Back to recording again

Last month I had a major reorganisation in my home office/studio.  I moved my MacBook Pro to the downstair office and swapped my Windows PC to my upstairs alcove studio.  I had always used my MacBook as my primary recording platform, but the upstair studio was becoming too hot and noisy and we had just installed a brand new air conditioner in the downstairs office that I wanted to take advantage of.

Over on the left for work, over on the right for play!

So this is the first recording in the new space, and I like to say that it was MUCH more enjoyable in the cool and (relative) quiet compared to the old space.  Still need to do some work on reducing reflections etc., but overall, I think it is positive.

I still need to bring my KRK studio monitors and set them up downstairs, so at the moment I am doing all mixing and mastering using my Sennheiser HD 25-SPII headphones, which is not ideal, but all I have to work with at the moment.

My fancy stereo ribbon mic still hasn't been used in anger yet - not at least until I get a 4 channel audio interface, so I used my trusty Rode NT1-A mic blended with the internal AP5 pickup in my venerable old Maton guitar.

This piece is called 'Dandelion' and is by Masaaki Kishibe.  I've actually been playing it for a couple of years now, and it turns out to be my wife's favourite of all the instrumental pieces I play.  It is a fairly simple song, but to capture that lilting feel is a bit tricky.  I don't think I have mastered it yet, but will keep working on it.  It doesn't help that I haven't played fingerstyle guitar for so long that my fingers are still not as nimble as I would like.

I mastered this track using the Slate Virtual Mix Rack plugins - nice, but a bit of a drain on the resources on my 7 year old MacBook.  I am not completely happy with it as I think the final results are still to strident.  I need to reduce some of the high frequency and bring in more bass without making it too boomy or woofy.  It is all a learning process, and I think once I have my KRK monitors set up for mastering work, I can improve on it.

Recording guitar with 4 microphones on my Macbook Pro

In my last blog post, I posted about revisiting the acoustic guitar again, and I posted a song there called "The Fisherman".  Normally when I record guitar, I use two inputs - the inbuilt guitar pickup/preamp, as well as a microphone somewhere near the soundhole.

For THIS particular recording though, I wanted to try something different.  I wanted to try up to 4 different recording inputs!  The problem though, was that I only had an audio interface with 2 input channels.  I am using an Apogee Duet, which as its name suggests, is a two input, two output device.

How then would I get 4 inputs?  Well, I recently purchased a Steinberg UR22 (once again, a 2 input, 2 output audio interface) for my son.  The Apogee Duet has a Firewire interface, whereas the Steinberg has a USB interface.  I thought that I might use BOTH on my ageing 2009 17" MacBook Pro.

Plugging in the Steinberg was a piece of cake.  I had to download the latest OS X driver from the Steinberg site, and the device was recognised immediately on my system.  Great.

The main problem came up when I fired up Logic X.  I discovered that Logic will only recognise ONE input device, and ONE input device only.  I could only choose between the Duet, or the UR22 as my input, giving me only 2 input channels in total at any one time.

The solution - was actually pretty easy, and took less time than plugging in and setting up the UR22 in the first place!

The secret is - Aggregated Audio Devices.  OS X has a nifty feature which allows you to combine two or more hardware (or software) devices into a single virtual device.

Under your 'Applications' folder on your Mac, there is a folder called 'Utilities'.  In there, is an app called 'Audio MIDI Setup'.  Fire it up, and you will see a screen with all your hardware (and software) audio devices.

Click the little '+' button on the lower left corner, and you will be able to set up a new aggregated device.  I ticked the Duet and the UR22 so I could use both devices together.  I set up the Duet as the master clock device for the MIDI clock, and I nominated that I wanted to use Input 1 and 2 on the Apogee, as well as Input 1 and 2 on the Steinberg (see image below).

I called my Aggregate Device the 'Dueberg', which was my amalgamation of the words 'Duet' and 'Steinberg' :)

Note that I had KRK Rokit 5 monitors already plugged into my Duet, and nothing plugged into the output ports of the UR22, so I ticked ONLY the 2 output channels on the Duet in my aggregate device.  This effectively gave me a 4 input, 2 output device.

Sure enough, when I went back to Logic X, I could choose the 'Dueberg' as my input device, and was able to set up 4 tracks with Inputs 1, 2, 3 and 4 across the two audio interfaces recording simultaneously.

For those that are curious, I set up the inputs as follows:

• Apogee Duet Input 1 - Direct from Guitar pickup/preamp
• Apogee Duet Input 2 - Rode NT-1A
• Steinberg UR22 Input 1 - AKG C5
• Steinberg UR22 Input 2 - AKG D40

The NT-1A was placed about 12 inches from the soundhole.  The C5 was placed near the lower bout and pointed at a 45 degree angle at the bridge of the guitar, about 10 inches away.  The D40 was placed directly over the 12th fret, pointing straight at it from around 6 inches away.

I am not sure if the sound was any better than my older recordings, but I felt I had more scope to play with the frequencies and tone shaping this way, including panning each mic left and right to create more 'space' in the end recording.

In the end, this was an easy and cheap way to get 4 inputs working in short order.  I was actually considering getting a Focusrite audio interface with 4 or 8 inputs on it, but this proved to be a far cheaper solution.

Hope it proves useful to others out there.

Rediscovering guitar - The Fisherman

Well it has been a long while since I recorded an acoustic guitar piece, so this weekend past, I decided to resolve that deficit and record a new song.

I remember a friend sending me a video of Simon Fox playing this particular piece in a live setting a few months back, and I was immediately taken with the song, which had a lilting Celtic cadence, combined with the feel of a lively jig.  Thankfully, Simon provides the tabs for all his songs on his website for free, so I downloaded them and learned "The Fisherman".

Technically, it was not an overly difficult piece, but the 'trills' proved to me more difficult that I thought.  Strangely, I find that some days they seem to come off perfectly, and other days, they just don't seem to work for me.

On the day I recorded this piece, they weren't working as well as I would have liked, but I persevered anyway.  The other thing that I found I needed to work on was the timing of this piece.  There is a dance like pace that needs to be maintained even though there are those trills and several syncopated notes to break the melody up.

I also decided to go a little overboard on recording this one, and used 4(!) different mics to capture the guitar sound.  I will post more on the details of that in another post, I think.

This was played on my Taylor BTO custom acoustic.  I had recently put pure Bronze strings on it to see how they sounded.  While I like the wamer, softer sound, they didn't seem as smooth under my fingers, and string squeak was a big problem, but I am relatively happy with the end tone that I got.

Here is "The Fisherman".  Enjoy.

Why I gave up on online forums

"Guitar Troll" by Steve Bolduc

Earlier this year, I decided to make the difficult decision to turn my back on online guitar and music communities.  I had been participating in various forums for many years, indeed even racking up nearly 10,000 posts at one of them.

I used to enjoy the camaraderie and sharing of knowledge that went with those forums in the early days, but over time things devolved and changed.

I am sure we have all seen it, on various internet communities.  The trolls start to emerge.  Discussions turn into sniping and personal insults.  Everyone seems to become outraged at the tiniest misinterpretation of something.  People judge without knowing.

It all started to get too much.  I initially pushed back at the negativity, and attempted to either defend or explain my point of view - but alas, the waves of constant hostility just began to wear me down.

"Relax" others would tell me.  "It is just the internet.  People do things there that they would never do in real life or to your face.  Just grow a thicker skin and stop being so sensitive."

Well, I was raised to believe that character is defined by what you do when nobody is looking.  I sincerely believe that someone who acts in a hostile or mean fashion behind the anonymity of a screen name has character flaws that I would not find attractive in real life either.

As for the second part about growing a thicker skin, well... as a musician, I believe that my sensitivity is actually an asset towards me creativity.  If I was to lose or suppress that, then I would lose a part of myself that makes music a joy to my soul.

So I have decided to take a sabbatical from online forums for a long while.  Who know, as with most communities, their nature is to evolve and change over time, and perhaps one day, they will organically weed out the energy sucking trolls and begin to celebrate those members that share knowledge and try to advance humankind again.

Then, I will rejoin the fray with gusto.