bruce lash

just alot of volume and feedback. ... i like...i like... it's well controlled and fits in the fix really well.

"darkness falls" (kranak)-- i like how all those different styles and voices work together. the atmospheric stuff sounds nice. the guitars sound cool (is that an ebow i hear?). the only thing that i would take a look at is the relationship between the bass guitar and the kick drum. they seem to be fighting for the same piece of the spectrum. maybe brighten the bass-- take a little of the extreme bottom end off-- to separate it from the kick. all in all, i think it's a really cool track. spirithunter--thanks for the kind words. bruce.

doctor, doctor in craig anderton's old musicplayer forum, bruce swedien once described a stereo mic-ing techinque where an instrument is recorded blumlein and then recorded again, matching as closely as possible the first pass. the first pass is panned left all the way left and right 2 o'clock. the second pass is panned left 10 o'clock and right all the way right. if the second pass matches the first, it will sound like one instrument, sitting nicely big in the middle of the stereo field. i tried this in the playroom of my house (a smallish room with carpeted floor, paneled walls, slanted ceiling, a big couch soaking up some of the sound), playing a three-stringed instrument called a strumstick, which i bought at an art fair. it looks a little like a martin backpacker. it's chromatic. the strings are tuned (low)g-d-(high)g. it sounds kind of like a banjo. i recorded this using an mbox and protools le 6.4 through a pc laptop onto an external drive. the mics are cheap: samson c03s. i played the strumstick inches away from the mics, close, but far enough away to catch the first reflections from the instrument in the room (per mr. swedien's advice). after that, i strummed one pass of an acoustic guitar using the same blumlein setup. the bass is from reason: the "bass guitar" preset from subtractor with the decay set shorter than the preset had it. i sang the lead vocal through one of the c03s, set cardioid, from 6 inches away. i sang the harmonies (a low one and a high one) through the same mic, standing four feet away to pick up some of the room and to thin out the sound of the voices using the proximity effect. i doubled the harmonies and panned the low one part way left and the high one part way right. i mixed this on another system, a tdm system, taking a little bottom off the lead vocal and putting it and the harmonies through bombfactory 1176s (grouping the harmonies). i limited the mix just a touch to control peaks with an L1. i didn't use any reverbs or anything like that, hoping that the room sound would surfice. i was trying to get that matching blumlein thing going and to successfully use the proximty effect on the harmonies, as well as using the room's natural reverberence instead of a reverb plug-in. would love to hear comments.

i wanted to listen to and comment on some tunes here, as i intend to post a song of my own. i'm listening on my computer through sony mdr-nc6 noise cancelling headphones. "white lie" (Spirithunter)-- i like the vocal treatment. left and right crunchy gtrs: maybe take some of the bottom off them and "hype" them to get them crunchier and give them their own place in the frequency spectrum. drums: try over-compressing them and/or distorting them to make them more violent. maybe add some sort of percussion on top of that, always keeping in mind that you are trying to make it more aggressive. shivers (Watershed)-- "almost" and "think of you": nice smooth production all around. nice vocals and arrangements. i wish the lead vocal was a little more on top, more present or something. "all alone": it sounds like the singer is channeling christine mcvie...very nice. "roundabout": nice guitars. i wish the drums were up a little more. i like the fade out a lot--"hurry hurry hurry...." that's really cool. "sometimes in love" (TIP)-- i second all the good things said. cool drum sound (interesting notes about the drum mic-ing. thanks for that). nice, fairly dry, vocal. nice guitar solos. i think the only thing i'd question is the slide fills during the verse. i don't know how well they fit. love the tremelo--especially at the end of the song. C JoGo--how i'd like to hear a 1920 kalamazoo guitar! i couldn't open the link. (550/.public/MAJIK.mp3: No such file or directory) that's all for now. bruce.