http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=48&langid=100&itemid=39631

The ability to so quickly and conveniently change guitar tones, and running the live “digital” signal out to an actual analog source, I believe will change the way guitars are recorded. If you have a bad taste in your mouth for amp sims due to other less realistic sounding amp sims, I urge you to give a try to the Eleven plugin. It in my opinion, is the best guitar sim I have heard (and I have used GR, Revalver, GTR3, Amplitube, pretty much all of them), and also have a couple of different amps at my studio (orange tiny terror and 2×15 cab, marshall dsl2k and 4×12), so I am quite accustomed to how an amp should feel and sound when you play through it. I feel eleven even without using the rack unit, is a good enough playing experience, and you can get some amazing guitar tones by mixing a direct in eleven track with a live recorded amp track as a double.

Can’t wait to get mine!

Finally got around to recording tutorial one, basic drum compression. Drums are done with the Steven Slate Drums samples, the Dan Steele kit specifically. This tutorial is on basic drum bus compression, hopefully you find it useful!. A tutorial on parallel compression is coming shortly also.

(for my money, I don’t think it gets any better than when he sings when a man loves a women, I pretty much celebrate the guys entire catalog…) — You be the judge. He’s 17 years old from the SLC, and he’s got some skills. He also claimed he doesn’t really play the piano… Right Nate.

Nate Manning – Walk With Me

Anyways give it a listen. All recording was done at the arguably world famous, The Resistance Recording Studios (arguably famous, because that is the name I just came up with for my studio about 5 minutes ago, but, I live in the world, and if you are reading this, you just heard the name, and you live in the world, do you not?) I rest my case. (unless you are some sort of alien reading this, but if you are capable of seeing such things, shouldn’t you be flying around space in your spacecraft and doing something more interesting than reading my website here?) Sorry, I get a little, strange, when I’m running on <= 3 hours of sleep.

Regarding the recording process:
All of the strings and piano were done with stock Protools 8 Plugins, Mini grand and Expand, played through a M audio 88 key. I think it turned out pretty good considering the only live instrument recorded was the acoustic at end. And my tube mic was using for M/S recording with a dragonfly, went to hell, which is what is making the electrical interference noise near the end that drives me crazy, but many won’t notice.
- Note, the UAudio Roland Dimension D plugin = money in the bank for piano mixing.

Vocal chain provided by my standard solution for sexiness, Blue Dragonfly Mic, into UAudio LA-610 channel strip preamp, set the preamp about 7-7.5, compressor hitting no more than 4 dbish, with about a 4-6 db gain, keeping the eq flat, comp in comp mode.

If you have any questions or comments on the recording process, well clearly that is what the comments section is for.

Ok so this is the first part of what I intend to be a series of tutorials regarding everything I’ve learned about achieving great drum sounds in a mix. Right now I only have time to post the sound clips I put together, but a video tutorial will follow tomorrow or the day after, so please check back. My objective with this tutorial is to show you how I use one of my newest favorite kits in the Steven Slate Drums sample library, my roland TD4 electro kit, to create some pretty good sounding drum tracks, while keeping it simple.

First of all, it is important to note that I used my ROLAND TD4 KIT’s stock settings as a midi controller to trigger the kontakt player in protools. (important to show how plug and play these sounds are) – Also important to note, I did not modify the settings on the SSD preset for the dan steele kit (I load up the roland td6 preset in kontakt, seems to work fine) – So this will also give anyone looking to purchase a roland kit a good idea of the playability of the kit, as far as realism compared to a real kit is concerned.

Here is a sample of the little diddy I drummed, with NO PROCESSING.

04 DanSteeleKitTD4Unprocessed

Now here is an example of what a little compression and equalization can do to bring the drums to life. (Note that in the interest of keeping the coming video tutorial simple, I merely sent the entire kontakt player instrument out through a main drum buss, where I have 3 plugins. First I compressed, then I eq, then compressed again to bring out the punch further.)

03 DanSteeleKitTD4EQComp

In the tutorial I will just basically walk you through how I compress, EQ and compress again, and how that makes the drums sound better, and fit better within a mix. Also I will show you my favorite 3 plugins I use for drum tracks, (fyi one of them is the fatso plugin that was just finally released by UA, its pure magic.) – But even if you dont have the plugins, you can use the stock protools EQ and comps to create a similar sound.

Also, quick plug for the absolute best drum sample library around for any type of rocking drums, Steven Slate Drums. If you are serious about making or recording music, you have to be serious about drums. They are the backbone of 99% of music these days. If your drum tracks suck, it will be hard for you to make anything else in your mixes sound good. In the last two years Ive spent teaching myself protools/recording, ive spent as of late a good 80% of it on getting good at producing drums, and as soon as I got the SSD samples, I found all sorts of new inspiration/skill mixing drums. I also have owned almost all of toontracks drum libraries, and I have to tell you, although they dont sound bad overall, SSD drums are leaps and bounds over what toontrack is doing. Steven knows many of the top mixers in the record industry, and it goes to show when you listen to the radio and all of the sudden you hear a song youve heard a million times, but this time you think to yourself, Snare 3P, with a non linear reverb! I cant tell you how many times Ive hear the drums I hear in the different kits, all over the radio now that Ive been paying attention. ANYWAYS, sorry to sound lke a fanboy, I’m just really glad that someone in the industry has taken the initiative who UNDERSTANDS drum sounds better than aspiring average mixers like me do, and provided them in such a good package. This is part of the reason I am running this blog, theres a lot of knowledge kept under tight wraps in the recording industry it seems, and if this knowledge can help inspire/inform people on how to make better MUSIC, then I’ll be damned if I don’t at least share what little knowledge I have. (gracefully descends from soapbox.)

Ok one clip, I decided to mess around with that little loopy from earlier and add some instruments (bass piano acoustic guitar) on top to show you how well the drums fit into a mix (which is one of the strongest points of SSD also, the kits and individual drums, just fit into mixes like a glove). Here is an example of that. BTW, I am merely attempting to play the drums, I don’t play the drums, though I am learning, and all of these parts were played in one or two take off the top attempts, so if you could keep the “no talent ass clow” comments to yourself, it would be much appreciated. – Also I parallel compressed the drums a little bit, which I will cover also in a future tutorial.

01 DanSteeleKitFullMixExample

So ya please be sure to bookmark my bloggy and follow on twitter if you use it. I plan on posting a pretty large amount of content in the weeks to come. I am currently recording a friend of mine band, the very talented All Over Again, local to SLC UT, so I will likely create some video tutorials of the mixing process when I begin mixing it.

If you find the blog useful all I ask is that you let me know it helped, which will motivate me to keep creating new content!

Jason

Another Reverb  UAD EMT 250 Classic Electronic Reverberator (Unfortunately only available if you have a UAD-2 card)

Because you can never have too much EQ: UAD Neve 31102 and 31102SE (Works with both the UAD-2 and UAD-1)

Last, but certainly not the least: The plugin all us UA users have been patiently waiting for.

 The FATSO - Warmth Plugin. Tape simulation and compression.

Well unfortunately this one also requires a UAD-2 card, and right now I’m rolling 2 UAD 1′s. So, I called up good old sweetwater as soon as I could come up with the cash, and it is now in transit. It is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday I believe, so I am looking forward to testing it out and I will be sure to do a video tutorial/review of the plugin! Im stoked for it!

P.S. check out this video for more on the plugin.

The Fatso explained and demonstrated

http://www.thrice.net/?p=270

Speaking from the point of an overly excited and impatient fan, I can tell you first hand that this album is amazing and inspirational.