Gear List (Everything Except Drums)

So, you have all seen my drums, and how they are all pieced together and miked up for recording! I do hope that helped some of you reading this! Now I am going to go into more detail on other parts of the recording process that I do from home...

To start with, after I have got my basic drums recorded, I move onto recording a very basic single guitar track. In one of my earlier posts I described the guitar gear that I use in a lot of our recordings, for those of you that didn't read it I use a Marshall MG HD100FX head and cabinet, I have used this combination in all of my recordings as you can hear in this song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsyjKoXSVd4 Please excuse the vocals in this recording, they are very very average! But listen to the guitar quality then compare my recording to the original recording here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtZWfGH7Tv4 There are some parts in my recording that have been missed out (most parts missed out were involving the synth) but the two recordings sound extremely similar in my mind, I should have done more mixing on the guitar, but overall, I got an extremely good sound out of a solid state amp. Below this is a picture of my amp and guitar that I used for the recording.

That is the amp that I have used in my bands recording of "Sweet December" considering at the time I only had one microphone the recording turned out pretty good in my opinion.

Since "Sweet December" I have invested some higher budget recording gear, namely, my M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB Interface, I havent had it for a very long time unfortunately, although it sure has been used a lot! At the moment I am editing my bands most recent cover called "Counting The Stars"if I had done this using Logic, the song would probably be on YouTube by now, however I am using ProTools to mix and master it (By no means am I saying ProTools is harder!! I have just worked with Logic a lot in the past and know a lot of the ins and outs of Logic I am stil very new to ProTools) For me, using ProTools to mix and master this song, has been a big learning experience, to start with ProTools is a lot different to Logic even from the basic user interface, wait until you get into the EQ's. But any way, here is a picture of my M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB Interface that I have been using. I highly recommend this product by the way, it is so easy to hook up and use, plus it is so portable.

So, thats a picture of my USB interface that I will recommend to just about anybody starting a home studio!

Next, I have my bass gear, this is fun to use, under this paragraph I will upload a photo of my bass, as well as my head and cabinet (Not that I use my cabinet for recording). In recordings with bass, there are two things that I like to do.. The first thing, is that I like to take a direct out, out of the back of my amp head into ProTools so I get the sound of the bass that I am hearing through the cabinet, coming out directly into the computer. My second way that I like to record bass is by simply a D.I. (Direct in) this means that basically I just take the lead from my bass, plug it into a track in my audio interface and in ProTools or Logic, I am getting the raw sound of the bass guitar I am using, this makes it more fun to mix as you have total control over the sound, and in ProTools, whats really cool is being able to add a guitar amp plug in over a bass guitar track, it can give you a very very unique sounding bass. In the picture below you can see both my bass (Squire Mike Dirnt Signiture Bass) as well as my bass amp and head (Rockit).

Thank you all for reading, I hope that was help for you all and if not leave your questions or comments in the section below!

:)

Pro Tools HD 9 or Logic Pro 9

So, I have read a lot of people asking questions around forums on weather to choose ProTools or Logic.

I have been working in both over the past month and there are many differences I suppose, the first obvious one is the ease of use, Logic has a much much easier interface as you can see in the screen shot below...

So the ease of use in Logic is much easier as opposed to the ease of use in ProTools HD 9 (Which is what I am using) here is a screen shot of ProTools HD 9's main user interface ...

As you can see from the two screenshots above, the user interface is much different, if you are just getting into music recording and music production, I would highly recommend Logic Pro 9 or even Logic Express! Logic is much much easier to use than ProTools. 

Placing plugins into Logic is much much easier than placing plugins into ProTools. Ill show you a basic "Mixer" look at the two programs with plugins on the tracks as well as the pop out window to install the plugins...

Logic...

ProTools....

Open those two pictures into a larger window and compare the two, Im not to sure which one LOOKS easier but believe me, Logic Pro, in comparison is much much easier.

In the next week, I will try to remember to create two comparison videos of the two programs! stay updated!!

:)

Mixing: Before and After

At the moment... I only have a before sound demo and a before screen shot. This is using ProTools HD 9 which I am very new to.

In this sound clip it is totally unmixed drums and you can hear quite a lot of bleeding into other mikes as well as feedback from one of my Tom Toms.

Please excuse the drumming!

As you can see from the above two screen shots, there are no plug ins at all involved in this snippet. If you listen throughout the whole thing there is also a clav on the snare.

Unfortunately, the sound file is located on the video which is just a video of a screenshot to show 0 Plugins.

Tonight I will take a picture of the drums, and how they are all miked up!

:)

Future Idiots

Future Idiots, who are they? They are a sweedish Pop/Punk band who are extremely well known on YouTube for their insane covers!

Who would think that you can turn a soft piano song like 1000 Miles into a modern Pop/Punk song?! Well Future Idiots did it, they recently released their first "album" to purchase on iTunes called Grand Theft Audio, and I bought it a few days ago, and I love it!

You have to check these guys out, totally amazing!!

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Futureidiots

:)