pretty decent 8-channel mixer that outputted to Minidiscs, a format Sony tried to push a few years ago, and, like most of their proprietary standards, it pretty much fizzled out. She also sold me a pair of Behringer B2031B Truth studio monitors and a Behringer MDX1400 compressor.

At first I thought the mixer was great. I could record my guitar and voice at the same time! What a revolutionary concept. But then I realized that an 8-channel mixer was almost pointless with only 1 microphone. So I looked online for the most inexpensive drum microphone set that had the most microphones and I decided on the Nady DMK 7-microphone Drum Package. It came with 2 condenser microphones for the overheads, a larger microphone for the kick, and 4 microphones for the rest of the drums.

At last I finally had a sufficient quantity of microphones, but now my problem was adapting them into the mixer. One big annoyance with the MD8 was that it only had 2 XLR inputs. The rest were just regular 1/4″ Line inputs. So this meant I had to buy a bunch of short Female XLR to 1/4″ cables. And I had to buy cables, not adapters, because all the inputs were so close together that a large transformer would take up so much room that the cables beside them wouldn’t fit.

Eventually I got all the right cables and was finally able to record some serious music. Well, not quite. I never thought I would need more than 8-channels, but only having 8-channels and the lack of being able to mix on the computer left most of the “songs” recorded seriously lacking.
The only really half decent thing we recorded was something I liked to call “Oriental Distortion”, a rock/punk version of “We Three Kings”. We recorded it live with 1 channel for Jimmy D on the Bass, 1 channel for Scott on the Electric, and then the other 6 for drums (1 for Kick, 2 for Overheads, 1 Snare, 1 for Lo-Tom and Hi-Tom, and 1 for the Floor Tom). I wish I could find an mp3 of that. Alas, I’m sure its lost somewhere on my desktop at home.

I did find one great, even money-making use for the MD8: Recording Voice Recitals. A friend of mine, Kendra, had her voice recital coming up and I can’t remember whether I volunteered or she asked me, but I got permission from her teacher to record it. And so I brought my mixer and drum mics to Meredith College. I just set up the two condenser mics on either side of the stage and let it run.

It worked surprisingly well, but that was the easy part. What took the most amount of time was figuring out how to get the audio into my computer and slicing each person’s performance into a separate track. I used some random program I got from download.com and a stereo phono to 1/8″ adapter to get it into the computer. Once I had one giant audio file I used Adobe Audition to slice it up into individual tracks and burn it to a CD. Then I had to make about 15 copies for all of the students that purchased one. Needless to say, it was a pain in the butt. Yet, I still think it was worth it and it ultimately made the purchase of that mixer actually useful.

Trying to record music on a shoestring budget with little to no instruction or experience is an extremely difficult task. Well, I guess the actual recording isn’t that difficult, but actually making it sound half decent is.

I remember the first song, or rather piece of a song, was “Crossing Guard”, written by Scott and Aaron. The song itself was really quite depressing: “Hope was lost/ in a blur of flaming yellow / cause the crossing guard / wasn’t there to save them” It ended up forming sort of a cult following at CYT (now Spiritual Twist Productions) despite its sad lyrics.

Recording equipment-wise, I had a Creative external microphone input, a Shure SM86, and Adobe Audition 1.0.

Instrumentally, we used my Schecter C1 Elite electric guitar, OLP Musicman 4-string bass, Scott’s Violin bow, and my mom’s old Yamaha keyboard.

We started off by recording the electric guitar directly into the computer and I don’t even think we used a metronome. Then we just went straight to the vocals. I think one of us heard somewhere it sounded cool to layer multiple takes of the vocals on top of each other. It ended up sounding pretty cool, but we probably could have achieved the same effect by applying a simple chorus effect.

One of the coolest things we did in that recording was using a violin bow on the electric bass. It actually sounded really great and gave a very smooth and sort of depressing sound to the song.

Well, I decided to change blog managers. I was using Postnuke, but that really was more of portal/cms than a blog manager. I decided the look and feel was really boring too.

So now I’m hoping to convert this into a space where I’m going to document my experiences and struggles with music equipment. I’ve noticed I’ve purchased a lot of music gear lately and so I want to document my thoughts on that stuff and write about how our singleTree recording sessions go.

So thats about it.

-Mark