Duh!

I, the self proclaimed opsimath, believe I may have just had yet another breakthrough.  It's no secret that I've been struggling the most with recording and mixing electric guitars and I'm sort of wondering if I just found one of the "tricks".  I say it that way because I have learned that most things in life aren't inherent skills but literal tricks of the trade, and if you don't know them, you're fumbling around in the dark like a lunatic.  When I find one of these things, usually on pure accident, I almost literally squeal with glee.

I also usually punch myself in the head repetitively since these things are usually a "duh!  Why didn't I think of that before?" kind of thing.  Tricks are like that, after all.  I guess you could say that I've been turning tricks (heh, heh).

I'm supposed to be recording today but I've so far gotten fairly caught up in mixing and such.  I was ultimately trying to determine if I needed to re-record the guitars on one of the Wrecking Ball tracks, and this is where maybe the light bulb finally went off.  My initial 2 mic guitar tracks from who knows when (2014-ish?) really don't sound great.  My first question was whether they don't sound good due to potential clipping, an issue I've had here and there in older recordings and hence I usually just re-record.  This one doesn't really sound like a clipping issue, and it doesn't seem a be a phase issue either, which more or less just tells me that the sound itself a) isn't dynamic enough or b) maybe the correct or best choices weren't made in terms of pedals, such as overdrive, distortion, etc.  I believe these guitar tracks fall into the latter.

I get some of my best and most brilliant light bulb moments when I'm NOT working on music, ironically, and in talking this out over the past 24 hours it occurred to me that I should investigate using the amp simulator plug-in's.  First off, do I own any?  Yes, in fact, I own 2, and I had to track those down first.  Next, does this guitar part have a direct signal?  No.  Hmm.  Initially, I thought this was an issue, but what the hell...just run it as a buss off of one of the 2 recorded tracks and see what you get.

It was about here that the 'duh' moment hit me.  I've been saying for so long that a lot of the guitars that I hear on recordings sound SO big and I have no idea how you get anywhere near that wall of tone.  Well, maybe it's not 100% but this technique seemed to get me at least a good part of the distance, and voila...not only do you have a bigger sound, you can totally manipulate a pre-recorded sound to some degree, and it's completely variable since you can adjust the plug-in however you want.  Duh.

I'm not going to get too crazy but I actually think this may be one of the biggest game changers yet for me, and there have been quite a few lately.  If nothing else, I think it'll greatly cut down on re-recordings, provided that the raw tracks are in decent shape.  Now, if only I had thought to try this years ago...  It seemed like cheating, and maybe it is...but then again maybe that's the "trick".  Who knows.

Re-recording the re-records

This has been a big recording weekend for me, trying to catch up a bit and stay on task for a few things.  I took Monday off so I'd have ample time to get things done.  It's been interesting thus far.  I actually ended up re-recording most of my re-records from 2 weeks ago, all due to a preamp issue that I think I finally more or less figured out the catch.  I made a decent list of songs that I needed to re-record the electric guitars on and I'm simply going down that list.

Most of these tracks are for the Defrost Nixon album.  Depending upon the song and the actual tracks, some of these I did quite awhile ago and have some less than desirable issues with.  I feel like I've learned a lot about mic'ing guitar cabinets over the past 2 weeks, and it seems strange to say that considering I've been doing this for so long.  I guess we learn a little bit here and there.

Today's recording ended with a re-record of the first track off of the "Wrecking Ball" album, though.  I've had this one on my agenda for quite some time, and I even tried to redo it about 3 years ago and abandoned ship because I couldn't get the sound right at the time.  I think I got it today although the intro is a bit questionable, but there's more than one way to handle that.

To add to the excitement, when I'm recording electric guitars, I'm usually standing facing the amps and I have a clear view out the front window from upstairs to the street below.  As I was going through the second take of the track, I saw an elderly couple walking the cul de sac and they stopped just to the right of my house.  I could clearly see them looking both annoyed and a bit bewildered, turning their heads back and forth, and I quickly realized that they were probably trying to track down where the guitar noise was coming from.  For whatever reason, sound in our neighborhood travels very strangely, and even though they were basically standing almost directly below my window, they kept looking at the house to my right.  Now, this is all going on literally as I'm playing and tracking the part, so I'm doing my best to not get too terribly distracted but it was making me nervous.  I finished the take and was half expecting my doorbell to ring but I never heard it.  I also couldn't figure out where the couple went for it was like they had just vanished.  Oh well, right?

Well, about 20 minutes later a highway patrolman shows up and parks in front of my neighbors house.  Fun!  Apparently, the older couple decided that my neighbor was the origin of the noise but the joke was on them because I think my neighbor was out all day, which is partly why I was blasting my amp a bit more than normal.  The cop went to the door but gave up quickly when no one answered.  I watched out my window to see if he was going to try my house next but he never did, and instead he drove off.  I guess it remains to be seen if I get a letter from the HOA or not.  I'll also have to try and ask my neighbor about it since I don't want them to erroneously get in trouble for my noise.  I'll admit the amp was a bit loud but it was 3-4pm in the afternoon, however, and it wasn't like I had been recording for hours.

This of course makes me a bit nervous for recording tomorrow, the day I took off, but nevertheless I'll do what I can.  I'll obviously drop the volume a bit on my amp but there's only so much you can do.  If I get carted off in the paddy wagon, well, you'll know why.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get a few things done and need to check my work.  I never consider anything complete until I actually listen to it back again with fresh ears.  Maybe I should call the elderly couple since their ears seemed pretty a-tune?  Okay, maybe not.

Blacked Out

This holiday weekend ended up being semi productive although not entirely according to plan.  I mainly worked on finally (yes, finally) redoing the main guitar on "Optimism" from the "Mirror Land" EP, and I'm hoping this seals the deal at long last.  I probably should have re-recorded the 12 string guitar part a long time ago.  I also did a minor part on the third track from that EP, doing whatever I can to make things sound a bit fuller and deeper in sound.

Next, it was onto the Defrost Nixon tracks.  I finally (again, yes, finally) rerecorded the main guitar on "Never Say Never", one of the more pivotal tracks on that album.  I'd been arguing over it for about 5 years or so.  In the end, I think it was the right move.  It's not a night and day difference but it just sounds a bit better and fuller.  I also added a secondary guitar part via the Les Paul and I think that might be the missing link.  I also redid the 12 string part on "The Worst Salesman Ever", another song that had been suffering a bit, and I think it now sounds pretty good overall.  Could it be that these songs are finally coming together?  One can only hope.

I did decide to the keep the '89 Rickenbacker 360 White with Black Trim model, btw.  I had to place multiple calls to Guitar Center in order to get them to knock off $300 from the price tag but it finally worked itself out.  I was all ready to record with it this weekend but it seems it has just a tiny bit of a bad connector which was causing some noise so I opted to pull out my Mapleglo 360 instead that I picked up a little over a year ago.  I swear it's one of the prettiest Rick 360's in Mapleglo that I have ever seen with a lovely knotty/curly top.

The weekend rounded out with taking in a viewing of the film "Tar".  Unfortunately, right in the middle of the film, the power went out, in fact in the whole neighborhood, and so I still have to finish that one up.  Apparently, someone ran into a power generator nearby and put 3500+ residents in total darkness for about an hour and a half.  Now, that's the way to end a holiday weekend...finally.

Back to Work

It was time to return back to work after having 2 weeks off.  My time off was fairly productive but I don't have anything huge to report, unfortunately.  My first week off left me in a rather bad mood, and then by the second week it was a bit too late to be super productive.  Still, I made decent progress on the "Lost Weekend" tracks and worked through all of the drums on the Defrost Nixon album except for one, of which I plan to do over the next couple of days.  I will say that the Defrost Nixon album will need a ton of guitars re-recorded and quite a few vocal touch-ups as well, not to mention just some additional instrumentation here and there.

I actually stayed away from the "Mirror Land" EP in the end.  I'm not sure that was a brilliant idea but I did revisit it tonight and was pleasantly surprised by my latest mix of the title track and the third track.  "Optimism" still seems to have issues and I've finally decided to just try to re-record the main guitars this weekend.  I'm actually pondering if the 12 string electric should really be a 6 string in the end.  I guess we'll see.  I also want to work on the drums a bit since I finally now have a better sense on how to do that.  It seems that you need to not run a gate before the Trigger 2 software for it doesn't appear to like it much.  I'm not sure what video I watched that recommended doing that but it ended up not being the greatest advice in the world and took me awhile to figure out what the issue was.

Bass boominess is getting better but now I'm starting to worry that I'm washing out the bass a bit too much.  Ugh.  It's a constant struggle.  I guess until you're really extremely well versed in mixing everyone must constantly deal with these emotions, especially when it's your own material that you're working on.  I could see how if it was someone else's song that I might not feel quite as invested in it.

I'm also slowly making my way through the Spirit Award films and other 2022 releases.  It's nice to be back in movie mode again.  The thing that I love about being in SoCal or anywhere warm during the winter is that there's so much to look forward to right after Christmas.  For example, the Spirit Awards usually start somewhere during the break and run until early February, and then the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament runs for 2 weeks shortly after that in early to mid March.  I used to despise the months of January through pretty much April in the Midwest but SoCal is quite different in that way.  In some ways, the spring is now my favorite time of year when it comes to activities.

I also received the 1988 white with black trim Rickenbacker 360 today.  I'm fighting over it mentally since it has one decent sized chip in the paint right in the front of the guitar, right where your arm rests.  It's that kind of thing that usually bugs me.  There's also a large chip on the headstock as well as a small crack in the finish near the pickups, along with multiple surface scratches on the front and back.  Overall, it's in pretty good condition for its age but I'll admit that I was hoping for better.  The case is fairly immaculate, though, and I guess that's saying something.  I'm thinking of calling Guitar Center tomorrow to see if I can get some money taken off of it due to the blemishes.  I have only 3 days to decide whether or not I want to keep it so I have to figure this out rather quickly.

In the meantime, I've been fighting with my main "player" guitar amp, a Savage Schatten, for it doesn't seem to be working correctly.  It's almost brand new, been used for probably about 1 hour total since I got it 6 years ago, but for some reason it seems to be missing the very high end frequencies.  A guy locally said it needed new tubes which makes close to no sense to me but I went with it...and it doesn't really sound any different, in my opinion.  So, I have a feeling it'll be sent back to Savage in MN for evaluation, and with the price of shipping these days it's kind of frightening.

I finally put away "Penguin" and have moved on to Devo's "Freedom of Choice".  I know, a strange next choice, no?  I really did like "Penguin" quite a bit and I personally don't know why it's considered a bit of a clunker for I dare say that I may like it even better than the former albums.  I know...sacrilege.  I have learned that I am truly a Bob Welch fan and I really had no idea.  I don't know what it is exactly about his writing and sound but I definitely dig it.

Drums, Drums, and More Drums

I spent most of yesterday cleaning the drums of 2 Defrost Nixon tracks, mainly the tom tracks.  Our drummer wasn't the most experienced at the time, and coupled with the not so great recording in a basement, the cymbals leaked and bled into every single microphone on the drum set.  This creates quite a mess when trying to mix it and, say, raise the kick and snare without raising the cymbals which are already too loud in the mix.  I'm sure you get the idea.  The solution is attempting a lot of cleanup, tricks, etc., desperately trying to get the drums to sound decent and well rounded.

Cleaning the toms isn't too difficult but incredibly tedious.  It takes me usually about 1-2 hours to do a song and it's basically endless clicking, separating, fading, and repeat over and over and over.  You get a bit looney after awhile and therefore need to take breaks in between songs.  I'm not sure what I like less...cleaning tom tracks or working on manipulating MIDI.  They're both quite awful to work on, in my opinion.

Once the tom tracks were cleaned, I then began working on trying to replace the kick and snare tracks using Steven Slate's Trigger 2 software.  As usual, it didn't go well and I had to spend an hour or more doing research online in order to get some hints and pointers.  Everyone raves about the Trigger 2 software but I personally can't stand it.  I'm either doing something terribly wrong or it just doesn't work well for the purpose that I'm throwing at it.  I'm going to start over today and see if I can try a few different tricks that I read about and/or came up with in my own head.  I guess you never know what'll work.

In the evening, I just happened to look at the used section of GuitarCenter.com and found a white with black trim Rickenbacker 360 that's supposedly in "excellent" condition.  I've been searching for one of these for the past 7 years and so I quickly grabbed my GC credit card and hit purchase.  They only made these basically from around 1987 - 1998, I believe, and at the time everyone pretty much despised them since they don't look like the normal Ric's.  Of course, today, they're fairly prized because they're unique but finding one that someone didn't more or less do the Pete Townsend on is rather difficult.  I guess we'll see what actual condition it's in when it shows up.  The beauty of Guitar Center online purchases is that they're incredibly easy to return to a store so there's fairly low risk.

I think I failed to mention that the Spirit Awards are also in full swing.  I got the email last week with the screeners and so I've already been making my way through the list, mainly in the evenings.  I started "Everything Everywhere All at Once" last night.  I mean, what the hell?!  Wow, that is some trip of a movie so far (I'm only about half way through).  It makes you think that someone spiked your drink without knowing it.

Today will be about more drums and such.  I have 5 more tracks on the Defrost Nixon album where I need to clean the toms so I'll probably work on one a day, just to spread out the work.  I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by the overall sound of "The Worst Salesman Ever", "Humor for a Lexophile", and then my personal favorite track "Semaphore on All Fours".  I think all the songs will need some minor re-recording and additions but they're not that bad in their original current form.  On the plus side, it's amazing how much better of a guitar sound I can record today vs. 12 years ago, but on the downside it always leaves you questioning whether you should actually waste the time doing it since it tends to completely change the overall sound of the track.  It'll be interesting to see what this project ends up sounding like in the end.