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Anderton

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  1. 10 Tips for Computer-Based Songwriting Speed thrills—especially when you need to be creative by Craig Anderton A lot of songwriters will tell you that you can’t write songs with a computer—given how much time it takes to get a program open and recording, it’s better just to pick up a guitar and record into a smart phone or whatever to catch the inspiration before it goes away. But there are ways to make a computer a partner in the songwriting process, not an adversary—like the following. Use a solid-state boot drive so your DAW can open as quickly as possible. Choose an audio interface with enough inputs so you don’t have to re-patch. I’m close to filling up 20 audio inputs, but almost any instrument or mic I need is always available. Open your browser to an online rhyming dictionary. I use Rhymezone.com, and it has been invaluable in helping to write lyrics faster. What's more, many DAWs have a notepad function where you can jot down ideas. Don’t waste time trying to find the right tempo. Learn how to access a DAW’s Tap Tempo function, and use that to set the song tempo. With Windows, use the Task Manager to disable any unneeded startup programs. Take advantage of interface applets. Your interface will probably have an application to store routings, so create one that’s optimized for songwriting within your DAW. Create a meaningful startup project. It’s surprising how many people use the default template that ships with a program. I have a “songwriting” template project with virtual drums, an electric guitar input channel with clean/crunchy/lead amps (I bypass all but the one I’m using), acoustic guitar input channel, several mics, bass input channel, metronome with count-in enabled, and a few keyboards. All the guitar channels have tuner plug-ins. The object here is to have a “support system” for your songwriting activities. Color-code and use pictures as much as possible. Track icons are great, because it’s easier to parse an image of a bass headstock than read 24 channels of text to find the bass. Color is also useful in zeroing in on particular tracks. Take advantage of a DAW’s random access, non-linear nature. Songwriting is not always a linear process; you may come up with some great chorus, outro, or lead line first. Go ahead and record it - it doesn’t matter where on the timeline you record. You may even find that by fleshing out a chorus fairly completely, it’s easier to come up with a verse. Change strings at the end of a session. It’s a buzzkill to pick up a guitar and want to record, only to find out the strings sound kind of dull and won’t stay in tune. Finally, remember that songwriting is different than tracking/mixing. The object is to move as fast as possible before the inspiration goes away—not edit and tweak. Consider all parts as placeholders that will eventually be replaced, and that way you won't feel the need to agonize over them. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  2. Summer NAMM 2017 - Show Report Hot city, warm people, cool gear by Craig Anderton and Team HC This year, the Summer NAMM show in Nashville woke up. Or maybe the industry woke up and NAMM was the beneficiary but either way, this was the most upbeat Summer NAMM in years. Attendance on Saturday’s “Industry Day,” when NAMM opens its doors to the public, was up 26% over last year—and a lot of those attendees were in the under-30 demographic (no, they don’t spend all their time on Facebook). The following picture shows only a little less than the left half of the exhibit hall, as viewed from the Mezzanine where Taylor and Fender had meeting and demo rooms. The rows went up to row 1700. Reverb.com sponsored an outdoor stage where there was pretty much non-stop entertainment. The band here was called "Middle Ground." The concerts were well attended, to say the least. See that little black rectangle in the lower left? That was the stage. The audience was between there and the front of the picture. NAMM also became a lot more user-friendly. The NAMM smartphone app was great—you could have it tell you where to go, remind you of appointments, give you a listing of seminars, and more. There were Whisperbooths scattered around the show that companies could book to demo products without the noise of the show floor. GREAT idea!!!!! The overall presentation and graphics were much more modern, and it was easy to find your way around. The TEC Tracks seminars (with one given by yours truly on songwriting with computers) brought more pro audio into the show, defying the “Summer NAMM is only about guitars” conventional wisdom. Of course, NAMM’s primary purpose is to serve manufacturers and retailers, so there were lots of seminars on improving business, using social media for promotion, and the like at NAMM’s “Idea Center”... ...as well as dealer/retailer-oriented events. And Nashville’s convention center, now a few years old, has a spacious, modern feel to it that was very different from the NAMM shows of yesteryear. This shot is looking down at the NAMM store from the mezzanine. However you’re reading this to find out about gear, so let’s check out product world. But where to start...well, this report is about the highlights. For more information and details on All Things Summer NAMM, go to the Summer NAMM 2017 forum in the Show Reports section, where the HC team has been posting pictures and descriptions - and we still have a lot more to cover there, so make sure you check back periodically over the next few days. Meanwhile, here are some of the cool goodies, in no particular order. Imagine a “Build-A-Bear” workshop for guitars—that’s what Guitar Build Workshop is all about. For $600, you spend a day building a custom guitar and are taught how to sand, stain, wire up the electronics, add the components, and so on—with the end result being a high-quality, playable guitar when you go home. Yamaha showed their Session Cake, a stackable set of analog mixing modules so people can jam together on headphones. There’s a mic module (blue), a line/guitar module (red), and you can have up to eight modules total. Sadly, JamHub’s doors are now closed...but this will help keep the concept of informal, inexpensive practicing and jamming alive. People with fretted instruments all need to keep strings in tune, and there were two interesting tuning products at the show. Peterson—which is pretty much the gold standard in tuners anyway—introduced their StroboClip HD clip-on strobe tuner, and yes, it’s a real Peterson Strobe tuner that even offers 50 sweetened tunings. Meanwhile, the Cling On tuner doesn’t clip on to your guitar; you stick a dime-sized magnet on the back of your headstock (removable with dental floss), and the tuner sticks to the magnet and sits hidden between your machine heads unless you swing it out temporarily for better visibility, as shown below. You can buy extra magnets, which means you can use one tuner for multiple instruments; the tunings handle guitar, bass, chromatic, ukulele, and violin. Artiphone was at the show in 2015, and they’re back with a fully-realized version of their guitar-like controller called Instrument 1. It does slides and pitch bends, handles MPE, is ergonomically pretty cool, and lets guitarists use their existing “muscle memory” to control synths. I’m still figuring out how the right-hand technique works, but the company’s in Nashville so I’m going to follow up with a visit. I was quite impressed. Now let's move along to more conventional guitars, and start out with the usual NAMM stand presentation: A bunch of guitars, all lined up in a row, intended to make showgoers drool. We'll start with Martin... ...then slide on over to Peavey... ...Breedlove... ...Kiesel... ...we wanted to see Brad Paisley introduce his signature guitar for Fender, the Brad Paisley Road Worn Telecaster, but didn't have time to deal with all the people in our way. So here's a photo from the press release...we're not really sitting in Brad Paisley's home. And of course, Gibson didn't have to go very far to get its guitars from the factory to the NAMM show floor... Gibson also showed acoustic guitars from the Montana factory. Thankfully, they were not sent via United Airlines. Just sayin.' Epiphone was showing new basses in the Masterbilt series. I always like how the 50s live forever with Supro. These are just cool-looking guitars. Cole Clark says "Dare to sound different." So I guess McPherson guitars would say "dare to look different." And of course, you can't have electric guitars without amps (well you can, but why?). Positive Grid had their amp head that not only looks cool, there's an app for editing it. It can also do profiling-type stuff. The BOSS Katana-Mini Guitar Amp was a big hit. Actually I guess technically speaking it was a small hit...you get what I mean. It makes a lot of noise for a small box. But BOSS didn't have the "little amp" world to themselves. ZT's lunchbox amps have been around for a while, but their latest is the smallest yet. And if you just want straight-ahead amps, you had plenty of choices as well...like Egnater, Bullhead Amplification, and 3rd Power. Unplug from ToneWoodAmp is truly novel. It takes your acoustic guitar's output, and feeds it into a box that mounts on the back of your guitar and produces several different "acoustic" effects - no need to plug into an amp, although there is an output jack if you want to do so. It made some pretty interesting sounds. Need more than just an amp? Elite Acoustics showed the D6-8, which is a sound system with six inputs, monitor, Bluetooth, and effects. Here's something I wasn't expecting...TransZformer "channel strips" for guitar and bass from API that are equally happy on stage or in the studio. Of course, there were plenty of effects...check out the Summer NAMM Orgy of Pedals thread in the Summer NAMM 2017 forum. But the one that kinda blew my mind was the Mothership 2 from Pigtronix. It tracks your guitar and does hard sync-type effects that are spot-on and if played appropriately, highly disturbing - and I mean that in a good way. Amazingly, you can read about guitars, amps, and effects in places other than Harmony Central! Guitar Player and Premier Guitar magazines were at the show. Okay, that's enough guitars for now so let's move along...but don't miss the thread in the Summer NAMM 2017 show report forum on the Boutique Guitar Showcase. The thread is basically a photo essay of some truly drool-worthy custom guitars. We hear a lot about people “cutting the cable.” But we still use cables live and in the studio, and I’m a sucker for simple solutions that don’t cost much, which brings us to Cable Porter and Groupies. Cable Porter makes it easy to hold cables, use only a certain length of the cable, and hang them up for storage. Meanwhile, the Killer-Q company says "all musicians should have groupies" and Groupie Cord Solution is at least one way to accomplish that goal. Groupie slips over an XLR connector, but is elastic so once on, it can’t fall off. It not only makes it easy to hold a coiled cable in place, but because it can slide anywhere along the cable length, it’s also good for corralling parallel cables at a gig and/or holding the mic cable to a stand. At four for $11, these are not expensive groupies and they also come with various patterns. But wait! There's more in cable-land - in the form of the Chi Hoop, which attaches to your guitar's strap post and holds the guitar cable in place so it doesn't fall out of your jack (or worse yet, damage your guitar when you step on your cable). People say Summer NAMM is a “guitar show,” but while that was more the case at one time, there’s a much bigger product mix and pedal manufacturers were well-represented. Check out the “Pedal Orgy” photo thread in the Summer NAMM 2017 forum, but a major pedal highlight was Roland introducing a 40th Anniversary "boxed set" with vintage reproductions of the Spectrum SP-1, Overdrive OD-1, and Phaser PH-1 BOSS pedals. The set sells for $899.99—but that’s a lot less than finding the originals (if you even can) on Reverb.com or eBay. What’s more, it’s a limited edition with serial numbers. Let’s also check out the cool video about these from Sweetwater’s Mitch Gallagher . The electrorganic aFrame controller from ATV is a highly seductive percussion instrument with its own sounds (it’s not a controller for other drums). Dendy was totally taken by it; then again, he’s a drummer. But I’m not a drummer, and was totally taken by it as well. The sounds are really sweet and versatile, and the finesse with which you can control the sounds is exceptional. Here's a shot of the electronics underneath the surface. Yeah, we’re owned by the same parent company, but we’d be doing you a disservice if we didn’t mention the buzz around Epiphone’s SL-series guitars. Why the buzz? They have an MSRP of $199, sell for as low as $99, but the big surprise is they’re very playable and sound really good. There was a constant stream of people checking them out; it's a toss-up whether that or the Gibson Custom Shop Modern Double Cut Standard got more attention for Gibson at the show. There’s no better environment to convince people of the need for hearing protection than a NAMM show. Oh, you didn’t hear me? I said THERE’S NO BETTER ENVIRONMENT TO CONVINCE PEOPLE OF THE NEED FOR HEARING PROTECTION THAN A NAMM SHOW. So, Crescendo was showing their line of products for hearing protection. Better to aid your hearing now than have a hearing aid later. In addition to Etymotic, which is a constant at NAMM shows and has been offering a variety of musicians' ear protection for years, Earasers was also there. The interest in ukuleles shows no sign of slowing down, and I have a theory that the upswing in acoustic guitar sales is due to people progressing beyond ukulele—the new “starter guitar,” as opposed to the previous $99 nylon-string guitar—and moving up a level. Anyway, you could find books with lessons on ukulele... ...or visit Kala, and check out their U-Bass, Ukadelic, and other innovative ukuleles... ...as well as see what's happening with Saga, and the many other ukulele companies. And not that this has anything to do with ukuleles, but what’s ex-David Bowie guitarist Reeves Gabrels doing these days? Touring with The Cure. Here he is hanging out with Ray Maxwell from Eventide. And speaking of Eventide, in addition to their amazing Fission plug-in and other hardware, the company has gotten into Eurorack modules with the Euro DDL, a pretty trippy little delay. And Eventide wasn't the only company with hardware. Audified unveiled a 500-series hardware reverb called the Synergy R1 (available soon from Eleven Dimensions Media). Even on the show floor, it sounded really smooth and natural. Of course, no show is complete without a wall of Marshall amplifiers. Spinal Tap lives! And when Spinal Tap plays “Big Bottom,” now they can play the ideal bass - a double-neck from HJC Customs. The single-neck ones are quite cool too, and well-crafted Of course Summer NAMM is in Nashville, so it's probably not surprising the convention has an exhibit for the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame with various artifacts associated with the iconic songs that put country music on the map. You can see the guitar Richard Leigh used to write “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue"... ...a letter from Hank Williams to his publisher (the music business hasn't changed much)... ...and several first drafts of famous songs—it was interesting to see what changed between the initial inspiration and final piece of music. Here’s the first draft of “The House that Built Me.” Moving right along, I'm not that blown away by wind instruments, probably because I don't play any except blues harp. But wind players have problems too, and one of them is sax straps slipping, as well as difficulty in switching instruments. The Killer Quick-Release Saxophone Strap solves those problems, and it costs under $20. As to harmonicas, Summer NAMM had the first practical truly electric harmonica - the Harmonicaster. Here's the backside, where you slip in the harmonica. Harmonicas for the system are available in different keys, and cost about $60. Here's one being inserted. I always think of Universal Audio in terms of their plug-ins, and sometimes forget that they got their start with hardware. They brought the OX Amp Top Box to the show, which is a load box with cabinet emulation. It doesn’t use IRs, but instead implements their acclaimed analog-level emulation. Want to get your “tone” at levels that don’t approach the sonic overload of NAMM? Here ya go. Yes, there were keyboards at NAMM. Arturia’s inexpensive KeyLab Essential controllers ($249 for 49 keys, $299 for 61 keys) were a hit... ...particularly because of the bundled Analog Lab software that’s a sort of “greatest hits” of Arturia’s virtual instruments. Casio had two new electric pianos. The Privia PX-870 costs under a grand (the PX-770 is similar but lacks some features and costs less), has 88 keys, USB recording, and a bunch of other features. Arguably the best feature is that its built-in amplification sounded really good, even on the NAMM show floor. Summer NAMM 2017 isn’t even close to a DJ show, but there was some DJ gear. This compact DJ setup from JD Sound, Monster Go DJ Plus, looked really small until... ....you put it next to the Monster Go DJ pocket-sized setup. And there were a lot more pro audio companies exhibiting, like Edwards Audio with their hand-made, vacuum-tube preamps. Speaking of tubes, you could also see Useful Arts Audio's FP-60 microphone preamp. The Zylia mic isn't new, but this was the first time at Summer NAMM. It's a multi-track microphone with software that's claimed to be able to separate instruments into individual tracks for mixing. It also has a cool "Death Star" look, although I don't think Darth Vader was into multitrack recording. Bettermaker showed their Mastering Limiter, which mates analog circuitry with digital control so it can look like a plug-in when editing in a DAW. And there was lots more pro audio, as well as lots of other products...be sure to check out the Summer NAMM 2017 forum for more. As to Summer NAMM in general, anyone who didn't come away wanting to pick up and start playing their guitar, piano, drums, ukulele, mic, or whatever their instrument of choice may be needs a reality check. Sure, NAMM was about new products...but it was also about the tools & toys we use to make music, and that's always inspirational. Welcome back, Summer NAMM...we missed you. Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  3. Recording FM Synthesizers It's not the technology's fault that FM was overused in the 80s - and it deserves a second chance by Craig Anderton When FM synths came on the scene in the mid ’80s, their bright, digital sound stood in stark contrast to their analog ancestors. Analog recording still reigned, and the DX7’s clarity was a fine complement to the warmth of analog tape (maybe it’s not a coincidence that analog synths made a comeback as the crossfade into digital recording occurred). If you’re getting back into FM, or re-discovering its joys for the first time, here are some tips on how to get the best recorded sound. Don’t have an FM synth? Maybe you do . . . we’ll also cover some popular soft synths that have enough FM capabilities to get you started. SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER FM synthesis was very popular in “new age” type recordings, often providing bell and Rhodes-type sounds in a track with acoustic guitar, percussion, etc. However, when recorded direct with instruments that had room ambience—even trace amounts—it sounded somehow “wrong” because its ambience didn’t match up. I like to insert four delay lines in the synth's audio track set to short, prime numbers (e.g., 17, 19, 23, and 29 ms) with no pre-delay to create a sense of room ambience, even if it’s going to feed “room” reverb through an aux bus. The emulated “room sound” helps the synth blend in better with acoustic tracks (or samples that were recorded with room ambience). DISTORTION? SAY WHAT? Want a really cutting “lead guitar” sound that will not just jump out of a track, but make guitar players green with envy? FM’s basic sound generator is the sine wave, which just happens to distort beautifully. This is because it has very few harmonics, so adding distortion doesn’t create the screeching highs that normally make listeners dive for their earplugs. However, sine waves by themselves are b-o-r-i-n-g, so most FM synth patches (with the possible exception of lame flute programs) add more operators to produce a more complex, interesting sound. We don’t want that. Fig. 1 shows a basic fun-with-distortion patch, using Native Instruments’ FM8. Fig. 1: This extremely simple FM7 patch works very well in conjunction with subsequent distortion. I stripped the FM8's Glassy E-Piano patch down to two operators, D and F (you could of course use any two operators). F is set to a frequency ratio of 1.0000, and D to 2.000. D’s output modulates operator F and also feeds the audio output (the latter is optional), but note that it uses an amplitude envelope to fade in . Both operators also receive a little LFO to simulate a guitar’s finger vibrato, controlled via mod wheel. When you press a key, operator F supplies the fundamental. Then the “feedback” octave higher component from operator D fades in over time—tasty! The output then goes through the distortion plug-in of your choice; I favor multi-band distortion, as described in the article The Guitarist's Guide to Multiband Distortion. FUN WITH PANNING Many FM synths offer interesting panning options. For example, the FM8 can pan each operator output anywhere in the stereo field. Yamaha’s ancient TX81Z (still wonderful if you can find one used) can pan notes in the stereo field based on note value (e.g., lower notes show up on the left, and higher notes on the right), velocity, or LFO frequency. These options help create more interesting stereo imaging. YOUR SECRET FM SYNTH Want to experiment with FM? You may already have some soft synths with FM capabilities. Usually this involves dual-oscillator architectures, where the output of one oscillator (the modulator) modulates the other oscillator (the carrier). You generally listen to the carrier output, and control the modulator’s level via envelope, mod wheel, etc. to adjust the amount of the FM effect. Synths I’ve used that allow for at least some form of FM include Arturia Moog Modular V, and Cakewalk's z3ta+ (as well as Cakewalk PSYNE). So what are you waiting for? Get ready for the FM synthesis revival! -HC- ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  4. Guitar Pickups – What You Need to Know Looking for a good pickup line? by Craig Anderton They’re just wire and magnets, right? Well…yes, but there’s a lot more to the story than that. A pickup change can give an entirely different sound and vibe, but you need to understand what goes into making pickups so you can choose the right solution for the sound you want. So, let’s examine what makes a pickup a pickup, and what these various elements mean to you. MAGNETS AND TONE Different magnets have different strengths, which interact differently with strings and therefore produce different tones. Alnico and ceramic are the two magnet types used in traditional pickups. Pickups with Alnico II magnets strike a balance between warmth and brightness. Their “vintage” sound has a sweet midrange, without high frequency brittleness. Alnico II was used in the original PAF pickups, which are best known for a smooth, “singing” tone when overdriven. Gibson's Burstbucker pickups use Alnico V magnets, which give a more "aggressive" sound than the "sweeter" Alnico II magnets used in PAF-type pickups. Alnico V magnets are stronger and have both more bass and treble than Alnico II types. This gives a somewhat edgier, more aggressive tone associated with metal and hard rock, as well as more clarity with high-gain amps. Ceramic magnets are generally the strongest magnet type, which leads to brighter pickups with a tight, instead of warm, low end. They retain clarity and articulation even with heavy distortion, and typically have high output levels. They are also less expensive to manufacture than metallic magnets. Most guitarists consider ceramic magnets less suitable for clean tones than Alnico magnets. OUTPUT LEVELS Some pickups are “hotter” than others. A hotter output will drive tube amps and some pedal inputs harder, thus giving more potential overdrive. Output levels are less relevant with amps, effects, and audio interfaces that have their own input gain controls. HUMBUCKER VS. SINGLE-COIL Humbucker pickups are known not just for their resistance to hum, but their warm, beefy sound. Single-coil pickups (so called because humbuckers have two pickup coils) have a bright, somewhat “glassier” sound and are more susceptible to hum. All Gibson pickups except the P90 are humbucker types. (Although the P90 is technically a single-coil pickup, it is more resistant to hum and has a fatter, more aggressive sound than conventional single-coil types.) The Mini-Humbucker has an interesting background - it was made specifically for guitarists who wanted to replace P90 single-coil pickups, which are smaller than standard humbuckers, with a pickup that had humbucking properties. However, by switching out one of the coils, a humbucker can give a single-coil sound. Guitars often include knobs with a switch that can change the humbucker sound to a single-coil sound. If a pickup is specified as using a “four-conductor cable,” that means that each coil can be wired separately, thus allowing for coil splitting. A humbucker with two-conductor cable means that you can’t convert it into a humbucker without breaking the connection between the two coils—doable for solderheads, but not necessarily fun. HUMBUCKER COILS While researching this article (translation: talking to people who know more about this stuff than I do), I found out several interesting aspects of Gibson pickups that relate to the coils used in humbuckers. The Gibson 490 pickup is available in the "zebra" color scheme that first appeared in the 60s. Note the four-conductor cable that allows the coils to be split for more of a single-coil sound. First, consider the “zebra” look where a pickup has one black and one cream-colored bobbin. There is no sonic significance to this; one day back in the 60s the Gibson factory ran low on black bobbins, and because the pickups had covers and the company figured no one would see the bobbins or care, they just alternated cream-colored ones with the black ones. Another is that back in the day, the pickup winding machines weren’t exactly precision devices, so sometimes coils would have more or less turns than others. This is why some people found particular pickups, even if they were the same model (in theory), to have “magical” properties. Gibson analyzed these and found that pickups people liked for being “hotter” were overwound (i.e., had more turns) compared to other pickups. The top coil is the “screws” coil, and the bottom oil is the “slugs” coil. The tape wrapped around the coils helps protect them, especially if you’re not using pickup covers. Also, if the coil surrounding the pole piece screws has fewer windings than the coil surrounding the slug, the pickup will more of a single-coil sound. So to get a balanced sound, it’s actually necessary to overwind the screws coil so that neither coil dominates. GOING TO POT One problem with early pickups was microphonic response, where sound from an amp would interact with the pickup’s windings to cause “squeals.” Potting the pickup with wax to fill in all the air gaps helps to minimize any kind of microphonic interaction. DC RESISTANCE DC resistance is a common pickup specification that correlates to the number of windings in a pickup coil. This affects output and frequency response somewhat, with higher resistances in theory meaning a little higher output and a slightly duller sound. However, in practice most DC resistance comparisons are meaningless because pickups use different manufacturing techniques that make much more of a difference than DC resistance. Where DC resistance does matter is with two pickups that are identical in all other aspect except the coil windings. PICKUP AND STRING INTERACTION Let’s close with the age-old question: How far should pickups be from the strings? Although the conventional wisdom is “closer to pickups = more level, further from pickups = less level,” there’s much more to the story than that…and there’s an entire article on the subject right here on Harmony Central, so check it out for the complete rundown. Pickups remain controversial, because they’re actually pretty complicated critters from a physics standpoint so they’re quite nuanced. Hopefully we’ve covered the important info that can help you better understand what pickups are all about. Note: All photos are courtesy Gibson Brands and used with permission. Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  5. Craig’s List - Music Deities of the Ancients Ancient astronauts? That’s soooo passé! Let’s set the wayback machine to ancient Greece and Rome, and discover the real roots of electronic music by Craig Anderton 1. Casio, the father of Casiopeia, displeased Zeus by cross-breeding a calculator with a musical instrument—and was forced to cross the river Styx (“Come Sail Away”) for banishment in the underworld. But there he befriended the demigod Synthesus, who taught Casio the true meaning of keyboards. Disguising himself as a calculator/watch, Casio eluded the guards, escaped, and in tribute to his master, vowed never again to create a synthesizer that could be useful while shopping for groceries. 2. Maximus was the Roman god of tastelessness, B-movies, and excessive noise levels. But the gods, tired of his yelling, wagered that Maximus could not create a sound louder than Heavius Metallus. If Maximus lost the wager, he would have to wed Minimus the Radio Shack loudspeaker—but the clever Maximus stole the secret of excessive multiband maximizing from Dynamicus. To this day, bad mastering on pop tunes reminds us that unfortunately, Maximus won the wager. 3. Chorus was the sister of Hydra but instead of having multiple heads, had a single head with multiple voices. She would have been but a footnote in mythology had the Sirens not tried to use the sweet sound of Chorus to ensnare Ulysses. Legend says Ulysses had himself tied to his ship’s mast to avoid the sirens’ lure, but according to contemporaneous accounts from Eudemus of Rhodes (not to be confused with Eudemus of Fender Rhodes), Chorus’s battery died at an inopportune moment. 4. Modulus, the nephew of Synthesus, was the most powerful of the ancient gods because of his ability to incorporate all the powers of the other gods. But he became boastful and incurred the wrath of Zeus—who punished Modulus by letting him keep his powers, but allowed them to be manifested only by untangling an infinitely huge collection of tangled patch cords. However, Modulus extracted his vengeance by marrying Medusa—whose hair, contrary to myth, consisted not of snakes but 1/4" cables. 5. Little is known about Tremulus, the first of the effects gods, who controlled the cycles of loudness and softness. To make matters worse he was often confused with his brother Vibratus, the god of the cycles of sharpness and flatness. Their constant bickering (along with getting Athena seriously plastered one night) caused the gods to curse them to forever being confused with each other. Even today, you still hear guitarists invoke the name of Tremulus when describing pitch-bending guitar tailpieces. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  6. Sweetwater's GearFest 2017 Sweetwater sure knows how to throw a party by Craig Anderton I wouldn’t miss this show for anything. Yeah, it’s about gear…but it’s also a 100% musician-centric social event, in an accommodating, friendly environment that encourages interaction among people, performers, manufacturers—all facilitated by the ever-courteous and helpful Sweetwater staff. How courteous? Courtesy cart drivers logged about 250 miles shuttling people to and from their cars, and free bottled water was everywhere to make sure attendees stayed hydrated during Indiana’s hot Summer days. Some people say “Fort Wayne, Indiana? It’s in the middle of nowhere!” Ah, but it’s indeed in the middle—within striking distance of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Lansing, etc. However, GearFest’s notoriety has spread far and wide, and now people fly in from literally all over the country, and increasingly, countries outside the USA. So that’s why this year, GearFest topped over 14,000 guests, and 15,000 people total. Yes, 15,000—more than the attendance at the 2016 Summer NAMM show. But the shows are quite different. NAMM is about dealers and writing business; GearFest is all about the public, making music, workshops, concerts, and offering deals on gear. 500 vendors set up displays in 100,000 square feet of tent space, and more manufacturers are using GearFest to introduce new products. This shows just a fraction of the total number of tents. Sweetwater really stepped up their social media game this year, and there's no way I can duplicate the massive coverage on Facebook - so search on #gearfest2017, and you'll get lots of photos. But what you might not get is the flavor of the event, and that's what I'll try to convey. Friday morning brought a heavy rainstorm (1 -3/4 inches!), and there were concerns it would drive people away. But the storms cleared around noon, and weather was great for the rest of GearFest. Over the past few years, there's been an increase in concerts. A couple years back Sweetwater added an amphitheater, which was the main venue. Despite being outdoors, the sound system was crystal-clear. The headliners were Eric Johnson... ...and Dweezil Zappa... The "Sweetwater All-Stars" also played as part of Customer Appreciation night, and yes, Chuck Surack can really play sax...the dude is good. You could also see performers all over the place, like Robben Ford and Andy Timmons. Even going for lunch meant you'd probably run into people of interest, like (left to right) guitarist Carl Verheyen, engineer Chris Lord-Alge, and Sweetwater Editorial Director Mitch Gallagher. And speaking of lunch, there were food trucks by the Amphitheater... ...as well as Sweetwater's "Downbeat Diner"... ...and a Starbucks-like coffee and snacks zone. I highly recommend the Mocha Latte The dining area was always packed. Sweetwater is the only place I've been where there's a slide to get from the second floor to the first floor. It's faster than stairs...and who needs elevators! One of the more popular features of GearFest is free guitar re-stringings. The team of luthiers re-strung over 750 instruments. Of course, the giveaways are always popular! This year Sweetwater gave away $55,000 worth of prizes. GearFest has tons of workshops, from beginner to expert. Some were done by Sweetwater people; Mitch Gallagher's workshop on guitar tone is always popular. Others were done by people such as yours truly, who came to GearFest to present a variety of workshops in various venues scattered throughout the Sweetwater campus. Sweetwater has three conference halls, with dividers so they can be separated into 3 individual halls, or 2+1, or 1 big hall. Here are the attendees in the left half of the hall prior to my workshop on making recorded vocals sound better. By the way, my workshops were recorded, so hopefully they'll be posted on the Harmony Central YouTube channel before too long. However music education is also ongoing at Sweetwater, it doesn't just happen during GearFest. GearFest is also about fun...people love to pose in front of the stack of Marshalls. Unlike Van Halen concerts from the mid-80s, these aren't cardboard but the real thing But of course, this was indeed GearFest, and Sweetwater carries a bazillion different products. And even though Sweetwater is known primarily as an online retailer, they have a fully equipped store. However what got the most attention for shoppers is the annual GearFest "Deal Zone," with major discounts. I picked up a pair of Auralex MoPAD-XL speaker isolators for $25; Shure SM58 mics were going for $58. And yes, Sweetwater does merch. You can also look at the warehouse from an overlook. It's not the Grand Canyon, but it's pretty darn big. There's even a graphic with stats...just in case you wondered about the warehouse's size (it's 4,500,000 cubic feet). But of course, most of you are here for the gear porn...so let's rock, starting with a huge Moog modular system that Keith Emerson used. Moog also had a "pop-up" factory...cool concept. GearFest always has some overachieving famous drum sets, like this one from Eric Singer of Kiss. Terry Bozzio's DW kit was also off the hook. Native Instruments was showing off their latest and greatest. And yes, the rumors are true: Propellerheads' Reason now supports VST plug-ins. My favorite new product at the show was TC-Helicon's Perform VE, a really clever voice morpher/sampler/manipulator. The best part is when you sing into it, Perform VE recognizes the pitch and maps it across your sampler. I don't know of any other sampler that does this. You can always count on Novation to show off a bunch of nifty stuff. And as you would expect, Gibson Brands was well-represented, both for guitars and pro audio. In particular, the new KRK V-Series speakers, new Stanton turntables, and the Neat mics got a lot of attention. And everyone loves the Gibson tour buses. DPA had some very accurate and unobtrusive instrument mics, along with a tiny audio interface that's smaller than a hockey puck. DPA also had a new hand-held, dynamic mic for live performance. In the true spirit of gear porn, they were kind enough to disassemble it for me. Cloud showed their new Cloudlifter Zi that gives much more flexibility in terms of choosing impedance. The Crumar Mojo-61 is a very cool clonewheel, where the two "manuals" can talk to each other. Torpedo was showing their load boxes and attenuators - they still seem to be a pretty well-kept secret, but they do indeed give you full guitar amp tone at whatever volume you want. Nektar had their line of keyboard controllers...helpful when you want hands-on control over your DAW. Of course there was much more gear, but there's info on Sweetwater's site about what was new at GearFest. And finally, Dendy brought the Harmony Central Airstream up to GearFest, where a ton of people joined up as HC members and also, signed up for the newsletter (which now has a circulation of over 66,000 - a big thank-you to all of you who subscribed!). By the way, no - he's not doing a lobster imitation, It's just what happens when you sit out the sun all day, spreading the word about HC to the GearFesters. The dates for next year's GearFest have already been set for June 15 and 16, 2018. It seems like for this year, Sweetwater was pretty much bumping up against their capacity for crowds on this level - but I overheard several discussions about how Sweetwater planned to accommodate the inevitable increase in attendance next year. Maybe they'll just buy the state of Indiana, and be done with it. In any event, GearFest is very, very cool...as anyone who's attended will tell you. If you haven't been there, plan to check it out next year. And if you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Kudos to Sweetwater for putting on such a professional, fun, well-run, and positive musician-friendly free event. -HC- ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  7. IK Multimedia iRig Pro I/O Universal Audio Interface Multi-platform mobile just got easier by Craig Anderton What? Another interface from IK Multimedia? Yes, but this costs more and does more, starting with Mac/Windows/iOS/Android compatibility, hardware MIDI I/O, and overcoming Apple’s Lightning interface limitations. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW A Neutrik combo connector handles 1/4” mono or XLR plugs. Separate MIDI in and out 1/8” stereo connectors patch to included adapter cables for use with 5-pin DIN MIDI devices. The 1/8” stereo output with associated volume control drives headphones or line inputs. You can use your fave analog headphones with an iOS Lightning device (!). There’s switchable +48V phantom power for the mic, and unlike some other interfaces I’ve tested, this really does deliver +48V so it can make any condenser mic happy. A DC in power jack for the optional iRig PSU 3A power supply ($39.99) lets you charge your Lightning-compatible iOS device and monitor audio through standard 1/8” headphones—so your recording time is not limited by the phone’s charge. Nor do you need Apple’s Lightning Dock (also $39.99), which does not exactly represent Apple’s finest hour (see the user reviews on Apple’s site). The audio quality is excellent. iRig Pro I/O uses a discrete-component preamp with “front-panel” gain control, 24-bit kHz conversion, and credible converters. A firmware update adds 96 kHz recording to the native 44.1/48 kHz native sample rates. Two LEDs change colors based on what’s happening; one indicates phantom power and MIDI activity, the other power and audio level. For example, the Power/Audio Level LED is dark blue when connected and on standby, bright blue when active, green when it senses signal level, orange for optimum signal level, and red for “turn the input gain down.” According to IK, the red phantom power LED blinks when the battery runs low. However, the batteries never got low enough during testing to verify this. The package consists of the unit itself, two batteries, the aforementioned MIDI cables, and cables that mate the unit’s multipin connector with USB or Lightning connectors (in other words, don’t lose the cables—you won’t find replacements at Best Buy). iRig Pro I/O is bus-powered with computers; the two AA batteries (included) are needed to pass audio with iOS and Android devices. For Android, your phone or tablet needs to be running Android OS 5 or later with USB digital audio capabilities, and you’ll also need an optional-at-extra-cost Micro-USB-OTG to Mini-DIN cable ($29.99). Like most IK products, registering gets you free software. For iPad/iPhone/iPod devices, there’s AmpliTube CS (with four additional amp models), VocaLive FREE, SampleTank CS (with 68 sounds total), and iGrand Piano FREE. All of these are expandable at extra cost. For the Mac and Windows, you get expandable versions of AmpliTube Metal with Custom Shop, SampleTank 3 SE, and T-RackS Classic mixing and mastering suite with four effects processors. Although iRig Pro I/O doesn’t support older 30-pin iOS devices, it’s compatible with iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5, iPod touch 6th generation, iPod touch 5th generation, iPad Pro (12.9-inch), iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini, and iPad 4th generation. iOS 6 or later is required. LIMITATIONS The input jack is mono XLR/TS only. The maximum preamp gain is 47 dB—not enough for ribbon mics that want 65 dB to 70 dB. If it’s crucial to use particular ribbon mics with iRig Pro I/O, try before you buy. IK recommends the ASIO4ALL driver with Windows, which sometimes works well, and sometimes not. Thankfully, I tried iRig Pro I/O with Cakewalk SONAR using Windows 10’s WASAPI Shared mode, and it worked fine—with latency very close (10 - 15 ms) to what you can obtain with ASIO4ALL when it’s working properly, so problem solved. However I couldn't get iRig Pro I/O working with WASAPI Exclusive mode, which gives around 7 ms latency. There's no free software for Android. CONCLUSIONS There’s no question iRig Pro I/O is a well-designed piece of gear from both an audio and compatibility standpoint. I love that it overcomes the limitation Apple imposed on the iPhone where everything has to be done through the Lightning connector—even though it will cost you another $39.99 for the power supply. With Windows, the lack of dedicated drivers means you’re stuck with installing ASIO4ALL—but the ability to work with WASAPI Shared mode is a more universal, Windows-friendly, and forwards-thinking solution. iRig Pro I/O has a lot going for it. The unit itself is light but rugged, with a slightly “rubberized” feel. It’s compact, reasonably priced, and solves several issues when you want high-quality, mobile interfacing. I’ve yet to see something this compact, at this price, that delivers true phantom power and hardware MIDI I/O. When you need to throw an audio interface into your backpack, iRig Pro I/O works as advertised, gets the job done, and is painless to set up—it’s a winner for mobile recording and playback. Resources iRig Pro I/O landing page iRig Pro I/O is available from: IK Multimedia B&H Guitar Center Musician's Friend IK Multimedia Introduction Video Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  8. Debunking Preamp Myths Don’t believe everything you hear . . . by Craig Anderton Preamps—like mics, speakers, and music business lawyers—are shrouded in mystery. They provide that all-importrant link between a mechanical transducer, such as a mic or guitar pickup, and the circuitry that follows it, like a mixer or computer audio interface. Buying expensive mic preamps for a home studio used to be considered outlandish. But as the cost of recording has nose-dived, more disposable income has been freed up for devices like monitor speakers, mics, preamps, and other accessories. Furthermore, with many “owner-operator” studios where instruments are recorded one at a time, you need only one good quality preamp. (If you need to mic a drum set, you can always use the good preamp on part of the kit and the ones in your mixer for the other tracks.) Preamps range from cheapo tube models to audiophile devices that costs thousands of dollars and sound like electronic silk. People get very passionate about their preamps, but that’s because there are distinct, subtle differences among the various types that even those without golden ears can hear. However, as with most “golden ear” topics, there’s a lot of mythology surrounding preamps—some of it true, some of it half-true, and some of it flat out wrong. Let’s sort out fact from the fiction. A preamp has to use a Class A amp design to sound any good. A Class A amplifier, where one or more transistors are conducting current all the time, is theoretically capable of the lowest amount of distortion. Class B amplifier configurations, which are more common, use separate transistors to conduct a waveform’s positive and negative portions. They got a bad rep because in their formative years, there would be delays as the signal switched back and forth between the two transistors, thus leaving a “notch” in the waveform. (Class A/B amps tried to fix this by overlapping the conduction, but this wasn’t always an ideal solution.) However, modern Class B circuits can be designed with no audible, and often no significantly measurable, distortion; and they save energy because they don’t dissipate the amount of power Class A circuits require. Still, when only the best will do you can’t go wrong with a good Class A design. The higher the impedance with guitar, the better. This is true only with passive pickups, and then only if you add “up to a certain point.” An excessively high impedance is more likely to pick up hum, noise, and other interference. Usually, an impedance of 500kΩ to 2MΩ is more than sufficient to avoid loading down a guitar with passive pickups. (Note that mics with built-in preamps and guitars with active electronics are relatively unaffected by the input impedance of subsequent stages.) High impedance is the only way to go with guitar. Not always. Lower impedances reduce a passive pickup’s high-frequency response and overall level, but this may be desirable if you’re feeding a subsequent distortion stage. Rolling off the highs by loading down the pickup can produce a creamier distortion effect. In fact, Radial Engineering makes some direct boxes and preamps with “drag” controls that emulate the effect of having a low input impedance. You can also build your own low-cost box to provide this effect. Tubes sound better than solid state. Many people prefer the sound of tubes not because they sound more accurate, but because they can color the sound in a subjectively pleasing way. Tubes add a natural compression, possible slight high-frequency reduction due to the “Miller effect,” hiss, and harmonic accentuation. With solid state, a well-designed preamp—whether using bipolar transistors, FETs, or integrated circuits—can certainly sound transparent and accurate; although conversely, there are some highly skilled tube designers who make extremely accurate tube-based products. In any case, even though computer emulations of tubes get better all the time, there’s still nothing quite like a tube sound. There’s nothing quite like a tube when you want to get a true tube sound. The preamp influences the way a dynamic mic sounds. Yes, but I think a more accurate phrasing is that the mic has a huge influence on the how the preamp sounds—a preamp may have a certain “color” with one mic, but not with another. This is because a dynamic mic presents an inductive load that could interact with the preamp’s input stage, which can alter the overall frequency response. Some preamps have adjustable input impedances, so you can dial up the best sound for your particular set of mics. You want to match the output impedance and input impedance of the mic and preamp. That’s true if you’re installing telephones, where the object is a maximum transfer of power. What we want is a maximum transfer of voltage, which means that for the most accurate signal transfer, a stage’s output impedance should be 10-20% the impedance of the stage it feeds. However, note that with passive guitar pickups, the impedance changes with frequency; the high frequencies exhibit a higher output impedance than low frequencies (this is why low impedance inputs reduce highs). Add other variables to the equation, and it’s no wonder different combinations of gear can sound very different. An expensive mic preamp will always sound better than a cheap one. All things being equal, many people can hear the difference between a high-end boutique preamp, and the “let’s-hit-a-price-point” preamps found in, say, budget mixers. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean one will sound “better” than the other. Certain combinations of preamp, mic, and cable may lead to an inexpensive preamp sounding better for that particular combination of gear, or with a particular signal source. So, even if you have a really great preamp that cost as much as the GNP of some third-world nation, try out some of your other preamps as well. They may do the job better in some cases. The bottom line on preamps is simple: You can’t really go too much by other people’s advice, unless you’re recording the same type of material using the same gear. Subtle differences among devices might sway you toward one or the other. In any event, though, try out as many preamps as you can. At some point, you’ll find the one that sounds best to your ears for a given application. -HC- ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  9. Sound Oracle Percussion Loops Library Dress up your beats with these complex, novel loops by Craig Anderton Sound Oracle is the chief sound designer for Timbaland, and his samples have also appeared in productions for Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Christina Aguilera, and others. Although the artist names may imply these loops are for hip-hop/trap/R&B, that’s only partially true. Percussion isn’t as contextually identifiable as, for example, the late Clyde Stubblefield’s tight drum sound or John Bonham’s mammoth tone, so it can work its way into a variety of music. I’m one of those people who doesn’t feel a song is complete until there’s some percussion element on it that adds movement and "bounce," so I was sufficiently intrigued to download a review copy and check out the loops. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW The 45 loops are not variations on a theme, but each has its own identity. That makes it easier to “slice and dice” a loop into variations. Tempos are mostly in the 60-100 BPM range, which underscores the hip-hop lineage. The file format is 16-bit/44.1 kHz. Most loops are two measures, but there are 4-measure ones as well. The sounds are very original—it’s not just a collection of the usual percussion instruments at all, but fall more into the “complex sound design” category. As such, some loops are well-suited to cutting off the last couple beats, and using them as intros or transitions. According to Sound Oracle, the sounds were recorded with vintage samplers and tape to take advantage of what those recording/playback media offer. All file names indicate the tempo in BPM. All loops are royalty-free. LIMITATIONS Some loops don’t end on a zero-crossing, so there’s a slight click. If you encounter one, add a very short fade out (e.g., several milliseconds) and bounce the clip to itself or export it. The loops are not in a stretchable format. You can open them in Cakewalk SONAR or Sony Acid Pro to create Acidized files, or use Propellerheads’ ReCycle to create REX files. Otherwise, you’ll need to use DSP to stretch to different tempos. Although there are demo videos on the Sound Oracle web site, they’re used primarily in context with other sounds, so you can’t be sure which sounds are attributable to the loops themselves. Some demos with just bass or guitar would have been more helpful. CONCLUSIONS I was curious at to what would happen to the loops in the EDM-friendly world above 120 BPM, as well as in rock songs, so I brought several files into SONAR and Acidized them for stretching. I was surprised that many loops worked extremely well at higher tempos, even in trance hovering around 127 PBM, and the originality added a flavor not found in libraries designed for those genres. Flipping back to the other end of the tempo spectrum, I added the loops to Brian Hardgroove’s Bass Loops and some loops in progress from funk/jazz legend Mike Clark. Not surprisingly, the loops were very comfortable in their home turf. However be aware these are mostly complex loops that work best in fairly minimalist contexts—they’re not like a tambourine hit every eighth note. Some could even form the basis for a song, where you wrap sounds around the loop designed to accommodate it—not the other way around. If you want bread-and-butter loops that sit in the background, this is probably not the loop library for you. Oracle Percussion Loops is for those who want interesting loops with texture that can share the spotlight along with other beats in a track, and even step out front from time to time. Resources Available for $34.99 (direct download) from Soundoracle.net ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  10. Arranger Keyboards as Studio Tools? Are You Nuts? You might be surprised at what you can do with modern arranger keyboards by Craig Anderton I understand why you almost hit the back button on your browser: When I say “arranger keyboard,” you think “guy at the Holiday Inn doing a cover version of ‘You Light Up My Life’ by pressing a few buttons on the keyboard and singing over it.” And you’d be right…but you’d also be wrong. (You would also be lucky if you didn’t know the song to which I’m referring.) Arranger keyboards, like the Korg Pa series (Fig. 1), Yamaha’s PSR-series keyboards, Casio’s WK series (Fig. 2), and the like have evolved over the years by offering high quality sounds, more humanized sequencing, and a host of other features. Let’s see why this matters to you. Fig. 1: Korg’s Pa4X76 is a high-end arranger with over 500 styles, including some updated favorites from previous Korg arrangers. It also includes vocal processing from TC-Helicon, processing from Waves, a 7" touch display, and can save custom styles and setings. Fig. 2: Casio’s WK-7600 has 260 styles; however you can edit these or create your own 8-track rhythms with drums, percussion, bass, and five chord patterns, which you can save to the 100 available memory slots. There’s also a 17-track sequencer for recording. The street price is under $450. YOUR MUSIC PRODUCTION LIBRARY A virtually untapped arranger keyboard application is as a replacement for music libraries. When doing audio-for-video work, you’ll often need a few minutes of appropriate background music behind a scene; with the ability to turn out just about anything from bossa nova to heavy metal, an arranger keyboard can produce an instrumental “bed” within minutes. Given the cost of typical “construction kit” sample libraries, it doesn’t take too many of them to equal the cost of a decent arranger keyboard—which can be more flexible, too. However, even though the musicality of these keyboards has improved dramatically, you don’t want to sound like that Holiday Inn guy. This is where, as a musician, you have a huge advantage: Record a few overdubs with “real” musicians (e.g., some tasty hand percussion, piano, or guitar), and the overall sound belies the arranger-based origins. Although this takes a bit more effort compared to just pushing a preset button for a particular style and recording the results, you’ll save much time compared to recording from scratch. Of course, you needn’t use arranger keyboards solely to make full productions. If you’re writing a song, you can set up the chord progression on your arranger and play along with a complete rhythm section instead of just a metronome click. You don’t have to keep the scratch track—but if you want to, keep reading. TURNING DEMOS INTO PRODUCTIONS For songwriting, arranger keyboards are like having a robo-partner who can churn out phrase after phrase until you hear something you like. In fact, you might actually end up wanting to use the demo track. As an example, suppose you’re noodling around on your arranger, and come up with a great basis for a rock tune . . . but you want to replace some of the arranger’s sounds. Many arrangers let you save an arrangement as a Standard MIDI File, which you can then import into your DAW. If there are arranger sounds you like, that’s fine too—direct some tracks via your MIDI out to the arranger, and record the audio back into your DAW. Meanwhile, you can send the other MIDI tracks to a multi-timbral virtual instrument in your DAW for bigger ’n’ better sounds. Or you may not want to replace sounds, but do more sophisticated mixing or processing than the arranger allows. Fortunately, some arrangers can save songs to a storage medium (e.g., USB thumb drive). If you can solo a sound, or mute (or turn the volume down on) all sounds except one, you can save each sound as a separate file. Your next step would be to import each file into your host, line up the beginnings (they should all start at the same time if you saved from the beginning to the end of the song), then process, mix, automate, and overdub as desired. If there’s no option to save audio to some type of transportable media, you can instead solo an individual track, send it to the arranger’s audio output, and record the output into your host. Repeat for each track until the data you need lives in your host program. Lining up the recorded tracks may be a problem. But as your arranger will probably have some kind of count-in or intro, if you record that at the head of the track, then you can simply line up the metronome clicks for each track until they’re in sync. Another possibility is that if the host’s MIDI out patches to the arranger’s MIDI in, a start command from the host will cause the arranger to start playing. Simply go back to the beginning of the host’s sequence each time, solo a track, record it, go back, record the next track, and so on—and the sounds will be in sync with the host, too. TIME IS MONEY, THEY SAY . . . And a good arranger keyboard can save you time, whether it’s by generating tracks that kick off a song idea, provide complete music beds for audio-for-video, or generate patterns you can use in your own productions. And of course, when the session’s over, you can always pack up your arranging keyboard, plug in at the Holiday Inn, and do a fabulous cover version of “You Light Up My Life.” Or on second thought, maybe you should just keep it in the studio. -HC- ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  11. Multi-Tool for Guitar by Gibson It's a setup... by Craig Anderton Probably like many of you, I have a tool collection that includes hex keys, screwdrivers, socket wrenches, etc. - so when I need to set up a guitar to my liking, I’m covered. However, taking all these on the road is inconvenient, and having proper tools at my fingertips became more of an issue when Gibson introduced the zero-fret adjustable nut. I found that raising the nut up all the way could convert my guitar into a slide guitar in under a minute (and once the nut was raised, the G FORCE automatic tuning provided an appropriate open tuning for slide). But then one night, I lost the 0.05” hex key… I also do more more frequent pickup adjustments, because of amp sims. There’s a tradeoff between pickup height, output, sustain, and attack transients; with physical amps I prefer the pickups closer for more output and attack, but with amp sims, lowering the pickups reduces the initial transient and gives a more consistent average signal. So it was time for Gibson's Multi-Tool. It's very compact and fits in my guitar case (check out the quarter for comparison), so I can leave all the other tools back home at my workbench. The Multi-Tool has two groups of tools, which swivel out from each end. One group is: 5/16” truss rod socket wrench 4 mm slotted screwdriver 1/8”, 1/16”, and 0.05” hex keys Lever with engraved marks at 3/64” and 5/64” for checking action at the 12th fret. I didn’t realize how useful this was, but it speeds up setting action compared to “play and see if it’s better or not.” The second group is: 1.5 mm, 2 mm, 2.5 mm, and 3 mm hex keys #1 and #2 Phillips-head screwdrivers This takes care of my guitar needs, but I also found the Multi-Tool useful for prying reluctant battery covers loose from effects, and even opening up computer peripherals for cleaning. BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE! Suitably inspired, I also looked around for a diagonal cutters that could fit in my case for quick string changes. Jewelrysupply.com has a mini diagonal cutter (item PL433) that’s only 3” long, but still has 1.2” jaws with a flush cutting edge, and costs under $5. Okay…I’m set! And my guitar is set up, too. RESOURCES The Gibson Multi-Tool retails in the Gibson Store for $19.99 + shipping. The Mini Side Cutters is available from JewelrySupply.com for $4.71 + shipping. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  12. Restoring Pete Townshend's Double-Neck Guitar The inside story on returning this historic guitar to playability by Craig Anderton When I had my vintage Rickenbacker 360 12-string restored recently (expertly, I might add) by Gibson Repair & Restoration, I was fascinated to see rare guitars in various stages of restoration when I dropped off the Ric. I asked if there had been any particularly interesting instruments they’d restored lately, and the consensus among the luthiers was that restoring Pete Townshend’s double-neck was one of the most challenging and gratifying jobs they’d done. I asked what was involved…and thought it was pretty interesting, so here’s the story (props to Phil Crabtree at GR&R for sharing his photos). This guitar was gifted by the Who’s Peter Townshend to an individual who kept it on display in his living room because of its history and cool looks. A friend had admired the guitar for years, and lamented its condition. He convinced the owner to send it to GR&R to be restored, and here’s what it looked like when it arrived. However as you'll see in subsequent photos, a lot of the damage was more than just skin-deep. With an iconic guitar like this, judgement calls have to be made about how far to take a restoration. For example, GR&R will restore finishes if the customer wants it, but they advise against it because it reduces a vintage guitar’s value (and cachet) dramatically. Some repairs are more or less invisible—e.g., replacing wiring—while others are more obvious. Also, some repairs are essential, such as replacing frets that have been more or less destroyed from years of playing, while others are really up to the owner. FIRST STEPS The first step GR&R does with any guitar is document the instrument’s current condition upon arrival, accompanied by lots of photos. In this case, the guitar has historical significance to popular music, so as the guitar progressed it was important to keep a running record of the "before" and "after." Here’s the initial list of what needed to be done…including scary things like fixing “collapsing bridges.” I didn’t realize the extent to which restored guitars are taken down to the basics—all original parts (screws, pickups, bridges, tuners, electronics, etc.) were removed for cleaning, replacement, etc. Parts that have to be replaced are bagged up and returned to the owner. Here, the pickups and electronics (which didn’t work at all) have been removed; you can get an idea of the deterioration the guitar had endured. The tuners were a total loss, and the corrosion had not been kind to the wood where they were sitting. Although it's desirable to retain the original hardware, this isn't always possible and some of the original hardware had to be replaced because of wear and corrosion (most likely from heavy use, touring in so many different environments, and time). In addition to all tuners being replaced with historic replicas, both original ABR-1 bridges had to be replaced because they were corroded and fatigued in shape from years of heavy use. The original ABR-1 bridge posts were also replaced, because a few of them were bent. Also, the original bridge post mounting hole had to be dowelled, re-drilled, and mounted because of fatiguing wood. And here are all the parts after removal. The corrosion on the metal parts was off the hook. Also, lots of the inlays were loose. They had to be re-seated and glued in place. The nut was another total loss, but it was measured carefully so that the replacement nut could be cut correctly. Both the 6- and 12-string necks needed a lot of work just to be playable again. Over time, the frets on both necks had deteriorated from years of playing and being on tour. All the frets had to be replaced. Removing frets has to be done really carefully to avoid tearing up the fingerboard (as a side note that doesn't relate to this repair, Richlite necks are much more refretting-friendly). Next came planing and smoothing the fingerboards. After the frets are replaced, they’re tapped into place and dressed. Here’s what the headstocks looked like after being restored with period-correct Kluson tuners. The client agreed with GR&R not to restore the finish, but to have it retain the history/wear of being on the road with Townshend. As a result, the finish was cleaned only by hand to preserve the natural patina and wear, using 3M Finesse-it Protective Wax. The entire electronic assembly had to be removed and restored because it no longer functioned—time, humidity, and corrosion caused the electronics to fail. The original PAFs were the heart and soul of this Gibson's electrified sound, and there was some concern how well they had survived. Fortunately, all the PAF pickups were okay, so they were re-used after cleaning. Other parts were not so lucky. Original parts that could be salvaged were used, but tracking down historically accurate parts for original parts that had failed can be challenging. Again fortunately, it was possible to find equivalent replacements for the output jack and one of the Switchcraft toggle switches. The wiring harness is done outside the body, then threaded back in through the pickup cutouts. Note the Caig DeoxIT—my favorite contact cleaner, and apparently GR&R’s as well. I thought this method of pulling controls through their associated holes was really clever - threading one of the cut strings through the hole for the pot, then taping it to the pot shaft so the shaft can be pulled easily up through the hole. As some of the final steps, ColorTone Fretboard Finishing oil puts some life back into the fretboard; then comes string replacement and setup (adjusting both truss rods, setting the action, adjusting intonation, tuning, and ultimately, playing the guitar as a final reality check). Of course, the entire restoration involved more than what’s shown here; it took about 40 hours to restore Townshend’s double-neck. Here’s GR&R luthier Phil Crabtree, playing the guitar before it goes back…I guess that playing one of Pete Townshend's guitars is a perk of doing restoration I'd like to thank GR&R for being willing to share this story and these pictures with us. Let's close out with how this guitar looks now that it's been through the restoration process. -HC- ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  13. Hi-Fi - Same As It Ever Was? Our memory might be telling our ears what they want to hear... by Craig Anderton Dear Musician - They’re called fanatics—people who listen to their vinyl albums on vintage gear like Macintosh amplifiers, old KLH speakers, and turntables with Stanton cartridges. They swear it sounds better, which of course, can’t be true—right? After all, today’s gear is so much more accurate, whether you’re talking DSP to flatten speaker response, or distortion so low it almost can’t be measured. Granted, there’s appeal to having rare gear, restoring it, and doing the loving maintenance that keeps it humming decades after the companies making the gear went out of business. But maybe those fanatics aren’t so crazy after all, because the naysayers may be overlooking the most important point of all. Music has a proven relationship to memory (for more information, check out this thread). One of the more interesting experiments involved putting together a playlist of songs that were popular in someone's youth, and seeing patients with Alzheimer's or dementia light up. So it's understandable that people enjoy reliving what was wonderful in their past, and of course, pretty much anything that was ever recorded is accessible via the internet. However, maybe it's not only about the music itself, but the sound that plays with our memory. The music of the past was listened to on the equipment of the past, and was mixed and mastered on speakers and amps designed using the technology of that time. This was brought home to me recently in a very dramatic way, because I was one of the first people to hear the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s. I was gigging in a town near the Capitol Records pressing plant in Pennsylvania, and a fan of our band had smuggled out a copy. With no idea what to expect, suffice it to say I was blown away. I eventually bought the CD, but could never replicate what I heard half a century ago…until I was visiting a friend who had a lovingly restored stereo system from that era. Over that system, it sounded like I remembered it. So if you want to know what the world heard when a classic album like Are You Experienced? was released on an unsuspecting world, it's possible that the only way to truly hear what it was intended to sound like would be to listen on the playback equipment of that time. The speakers of that era didn’t benefit from computer-aided design, or the improvements in cone and magnet materials that have occurred over the years. Ribbon tweeters, although invented back in the 20s, have only become popular recently. Audio transformers and tubes added their own coloration, records were mixed and mastered to take the RIAA curve for vinyl into account, and back in the day, people listened to speakers moving air in an acoustical space rather than over headphones. Yes, it may be crazy to devote your life to listening over painstakingly maintained vintage gear…but it’s crazier to think that the way we listen to music in 2017 is the same way people listened to music half a century ago. And if you want the experience of listening to music in 1967 (and all that implies with respect to music's relationship to memory), then you probably need to listen on equipment made in 1967...that is, until technology perfects the digital emulation of vintage playback systems! ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  14. Craig’s List - 5 Symptoms that Your Gear Owns You Are you the proud owner of your music gear? Wake up—your gear may own you by Craig Anderton 1. You spend a lot of time on the phone with your Sweetwater sales engineer. As in, a lot. As in, Verizon is offering you attractive incentives to please switch to AT&T. Just a friendly heads-up: your sales engineer is looking into what’s involved in filing a restraining order. 2. When your buddy gets all effusive about his cool new GF, you think he means “Gear Fanatic.” Even more sadly, you think the terms “male” and “female” were invented to describe plugs and jacks, not the biological functionality of humanoid bipeds. (And FYI, "strip clubs" are not places were people get together to discuss channel strips.) 3. That Apple Mac IIci in the corner. . .seriously. 80MB hard drive, 25MHz processor, and it accepts only NuBus cards. Honest, you’ll never use it again. But if you really can’t bear to part with of it, then take out the motherboard, and it makes a divine planter! Convicted felon Martha Stewart recommends petunias. 4. You have a software update sitting on your computer, but you‘re terrified to install it because what you have works. Show some spine! Don’t let your software boss you around—it’s an update! What could possibly go wrong? 5. You really believe that you have to plug in cables in the “right” direction, so that the teeny-tiny little sentient electrons all march together in the same direction, goose-stepping their March of the Milliamps from one plug to another. And you’re really afraid that if you plug it in backwards, you may alter the ytilaer fo cirbaf. I mean, the fabric of reality. Hmmm . . . maybe you’re right. - HC - ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  15. How to Adjust Monitor Speaker Rear Panel Controls When your speaker needs a tweaker, here’s how to do it by Craig Anderton Life used to be simple: people pumped your gas, bills included envelopes with return postage, telephones were stationary objects…and speakers had two terminals on the back. Today, many powered monitors have a bewildering forest of controls, options, and switches. So how do you get the most out of them? Well, at least that part is simple: keep reading. BUT FIRST... Before you even think about adjusting rear panel controls to compensate for acoustic problems, it's crucial to optimize your setup as much as possible. Just as noise reduction is most effective with audio that doesn't have too much noise in the first place, rear panel adjustment controls are at their best when they don't have to be adjusted too much. Because overall system setup is crucial to avoid unnecessary room acoustic interaction, and a room’s natural acoustics may alter the sound level at various frequencies due to abnormal dampening or reflections, follow the checklist below to help set up the right environment for your speakers. Set up the system (studio monitors and worktable) within the front third of the room. Doing so will reduce reflection buildup of peak frequencies. Center the left and right sides of the system setup an equal distance from the left and right walls. This will produce even mid and low frequency response, and preserve stereo imaging. Avoid a listening position (your ears) closer than 3 feet (1 meter) from any wall. Also avoid large objects (such as lamps or decorations) near the studio monitor and listening position. Diffusers and absorption material in the corners and back of a room will help remove room interaction by preventing reflections. Carpeting will help prevent reflections from hard floor surfaces. Studio monitor isolators (foam or rubber pads) will help remove low vibration-inducing frequency coupling between the stands and console or work surface. A low noise floor (no outside interference from refrigerators or fans) is important to prevent the masking of low frequency detail. Also remove rattles due to studio monitor playback. Within the system setup, the studio monitors and listening placement should be positioned in a near field configuration so that the left and right studio monitors are approximately 3 to 5 feet (1 to 1.5 meters) apart, and directed at a 60 degree angle towards the listening location. Measure the distance between the left and right studio monitors to make the listening position is equidistant from both sides; this will form an equilateral triangle. Most two-way studio monitors incorporate a tweeter (producing high frequencies) and a woofer (producing mid and low frequencies) in one enclosure. In between the tweeter and woofer is the acoustic axis point where the full frequency range comes together. The ideal location for the acoustic axis point is located at ear level in the listening position. It is acceptable to angle the studio monitors so the acoustic axis points in the correct direction. Note that it’s also important to level-match both left and right studio monitors. EQUALIZATION OPTIONS Room acoustics can be the biggest issue in today’s studios because many are in revamped houses or garages that were never designed with acoustic purity in mind. Most manufacturers recognize that their speakers may not live in perfect acoustical environments, and offer equalization options to compensate for acoustics issues. Often these EQs are simple, like high or low frequency boost or cut. Others are more sophisticated. We’ll describe KRK’s V-Series options because to determine what would be the most useful EQ settings, KRK’s designers modeled and analyzed hundreds of monitor placement and room acoustic situations. If your speaker doesn’t have the same kind of flexibility, you can always try to translate the following settings to an EQ inserted in your DAW’s master bus. Low Shelf Cut controls compensate for wall coupling. When a speaker is close to a wall, sound emanating from the speaker’s rear bounces off the wall, and reinforces the sound emanating from the speaker’s front. Because low frequency waveforms are more likely to reinforce, the shelf for the V-Series 4 (4” model) starts at about 75 Hz (the 6” and 8” models start at about 60 Hz), with options to cut by -3 dB or -1.5 dB. Low Shelf Boost is more about adjusting to taste and having more “thump.” Most studios will have sufficient bass with a flat setting. However, the boost is useful when artists want to hear more bass than would be desirable for a mix or master. A low frequency boost lets you mix with the correct amount of bass while giving artists what they want to hear. The V-Series boost complements the cut: +1.5 or +3 dB at around 75 Hz for the 4”, and 60 Hz for the 6” and 8”. Low Mid Parametric compensates for the lower midrange buildup that can occur if speakers are directing their sound over a large console or other surface. This can produce a somewhat “muddy” sound. The V-Series parametric dips -2 dB at 200 Hz, but another switch position dips ‑2 dB at 200 Hz and adds a low shelf of -2 dB at 75 Hz for the 4” model, and 60 Hz for the 6” and 8” models, in case the speaker rear is also close to the wall. High frequency controls are about correcting issues too (some mixing environments are “brighter” or “deader” than others), but can also be about adjusting to taste, or compensating for hearing issues. High Shelf is pretty standard, and if a speaker has only one high frequency control, it will have a similar response—you can boost or cut 2 dB at 10 kHz. High Mid Parametric Boost is +1 dB at 3.5 kHz. The ear is most sensitive in the 3 to 4 kHz range, and sadly, engineers who’ve mixed a lot at loud volumes often suffer hearing loss in that range. Boosting somewhat will cause engineers to mix these frequencies properly rather than boosting them too much to compensate for the deficiencies in their hearing, which could lead to a harsh sound. High Mid Parametric Cut is -1 dB at 3.5 kHz. This is useful for a “Jedi mind trick” with artists who aren’t confident about their voices. Reducing the perceived level at 3.5 kHz will make a voice sound less prominent in the mix, but the actual mix will have the voice at the right level. As with the Low Frequency controls, there are two options that combine parametric and shelving: -1 dB at 10 kHz and -1 dB at 3.5 kHz for rooms that have excessively bright acoustics, as well as +1 dB at 10 kHz and +1 dB at 3.5 kHz for rooms with excessively dull acoustics. OTHER REAR PANEL GOODIES There's more to life than equalization, so here's the scoop on the rest of the rear panel. Inputs. The typical input options are some combination of XLR, 1/4” TRS (tip-ring-sleeve), and RCA phono jacks. XLR and TRS connectors are balanced (and sometimes combined into a single “combi” jack), while RCA phono connectors are unbalanced. Balanced connections are preferable, because they provide more level and lower noise. TRS connectors are balanced if you use a stereo cable (not because they’re stereo per se, but because a balanced line needs three conductors) and unbalanced if you use a standard mono cable. It’s definitely worth using a stereo cable with TRS connectors or an XLR cable. Input sensitivity. The usual choices are -10 dB (for consumer and prosumer gear) and +4 dB (for pro-level, and often high-end, gear). For example, KRK ships its speakers with a default setting of -10 dB, but note that input sensitivity is not volume. The amplifiers run at full gain, and then you adjust how “hard” you hit it with the input sensitivity control. As a result, you will get better results (more headroom, less noise) when running a system at +4 dB, assuming the device feeding the speaker can generate enough level. Ground lift. Because monitor speakers have amplifiers and connect to systems, ground loops that result in hum and noise are possible. In ancient times, people cut the ground pin off of 3-conductor AC cables, which was neither safe nor recommended. Enabling the speaker’s ground lift switch has the same effect without compromising safety. Standby or "sleep" switch. Speakers with a standby option engaged will go into a low-power mode after a certain amount of time. Receiving audio turns it back on again. However, if you mix or master at low levels, the speakers may seem to cut out at inappropriate times, or there may not be enough level to “wake” them up again. If this happens consistently, turn off standby mode. CAUTION! It takes a while for the ear to acclimate to changes in EQ and levels. It’s always best to start off with flat settings and get to know your speakers and your room. Listen to music with which you are familiar, and preferably, have heard over quality monitors in a studio with good acoustics so you have a frame of reference. Try different positions in your room and placement before making EQ adjustments and after finding the optimum position, then adjust the EQ to give you your best listening and monitoring experience. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  16. Intelligent Sounds & Music Aroma Plug-In from Ploytec Sometimes it takes scents to spice up your audio by Craig Anderton Aroma is one of those processors that's intended to add a certain “magic mojo” to masters and other audio files. The effects are based on analog processes, but there are no specific claims as to what’s being emulated; the company mentions “tape” and “valves,” but the reality is I don’t care as much about an “accurate” emulation as I do about whether the effect is useful and/or interesting. (As an aside, I feel similarly about amp sims: I’m less concerned whether a sim models a Marshall amp perfectly than whether it makes a good amp sound I would want to use on a track.) That said, Aroma does seem to have been inspired by Cranesong's excellent HDD-192 hardware, while taking liberties that only a software version can do. Because you can download a trial demo of Aroma (Mac/Windows VST2/VST3/AU/AAX, with challenge/response protection), you can decide for yourself if this plug-in is something you need. However, to my ears Aroma is at its best when used subtly; I had to spend quite a bit of time with it to understand which effects and settings would benefit audio files the most. So, the purpose of this review is to give a head start for those who choose to download the trial version...as well as to describe a distinctly non-conformist processor. SPICE RACK IN A PLUG-IN Aroma in Stereo mode, with the Transfer menu open that can exchange parameter values between the Stereo and Mid/Side modes. There are four processors, enigmatically called Salt (emphasizes even harmonics), Pepper (emphasizes odd harmonics), Sugar (tape compression), and Chili (sort of like a more aggressive version of the Pepper processor). Each has an Intensity and Flavour control to alter the sound beyond the basic emulation, as well as a bypass switch. Aroma can operate globally in Stereo or Mid/Side processing modes; with Mid/Side processing, the controls are duplicated for independent control over mid and side components. Mid/Side mode provides individual controls for the mid and sides for each of the four processors. The effects themselves can be subtle but they can also increase the level, which makes comparisons difficult. As a result it’s important to match levels precisely when doing A/B comparisons so you can identify what’s happening with the audio. For example with the Sugar processor, the processed and unprocessed sounds didn’t seem all that different—except that I could increase the processed sound’s level quite a bit before it hit the same peak values as the unprocessed version, which revealed its tape compression-like effect. Also note that these effects are dependent on input level. There’s an input level control, and you want to make sure that you don’t exceed the recommended level, as shown by an orange ring illuminating when you’re feeding in too much signal. I obtained what I thought were the best results when hitting the input as hard as possible, short of distortion. THE FOUR EFFECTS Sugar adds body and depth, although as with all the effects, a little goes a long way—in stereo, I gravitated toward Intensity and Flavour settings around 50%. Mid/side processing worked very well on just the sides to widen the apparent stereo image and “fatten” up the sides a bit. This was an effective and very useful process. Chili “hypes” the sound a bit. I also found this effect useful, but combining mid/side processing with Sugar and Chili had the ability to “lift” a track up a bit. I did my usual A/B comparison method of closing my eyes and clicking bypass so many times I didn’t know if the effect was in or out. When I clicked a few more times to compare, it was easy to tell that the bypassed version was not as pleasing. I wasn’t really a fan of Salt; it added distortion which is fine and all that, but given how much I try to get as clean a sound as possible, generally saturation doesn’t really do it for me except for individual tracks—not masters. However, Pepper was much more to my liking; it created a fatter, bigger sound if not taken to extremes. You do have to be careful when using multiple processors at once, though. I found the effect cumulative, and the sound could get ugly pretty fast. In those cases, I was better off dialing back the individual effects. Note that there are options to transfer parameters between mid/side and stereo options, along with three slots to temporarily store and compare various settings. Given how much of mastering—and mixing in general—requires A/B comparisons, this is very handy. CONCLUSIONS Initially, I wasn’t too sure about Aroma. I would turn things up all the way to really hear the effect, and a lot of times, it sounded worse than the unprocessed audio. But as I learned more about how the processes affected the overall sound, and dialed back the settings to enhance rather than overpower, Aroma added a dimension to a track that I couldn’t obtain in other ways. In that respect, the “spice” analogy is accurate—you can ruin a great meal with too much spice, but also, use spices to enhance a meal into more than it would be otherwise. Overall, I don’t necessarily see Aroma as a “must-have” processor, like a linear-phase multiband compressor or a quality “maximizer.” However, for under $100 it provides a suite of effects that can substitute for individual processors designed to produce effects like tape emulation and saturation. Also, the mid/side processing is extremely useful—if you download the demo, make sure you check out what this can do to tracks. For me, mid/side processing is where Aroma has the sweetest scent. Finally, although Aroma is promoted mainly as a mastering plug-in, do try it on other source material. For example, I found that acoustic guitar, bass, and drum loops could benefit from Aroma’s spices. It’s definitely worth downloading the trial version and finding out for yourself what Aroma can do. Once you learn how to dial in the right settings, it can enhance your music in unique ways. -HC- Resources Product landing page Aroma introductory video ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  17. How to Record Hand Claps It should be simple, but it isn't - so follow these six tips by Craig Anderton Granted, it's easy just to load up a handclap sample, or one of those drum machine handclap sounds. But real handclaps recorded by real human beings can sound a whole lot better, and enhance the beat in ways that other instruments can't. Handclaps can also help reinforce snare beats, or add percussive accents with a human touch in just the right places. But all too many times, recorded handclaps don't sound...well..."right." So, here are some tips designed to help you get better handclap sounds. FOUR HANDS BEATS TWO HANDS Pretty much everyone can clap hands—so grab a spouse, kid, or even the neighbor next door who will be thrilled to be part of an actual recording session, to thicken up the sound. Even if the claps are off, hey, you have a DAW—split the claps, and adjust the timing as desired. ACOUSTICS CAN BE A PROBLEM…OR NOT A sharp impulse noise like a clap is going to bounce off walls and give a lot of ambience. This may be a good thing, but if it’s a problem, using something like Primacoustic’s VoxGuard (an acoustic treatment that wraps around a mic to help block room reflections from getting into the mic) really helps. SET LEVELS CONSERVATIVELY Even if you think you’re clapping with a consistent level, you’re not. If you’ve enlisted another person in your clapological endeavors, the levels will be even more inconsistent, depending on whether the claps hit at exactly the same time. Set levels so that what you think are the loudest claps hit at -12 dB or so, and you’ll probably be okay. TRANSPOSE DOWNWARD Claps often end up sounding thin on playback, but transposing down a few semitones can give a more corpulent sound, as well as tame the transient a bit. I’ve transposed down as much as -5 semitones, but even a semitone or two can help. Also, if you need to overdub several passes of claps to make it sound like you’re really a big group of people instead of just someone sitting a studio, doing different transpositions for the different overdubs can improve the illusion of the claps coming from different people. MORE MEAT Boosting in the lower mids can add “meat” to the sound of a clap so it doesn’t sound as thin. INCREASE REVERB DIFFUSION Because handclaps are so percussive, you need a lot of diffusion to create a smooth reverb sound (assuming that’s what you want). Lesser amounts of diffusion can give the “marbles bouncing on a steel plate” effect. So now that I’ve handed over these six tips (handed—get it?), go forth and practice better clapology. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  18. The Reason Why You Don’t Want to Compress the Master Bus You've often been told not to do it...but here's the technical reason why by Craig Anderton Traditionally, mixing and mastering were separate processes. The object of mixing was to provide the ideal balance among tracks, with mastering adding the final polish to make the most out of that balance as well as insure consistency over the course of an album. Mix engineers did not add final compression or EQ on the master not just out of respect for mastering engineers, but because mastering suites often had the best possible tools to complement the engineer's expertise. The uncompressed pre-master is at the top, the compressed version below. Whether you place EQ before or after compression makes a big difference in the final sound. This tradition continued into the early days of DAWs for aesthetic but also practical reasons. Plug-ins intended for mixing had to be light on CPU consumption if you were going to have multiple instances in a multitrack project. Mastering plug-ins were designed for maximum fidelity and accuracy, not conservation of CPU cycles. So, you would bring them into a program like Sound Forge or Wavelab that specialized in mastering. With today’s more powerful DAWs and computers, more people are adding “mastering” processors to the master bus and mastering as part of the mixing process. The main advantage to this is you don’t get “surprises” should mastering change a mix’s delicate balance. If a mastering engineer’s expertise isn’t required, then this is a valid way to work. (I still think it’s better to treat mixing and mastering as separate processes even if you’re doing both yourself, but to each his own.) If you do separate mixing and mastering, then the standard advice is “don’t add any processors to the master bus” but there are seldom practical reasons given as to why this is important, aside from the usual caveat of not tying the mastering engineer’s hands. So, let’s look at the technical reason why this is important. (Incidentally I’m not just talking about brickwall limiting; a lot of folks think “well I’ll add just a little ‘glue’ to the master bus so the tracks sit together better” but I even recommend against that until the actual mastering process.) For me, mastering is primarily about EQ and to a lesser extent, dynamics. However EQ before dynamics or EQ afterward produces very different results. A good example is wanting to bring up a kick drum in an EDM song during the mastering process. If you insert EQ after limiting, the kick will sound big but the extra level is now above the limiting threshold. This restricts the amount of available headroom, so now you have to lower the overall level, or add a second stage of limiting to try and re-gain the additional level. If the EQ is before limiting, then you’re “pushing” the kick into the limiter. While this doesn’t produce as much actual level as EQ after limiting, it gives the psycho-acoustic impact of more level because the kick “pushes” the rest of the audio out of the way to make room for the kick. The music sounds like it’s straining a little more, and has an added feeling of power. Another consideration works in reverse. If a master needs to be brighter, I tend to add that processing post-dynamics. Brightness can lead to ear fatigue, so EQ before compression can bring up the brightness to an unnatural degree. But also note that boosting treble frequencies, unlike boosting a kick drum, doesn’t add a lot of energy to the master. So to maintain headroom, you may need to reduce the overall level by only a fraction of a dB or so. The bottom line is that not processing the master bus isn’t just about tradition—there’s definitely a valid reason to create pre-masters with sufficient headroom and no compression in the master bus, then apply the processing needed to produce a quality master recording. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  19. Craig’s List - 5 Proven Ways to Get Publicity in 2017 It's easier than you may think ... by Craig Anderton Sure, the music business field has been leveled—but how do you rise above the noise? Notoriety! Check out these five sure-fire tips on how to become more famous, more faster. I mean, more fastly. 1. The public puke. Justin Bieber’s stage-to-vomitorium extreme makeover doesn’t count, nor does Lady Gaga’s; they were already famous. Instead, look for inspiration from Swedish death metal band Nödvärn—simply type “Swedish death metal singer barf” into Google, and see how some well-timed reverse peristalsis can help launch your career. 2. Make wacky political statements. Look what believing their own press did for Hank Williams Jr., Rage Against the Machine, Kid Rock, Dave Mustaine, and of course, Madonna. Need further proof? If wacky political statements could revive Ted Nugent’s comatose career, then it should be easy peasy for you! 3. Die. True story: An artist on the same label as me was selling huge numbers of CDs in one particular store. The record company wondered why, and visited the store to investigate. Turned out his record had been misfiled in the “deceased rock stars” section next to Hendrix and Joplin. So he got the benefits of dying without having to actually die! Cool!! 4. Join a cult. This is a tricky “time release” strategy. Joining the cult won’t make you famous, but leaving it and telling lurid tales on talk shows about how they believe that Drano is an aphrodisiac and aliens use TV to control our minds will do the trick. If that still doesn’t get you any attention . . . say they eat kittens. 5. Make really great music. There’s nothing like original, innovative, soulful music that causes a deep emotional connection with your listeners to get you some well-deserved attention...although admittedly, not as much as puking, dying, babbling about a cult, or making wacky political statements. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  20. Music Computer Myths True or false? The answers might surprise you by Craig Anderton There is much mythology surrounding computers, so let’s debunk some of the more common myths before they do any more damage to your music—or sanity. Programs will work if your computer meets the minimum system requirements. Well, yes, and you can drive a car using only first gear. But even if a program says it will work with 1 GB of RAM, that might mean most of the time it will be swapping data to a hard drive because it can’t get enough RAM—and performance will slow to a crawl. If you run music programs, you need at least 4 GB of RAM, and even that is like putting your computer on a starvation diet; 8 GB or preferably at least 16 GB is better as a minimum requirement. Don't know whether your computer matches a program's system requirements? Check "About This Mac" for Mac OS, and for Windows, the Control Panel System category (Fig. 1). Fig. 1: It's easy to check whether your computer meets a program's system requirements. Apple Computers are much more expensive than PCs of equivalent performance. This was once true, but times have changed. This myth persists mainly because there are a variety of budget PCs, ideal for surfing the internet, running spreadsheets, etc., at price points far lower than a Mac; but they’re a poor choice for high-performance music programs. At the level of performance we need from our computers, although you still pay a premium for Macs it’s not as much as it was a few years ago. Also, if you use programs from Apple, their software is relatively inexpensive because they want you to buy their hardware. PCI sound cards are obsolete, because Firewire and USB interfaces do everything we need. While convenient, outboard audio interfaces have an additional “layer” that adds latency—not that much, but it’s there. For Windows, onboard cards still give a performance edge, and will continue to do so until Thunderbolt (which basically brings PCI "out of the box") becomes more widespread. With the Mac, Thunderbolt gives equivalent performance to PCI cards. The Mac OS has a superior user interface compared to Windows. Regardless of what partisan zealots want you to believe, as a long-time user of both platforms I find both operating systems have annoying limitations and awesome capabilities. Windows 10 brings the audio sub-system to parity with the Mac. While Windows has made significant improvements to the audio system as well as MIDI (it's now multi-client), Core Audio still has an edge. However, Windows has improved latency dramatically for laptops and onboard sound cards—the latest WASAPI drivers have shared and exclusive modes, with latencies as low as 3 ms in exclusive mode (Fig. 2). Fig. 2: Windows 10 brings greatly improved onboard audio latency to Windows. The most important component of a good music computer is a fast processor. While a fast processor helps determine aspects of performance like how many plug-ins you can run, in terms of stability for Windows machines, the motherboard, its associated chip set, and the graphics card all influence performance to a huge degree. As the “which motherboard is best” game presents a moving target, follow magazine articles and web sites to get an idea of which motherboards are most multimedia-friendly. And for either Mac or Windows, enough RAM is crucial. It’s necessary to do lots of tweaks to Windows to optimize it for audio. Yes and no. It can be important to turn off wi-fi, and crucial to set up a high-performance power plan for laptops (other performance plans tend to throttle back power to save battery life); it’s also good to disable background processes and drivers that aren’t relevant to making music (Fig. 3), as well as set the USB ports so that they never sleep. Computers that come with a lot of bloatware and trial versions of security software almost always benefit from a clean install followed by selective disabling of non-essential services. However, the days of Windows operating systems needing lots of tweaks to work properly with audio ended with Windows XP. Fig. 3: In Windows' Device Manager, you can disable drivers that aren't being used. The main audio interface being used is the TASCAM US-4x4, so other drivers aren't needed and can be disabled. It’s no longer essential to defragment hard disks. Again, yes and no; one reason for this myth is operating systems that defragment invisibly in the background, leading people to believe it’s not being done. Most experts agree that defragmentation is not only unnecessary for solid-state drives but can also be undesirable; however with standard, spinning-disk hard drives, defragmentation is still useful. This is because as you use a hard drive over time and add/delete files, there will be less free, contiguous space for storing large files (like those used in audio and video work). So, pieces of the same file might get stored at different places on your hard drive, creating file fragments. Defragmentation joins these various pieces of files back together, which means your hard drive head doesn’t have to jump all over to read the file. The Mac’s OS is less prone to crashing than Windows. With a modern Mac or Windows computer, the OS itself will almost never crash. Crashes arise not so much because of the OS, but from the relationship of other programs to the OS and to each other. The Mac has a more tightly controlled environment that promotes more stability, but Windows machines can be equally stable with careful software and hardware choices. With laptops, it’s important to discharge the battery completely from time to time to prevent the “memory effect.” This was true with nickel-cadmium batteries, but today’s batteries will last longest if you avoid frequent deep discharges. -HC- _______________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  21. Breaking Boundaries And the love of music gets all the credit by Craig Anderton People often talk in an abstract way about music crossing boundaries. But it’s a real phenomenon…as re-confirmed late on a Friday night in Houston. Three ladies were checking into a hotel where I was staying after a flight to Nashville had been canceled. I had come to the lobby to buy a late-night snack, and waited behind them as they went through some complicated maneuvers involving transferring from another hotel and using points. They were also asking about whether there were any dance clubs in the area, and I noticed that one of the ladies had “Soca Animal” on her cell phone. It was taking a long time, but I wasn’t in a hurry. Then one of them noticed I was standing there and said to the night clerk “I’m sorry, you can take care of this guy, he just wants to buy a bag of chips.” I replied, “Hey, take your time. Anyone into soca and dance clubs is okay with me.” That elicited a few chuckles, but then the lady with the cell phone said, “You know about soca?” with a look that could only be described as amazement. I said that yes, I love soca, and I’m also a big fan of zouk (another strain of dance-oriented Caribbean music). We talked for a while, and I mentioned my intro to the genre was the band Kassav. Well, the amazement turned to shock—she played her favorite Kassav tune on her cell phone ( ), and asked if I was familiar with it. Well, it’s one of their biggest hits, so I said sure and named the album. Upon hearing that, she blurted out, “I can’t believe I’m talking with a white person about soca!” which frankly, cracked me up. One of the other women was horrified I would interpret that as a racist comment, but I knew it wasn’t said in a racist way at all. We talked about Caribbean music some more, had some good laughs, and I gave them a list of some of my favorite Caribbean internet radio stations. What had started out as three black women and one white guy in a hotel lobby morphed effortlessly into four music fans. As I turned to go back to my room, the oldest of the three said, “I respect the Diety within you.” Now, I’m not really into organized religion, but I appreciated what she meant. For quite a while, we had bonded over music and enjoyed common ground that was far more relevant than skin color. Racism isn’t only about conflict: it’s about an artificial boundary that keeps people apart who shouldn’t be apart. That night, music poked some holes in that boundary. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  22. Audified TNT Voice Executor Plug-In Fix it in the mix—with a couple clix by Craig Anderton The premise is simple: you need to mix a vocal—voiceover, podcast, singer, rapper, YouTuber, audiobook reader, or anything involving voice. But you have a super-tight deadline, so instead of setting up a complex effects chain, you insert the TNT Voice Executor ($69), dial up a preset, and...you may not need to do much else. The reality is a lot of people don’t have either the time or interest to tweak a processor from scratch to their specific needs, so we’re seeing more products intended to simplify the mixing process by being preset-based. Toontrack’s EZmix was one of the early ones, while more recently, iZotope’s Neutron analyzes your signal to try and create a more customized preset than one of the stock options. Cakewalk SONAR’s FX Chains are another approach—and furthermore, it seems just about every plug-in is putting more effort into including useful presets. Of course, those who know how to edit presets will always get better results than “one size fits all” approaches. However, there are also times when it’s good enough to get a sound that’s close enough to what you need that you can move forward on a project—if it works, you're covered and if not, you can tweak a sound at your leisure during mixdown. Does TNT Voice Executor do the job? There’s a 30-day free trial so you can find out for yourself, but let’s see if it’s something you’ll want to evaluate. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW The TNT Voice Executor (we’ll call it TNTVE for short) is a multieffects intended solely for voice—primarily voiceover artists, podcasters, YouTubers, audiobook creators, and singers. It includes a gate, low-cut filter, compressor, EQ, distortion, stereo enhancement, delay, and limiting. Different effects are called up for different presetss. Supported formats (32/64-bit) are VST2, VST3, and AAX for Mac/Windows as well as AU for the Mac. Supported operating systems are Mac OS X 10.9 – 10.12 and Windows 7 – 10. TNTVE uses iLok copy protection (dongle or software authorization). There are four preset groups: Vocals (4 male, 4 female), Speech (6 male, 6 female), Rap (3 male, 3 female presets), and Special (9 presets). Adjustable controls are Input, Drive, and Output. There’s also input and output metering, a gain reduction meter, and “LEDs” that indicate which effects are in use. The Gate and Limit glow red when gating or limiting is taking place. The plug-in is super-easy to use: Adjust the Input control to optimize the signal level, adjust Drive for the amount of effect, then if needed, Output to set the output level. Proper levels are critical, so a Calibration option sets the difference between the digital dBFS scale and analog dBu scale. I just set the calibration to 0dBFS for use with SONAR, and the levels were correct with Input and Output set to 0. LIMITATIONS You cannot edit the presets, or bypass any of the effects. There’s no shortcut for choosing presets (e.g., using arrow keys). You need to select each preset by clicking the preset button, the preset group, and then the desired preset. The user interface looks cool, but takes up a lot of space. CONCLUSIONS To see how close TNTVE could get vocals to where I wanted, I tried the TNTVE with narration and vocals on which I had used a significant amount of processing. Given how picky I am about vocal processing, I was rather surprised at the TNTVE’s efficacy—especially given the relatively small number of presets. The key was finding out that you don’t always get the best results from turning Drive up all the way; sometimes adding just a little bit of Drive is all you need to make things right. However, I also found that it’s important to try presets other than the expected ones. For example, some of the “rap” presets sounded really good on pop vocals. This is why I consider the current method of preset selection a limitation—I’d like to be able to jump quickly among presets. On the other hand I found the “Special” presets are more like special effects, and of limited usefulness for what I do. Ultimately I know my way around processing, and have no problem tweaking processors for my vocals. Over the years, I’ve also saved lots of presets and track templates for dynamic and condenser mics that I know work well with my voice, so in a way I’ve created my own TNTVE. However if I was in a situation where I worked with different vocalists, or didn’t really know how to get decent sounds for my own vocals, TNTVE could be a lifesaver—not just because it can provide a “sound” that does the job well enough that I could move on, but in some cases, it gave the same sound I would end up with if I was putting together my own signal chain. It’s a relatively inexpensive problem-solver, so try the free trial—there’s essentially no learning curve, so you’ll know in short order whether you’ll want to make it a permanent part of your sonic arsenal. Resources TNT Voice Executor landing page 30 day free trial download Introduction Video How to Use TNT Voice Executor by Audified ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  23. Understanding Filter "Character"—Why Noise Is Your Friend Yes, you can hear the difference between the "character" of different EQs by Craig Anderton You’ll often see posts in various forums from users who like the “sound” of one EQ more than another. that's not surprising; manufacturer's often tout how their particular EQ has some kind of "secret sauce" character. And while there can be times when an EQ aims for a specific character (like emulating the “ring” inherent in inductor-based units) and therefore does indeed have a different sound, I suspect that more often than not the difference relates more to the type of EQ curve chosen by the plug-in manufacturer. Although digital technology allows for “surgical” EQ, analog EQs involved multiple design tradeoffs. For example, maybe you could obtain a steeper slope if you were willing to trade off passband ripple; constant-Q designs were different from non-constant Q; and so on. We don’t need to get bogged down in the technical details—suffice it to say a digital EQ that emulates one particular type of analog EQ curve is indeed going to sound “different” compared to a digital EQ that emulates a different type of analog EQ curve. But that doesn’t mean a particular EQ plug-in is inherently better. What it means is that a particular plug-in might be better for a specific application. A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE Some EQs offer multiple curves, which can be a source of confusion to end users trying to figure out which curve will work best for their application. I saw this confusion in discussions about Cakewalk SONAR’s QuadCurve EQ, so named because it has four different EQ curves. My sense was that many users chose a curve based on “Well I tried different ones, and this one sounds better.” But that doesn’t mean one of the other curves couldn’t have been optimized to provide something even more appropriate. Filter plug-in documentation will often try to help; for example, SONAR’s description for the QuadCurve’s “G-Type” curve says: “Provides a curve that mimics a modern hardware equalizer. In this mode, the Q response is dynamic, meaning the Q is reduced as you increase the Level, and the effective bandwidth is increased for low gain settings. This is a musical EQ with a gentle Q curve.” Okay, but what does that mean in terms of sound? Fortunately, there’s a simple way to really hear the differences among filter curves: noise! Here’s how to use noise to learn about your filter of choice. MAKING NOISE WORK FOR YOU To start, you need a pink noise source. If you don’t have an audio editor like Sound Forge or Wavelab, open your fave browser and search on “pink noise download”—you’ll find plenty of options. Then, load the noise sample into a track in your DAW. Insert the filter into the track, adjust the settings, and sweep the frequency control—you’ll hear how the filter affects the noise. If you have more than one curve available, switch among curves and then sweep the frequency. You’ll likely hear a dramatic difference that really helps you zero in on what curve might be best for what you need. Make sure you also try out notch responses and different resonances, as they play into creating different curves as well. If your filter has a spectrum analyzer so you can see as well as hear what’s happening, so much the better. For example, let’s consider SONAR’s QuadCurve. The four buttons circled in red select one of the QuadCurve’s four possible curves. You’ll hear that the cut in the Hybrid is much sharper than the other curves, while the boost is fairly moderate—this would be the EQ to use on drums if you wanted to tame a resonance but also boost some frequencies. You’ll also hear that the Pure type is very broad and gentle, the E-Type sort of splits the difference, and the G-Type is like the Pure, but with a broader cut and narrower boost. These effects are far more obvious when listening with noise compared to listening with program material. Play with your filter’s controls as you listen to noise, and you’ll really be able to understand the differences with how these curves affect sound—and ultimately, be able to choose the right curve for the right job instead of just clicking on buttons and hoping. -HC- ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  24. Ikutaro Kakehashi: The MIDI Backstory Over three decades later, the path to MIDI seemed easy...but it wasn't by Craig Anderton Many people have commemorated Mr. Ikutaro Kakehashi’s contributions to the music industry. As the founder of Roland, the products he influenced literally changed the course of popular music—not just music technology. But arguably his biggest contribution has flown “under the radar,” and in honor of his life and his passing, I’d like to shine a light on it. First, though, let’s set the stage. I had the honor of knowing him and we often had discussions about music and technology. He never lost a little kid’s sense of wonder, and whenever he discovered a new interest—such as video—he always saw it from a perspective that was broad yet focused. And once he found merit in something, like MIDI guitar or greater expressiveness with keyboards, he would keep pushing until what he thought was possible became reality. The origins of MIDI are generally—and properly—credited to Dave Smith and Ikutaro Kakehashi. But that just scratches the surface. There had already been movement on the part of Roland, Oberheim (the “System”), and Sequential Circuits to find some way for the new generation of electronic synthesis devices to “talk” to each other. Dave Smith concentrated on keyboards with the Universal Synthesizer Interface, which was first presented in a white paper to the Audio Engineering Society. What Mr. Kakehashi brought to the party were (primarily) the timing and synchronization aspects that made MIDI relevant far beyond the stage, and established its importance in the studio. As no less a luminary that Alan Parsons opined, MIDI has become part of the DNA of modern music production. It’s everywhere, whether people know it’s there or not. "[DON'T] GIVE UP SO EASILY" But MIDI wasn’t just about technology. Initially, some companies resisted MIDI. Dave Rossum, the genius behind E-Mu Systems, saw Ethernet as a far more capable protocol. He was right, of course; but in reality, it would have been too expensive for consumer-oriented gear. Other companies simply didn’t see any value, or were reluctant to add a feature to their products that had no guarantee of success. In fact, Dave Smith said that at the first meeting about MIDI there was a lot of disagreement because some people wanted more expensive and faster hardware. Dave left the meeting thinking it wasn’t going to happen, but later that night an engineer from Roland showed up at Dave’s hotel room and said “I have been told by Kakehashi-san not to give up so easily.” Ultimately, one of the reasons MIDI caught on was because it was inexpensive enough that it could be part of something like a consumer-oriented Casio keyboard. Companies had little to lose by including MIDI…and if it took off, then they’d be poised to enjoy the benefits. IT TOOK TWO TO TANGO And then there was the 800 lb. gorilla in the room: The intense rivalry between Yamaha and Roland. For MIDI to be successful, it would have to be adopted universally. There was no room for the two industry giants to go in different directions, yet at the time Japanese corporate culture had a tendency toward insularity. Fortunately, Mr. Kakehashi did not take the position that since Roland made such a significant contribution, it could obtain a competitive advantage over its rival. As a believer in the power of music, he realized there was something bigger at stake than corporate politics. Equally fortunately, Yamaha jettisoned the “not invented here” syndrome, embraced MIDI, and made its own contributions to help make MIDI a practical reality. The adoption of the spec by Roland and Yamaha became an incredibly powerful statement that ensured the success of MIDI. The smaller companies were taken aback by such a show of unity from two powerful rivals, and adopted the attitude of “Well if Roland and Yamaha can join together for this, who are we not to participate?” Whether it was the force of Mr. Kakehashi’s personality or Yamaha’s keen foresight—or more likely, both—doesn’t really matter at this point because after Dave Smith and Kakehashi-san birthed MIDI (and earned a technical Grammy in the process), the rest of the industry raised the kid enthusiastically. BELIEVE IT... I’ll close with a story that showed just how revolutionary MIDI was. Having written the book “MIDI for Musicians,” which was the first mainstream book explaining MIDI, I was often asked for comment. One day a journalist called me and wanted details on the protocol. I gave him the lowdown on what MIDI did, how it worked, and why it was so great. After my rant, he said “Okay, but let’s give equal time to the other standards.” I told him there wasn’t another standard, the entire industry had adopted MIDI. He seemed puzzled and said “I understand it’s been adopted by the industry, but I want to know about the other standards, and how they fit in.” I explained that prior to MIDI there had been attempts to create something similar, but none of them gained traction, and had fallen by the wayside as MIDI took over. He remained unconvinced. After all, this was a world of Mac vs. PC and VHS vs. Beta. Exasperated, he tried one last time to get me to spill the beans on MIDI’s rivals, and again, I explained there simply weren’t any. He became upset, and essentially gave no credibility to anything I said because he was convinced I was an unprincipled shill for this MIDI thing. He didn’t quite hang up on me, but it was clear he felt he had wasted his time talking to someone so obviously biased. Looking back, I can understand his confusion. He didn’t realize people like Dave Smith and Ikutaro Kakehashi could exist, and that rivals like Yamaha and Roland could place the needs of musicians above their own potential agendas. I don’t know what that journalist is doing now, but the specification he dismissed endures. Dave Smith continues to make exceptional synthesizers. Yamaha, Korg, Casio, Kawai, and so many others keep innovating ever-cooler products. Roland carries forth Mr. Kakehashi’s vision of always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Yes, we lost a giant in this industry—but not before he left a mark on it that will endure after everyone reading this will have passed away. I can’t really be sad about Mr. Kakehashi’s passing…because it’s far outweighed by the happiness he helped bring to the world. To learn more about the life of Mr. Kakehashi, The MIDI Association (www.midi.org), which is exceptionally cool in its own right, has published an informative article https://www.midi.org/articles/ikutaro-kakehashi-passes-away-at-87 on his life. The following articles also describe the beginnings of MIDI…interesting stuff. And of course, the TMA has a ton of articles about MIDI techniques, basics, advanced topics, and the future of MIDI. https://www.midi.org/articles/midi-from-the-inside https://www.midi.org/articles/midi-history-chapter-6-midi-is-born-1980-1983 ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
  25. 5 Ultra-Nifty Uses for CDs With the decline of physical media, what will we do with CDs? Here’s what! by Craig Anderton 1. Microwave awesomeness. Ever put a CD in a microwave oven on high for 5 seconds? Well, don’t! It could damage the oven and cause serious safety issues. So just take my word for it: It’s awesome. 2. Roofing tiles. I know someone who successfully re-tiled a roof using the CDs that AOL sent out every 2.756 minutes back in the 90s, and it’s still around today. The roof, I mean. 3. Personal defense. The bad guy is coming toward you! Quick—whip out your CD, and reflect light off it into your attacker’s eyes. While he’s temporarily blinded, make your escape! Well, unless it’s night. Or the sun isn’t behind him. But in that case, he still might die from laughter from someone trying to stop him with a CD. 4. Superlative cat toy. A CD makes a simply marvelous cat toy. Then again, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t make a marvelous cat toy. Except maybe for raccoons and swimming pools, but that’s about it. 5. Listen to music. I’ve been told you can download CDs from the internet! But when I do, all that happens is files get written to my hard drive. Maybe I need a 3D printer for this to work properly. ______________________________________________ Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
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