jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

you know what Nikhil? you need to relax into it to slow down and enjoy making the song happen.... net time you do any music work you gotta dim the lights and pour yourself a gin and tonic and just mellow out before you hit play... hook up whatever shitty computer speakers you have and set 'em kinda low and just chill... lsiten real quiet, sip your drinkk, go in there and maybe high pass the piano at 20hz, then roll it abck, listen...

and chill! Imagine you're Dr Dre.. he's just relaxed, kicking out dope beats, no stressing about the details but paying attention to them and making the sonics rock solid while he enjoys himself. That's you. Like a little christian gangsta drinking tangueray, praisin' the lord with some smooth parallel bus compression... got me?

dude, I have problems having a non-music, day job type career the past decade because I'll eventually ask eveyr motherfucker in the office what their favorite record is, often right in the middle of a conversation about soemthing else.... they're liket alking about work shit and I'm thinking, 'I'll bet this guy is a James Brown fan.' Or like someone will be talking at work and say soemthing remotely about sound and I'll be like "shit, that's just haas effect." nd people already thiink I'm nuts because I talk to myself all day and like hold a telecaster while I sit at the computer and do my do-ggoder healthcare funding job.... play a blues lick, type a littl;e, think some, figure out the problem, strum an A chord, solve it. Get the money, help more sick people... by the way, fuck Trump care.

HBO show? The Defiant Ones. DIf you have an apple TV you can rent HBO shows ala carte with the HBO NOW app insteada HBO GO.

its all about doing the work... soemtiems I did projects for abnds (a lot of times actually) where the music was so shitty that only the process amde it fun. No matter how hard I worked there was a limit on the quality of the finished product, but the work is addicting and great.

I watched this 4 part documentary recently on HBO about Jimmy Iovine and Nikhil needs to watch that and absorb the single-mined pursuit in these people. The workaholism and the willingness to put it all on the line, the focus on rpocess.

I feel like Nikhil is mroe itnerested inr esults than anything else. And Ic are about the finished product, but no matter ow prud I am of anything I do right after finishing, within an hour i am depressed because the fun of making it is over. its just dead to me, out in the world. I feel proud and I might even be able to listen to it years down the line, but I am always about the process, the fun of getting from humming in the shower to a recording that soudsn good on every system its played on and soudns pretty much the way I imagined it.... well, hopefully even ebtter thanks to the fun experimenting. But its sad too, ebcause most of the point for me was the work.

I don't find myself getting frustrated with stuff when tis not working, i justget at it. I get frustrated when stuff breaks! I ahte having tot ake time out to solder. i ahte having to do computer work tog et my shit running right like the last fucking OS update Iw as forced into! ARGH! But making isntruments obey me and making the tools do magic shit to the recording? See that can't take logn enough. I have gotten so fast now its over too quick. Its like the opposite of sex. When you're a kid its over too quick and its better as a grown up with some experience.... but with music you get good and the whole process gets quick. I putter around just to stretch it out now. take big breaks, get involved in other things so i have something cool to look forward to. like the vocals on all that stuff I bounced off you and Kyja. i think Iw as sretching to make the project last, man

I used to record people's live sets for gas money, beer and drugs... I got a lot of experience, built my reel up and.... wait, did I say for DRUGS, umm sorry kids, stay off drugs. i emant to say HUGS. yeah, hugs. Anyway, i got to ahng with some talented guys. Some downbeat magazine cats who could fucking play. Being a closet jazz fan it was a thrill and it was worth devaluing my services. Also, the ajzz guys weren't out there telling ym usual clientelle Iw as working for cheap for them. They were their whole clsoed circle and it was on the sly.

its definitely more amp like n the dynamic breakup camp than the soul food. The soul food is a Klon clone. ia hd one, decent pedal, didn't work for my rig though i wish I had kept it for the studio. When i traded it I wasn't thinking straight. I am really sensitive to bandwidth changes when I engage a device in-line with my amps. I have really nice amps and I know what they all do across the freequency spectrum and I am not content jacking the volume on my OD to compensate for a really audible abss drop out. I understand that to get the circuit clipping right it can't have all the bandwidth of a poweful tube amp, but still, tis a problem, there are ways to remedy it. Anyway, the Glove is an OCD. Both are riffs on the classic Distortion+/Ross/OD250 type diodes-to-ground distortion. But they each ahve a twist. The Klon splits the signal up into no clipping, mids clipping and treble clipping. The gain control is actually a dual pot, the first aprt is gain into the circuit and the 2nd part is a clean blend basically balancing the clean and main midrangey clipping to ground (so when you are getting elss clipping you are also getting mroe of your bypassed tone blended) while the tone control is the gain for the treble-only clipping to ground and its all mixed back together at the 2nd op-amp stage. It also borrows the rat's charge pump to run at a more dynamic 18 volts without needing a larger pwoer supply. It stores the voltage up and doubles what the ccircuit sees.... the OCD circuit is absed on the voodoo lab OD. Its a basic od250 type circuit with a basic tone cotnrol and a voicing switch to change the inut capacitor to allow more bass thru in 'low peak' mode which chagnges the frequencies that clip the most, basically goes from growl to crunch, small tweed to 100 watt brit? That's the idea. But its extremely dynamic because the diodes aren't shunting to ground clipping away a fixed amount of signal making a uniformly squared wave at a certain threshold. In the OCD and voodoo lab design the diodes go to the bias potential of the first gains tage so thatyour playing dynamics have an impact on the amount of clipping not just because the clipping will be less when you play lighter but the diodes clipping threshold will also change based on how that op amp gain stage is being hit. Its even more dynamic on an 18 volt supply because the slew rate of the opamp will be better at higher voltage (soemthing the Klon circuit does internally) and in a circuit where the dynamics of the opamp effect the clipping characteristics this can be a big deal. Some prefer 18, some rpefer the more compressed 9 volt. You have the option. Confused yet? Botha re VERY VERY clever designs to make a lively overdrive out of pretty archaic ideas. Botha re good pedals and the EHX copies are pretty damn solid, For the coin they are ahrd to deny and to me the OD Glove actually soudns better than any version OCD I've tried or heard. You would have to A/B them with your rig. Theya re cheap enough that you could buy both sued and thenr esell the one you don't like or go to a store with a no-questions return policy, buy both, and then return one within that return window.

you cna do it with anything IF you kow what you're doing and you don't expect top40 polish... if you don't it helps to have the bare bones tools. I didn't suggest you work ina studio, I doubt you've played in enough bands and amde enough friends in highschool to get a job in what few studios have survived the digital music revolution. Getting those gigs in the old days was networking. But I am suggesting without that gig you need to gain experience on your own with good tools or lweor your expectations and slow down your timetable for musical development. Stay in school. if you're too tired to get a job on top of that, fine. just don't expect magic from what you have so far. And slow the heck down. Nothing happens overnight even if you're getting schooled by the cheif engineer at a big commercial studio or an indie label owner or whatever. It takes tiem tog et good at. by time I mean forever. I ams till elanring, everyone is. When you think you've got it down then the truth is you don't. I worked a job at an inide label and studio through college. I slept very little. You're young, you will never have more energy than you have RIGHT NOW. The job fudned my gear purchases, paid the rent, teh bills, taught me about music production AND taught me office management and bookkeeping. Iw as tired. That's why they invesnted coffee.

just stop and tool up, then just sit and elarn your tools and stop putting stuff out and asking for advice until you have a working udnerstanding of what everything does. Do the diligence and come back in a few months. You're not ready to get technical. Put some elgit work in. Make 100 bad recordings and mixes. You'll know when you hit a watershed moment. Or you won't and then it emans you should quit. I'll teach you stuff because I feel abd for young people coming up in an environment with cheap and free tools but no mentorship because there aren't that many commercial recording facilities left and especially not many doing itnernship or hiring tape-ops and tea boys and shepherding them through all the steps to independence like when me and Xaq were learning in the 90s. But do your bit. I didn't have the balls to ask questions until I worked on my own enough to know what to ask my boss. "why does my mix sound unprofessiona;" is not an intelligent question. Okay? Its tons of reasons starting with the arrangement like i said in teh first place. Pick a discipline and focus. You wanna engineer? Do some of your own stuff, sure, but record other musicians whoa re more accomplished. Do it free and let them worry about the music and you just learn the tools. Get good recordings and see if you cna get a decent balance.

But firsta nd foremost, get rid of the earbuds. And stop rushing through everything. Take your time, take breaks. More breaks and thinking than actual lsitening. Then work fast, lsiten more, walk away for a day. Do a lot of thinking.

yeah, you might as well time out and save for seakers if you're mixing on earbuds... don't even bother. Not only will you not be eharing whats there but you are hurting your ears. Stop putting those thigns in your ear holes, man. Theya re worse for your top end hearing then playing in a loud rock band without ear protection. At best you are getting fatigued working on music ebfore you even get very far. Just stop, now. Over ear ehadphones are safer, they're further from your ear drum... open abck over ears are even safer still because some of the sound vents, they're more accurate and speaker-like too. So if you must get headphones buy a pair of open abcked AKGs. You're not a DJ. You can use the earbuds to overdub if the AKGs have too much spill, but really? get some fucking speakers. If you wanna go simple just buy a pair of yamaha powered HS speakers. the 5s are probaby too small, my experiences with 5" woofers were 100% negative ine very room at any volume elvel. Weird lower mids, no real bass. Good for hooking to your TV though. 6.5" and elarer woofers are the way to go.

Get those evil things out of your ears. Sound is not meant to be right up against your eardrums. Its not how thigns sound in teh world and tis not good for your hearing.

there's a lot of science to this... mostly electrical engineering and acoustics, but its not essential to really understand all of it if you just sit down and patiently make it sound good, but it can be tricky to know where tos tart. Knowing what's wrong without the science requires a magical gift or experience, usually both. Some people have an isntinct for it and know very little about what the processing is doing but they just get it. They turn knobs until tis right without having any diea what's going on. I've seen people like that, they are savants. I don't think that's you. You're not a natural sound engineer. Althugh to be fair you don't have good monitoring... my worst recordings and mixes strting out were done at home with monitoring thatw asn't so hot while doing my own music. A lot of my other really abd mixes weren't my fault, i did what teh clients asked tog et paid and ruined music thatw as coming together alright ebfore they showed up and started making demnds that had mroe to do with their egos than the sogns, but i digress. My big tracking and mixing epiphanies really happened when i was set up with great monitoring and could really hear what everything was doing. Hering it all working gave me new ideas on how to use the tools and it helped me udnerstand methods I'd been told about ahnging out at the abr with more experienced guys LOL A lot of mixing is really subtle, same with recording with a microphone, subtle little changes thata re a big deal in context. Hearing stuff in cotnext is genuinely when you hear an improvement, soloed moving the mic an inch back or adding some compression will just sound different. All these little changes add up and become drastic. When you get to the end of the process you should really hear your processing working only by disabling a processor or two and eharing the mix fall apart.

right now I am spitting flames, a plugin I sue on every mix stopped working after the most recent forced windows update... there's no susbtitute for it that I can get behind anywhere in my library, I like THIS ONE and I can no longer open any of my mixes without losing this one essential component in the lows. I have tried everything Ic an think of like unisntalling and reinstalling, reinstalling the windows update and I still get the same error message which I KNOW is update related. I fucking ahte computer music. its cheap but it sucks. You really wanna learn music you shoudla started on an old tascam cassette 4 track. HAHAHA

I edited that, see if it makes sense or if you need me to explain terms

also, bookmark this:

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-bpmtempotime.htm

we're going to crash course this and see how it goes.... might not go well with you because you don't have any legit monitoring, just whatever ehadphones came with your interface. Stereo iamge and dynamics are just easier to hear on speakers in my experience.

just get it where you think the arrangement's where it oughta be and there's a solid vocal even if its not aa final take and then upload that, we'll talk arranging then. From there we can talk about the mix. Before you even try mixing much lets do arrangement and then i'll give you the crash course in setting up the tools to polish what's there and get it working together. There are no wrong ways, but there are definitely some different approaches tos tarting a mix you might wanna try. I have a methodologythat works for me and i can get you started and explain the basics so you can use your ears from there. We're going to set up some channel comrpession, isntrument groups with parallel bus comrpession across the groups and do some mix bus compression to start. A vocal trick you may not know is to shelve out some low end before you de-ess or compress or do anything else. You wilL likely EQ later, but you want the compressor to grab transients in teh presence and detail ranges not the boominess so taking it out first makes more efficient use of that dynamics processing. I will generally use a simple EQ like a pultec simualtion or a tilt/baxandall sort of thing, I leave an insert space for a de-esser if I need it, then a VCA style comrpessor for peak limiting and follow that with soemthing overt like an 1176 or LA2A type of thing set to smash but run it parallel so ti not sucking the lfie outta the vocal, then I will sue the channel EQ or if I ened more detail I'll use fruity EQ2 or Fab Filter. We'll also set up 2 to 4 ambience sends and some echo sends that go to the ambiances but not into the mix bus (or minimally in the mix bus so they are msotly hitting reverb when you feed a track into them). We will be gating and expanding reverbs to get them to pusle with the meter and we will be EQing them too. We might be EQing those delays as well f needed. You will also be high-passing anything that doesn't have sub-bass as a component of its music sound. Low tones thata ren't musical eat dynamic range and bandwidth and make your mix muddy.

Boom, I kep trying to explain this to people who elarned to play from records and the radio, there are no such thing as chords. You don't copyright chords to a song, they're just harmony, only the melody defines a sogn and any chord that works musically can be subbed... all his substitutions worked and eh sang the toes so he naively just rearranged the song. While a specific chord sequence or drum groove might definethe original recorded version of a song to a fan, the song is pretty much just the melody with or without the lyric. 8 million songs have sued that sequence of suspended and add9 chords Nikhil played ebcause they are easier to play than the striahg tmajors and minor, requiring less figner movement in 1st position! They are incountry, pop, rock, whatever uses a guitar. Throwng thsoe suspensions in is soemthing guys do all the time ebcause tis easy.

yea actually the vocals was a rough take, they did it long time back just to get the feel of the song. I sent it to my friend after mixing, he also was not happy with the vocal part. I changed the piano to FL Keys Rhodes. To get the right atmosphere. still working on it.

"well, I posted a bad vocal take and I changed the keyboard sound from a sampled piano to a synthesized rhodes, so I guess I wasn't that serious about what I psoted and asked for help with... I'm not sure why I asked you sicne I was planning on changing every last thing to ebgin with"

Professor Compressor says:

just make up your fucking mind, get some takes and make it sound good already, stop puttering around and DO IT. and don't ask anymore questions until you are sure about the aprts, the isntrumentation and the vocal take.

it wouldhelp substantially if the guy and the girl singing could actually singt h parts at pitch and in time... I ahd to turn it off a little after the siinging started

piano is muddy, vocals have too much low end, doesn't matter though ebcause you need tog et some good vocal takes. The ix is irrelevant without a stellar vocal on a song that's all vocal driven like this

unless all fo teh suddent a pounding kick comes in all 4 on teh floor with some shrieking303 and maybe some moog bass or soemthing and I just didn't get to that part.... but yeah. look at the [iano, it could use some defintieion at 6k for the attack of the keys to cut ebtter and it soudns muddy around 350hz or so, make a peak in the lwoer mdis with an EQ and move it around between 250 and 1k until you find the mush,then slide it down tilits cutting 3dB or more and play with the width (Q) of the notch until it soudns even, clear but NOT hollow. Put a high pass on the piano too maybe, something around 20hz to get rid of any less than musical rumbling... steep Q maybe so it actually has a hint of boost in the bass above the fitler cutoff point.... delete those vocals, delete delete delete

oh, can I? thanks! I am glad I have your permission to do it after work... Iw as worried there for aminute that my schedule might not emet with your approval, boss.

no idea, kinda busy, didn't listen to it

I think you meant to say 'jesus LOVES you', might wanna fix that, not everyone reading that title will know English is your second or third language

welcome! https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder64/500x/17307064/mr-burns-i-like-the-cut-of-your-jib.jpg

nah nah, I am 5 o'clock shadow and a hangover to the guitar

I can play. and play and play and do stuff with nothing... I like some echo these days, some slap or stereo tmed stuff with 2 amps.... I occassionally put drive into one amp too while th other is freaking out. But usually i can just go at it. When I put stuff in line it potentialy eats my feeling. It usually eats it actually, but I have some clear amps. Super clear. Like my matchless is so clear that its a crime to put much more than delay out front if you're giving it the nuance. Same with the pro. I can produce effects with guitar controls and hand technique to a large degree. You know I am not smack talkin'.

PEDAL OVERLOAD

CAN'T PLAY!

agreed.... I don't really get a lot of texas blues except ZZ Top. I admit it took some balls to be SRV, but its never been my taste. So heavy handed. And the much admired SRV guitar sound has never knocked my socks off. He's really brassy, typical strat neck pickup with a smattering of tubescreamer overtop. Maybe its just me, but I don't get most of that electric cowboy blues. Gary Clark is defintiely no T-Bone walker. He's got a lot of heart but his technique is shit and his musical snsibilities are not what I wanna hear.

I think his whole career has been built on the fact that he started in the hipster austin purist blues scene when he was a kid and justs tuck with it... he's there for every south by southwest I'm sure and he seems like a nice who guy so people in the scene there wanted to support him. There are people who like him and always make money off of him promoting his myth. He has a story and that's what sells records and merch, not the actual music. I remember doing major label talks at one point and the label ltierally said the band iw as in needed a good story. i am basically quoting. Ifyou're not a great player but part of your story in the press is that you started young and you paid your blues dues then I gues you've gotta be great, right? What does the lsitener know? Its part of his story so elts repeat it and give him more press coverage, sell more shirts.

there's also the consideration of how far the cone of the woofer or mid driver throws midrange versus your lsitening position. An NS10 is low on abss but the mdis are very rich and detail up close but start abcking off in a small room at low volume and get more balance. Working on midrange? lean forward. working on the lows? lean back for the full effect and then maybe A/B with a wider bandwidth system if you're not so sued to the old yamahas as many oungsters won't be.... but i digres

the other thing about ehadphones is that they totally fuck with the stereo image unless its extreme speacial effects.... now you may be thinking that depending on how a person places their speakers in the room that what you heard will not be what they will ehar.... maybe so, but if you make an equilateral triangle between the speakers and your head at your nominal mix position? that's going to translate okay for people whoa re off-center, off-axis, system where the speakers are spread too wide or are too close ssuming you also make sure it collapses passably to mono. Why is this a concern? clubs are rarely in balanced, well-sapced stereo. EDM? you wanna mix that's fun at home and fun on the floor.... fun on earbuds or even a shitty phone speaker will follow if you make it happen on properly positioned monitors.

very stressed out since getting back from vacation... no one has said anything aprticularly interesting anyway

the trouble with hotone is that they don't employ any hos in the design/manufacturing process

Yes, Xaq, that's what's up right there.... although I suspect come teh Autumn its going to get dicey for outdoor electronic devices up there in the Pacific Northwest!

and most wahs are enormous, though there are now the dunlop minis if you want that flavor. but generally expect to eat up a ton of pedalbaord real estate for a few riffs here and there. If you're into the cocked wah thing like Mic Ronson then these days you can just score an EHX Cock Fight and go smaller and cheaper. I don't really have an opinion on anything else you're talking about. I am not a huge effects guy live, or at all really though i have owned a ton of pedals and rack units over the years... just didn't use 'em much. I am all about convenience now, MIDI presets, tap tempo for time based stuff and a good clean bypass... but i let my amplifiers do most of the tonal heavy lifting, which I don't see a lot of people doing anymore outside of the high-gain, channel switcher crowd. Anything else I tell you about a dream rig will probably not work for you unless you're a guy who likes to use vintage amps turned up pretty loud.

I can only speeak about wah. Unless you are really great at the wah wah then leave it off. First off there is so much that goes into amtching a wah to your guitar, amp, other pedals and the style of music. These days there are so many options its dizzying. Secondly using the wah pedal is easy but using it well is not you may think yo're killin' it, but man, msot people who sue the wah on solos imaprticular are really not doing anything special although tis good for covering mistakes. And finally, apart from Hendrix, Slash, Beck and sometimes Page (usually not though) most of the rock soloing greats are not regular wah users. I am not a huge EVH fan, but the guy never leaned on wah for solos, he would use a phaser for a similar presence lift and feeling of motion, you know? So you have yourself some other modualtion? unless you're a wah god go the EVH route when you want some sweep. You enver hear Dean rom STP go for the wah wah and that guy's like a modern guitar solo expert. Just my .02 on the wah question. I steer clear ofw ah live ebcause i am not very good at it and I am doubly bad if i do any improvisation, my whole feel for where to sweep gets thrown off. I can pratice up and make it happen, but why bother? Its not part of my style and refusing to sue it helps me stand out and sound more like me.

its true... everyone is always so resistant outside of jazz and classical, like knowledge is detrimental to creativity? I don't know where that comes from. Other art forms don't have that attitude.

I always wanna know more so i can do new and exciting things with authority and impunity.

wow, that's some stereotyping

I'm prettys ure it IS an ac30, its got the right speaker cutouts... the orange could be either but I suspect its a cabient since there's a marshall ehad on top of it. Maybe its just an ac30 2x12 cab though. Only an idiot would block the vents to an ac30 with a cab on top of them. Recipe for meltdown.

or not...either way

repudiate capitalism! KILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

go get that shit

nah, I'm chillin' homey.. she actually just died 11 onths ago, the big aniversary is august 5th... its okay dude... you will grow up and understand shit

i added to my post, very emtionally

point being, thhis recording is junk, thrown together... but you like it because of the precise guitar playing and emotional content of teh vocal and writing

thats analog tape, no editing... studio I worked at afer I left my late wife, we were apart for 5 years+..... its just a console and some EQ, gentle compression on each track from dbx units, basic... PLAY WELL AND WRITE YOUR HEART WELL... notwhat you think you feel or want to feel, not the feeling the congregation wants but bare bones honesty overcomes everything. PERIOD... and given your religious conviction? it should be a basis for eclesiastical music, embrace the emotion and embrace teh down and dirty technical stuff and speak your heart. It will be great!

you don't need gear, you need taste and skill.. PRACTICE

that's how you play the acoustic guitar, with emotion, restraint and expert understanding of its weaknesses... and chords? a joke, know harmony and make it happen where its appropriate

when Iw as your age, maybe a bit older... hit the archives today on the last day off. GET TO WORK... bitch