Levo
One even challenge to get something written. Not the greatest. Not the worst. Drums still challenging for me with this setup. Soldier on. Levo
A few of my associates (Jeremy and Dave) and I have agreed to a weekly challenge of capturing a performlance by means of recording to the computer or other media. Here are the results of the experiments.
Will try to make any notes of what was used to record or the rationale behind said recording. Might be a lost cause as some of these happened long ago…
Unless otherwise noted all audio tracks here were written and recorded by me.
One even challenge to get something written. Not the greatest. Not the worst. Drums still challenging for me with this setup. Soldier on. Levo
This was an old uncompleted doodle I found in the recording directory of a USB drive. Just cleaning up. Had a good start on something. Think I did this last spring break (2021). Finalize
Trying to get back into doing some home recordings again. Spend a lot of time messing with programming the drums. Just not that speedy at it yet. Still a lot of fun.
Trying to get things set up again for easier recording in the office. This was the little test. A bunch of keyboards parts in play. A little octave down on one guitar part. Some clean guitar with a bunch of delay courtesy of the meet maude. Hurled Your browser does not support this audio element.
Here we have an experiment with some Fuzz. Was having maybe too much self-indulgent fun. Your browser does not support this audio element.
Got a new Swart amplifier with some really liquid tremolo going on. Had to record a little loop type thing I had going. Your browser does not support this audio element.
Went with some dissonance and some fuzz for a Halloween inspired track this time. Recording ended up being a little noisy. I’ll say it adds to the grit just so I don’t have to figure out what happened. Used a mix of amps and guitars. All recorded DI though. No microphones were harmed. Did pick up some impulse responses from Own Hammer which I really liked. Figured out that reaper has an IR loader built right in.
Ran out of motivation and time working on this one. Had the best intentions to make a longer piece. Schedules were not going to allow for such a thing this week, so this is all there is. Seem to be getting more comfortable with the recording part of things. Doesn’t take up as much brain bandwidth. Final mix feels a little off still, but getting there. Played on the awesome BC Audio No 8 through the two notes topedo captor in to reaper.
In honor of completing the first season of Cobra Kai I have composed a completely cheesy piece mostly devoid of any musical intelligence. Recorded direct from Mesa into the Two Notes Torpedo with some Getgood drums Recording direct is fun, but has it’s drawbacks. There is a tiny bit of latency which threw me off a little while using a delay and trying to stay in time. Interesting to remember, but not something to be overly concerned about.
Hit record and let her roll. 42 minutes and several interruptions later managed to get about 2 minutes worth of something not completely terrible. Recorded with EJ strat into the rectoverb with a little fatbee for flavor on the solo guitar portion. Your browser does not support this audio element.
Spent a couple mornings getting used to recording Neural DSP amp sim guitars in Reaper. Also used GetGood Drums for the first time. This was a lot of fun. Your browser does not support this audio element.
First result of trying to record more frequently. Often times at night I get little grooving loops going that are cool, but completely miss recording them. Disk space is cheap, so I’ll try hitting record and just let it go. If there’s something cool. Cool. If not. Cool. Friedman into BC Audio with a little delay from an echo rec.
Fun sunday morning with Neural DSP plugins and silently recording to Reaper. Really amateur job on the mix, still a lot of fun.
Quick loop made with the Swart amplifier. Used both ribbon and dynamic microphones I believe. Can’t remember what guitar or what else was going on as I’m documenting it 3 weeks after the fact.
First recording using reaper since the very very early days. Decided to switch from Cubase. Spent the majority of the time figuring out how to do things again, so the playing itself is a bit lacking. Evenutally I ran out of patience and called it done for the day. Maybe worth going back for a revisit at some point.
Another COVID-19 related collaboration. With all of us stuck at home it’s a really fun challenge. Jeremy hit us with a more traditional drum groove. Dave cranked in some awesome bass. Guitar again on me.
Due to the current circumstances it seemed like a really good idea to do some remote collaboration. Dave on bass, Jeremy on Drums, and myself on the guitar. Jer hit us with a cool shuffle groove on the drums with an odd time signature as a challenge. Accepted! This was our first all around attempt at this I believe. Dave and I had tried one earlier. More to come hopefully! Very fun.
Experimenting with VST plugin guitar amps. Might have gone a little over the top to start with. It is unfamiliar so the sounds were a little harder to dial in. Did most of the recording before 8am on a Sunday though. The flexibility of recording silently is a big advantage. Exported out to Ogg and mp3 just for fun. Can’t tell any difference through crappy speakers at least. Might need some good cans to get a read on it.
Another fun little jam, same night as PB Jamz I. This guitar sound was brought to you buy the letter Friedman guitar into the Beetronics Fatbee pedal.
Goofing around with a little jam idea on Easter Sunday. Started using the beats sequencer again and wrote the bass line first. Guitar last. Could it be better? Sure. Was it still fun? Yes. Guitar recorded with Friedman into Mesa Mark V with a load of Slo reverb. Bass was same Friedman guitar using the EHX Bass9 pedal.
Fun little jam using the volca beats for drums. Tried making some drum switches on the fly, but ended up not sounding dramatically different. Hardly different at all. Still, fun experiments.
Rambling jam with the new Korg Volca Beats and Bass that I picked up on the cheap. Sequencers and synthesizers have always been a point of interest. A whole lot of fun to mess around with. First attempt and weaving some guitar into the space. It’s a little awkward.
This is a little idea that had been rolling around in my head for the last week or so. Still feels like something that is familiar. Funny such a happy sound can come out in dark times.
Clean little etude type piece with hybrid picking. Clean channel of the Mesa with Friedman guitar. Had meant to switch guitars for something with a little warmer tone, but forgot. Demedash delay prominently featured on this one.
Jeremy has been pointing me to lots of resources on recording techniques. Trying some of them out here. Mostly eq’s and mic preamp plugins and the like. Moar Toans.
First track of the year! Starting off right. Picked up a little Kork Volca Beats sequencer. First attempt at using it and of course had to try an odd time signature. A little messy, but still fun. If listening through headphones you’ll be sure to be sickened by the copious amounts of panning.
Another in the looping series. Intention was to change setup to make two tracks and ended up only playing. Not a bad thing overall. Leaves the experimentation for later and anticipation.
Quick looping experiment. Built the loop first then hit record and doodled over top. Sounds okay, but the levels are off. In real life it sounded fine. On the recording the loop is very quiet. Might try recording the loop to a second track some how. Maybe different amp or DI? On this day in history my messy pedal board looked like this
Day off! Quick morning fun with a kinda strange beat. Strat through amp1. No other fx besides some delay in post. Switch to the PRS Vela some time through for no particular reason. Need more time to really nail something cool, but this is still a tonne of funne.
My entry into the Hans Zimmer school of pop instrumentals. Messing about with learning Halion SE in Cubase and wondering if I could get guitar to mix with a synth. Since it was a nice quiet Sunday morning I used the Torpedo to record the Bad Cat silently. Combo of pedals used: Yellow Cake Furry Burrito, JAM Rattler, Keeley Red Dirt.
Post dating this as it was recorded some time ago. This was straight into the No. 8 with some delay from a Boss DM-2w for the second part. Captured with the e609 played on the PRS Vela.
Resuming recording. Sam’s baseball season complete which means I should have nights free again. Hand mostly healed up from whatever injury I caused it. Almost 60% capacity which is about 40% better than it was, but still 110% less than the old days. Recorded using the Charvel and the BC Audio No. 8 into a 10" Eminence RF10C. Some delay from a BOSS DM-2w I believe. Captured with Sennheiser e609 into Scarlet Focusrite 2i2.
Trying to get back into the swing of things. The point of this one was to try and solve a major point of frustration I have with modern DAW setups. There is no really good way to alternate time signatures, or do anything crazy like have a bunch of different time signatures, or do anything creative at all. It quickly becomes a nightmare to manage in the software. A quick internet search yields the typical “Why would you want to do that?
This started out as an experiment with microphone placement, but after a few sweeps through I liked what was there and turned it into my weekly recording. Used both the Sennheiser e609 and my new Golden Age Project R1 (MkIII) Ribbon mic. Also new is the amp used for recording. Traded a bunch of pedals for a Marshall DSL20HR. One of the best values in amps I have to admit. If there were a sound per dollar measurement it would be hard to beat this one.
Spring Time! back at it. Been super busy with, waddya call it? OUTSIDE Amazing, I know. This was just a little jam with myself. Trying to get back in the habit of recording something more frequently. Strat through bad cat for guitar with a little help from the Brother’s pedal for a faux tube screamer type sound. Same ol’ bass plugin for bass. Drums courtesy of Cubase in 6/8 time.
First collaboration effort! Dave played the bass, I played guitar and GarageBand played the drums. What could be better? Not bad for being a few hundred miles apart. Thanks to modern technology like DropBox it wasn’t too hard. Not sure what will happen in the future should we try to get tricky with things. Overall I give us an A for effort on the first one. On my side this was recorded on the new PRS Vela with a Chase Bliss Brother’s pedal into the Bad Cat plugged into the Two Notes Torpedo Captor.
Quick little experiment with Drop C tuning. Still need some work on the monitoring situation. This was recorded with the Charvel on the Bad Cat with some pedals for dirt.
Sound sample of the new Bad Cat which is the same as the old Bad Cat, except it’s different. Follow me? I’d still like to get better at recording the cleaner guitar sounds. To my ear it’s much better in person. Maybe that’s just the nature of things, but I’d like to try and get closer to that. This was all recorded with the Sennheiser e609. No fx used at all.
Back from spring break and behind on the weekly goal of recording something. Little jazzier type ditty. Some moments that might be worth expanding upon. Recorded half with captor and half with e609. All on the Frankenstrat through the Bad Cat.
Quick practice playing in time. Nothing fancy. Double tracked guitars with the Charvel. Added some bass. Tried a little to tweak the EQ a little. Everything played directly into the Two Notes Torpedo. Used the Bad Cat as the guitar amp, bass was DI using an Ampeg model in software.
Don’t let Dana record while sick. Fighting a cold and it seemed like a good idea to keep the fun train rolling. Maybe a bit too long. Recorded entirely with Frankenstrat again on a combination of amps, but all going through the Torpedo Captor for silent recording since it was getting late. Mix always ends up bass heavy. Not mixing with headphones would probably help.
Converted the cab Jeremy built into a closed back cab. Then had to go about testing it out. Performed on the Frakenstrat and 50% Frankencab. Other 50% was direct into the Two Notes Torpedo.
Pretty little piece. Still need to get my fingers working a little better on this one. Hard for a no-wrist guy. First recording after getting my favorite amp (BC Audio No. 8) back.
Final mix is loud for some reason. The drums at about 1 minute it still crack me up. This was the first recording using a Two Notes Torpedo Captor. Could account for the odd mix level.
Not a fully formed idea. Possibly for later use.
Fun spatial track. Never a bad time when making noise. Used the Karma Suture Silicon fuzz pedal fairly cranked up to generate the feedback. Used a regular old strat for the guitar on this one even though it sounds thicker to my ears.
Testing out mic placement and some different distortion pedals. Again nothing noted, so no idea what was used to make any of these sounds a month later typing this. Thanks former me.
Buried a beautiful arpeggiated backing line with a heavy helping of loud lead guitar.
We’ll just call it loose instead of sloppy?
Fun with double tracking guitars again.
Ran out of time. One shot to record everything. A big blob of single take.
Apparently I put new tubes in something. Probably an amp. Was just messing about trying to hear a difference from??
Little bass only rip off of a Primus lick. Not even sure if I’m in the right key.
I think this had something to do with speaker testing. There was an Eminence copperhead in my 2x10. I took it out and put in an Eminence RF10C which is a ceramic Red Fang in a 10" version. This was supposed to be some test in the different sounds, but I didn’t do anything to designate what was what, so who knows?
A ton of stuff going on at the same time. Most of it not that impressive. Kind of a mess of a recording. Very crowded
Having fun with some different sounds in Cubase. Synth and filters on the recorded guitar and bass parts. This might mark the initial appearance of the bass guitar.
Simple finger style type etude.
First recording using reaper if I remember correctly. The strat was pretty new to me at the time.
Some double tracking with guitars it sounds like. Lots of work with drums. Not sure what I was on about?
Initial tone test for some new pickups I had just installed. First real time trying to record anything. Used the ditto looper for “backing” noise.
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