Lee Knight

Killer V PM'ed me and asked to comment on his tunes and recordings. I've only listened to Uhuhu so far. I wouldn't typically go in depth with suggestions like this but he asked that I do so. So... First off, I really dig the overall style you've got going. Hard Rock without the silliness. Uhuru Nice playing all around. Cool vibe and cool tune. Great guitars. Love the wah-delay intro sections. Nice bass tone. Nice kick. The snare needs high end. The OHs in general are favoring the cymbals. A bit swishy? Ever try the Glynn John's style OHs? I dig the natural snare style but think you need to get more impact. Bell at 2k, shelf at 8k. Notch at 500Hz or so. Solo. You could stand to set the solo back a tad with some ambience. Either a mono room panned off or a delay into a mono room. Try this... A 400 ms delay into a room reverb. Sometimes it's cool to pan the solo off 50% one direction and the delay 50% in the other. This is especially cool with the 400ms into a mono room. Sounds like you're lighting up a Chicago nightclub/Theater hitting the back balcony. Then pull the level down just a tad from where it is now. The spread will sound like a roar and you'll give more an impression of VOLUME!!! The vocals need to go either way for me. Either right up in your face, or more set back and hi-fi. I'd go up in your face. While your vocal level is fine, it needs more aggression. Cut some of the low mids, maybe limit and distort the vocal slightly. If cutting isn't enough, try boosting some mids. Maybe a distorntion would get it there. Try some doubles in the SEE/DOWN sections. And when you do an octave above, go wild with the singing. More intense, then set it back with delay. Overall the lead vocal really needs more intensity. Consider retracking and opening up like you do when you guys are onstage and on fire. Overall I really dig this first one. I just think you need some fun production tricks to lift certain sections and more emphasis on the snare and vocal.

I just switched form a new Dell quad core to a dual 2.4 iMac. And yes it is a touchy subject. I'm no flag waver but... I got to say, PT runs very well on a Mac. Sorry, I've been rocking PC for a long time and have always rolled my eyes at Jobs slaves. And now I'm doing the V8 head bonk thinking doh! This simple iMac kicks ass.

I used to be 24/44.1, but now I'm 24/48. Up to 48 now because my lightpipe converter will only run at 48k and it's cheap and it sounds GREAT! (Aphex 142) So, I run 48k because I have to. Happily.

I'd go for the attic. More cubic feet of volume. Roughly 3000 vs.1700 cubic feet. Things generally sound better in rooms with more volume. From your sketch it looks like you have 2 dormer-ed windows? Am I interpreting that right? I'd take the upper left dormer hallway and create a bass trap there. Then you have a cutout in the lower right of your sketch. Do the same in that corner. Then orient you monitors on the right shooting leftward down the long dimension. 4" of 703 on the ceiling above your monitor set up. That would get you started.

If a snare hit looks like this... ^____ The transient would be the up pointing character. The whole envelope of that leading section. The peak would be the only apex of that character.

Well, a transient is the fast, leading edge of the sound. A peak, is a sound's highest amplitude. The transient isn't necessarily the peak, though often it is. Picture a horn player doing one of those soft attack then swell things. Kind of a little soft burp at the attack.The transient would still be that attack, but the peak most likely would be at the top of the swell. Now look at a snare hit. The transient is the peak. See? Now look at an entire snare track. The peak would be the loudest snare hit. The trasnsient would be the leading edge of each snare hit.

I've learned that the more I can use the room, the less I have to use a plug. Then... (Thanks Bruce Swedien) if I want a reverb, by dialing the predelay back enough so I can hear the real ER helps make that reverb sound good. I used to scratch my head when Bruce would talk about big predelay times until I pushed the point with him and he pointed out he always takes great pains to grab the early refections right off the room itself. The real room ER's fill the predelay gap. Learn to do that, and any artificial reverb usage gets a lot more bearable. Nice trick with the Transient Designer before reverb, Fletcher. I've got to try that. I have the Waves "equivalent".

Hey Phil, New to HC, I produce three to six records a year and I wanted to get some of your thoughts about the most effective way to do Pre Production... I keep feeling like I sit in the control room rehersing a lot of my clients, as much as I try to get clients to be prepared, few of them ever are. While my pocket book doesn't mind, I am just getting a little board and it makes it tough to really stay engauged in the project... any advice? Great idea for a thread.

25 years ago, a friend of a friend worked as a camera man on Mork and Mindi and did a lot of feature work as well. He quit it all to invest in his idea of a remote controlled camera mount. The idea was to put the camera where you never could with a man operating it because of danger. A car speeding directly into the picture, fire shots, high perspectives, etc. all with full control of angle and camera adjustments remotely. I remember thinking how cool that would be for a mic mount. Fresh in my mind were the sessions we were doing and the engineer asking for a mic to be moved an inch that way.... no, no, no, that way!!! On and on. Imagine tweaking mic placement on a cab in the other room. I'll take one.

Drywall anchors and those spring clips you get at Home Depot. Hang as my anchors as you want around the room then "clip" the blanket up wherever you need it. Take it down when you want too! I use those clips and mic stands to create a nice super dead vocal booth sometimes... don't get the little ones, get the larger style.

I love this alphonso. The perc sound is so cool. Like Jarre with voice. Nice.

For learning frequencies: Find a chart that correlates the keyboard pitches to frequency. I think a search for "pitch to frequency" in Google might get it. Then start playing the keys. You'll be surprised. "1k is that high?" Solo a voice, turn down the input to an eq plugin, using a narrowish Q, boost 10 or 15dB, and sweep slowly. Get the voice to howl. You should be able to get 200 through 3k to do some odd things. This will get you tuned into the frequency components of the voice. Voice is number 1 in my book. Do the same thing with a kick. A hi hat. An acoustic guitar. A piano... The voice can be the most educational though.

One way to get acquainted with pocket and pitch is to over use tools like Beat Detective and Auto Tune just for educational purposes. For instance... pocket the drums rigidly to the grid. 2 things will happen. You'll say, "That rocks, it's tight!" And... you'll say, "That sucks, it a machine!" By hearing the "too much of a good thing", you at least know the parameters of what you're dealing with. Use Auto Tune in Auto mode and hear the locked in pitch. Ignore the algorithm's artifacts if you can and just get a feel for good pitch. Watch the tuning meter in Auto Tune and learn what 30 cents flat sound like. 40 cents sharp... By going too far, just for learning, you can learn a lot. Just like setting up a compressor.

Right. I forgot about the switch. I've been favoring the LP but only because this past guitarist didn't need any more mid and highs. The HP is great, but if the guy's already getting boderline edgy... the LP works great for keeping it in classic territory which is what we were going for at the time. Not to say that HP sounds too edgy because like I said... and I really mean it, it sounds great to me in all positions depending on what you need. Phil, how have you been using yours? Or haven't you yet...

It's a CS something. It's doesn't have 4 knobs like the new ones but 3 knobs. I bought it in the 80's. The OCD setting I'm using... Volume at unity which seems to be 10 o'clock or so. Then that control gets goosed based on what's need for the track. Sometimes just a little, sometimes a lot. Drive sometimes at 0 or all the way up to max. Tone usually straight up but sometimes 2 or 3 o'clock. Hmmm. Really I don't have a regular go to setting. It's so intuitive with regards to hearing a need and tweaking to get what's needed. Which is why I'm loving it. It can be almost invisible but when yo take it out the guitar amp doesn't sound as good... or it can be way over the top. Like I said earlier... I like it in all settings. Just depends on what the part needs for that particular tune with that amp and guitar. And the phase of the moon... BTW. As I'm editing the guitars from this past weekend, I can clearly hear when I talked the guitarist into the OCD. The 2nd tune out of 10. The first one's good. Vibrolux clean muted riffing. But right after that... the guitar starts sounding more finished, raw, aggressive, responsive, interesting, cool, fat...

Ok... other pedals I've got and use. Bear in mind, though I play guitar, I was a bassist professionally. The Boss blue compressor pedal. Perfect for chickin' pickin'. Good for almost E-bow like parts before an overdrive. Good for kicking a bass into overdrive for fills and solos. The Aphex Punch Factory. Really good for taming hack guitarists. I use this a lot for my overdub stealth parts for my production for hire gigs. Did I say hack guitarist? Why yes I did. Good as a more hi-fi yet vibey before amp bass pedal in the studio. A Boss Bass Graphic EQ stompbox that ironically is better for clean guitar. It's mid boost is cool for getting that Jim Messina thing. Pushes an amp nice too. You can see why I needed the OCD.

I just tracked guitars through a very nice 100 watt Marshall combo from the 70's (I'm lost when it come to Marshall models), an equaly nice re-issue Vibrolux and a Blues Jr. Nice Strat and Paul. 80% of the time we kept the OCD in as it almost always got us there quicker. It IS sensitive as to it's order like a previous poster remarked. I kept it just before a Radial Tritone, the Tritone being used for only over the top stuff at this point and... yeah. We got the basic tone for each tune by picking guitar/amp combo. Tweaking without the OCD. Engaging OCD at unity and going from there. It was a breeze. Exactly what I've been needing. When I first mentioned using it with the player's rig he commented on how he has his tone, etc. 10 seconds later it was, "Wow. Uh... yeah. Wait. Holy {censored}!" Of course he's buying one now. It has stayed in line for the past 2 days.

Well now i'm convinced I need one when someone in the recording forum gives props to a pedal! I use a modded SD-1 but it gets schrill with the tone past noon when recording it. It benifits with an EQ too somtimes. It's either an OCD or i'm savin my pennies for a Klon. What amp and how are you running it? Clean amp, semi-dirt amp?? I tested it with my little Vox tube amp. I really needed something that would sound like a great amp. It does. It doesn't however, have a real modern, high gain type thing. American Woman, yes, Mesa high gain? No. Page? Yes. Dimebag? No. Clean amp or dirty amp... Got to www.fulltone.com and listen to the mp3s.

I like to have things around my studio that help a player relax and do what he's come to do. The little clip on tuner for those times when the guitarist starts panicking because his tuner won't read. I drum dial to keep the heads tensioned consistently as tracking proceeds. A great guitar cable that doesn't pickup microphonicaly (Mogami). A good bass amp and bass, etc. What I haven't had is a go-to, kick ass, no excuses OD pedal. Frankly, I didn't think one existed. The old Tube Screamer sometimes, buy not all the time. I need it for guitar player calming, and for later reamp sessions. I just bought a Fulltone OCD. Holy mother of GOD! I can

Ken, I love your observations regarding bringing out more from a performer. One of the things I try to remember doing is to not concentrate on the perfomer but the work, and then the performance. That way, I can then speak candidly with the performer, bout the work and the performance because it's something slightly removed from them. I find that attention to their "baby", the song, is a compliment. "Hey, someone's actually taking these 3 minutes seriously". So the 1st verse is to hyper and the last too somber... because this tunes lyrics really lend themselvs to a gradual build in intensisty. By disussing the song and not the performance, the performer becomes part of the solution to the challenge this piece of work is presenting... ... if the performance were instead the focus, the performer sometimes just buckles under the pressure. When I do that I get a lot of, "This sucks. I suck... I can't do this."

Nice post Blue. Multiple playlists have eased this concern a bit for me. Meaning, I can get the singer to give me 5 or 6 passes at it. Take stock quickly, then determine if I need to address it or not. When I need to address, I better have a good rapport with the performer. Once again... nice post.

... i cant hear the subtle difference in order to make changes in the settings. advices? Lower the threshold so you can really hear the effect of each control. Really lower it. Work the controls so you kind of dig what's happening to the signal. Now, raise the threshold back to zero and slowly lower it into the signal. Go easy and it should sound great. Think of it the way you crank gain on an eq band to hear your sweep, then you find it and lower the gain back. Same deal.

Finding my way into the writer's song to help with a re-write. That's an odd one I know. For instance, a band I'm starting up with their second album. The singer's doing a new take on the David Byrne, Danny Elfman, alienated New Wave trip. It's cool. It's new. It's him. Except... Some of his words are a little hokey. I work at it on my own time and come up with good alternatives. I haven't figured a way to go there with him yet. This is new territory. I'm uncomfortable with it but I want to get past that hump and move into true collaboration with certain artist/clients of mine without appearing like I want to change things away from their vision or hone in on their creative slice of the pie. I'm weak figuring how to approach this. I'll get there. I'm weak in fine tuning vocal mic placement. I like to work with the singer. I coach breathing and tone production and interpretation of the lines. As I get caught up in that, I sometimes loose sight of the mic placement and find myself wishing later that I'd taken more time throughout the tracking phase. But

Be prepared for an onslaught! I don't like the Pod for tracking but... go buy one. Better yet, spend $100 on ebay for the 1st version. Here's why... it'll allow you to try different types of amp styles and will get you more familar with what it is you want. Of course the Pod doesn't really nail those sounds well enough to make me smile, but it does nail them well enough for me to know I'm not really interested in a Boogie but I am in a little Fender, a Vox Ac30, and an early Marshall. I'm more prepared now answering the question, "Should I bring my Marshall or my Twin?" Once you start tracking with it you'll get pretty burnt out on it fairly quick, but it does have it's uses down the line is is good to have around.

Originally posted by where02190 Like I said, no one is forcing you to read my posts. We should re-name the thread. OK, you're right. No one is forcing me to read your posts, but every time this subject comes up, and it has come up a few times, you always have the same reply. "You don't have to read my posts." When you think about what the subject is, your rudeness, I would think you might have a little bit of interest as to what people are talking about. You clearly and honestly don