To him who has Ears and the home recording revolution.
I recorded my first 2 releases in a “professional” studio with extortionate fees to match and was only ever really 70% satisfied with the results. Back then the idea of recording on your own gear was just out of reach of the average home consumer just through the sheer expense of it all. For the price of a professional analog to digital converter you could buy yourself a decent car! But how times have changed amidst our current technological revolution, home studios have now become a phenomenal success with many big studios now closing their doors.
It’s been about 3 years now since I bit the bullet, researched like hell and buried my head in every article, book or magazine I could find to go about my vision of creating a home studio. The outcome?
Complete autonomy and creative freedom! Every song snippet, idea, guitar rift, or some weird flurry of ad lib vocals at 2am in the morning is all captured here through these microphones. They are in a sense my “dream catchers”.
I now possess hundreds of burgeoning songs in various degrees of completion all residing on my hard drives just waiting for me to recall them in exactly the same fashion that I’d left them say eighteen months prior. Oh what joy! What a revelation! This is the degree of immediacy and recall that every artist deserves. Autonomy and freedom!
For me personally the idea of booking a studio now in the hope of pulling that EP off in say 3 or 4 days is absurd. My belief is a professional recording studio will only benefit you if you can really afford the the time. For example ,I am happy to spend several hours just mixing the drum kit, or meticulously editing vocal lines to the n’th degree, at $800 a day you are unlikely to pursue that path unless you are a very wealthy or supported by a large record label.
Sure, while I admit I was fraught with fear on this initial expedition into the unknown land of music production it is now paying dividends. Write, record, mix-master, upload, distribute, done! Next! The work flow is established.
My last album “Frontline” took me about 12 months to write and record and boy was that difficult, my first self produced project. Yes I admit at times it was stressful not achieving the results I wanted with L plates on my back but persistence paid off I do believe I am achieving some great results.
Do I have lots to learn? Yeh sure! But man, what a trip! This is the real deal.
Yes home recording is definitely a viable and worthwhile option.
To him who has ears let them hear.
Mike de Velta
Pro tools 8 First Impressions
How I love Pro tools 8, let me count the ways. Well the boys at Digidesign have certainly put in the hours to create something most streamlined and beautiful. You know how pro tools 7.4 had that hard and sterile looking GUI? Well Pro tools 8 is very easy on the eye, it looks slick. But looks aren’t everything but it doesn’t take long to realize this is one mean peace of music creation software.
After only a couple of weeks I can only tell you what strikes me first, after all writing a comprehensive review on Pro tool 8 would have me at this keyboard to the wee hours of the morning, it really is that extensive.
Ok, what I like.
Notation.
Midi to score feature is going to be great for passing on my compositions for horn and string arrangements, I can’t write notes and humming it to a would be session musician just doesn’t cut it. Love it!
Um..Mini Grand, sounds great to my ears, maybe not to a concert pianist but within a pop style mix, purfect!
Pro tools 8 with the Mini Grand
The DB-33 organ, growls like the real thing, I’ve heard NI’s B4 and there is a difference in tone but I’m not particularly concerned whether an organ sounds exactly like a real Hammond, I just want a good sounding organ and this one sounds lovely.
Pro tools 8 with the DB-33
Automation is much smoother, you know how in previous versions nailing your automation with a mouse was real tricky.
Smoother automation edits
The new AIR plugin in list is extensive.
New Frequency Shifter plugin
• Effects Plug-ins:
• Chorus
• Decimator
• Distortion
• Dynamic Delay
• Enhancer
• Ensemble
• Filter-Gate-Sequencer
• Flanger
• Frequency Shifter
• FuzzWah
• KillEQ
• MultiChorus
• MultiTap Delay
• Nonlinear Reverb
• Phaser
• Reverb
• Spring Reverb
• StereoWidth
• Talkbox
• Vintage Filter
Now that’s a sweet list ain’t it? I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what these can do for my creativity but I’m real happy about having all these new options, Previously trying to find these effects from third party developers was time consuming and expensive.
Ok, check out the above graphic, this is real nice, see how you can highlight GRID mode and SHUFFLE mode at the same time, a new feature in Pro tools 8. This is really helpful, one less move when pushing around those regions. Also the Universe is great new feature. Just above bars and beats you can see a series of blue lines which overview the layout of my tracks without having to waste time zooming out. Clicking around this box will navigate me to that particular area in a flash.
As I said, there are so many features but is it really worth that expensive upgrade?
Well I think it’s a bit pricey but then again consider replacing just what I’ve listed here with third party products and you’d be up for thousands.
In a nutshell Pro tools 8 is empowering and it’s more of a one stop shop than ever.
Improved midi performance, state of the art design, a super plugin database, awesome virtual instruments. yep sold me.
A definite thumbs up!
BTW Upgrading from 7.4 to PT8 was a breeze, I thought I would at least lose a few of plugins with incompatibility issues but surprisingly they have all survived.
If I find more interesting stuff I’ll post it here soon.
Happy playing,
Mike de Velta
Side chain compression in Pro tools
I met a professional mixer on gearslutz once on a live chat some time ago and asked him if he worked with stems (merged tracks e.g all drums in on sep stereo track) in a final mix, he said he didn’t like working with them because of the extensive side chaining work he does with all his tracks.
I was a bit unsure of what he meant but in the simplest terms he went on to explain how you could send a level from a track via a buss to the compressor of another track that you wanted ducked.
Man! Like a light bulb! I knew how to do it theoretically but never saw or importantly heard this effect in a real world application.
Listen to the snippet below and listen to the effect of the vocals “pushing” down the volume of the keyboard sound it is set against.
Sacrifice.mp3
It makes more sense now to employ this method instead of trying to eq or volume ride everything into or out of existence.
Great stuff!
The Pro tools Side Chain Method
In this example a send is created within the vox channel and routed via bus 8 to the input of the compressor on the track below it.
The bussed output on the vox channel is set to 0db and the pre fade “P” button is clicked on to maximize it’s level.
The input of the compressor’s key (top-left) is now set to receive from bus 8 and importantly the highlighted blue key on the compressor should be activated. (top-right). The compressor is now listening to the external source.
Initially by tweaking the threshold settings within the compressor you should now be able to hear the side chain effect.
Voila!
The above graphic should be self explanatory, if you get stuck just flick me a mail and I’ll elaborate a little.
The new album
Well I have been plugging away the last few months really thinking forward about the musical direction for the next release. Whether or not it will be a hard copy CD or just available for download I’m not sure but however I go about it I want these tracks to stand out.
The track I’m working on here is called, “All these words”. so far it’s a fairly deep mix in that there is a lot going on. At this stage I work with midi instruments like drums, horns, sax etc until I get the arrangements in, then I’ll be looking for real players.
I’ll keep things posted.
For the technical I run pro tools 7.4 on OSX, really looking forward to Pro tools 8!
Electronique
Electronique is an instrumental improvisation played by Australian musician/ producer Mike de Velta on an orig 53 Les Paul Gold Top, 50′s Rickenbacker Lap Guitar and Fender Jazz Bass. All recorded in pro tools via Great River preamp and RME converters.
Mike de Velta & Ellis Guitars
Hi guys,
Bit of fun last Thursday with Andrew Ellis form Ellis guitars, we’re currently putting together a series of you tube videos demonstrating his most excellent guitars.
This particular Ellis is a Wiessenborn styled lap. It was recorded in pro tools with a Neumann KM 184 small diagphram condensor and a DI from the sunrise pickup going to a Great River NV-1 preamp. Sweet.
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Typically associated with the Blues and Roots movement and acoustic in nature Mike De Velta's intoxicating compositions and performances are constantly on the move. A rich showcase of modern folk,blues and a hint of the eastern expressed through the shimmering and delightful tones of lap slide, ukulele and acoustic guitars.
