Visualizzazione post con etichetta EFFECTS. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta EFFECTS. Mostra tutti i post

sabato 6 marzo 2021

What is a sustainer? (with free VST plugins)


Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a type of guitar effect which is often overlooked, but that in some genre can make the difference: the Sustainer!

Let's start with the basics: the sustain is one of the four parts of a sound (click here for a dedicated article), meaning for example with the guitar, how long it passes between when you pluck a string and when the volume goes back to zero.

If we're playing the clean channel of an amp, the cleaner it is the shorter in theory the sustain is, while at the opposite, adding gain adds also compression, which keeps audible also the quieter parts for longer, with the result that the tone has more sustain.

Sustain can be added either by adding gain, distortion, tube saturation or directly by using a compressor, and the original, beloved sustain was actually a product of the signal overdriving the guitar amp tubes, which were not (voluntarily) distorting the tone, but producing a saturated clean channel which provided sustain, and made playing solos more easy.
By adding stages of gain and distortions, reverbs and delays, the guitarits have found many ways to add sustain, but all those methods change dramatically the tone, and sometimes this is not what the guitarist needs:

Sometimes what a guitarist need is a tone that is clean or just slightly distorted, but with an incredibly long sustain, so that all the nuances of the solo are audible and the beauty of the guitar tone can arrive to the listener without being completely disfigured by the other effects, as you can hear for example in the solos by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. 

This is where compressors comes into play: a compressor, if set in a way in which it boost the lower part of the signal without affecting too much the rest of the tone, can offer an alternative to the high volume tube compression of a saturated amp, and this has been the success of stompboxes such as the Boss Compressor/Sustainer.

Today in studio there is not even anymore the need of using a hardware sustainer, it is sufficient to have a VST one, and usually the guitar amp suites have some sort of compressor/sustainer bundled, but if you don't happen to have one, you can try one of these 2:



7amp Peak Sustainer - a free sustainer plugin

Hornet HCS1 (demo) - a paid compressor/sustainer



alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: , ,

sabato 10 ottobre 2020

How to use Ping Pong delay to give a sense of depth to a sound



Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about an interesting, creative use of delay (click here for a dedicated article): the ping pong effect, in a particular way used by some producer to add a nice sense of depth to a tone, especially vocals, but it can also be used on guitars (for example a clean arpeggio or a solo).

Let's start with the definition: a Ping Pong delay is a type of delay that sends the repetitions of a signal on the right and left side alternatively, like it's a ping pong ball.

In order to do this we are going to need a stereo delay plugin (often there is one also bundled directly in our DAW), and usually the interface of this type of plugin features controls to dial specific settings for each channel. 

Instead of using it as a normal stereo delay with ping pong effect (the same type of delay that bounces from left to right), we can add a more 3d effect by using a different time signature between the left and right channel, so that the sound does not bounce back and forth evenly (this is a technique used for example by The Edge, the guitarist of U2):

- we can try to set the repetitions of our vocal track in triplets on one side and in quadruplets on the other, using the same tempo.

- we can try to offset the repetitions by setting for example the time signature in 3/16th of note on one side and 1/8th of note on the other.

- we can try (but this is slightly more risky in terms of result) to detach the sync with the project tempo and set the 2 sides at 2 different bpm.

Any solution we choose, since the result can be easily messy/overwhelming, it's a good practice to filter out some low end, maybe to effect only the tone from 800hz/1khz up, and to not overdo with the mix knob: just a little amount goes a long way, we want to add a 3d effect, not to overshadow the main vocal track.

I hope this was helpful!


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!

alle Nessun commento:
Etichette:

sabato 4 luglio 2020

Everything you need to know about effects part 4/4: Distortions!




CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/4: Fx routing, in studio and live!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/4: Reverb and Modulations 1

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3/4: Reverb and Modulations 2


Once we have gone through all the most common application of modulation effects, it's time to pass to what is considerable the most important type of effect that we can apply to a tone, an effect which has taken an instrument, the electric guitar, and made it the most important, influential and beloved one of the 20th century: the distortion, in all of its forms.

The overdriven guitar tone is born by mistake: bands were using tube amps in the '50s and '60s, and back then there wasn't even a real PA to amplify them, so guitarists, especially those that were playing in big arenas, had to crank them at the maximum volume.
The signal passing through the tube circuits ended up saturating them, and the result was a distorted tone, with lots of additional harmonics and some compression that the guitarists found out to be exciting, to make the tone edgier and even easier to play: the tube overdrive sound was born.
The audio enhancement provided by tubes is still today often used in studios, to add a track, especially if digital, the liveliness typical of the vintage hardware.

Not too long after the discovery of the tube overdriven sound, guitarists (especially the pioneer Jimi Hendrix) started to ask themselves "where do we go from here? How can I make my tone ever more extreme?", and producers started working tirelessly to replicate the distorted sound of a tube amp full volume in a stompbox, and came up with an infinity of solutions, which can be divided in 3 macro groups: fuzz, overdrive and distortion.

The first models to hit the market (end of the '50s/early '60s) was the fuzz: it is a type of pedal that takes the original sound and distorts it, but in a very unique and specific way, by taking the sinusoidal wave and turning it into a squared one.
The result is a gritty tone with lots of sustain, impossible to obtain with a regular amp, and it was the staple of riffs that made the history of rock, such as Rolling Stones' (I can't get no) Satisfaction and most of the Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd solos, just to name a few.

An overdrive is a pedal that recreates (sometimes also by using a tube) the saturation of a tube amp full volume without the need of pushing it (thus without ruining the tubes): the effect is a slight distortion, more attack, less low mids, lots of extra harmonics and some extra compression; this is a great pedal to boost our amp and even out its frequencies, and it's often a solution used when recording.

Another effect that can be considered a more extreme evolution of the overdrive is the distortion.
The distortion is a pedal aimed not to boost an overdrive channel of an amplifier but to replace it, going directly into the clean one, since it's capable of producing high levels of gain, or bypassing the preamp altogether and going direcly into the power amp.
Distortions have seen their moment of maximum popularity in the '80s, with many guitar heroes (such as Steve Vai) and classic heavy metal bands (like Judas Priest) using them regularly, and still today they are very popular in certain genres such as grunge or alternative rock.

Finally, a sound can be further degraded or modified creatively in an infinite amount of other ways, and there are today pedals to do practically everything, but there are still a couple of effects that are worth to be mentioned here: the harmonic exciters, which takes certain harmonics of our tone and emphasizes them, which is a cool way for example to add brightness to a sound without messing too much with the eq (click here for an article about harmonic exciters with free VST plugins) and the bit crusher, which on the other hand takes a sound (usually vocals, or drums, or a bass) and degrades it by reducing the bit depth, creating the feeling that the sound comes through some vintage gear.
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

sabato 20 giugno 2020

Everything you need to know about effects part 3/4: Reverb and Modulations 2




CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/4: Fx routing, in studio and live!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/4: Reverb and Modulations 1

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4/4: Distortions!


We have started digging into the modulation world, but the reality is that it's a rabbit hole with infinite variants, so what we're going to do today is to finish covering the modulation macro areas that are most known and used.

Let's start today with the one that can be considered probably the king of all modulations, the most used and in my opinion more useful and pleasant sounding: the delay.
In the '50s sound engineers were looking for a way to recreate the echo effect that one would obtain by yelling for example inside of a cave, with the soundwave bouncing around and coming back after a certain amount of time: the voice gets reflected and comes back to the listener summing up to the original one.

This effect is called echo, but with time the use of this echo in music became more and more creative, stemming many different types of echo, and today we refer as this type of effect as delay because we refer to the time distance from the original source and its reflection. 

One of the coolest ways to use a delay when mixing is the so-called "slapback" delay, which is a delay with just one repetition of the original sound: this type of delay is particularly cool because it lends itself to being used in creative ways with the stereo field, for example sending one repetition left and one right in 2 slightly different moments or following 2 different time signatures, and this creates a sense of depth and 3d-like sound which can make our vocal or solo tracks really stand out.

Finally, delay is one of the most beloved guitar effects because it can seamlessly give depth and atmosphere to a clean guitar part or smoothness to a hi-gain solo, and countless pedal producers have put in the market their interpretation of this effect.

Proceeding with our walk in the world of modulations, the more we dig the more we can find interesting uses, and in this the guitarists of the '60s (for example Jimi Hendrix) have been exceptional innovators, looking always for new and creative ways to play with their sound. 
A classic example of this research is the tremolo, which emulates a fast, rhytmical opening and closure of the guitar volume knob, or the vibrato, which is a fast, rhytmical alteration of the sound pitch, or the rotary effect (also known as Leslie, from the name of its inventor), which consist into passing the sound through an actual speaker which rotates inside a box.

Now it's time to move to another group of modulation effects which are a bit less common, because they are more particular sounding and are used for quite specific purposes.
Let's start from the ring modulator: this effect would deserve a lot of space because its actual uses are infinite, but let's just define it broadly, by saying that it takes two different sounds (for example a guitar and a voice) and puts them in correlation, producing a sound that is the result of the interaction between the two (for example the famous "talking guitar" of Peter Frampton).
Then we have the huge world of pitch shifters, which are the processors that take one sound and produce a copy in a different pitch; among these, the most used are the octave, which creates a copy of the original tone shifted one octave below, and the harmonizer, which creates a harmony of the original tone, and usually it features an intelligent system which respects the right interval between the notes to make it musical.

One last modulation that is worth to be mentioned is the vocoder, which is a tool that takes a sound, usually a vocal track, and "passes it through a synth": this was a very popular effect in the '70s and '80s, used for example by Earth, Wind and Fire, but also more recently by Daft Punk (e.g. in the song Harder, Better, Faster.   
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette:

sabato 6 giugno 2020

Everything you need to know about effects part 2/4: Reverb and Modulations 1




CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/4: Fx routing, in studio and live!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3/4: Reverb and Modulations 2

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4/4: Distortions!


Now that we have seen the basic rules of how effects work is time to start talking about some of the most important of them.
Let's start talking about envelope filters: those are basically a creative form of equalization that can be controlled in real time, moving through the spectrum while the sound is playing and creating a very interesting effect which shows one of its most famous uses in the Wah, a classic guitar effect, click here for a dedicated article with free vst plugins.

Besides the eq-based effects, it's definitely worth mentioning the reverb, one of the most important effects of all: it's an effect that mimics the bouncing of a sound in various ambients, which can be from small rooms to huge caves, and it's essential to add smoothness and realism to any tone and to make it less harsh; click here for an in-depth article about reverbs.
Reverb can be used not only to recreate ambience, but also for creative purposes, such as specific effects like a sound that is incoming (the inverse reverb effect, or preverb, like in the horror movies) or even to recreate a very accurate reproduction of the interaction between a cabinet and a microphone (click here for an article about impulse responses).

Moving towards the modulation effects, let's first start with the definition: they are filters that take a given signal and create a copy, with a given delay and pitch modification, to be summed with the original one, creating a wide range of different results.
Said this way it's a very wide definition, but modulations are the core (together with the reverb) of sound effects, and they are many and capable of obtaining very different result.

Let's start with the chorus: the chorus is a type of modulation that doubles the sound creating a slighly delayed (usually around 20ms) copy whose delay will not be stable but will keep on variating, oscillating 5ms more and less, plus the copy's pitch is slighly detuned, giving the impression that the copy is (in case of a Vocal track) another person singing along with the first one: not identical, but very similiar, and this effect is used to make the original sound wider and fatter.

Moving to other types of modulation, other two types which are quite important are flanger and phaser.
These 2 effects starts from the same idea: to split the signal in 2 copies and putting one of the 2 rhytmically out of phase with the other. The fact that this phase changes all the time following a certain tempo creates a very "sci-fi" effect, and the flanger takes this effect one step further by delaying the second sound copy and moving it back and forth in time, creating an even stronger phasing effect.

alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

sabato 23 maggio 2020

Everything you need to know about effects part 1/4: Fx routing, in studio and live!



Hello and welcome to our new omnicomprehensive article in which we are going to gather together and put in a coeherent order all the various articles of this blog related to effects!

Let's start very generic: what do we mean in a wide sense when we refer to audio effects?
We talk about any process that artificially modifies an audio signal, which can be recorded or live.

(Small disclaimer: in this article we will talk about everything except Equalization and Compression, because they have a specific tag on their own and are explained more in detail in other articles such as our "how to mix a song" serie).

In the music world, whether we are talking of studio recordings or adding an effect to our electric guitar sound, the basic concept is that we can put any effect in any order, but the reality (and decades of perfecting the craft) tells us a set of rule quite stiff in which to optimize the effect chain order: every effect, in facts, cascades into the others and modifies them, therefore putting the same effects in a certain order can result in a pleasant enhancement, while putting the same effects in another order can just create a messy cloud of noise.

Decades ago, some audio engineer has realized for example that by putting all the effects in front of an amplifier would make the resulting tone quite bad, while putting some of them AFTER the preamp, just before the power amp, would make the sound much cleaner and more polished: that moment was the creation of the effect loop, a tool that still today is considered a staple in audio technology (click here for a dedicated article).

By putting the right effects in the right order in our guitar and bass rig, we can obtain the best tones possible, click here for the perfect guitar effect chain order (with the explaination also of why a certain effect needs to stay there and not in another position), and click here for the perfect bass effect chain order.

The same logic can also be applied in studio, and not only for guitar, but also for any sound source that goes into a mixer, that's why also mixing boards often features an effect loop.
Regardless of the loop, if we're talking about the digital world of recordings, what we need to know is that we don't need (especially if we have projects with a very large number of tracks) to use individual instances of an effect (for example the same reverb) into every track: we can create an fx track (click here for a dedicated article), and "send" this same effect to the various tracks, controlling the single amount desired for each track.

The nice thing of an fx channel track is that we are not limited to one effect at the time if we want, we can create also elaborate effect chains, for example with reverb and delay (click here for a dedicated article), and we can even make sure that only a part of our signal (for example from a certain frequency up) is affected (click here for a dedicated article about how to use the insert of an fx channel, practice also known as "to effect an effect").

Finally, it's important to say that any effect or serie of effects we are going to use in studio to process our tracks not only can be applied only to a certain part of the tone (for example a specific frequency area), but also to the whole tone in an adjustable amount, which is controlled by the "dry/wet" control: if the knob is 100% dry the whole signal will not be effected, if it's 100% wet the signal will be completely effected, and every shade in between will be a blend between effected and dry signal (consider that often a 10/15% wet signal is more than enough to give a track the enhance it needs without making it drown).
If you want to get nerdy it's also possible to be creative with the use of wet and dry, for example with the "wet/dry/wet" trick, which can be seen clicking here.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/4: Reverb and Modulations 1

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3/4: Reverb and Modulations 2

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4/4: Distortions!


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette:

sabato 24 agosto 2019

How to mix vocals with stereo slapback delay (with Free Vst plugin download)



Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about an advanced Delay technique for Vocals (click here for a dedicated article about how to mix vocals) and Lead Guitar (click here for a dedicated article) that will allow us to create some space and focus around our track without the downside of pushing it behind in the mix.

As we know, in facts, effecting a track is a double edge sword: it makes it smoother, gives it a sense of space and coherence with the other instruments, as if they were recorded in the same room at the same time, but on the other hand the more ambience effect we add, the more the track will sound distant, up to the point to end up quite buried in the mix.
It's a matter of finding a good balance, because we need to add thickness and fullness, without sacrificing the position of our vocal track as the focus of our mix, and one of the techniques that we can use is a stereo slapback delay, which is a delay with little or no feedback (the feedback controls the number of repetitions of the delay), meaning that with the slapback delay you use only one repetition (the so called "slap back").

In order to create a slapback delay we need to create an fx track and load on it our favourite stereo delay plugin, then set the feedback control anywhere from 0 to 10% (the important is to have only one repetition per side);
now we need to set a different timing for the left and the right repetition, so that the "slap" arrives from left and right in 2 slightly different moments, for example on the left side after 100ms and on the right one after 150ms.

The timing of the repetitions must be adjusted according to the how fast is the song, 50ms for a very fast one, up to 200ms to a slow one.

In the fx track obviously we can put also other effects, in order to send it to our single vocal (or lead guitar) tracks, each one in the right amount (let's not overdo it, not all the tracks needs to be hyper effected, though).

With a Slapback delay we will add depth, a 3D, "larger than life" effect, without pushing the track too far back in the mix.


There are several free Stereo Delay Vst plugins available, here's our 3 top picks:

- Voxengo Tempo delay: the most complete among the free ones

- Easy-Q Delay: a simple, easy to use Delay

- Entropy: a Delay with an interesting stereo crossover effect


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: , ,

sabato 23 febbraio 2019

5 tips to declutter your mix



Hello and welcome to this week's article!
After 2 weeks of reviews it's time to get back to talk about mixing, with 5 tips for declutter our mix.

The purpose of this article is to find some solution to a common problem, which is our curse and our delight at the same time as amateur mix engineers: the fact that when mixing we love to experiment, try new plugins, see what happens if I add this tool on the chain, this effect, and so on, to the point that all the tracks lose their body, they become distant, a bit distorted, starts covering each other and in general the sound becomes terrible.
This happens because there is too much aimless processing going on, and because we are making too many random choices with tools we have no idea of how to use.

This is a good starting point to initiate a "diet" for our project: clean up, declutter, tidy up the routing let the original tracks breathe; just by taking away the useless processing the tracks will get back in focus and become more clear, and from there with few, well studied moves we can make them sound awesome.


1) Clean up your channel inserts: the first thing to do if we find ourselves in a plateau in which we don't like what we have but we don't know where to start to fix the mix, is to clean up all the channel inserts from the thousands of random Vst plugins we have loaded. Clean slate.
Now let's get into the order of ideas of putting as little plugins as possible in each single track, and if possible to leave them completely empty, putting everything that we need in the group tracks.
Let's try to adopt an old school approach, like with the mixing boards of the 70s, in which there was a limited number of tracks, a limited number of effect tracks and let's try to get to the result with as few moves as possible.

2) Grouping and using Buses: the second step is to create group tracks for basically everything. One for all rhythm guitars, one for all the toms, one for all crash cymbals, one for all the vocals and so on, leaving out only the tracks that are unique (for example a bass track, or if there is only one vocal track). In these groups we can process and effect our tracks together, giving coherence to the overall sound and processing with our minimal approach that hopefully will bring to our final result more focus, clarity and headroom.

3) Use Fx Tracks intelligently: create an fx track with a reverb and one with a delay, to be dosed in different amounts among the instruments (short tail delay for solos and vocals, reverb in small amounts for almost all tracks except those with a low oriented eq such as bass, kick, rhythm guitars...), this will give the impression that the song is performed in the same room, and will add coherence and realism to the final result.

4) Choose few plugins per type (better if just one): find out among your plugins the best Equalizer and the best Compressor and learn how to use them perfectly and how they behave, then make them your hammer and chisel; they are our main tone shaping tool, and we must use to clean up the unwanted frequences and give body and weight to our sounds. Using only one type of Comp and Eq in our project is another way to add coherence and making the final result less dispersive and distracting.

5) Refocus by using Bypass: as stated in the linked article, every time we add a plugin, before deciding whether to leave it or not we need to make a test; the test consists in listening to the song with all the tracks together (not in solo), while turning on and off the plugin. If we hear an improvement we keep it, if it sounds worse or if we don't notice anything different, we remove it.
Just by removing the plugins that doesn't add anything, the mix will sound much cleaner and more focused.


I hope this was helpful!


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!! 
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

sabato 5 agosto 2017

How to use Delay and Reverb fx sends




Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This article is a more in depth view of our group and fx channel article: how to actually set up and use a Delay (or any other modulation effect) and a Reverb fx send (or more than one) to give a coherent tone to our whole project.

This is done to achieve two results:

1) not having to open a single effect instance for each track, which can be extremely cpu-demanding

2) to create a tone that will give a consistent tone print through our tracks, as it used to happen in the hardware days, in which obviously the number of hardware processors was limited and the mix engineers had to send it, in different amounts, to various tracks.

We are using the classic Presonus Studio One interface, but the same concept can be applied to any other professional daw.

What do we need to do?
We take our vocal or guitar solo track, for example, and just drag and drop from the effect pool window on the right side of the screen our effect into the "send" area of our track in the mixer (you can show or hide the mixer by pressing F3). Once the effect is there, it will automatically create an fx send track in the mixer with the name of the selected effect (you can also rename it). Then from the send of each track (e.g. Vocals, solo etc) you can decide the amount of effect to be sent to that particular track.

Esample: more Reverb send for the vocal track, less send (but the same reverb, so it sounds like they are in the same room) to the snare drum.


Another interesting thing is that we can also create and save complex chains, like the following effect track that can be sent to many single vocal tracks, instead of loading the effects in the insert of each one:

1) Eq filtering up to 1000hz: this will affect only the effect track, meaning that the following effects will work in our track only from the frequences above 1khz, so the effect will sound less muddy (this process is explained in detail here).

2) Delay with short tail to thicken the vocal and give it some shimmer.

3) Reverb with short tail and low dry/wet ratio: we are using it only to create some tail.

the purpose of this chain is to create a subtle effect send to be used on all our vocal tracks (or guitar solos, for example), we can also click on the arrow on top of this fx track in the mixer and store it to recall it in other projects.

Hope this was helpful!


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: , ,

sabato 8 luglio 2017

The Delay Battle: Line6 Echo Park vs Boss DD7 vs Tc Electronic Flashback Part 2/2




CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/2


The quality of sound cames first.

Boss DD7: It has both digital and analog functions with a “modulation” mode that adds a little bit of chorus. They all sounds really good, the analog functions is, according to the manual, “really close to the DD2 sound”. You can ear a bit of degradation of the signal, which gives to the sound a particular color: it’s not that you lose much signal, it must be clear, but the analog mode gives a warmer and soft delay.

Line6 Echo Park: It’s a solid hammer if you need just a delay pedal with tons of functions and a lot choices in order to create weird sounds, but definitely it doesn’t have the best sound in the world. You lose always a little bit of signal, and this is bad in any case. Another bad thing is that the “trails” can leave a fuzzy noise in the background, so it’s not true bypass either. “Trails” mode is used to have the functions of the pedal a little bit on even if it’s bypassed. So your delays works a little more after you switched to another pedal. Could be a good weapon, coud be useless, just set it on “off” and you will have no problems at all.

Tc Electronic Flashback: Oh, dear God, the Tape effect it’s ridiculously good. The overall sound of both digital and analog mode is awesome and there isn’t any signal loss. It has also the “Tone Print” function, which gives to you the possibility to link the pedal to your PC and download prestes chosen from a library of artists that uses this pedals. If you have a lazy ass this is your pedal.

I want to experiment new possibilities.

Boss DD7: Short and long delays can be crafted easily and the reverse mode is nice, but the device lacks the fact that you can’t control how much of your original signal to blend. At the end it’s a significant limitation. It is really easy to understand how the pedal works and creates a delay that works for you. It’s not a spacemachine, but a really solid pedal with usefull functions.

Line6 Echo Park: This is a weird guy. Sometimes there are more knobs that what you need, sometimes you feel like the whole world is in your hands. You can choose first if you want a digital, analog or a tape kind of delay, then you choose the modes. It has unique functions as the “Swell” (adds an auto volume swell along with your echoes) and the “Sweep” (adds a nasty filter that squeeze your feedback). You can go really in depth with this toy but it’s not easy to understand, it requires a little bit of time to be understood in its wholeness.

Tc Electronic Flashback: Its point of strenght is the “Tone Print” function, it opens to new features and gives you the power to set the delay exactly as other famous players did.


FINAL THOUGHTS – PROS AND CONS

Boss DD7

Avarage price as new in the market 140$ (90-100$ used)

Pros: Analog mode sounds great. True bypass with any loss of signal. Works great for both long and short delay

Cons: Lack of Dry/wet mix control. Without an external Boss footswitch the tap tempo could be a little bit complicated.

Line6 Echo Park

The production is discontinued, so you can find it used from 60 to 100$

Pros: It has unique modes. You can select tape, analog or digital sound. Mixing time and repetions knobs creates weird sounds and textures, so it can work fine even for synths. Super-easy tap tempo. You can go really in depth in every feature.

Cons: It can create some signal loss (some of Echo Parks has an internal boost switch to avoid that). The “Trails” function makes the pedal not completly bypassed. A little bit more complicated to understand than the others. To bypass the pedal you have press the stombox harder, it can be annoying.

Tc Electronic Flashback

Avarage price as new in the market is 160$ (100-120$ used)

Pros: Tape Echo sounds otherworldy. The unit has looping function. Tone Print mode gives to this guy a lot more possibilities, reverse mode is excellent. Really small pedal.

Cons: It’s a bit more expensive than the others. The tap tempo mode could be improved, this is why many users have switched to the “x4” version.




alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

sabato 1 luglio 2017

The Delay Battle: Line6 Echo Park vs Boss DD7 vs Tc Electronic Flashback Part 1/2



Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today our good friend Edoardo del Principe will share with us a comparison between the three most known delay pedals on the market: Line6 Echo Park, Boss DD7 and Tc Electronics Flashback.
The analysis will be made by comparing the three devices under several points of view.
Enjoy!



Out there there are tons of delays with tons of modes, knobs, delay times etc and I was really confused (I still am a little bit now) of what works for me. I went to a local shop to try those that are in my opinion the three most complete single-stompbox delay pedals in the market. This is my guide to show you which one is the best.

I need an easy tap tempo mode:

Boss DD7: The two seconds press-release and following taps is the most unconfortable way to have tap tempo when you are live. Maybe with a lot of practice it becomes easier but if you are searching something more straightforward in my opinion it’s not the best choice

Line6 Echo Park: The Tap Tempo mode is tricky because it is always on. The only way to turn it off is by pressing the footswitch a little harder until you hear a “click” sound. I really suggest to use it with a switch/looper, having keeping it always on an then tapping it lightly for tempos, just one tap to have it on with the looper and the others to give it the tempo.

Tc Electronic Flashback: The Tap Tempo here could be awesome for someone and really negative for others. With this pedals you have to press the stompbox and play the guitar in the tempo you want, then you release it. The pedal catches the signal from the guitar and gives to you the delay with your tempo.

I want to create textures with the looping function:

Boss DD7: The pedal does not have a real looping mode, but it has the “hold” mode which is a brief loop that holds literally what you are playing. This can be used to create textures and add layers, could works fine for short loops.

Line6 Echo Park: The Line 6 Echo Park doesn’t have a loop mode, but if you give it a lot of repetitions under the “Ducking” mode with the “trails” on you can work with that as a little cool loop to expand your riffs into new layers. The “Ducking” mode it’s a delay that starts only when you finish to play the riff.

Tc Electronic Flashback: It has a real loop mode which works great, having a loop machine in that really small space can save space in your pedalboard.




alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

lunedì 15 febbraio 2016

Mixing and Mastering with a Peak Limiter (with Free Vst Plugins)


Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are talking about a very interesting tool to compress or limit a sound (under this point of view this article goes under the main category of COMPRESSORS) slighly different from the compressors and limiters interface of today.
In the old times (we are talking of the '60s), gain reduction was not a trend as today: sounds were much less "in your face", recordings were less loud and there was a lot of headroom and dynamic range (on the other hand songs were much less powerful and many nuances were hard to hear because they were really low in volume).

In the early '60s a producer called Teletronix created one of the most famous compressors of the time, the LA-2A Leveling Amplifier, a tube-driven peak limiter which still today is used by some classic studio due to its simplicity and the very particular harmonic enhancement produced.

In 1968, then, a producer called Urei created a peak limiter that still today is considered by many studios a standard, and it is still in production: the 1176Ln Peak Limiter, one of the first compressors / peak limiters (at the time the concept of compressor and limiter was really the same) to be completely solid state, unlike the other models which all were tube-driven.

In the modern times Compressors and Limiters have taken different roads, specializing in different tasks and different phases of the music production, but the origin of both is the Peak Limiter, a tool that originally had just two knobs: Peak Reduction and Gain (or Input and Output).
Peak reduction controls the amount of compression to apply to the signal (as can be seen also from the VU meter), Gain controls the output volume. That's it.
Obviously with the following releases of the 1176, the unit started having more and more controls, to the point that today is very similar to a modern compressor: you can choose the compression ratio among four modes (or press all the buttons together to drive the ratio to the max), you can decide attack and release with two knobs and there are different ways of using the VU Meter. 

HOW TO USE TODAY A PEAK LIMITER:

Mixing:  There are many uses of a compressor (both physical or one of the countless VST versions, such as the freeware Modern Lost Angel or Modern Seventh Sign by Antress, or the Variety of Sound Thrillseeker, or Nomad Factory Bus Driver), but today this kind of units are used mainly for Buss Compression.
A typical use of a Peak Limiter is on the Drum Overhead Buss: usually the snare is the loudest drum part picked up by the oh microphones, therefore putting a peak limiter in the OH buss lets us compress the snare sound and raise and make stable the level of the cymbals: this way the cymbals will be more audible and with less dynamic range, and at the same time the snare will pop out less but it will gain in weight and sustain.
The only thing to remember is to balance the output of the signal, because since we are adding db of gain IN, we should lower accordingly of the same amount of db the OUTPUT in order to leave the overall level of the track unaltered, just processed.
A peak limiter is also good on single tracks such as Bass or Vocals, adding weight and loudness, if we want to use compression as a tone shaping tool, since this obviously is not the most transparent way of processing our track. 
One last great way to use a peak limiter is for parallel compression: this way we can really squeeze a buss with all the drum parts, and then mix this sound back into the unprocessed sound, until we find the desired mix between the two.

Mastering: There are some mastering engineers who prefers the subtlety of a multiband compressor in the mastering buss, in order to be able to tame selectively certain frequences and to make adjustments even in the mastering phase, and some other engineers who prefer to have all the mix equilibrium perfect, and then slam the track with a broadband compressor, leveling equally all frequences (I often prefer this solution, and if there is some frequency that needs to be tamed, I prefer going back to the mixing project and solve the problem from there). With the hardware version obviously the hardware needs to be stereo, otherwise two units are needed, anyway this kind of peak limiter is very good in mastering, because often the harmonic excitement and the warmth that it adds to the song is just what it takes to bring a recording to the next level.


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: , , ,

sabato 10 ottobre 2015

How to sound like: Jimi Hendrix (with sample and using only free Vst Plugins)



Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to see how to obtain very easily one of the most iconic and classic guitar sounds of the history of this instrument: the classic Jimi Hendrix tone.
Let's start by saying that Jimi hendrix was really an innovator: he took effects which were new at the time, like the modulation effects, and made them famous and mainstream, to the point that many of them are still today a standard in any guitar player rig.

Another thing to say about Jimi Hendrix is that he actually had a LOT of tones; almost a different one for each song, to the point that some commercial simulator (for example the very complete Amplitube Hendrix) today recreates the tone of the various single songs.

I wanted to recreate the classic Little Wing sound, that in my opinion is the best one, using only free plugins or the ones bundled in any commercial Daw: as you can see from the picture above (which shows the full chain, to be read from left to right, from top to bottom) I have used Presonus Studio One, but the same rules can be applied to any DAW, since they all feature these processors by default.

First off I have loaded on a track the original Little Wing, to use it as a Reference Track, so I could compare in real time the results of my tweaking, until the sound was similar enough.
I have used my cheap Squier Stratocaster, using the neck pickup (although in the last part of the sample I have switched to the bridge one, which was a humbucker, in order to have a little more output), tuned it, found the right Input Level, and proceeded loading a Preamp to use with the clean channel. I have used the Ignite Amp NRR-1, with no cab emulation (when using clean guitars it's possible to act this way to obtain a more direct sound, it's no blasphemy :D), and I have added enough gain to simulate a booster in front of the amp.
From here I have proceeded to add two modulation effects typical of the Hendrix sound: a Phaser and a Chorus. both of them in a very moderate amount, just to add some depth and character to the sound.
In the end I've put a sprinke of Reverb, do give some space to the sound, that otherwise without Cab emulation would have sounded too direct.

On the bottom of the signal chain I've added a Low pass Filter to shave off some of the harsh frequences typical of the digital sound, and put a limiter on the master bus.


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

sabato 7 marzo 2015

"Horror" Preverb: what it is and how to create this effect



Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about the "Preverb" effect, a particular use of the Reverb effect that creates a typical "Horror" vibe (and that has been extensively used in many movies too, for example on "The Exorcist").
With the term "Preverb" we refer to a reversed reverb that happens before the actual sound that generates it, and this effect it's obtained in a rather clever way;

this explaination is about how to do it in the typical Cubase\Nuendo interface, but it can be done the same way with any DAW.

1) First we need to select the audio track we need to process (for example a vocal track, or a drum track), and click on Process->Reverse

2) Then we put a nice Reverb on our Track, with a long tail, and with the mix control set to 100% Wet.

3) Now we must export our reverbered track to apply the effect on the track permanently.

4) After that, we must import back the track on our project, and do Process->Reverse again, so that the sound will be straight, and only the Reverb will be reversed!

Now playing the track you will hear first the tail of the reverb, then the actual sound, and this will make a very sinister effect.


Hope this was helpful!


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!


alle Nessun commento:
Etichette:

sabato 26 ottobre 2013

WAH WAH and the other ENVELOPE FILTERS! with Free Vst Plugins Inside!



Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about the Wah Wah, and more in general about the envelope filters!
Envelope filters are basically Equalization filters that can work both automatically, through fixed or dynamic time and amplitude parameters, or can be controlled manually, to bring in and out in real time certain frequences from a sound.
The Wah Wah, which is the most famous application of an envelope filter, is a foot-controlled filter that takes in or out certain treble frequences, while a note is sustained.
The name Wah Wah is onomatopoeic, which means that the device recreates the sound effect produced, in facts if we apply it to a trumpet or a distorted guitar, the result is similar to the modulation of vowels made by a human voice (in facts one of the most famous wah wah pedals is called "Cry Baby").

One of the musicians that contributed to make the Wah Wah pedal famous is without any doubt  Jimi Hendrix (impressive how this artist has been taken by us many times as an example for the use of effects: the truth is that after half a century, the guitar effect standards set by him has never really gotten old), with songs like "The Burning of the Midnight Lamp", or Guns'n Roses guitarist Slash, with classics like "Sweet Child o'Mine".
Another artist that has built his fame also around the sound of his wah is Kirk Hammett of Metallica.
There are many different types of Wah, that changes according to how many and which frequences are filtered, but the idea behind them is always the same.
Talking about the envelope filters in general, instead, we can see a massive use of them in todays electronic music, for example artists like Skrillex shapes their tone by filtering in and out certain frequences from their lead synths, in time with the song to emphasyze the groove.


Most of DAWs already features a bundled filter or wah effect, but if you want to try some cool vst downloadable for free, here's our suggestions:

- Samsara Cycle Audio Wahzi: an interesting autowah effect with many editable parameters.

- Mtg Wahwactor: a very simple wah emulator, Voice Controlled.

- Coyote Electronics WahGT: a wah emulator that can also be controlled with a midi pedal.

- Fretted synth WAHT: a wah designed for the guitar.

- GSI EFFECTIZER: a single vst that features all the modulation effects, included the wah.

- Admiral Quality Naive LPF: a midi controllable envelope filter.

- Topaz Dyna Filter II: an AutoWah and Dynamic Filter.



Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

sabato 19 ottobre 2013

THE PERFECT BASS EFFECT CHAIN ORDER



Hello everyone!
Today we talk about an interesting bass related topic, that we have already seen for the guitar (Click Here for the perfect guitar effect chain order!).
The rules aren't totally different, actually they are very similar, but we need to adapt them to this other instrument's characteristics.

So, as for guitars, here is our bass chain by areas: BASS -> PRE GAIN AREA -> GAIN RELATED AREA -> POST GAIN AREA -> AMPLIFIER

- PRE GAIN AREA: Starting from the instrument itself, it's a good idea to set at the beginning of the chain the WAH or the othter envelope filters (such as the Electro Harmonix Bass Balls), then we can set an Octave, and, if we need it, a Compressor.

- GAIN RELATED AREA: in this area we can use any kind of Overdrive, Fuzz or Distortion, and in this case the Post Gain effects goes after this area, or we can use the Amplifier's Preamp section as Gain Related Area, and the Post Gain effects goes into the amp's FX Loop.

- POST GAIN AREA: in this area we can set all the post-gain processors, such as modulation effects (chorus, delay..) and last the Reverb.

Here is the effect order: BASS -> WAH/FILTER -> COMPRESSOR / LIMITER ->OCTAVE / SYNTH -> OVERDRIVE / DISTORTION / FUZZ -> CHORUS / FLANGER / PHASER / TREMOLO -> DELAY / REVERB -> AMPLIFIER

As for the guitar, the EQUALIZATION can be set anywhere, from the top of the chain to right after the gain related area; the thing to keep in mind is that if we cut, we can go before the compressor, if we boost we should place the eq after the compressor, otherwise it would cut our boost.

Keep in mind that this is just one of the many chains usable, and it's made to understand the basic rules of bass effects, but we can obviously experiment modifying the effect order to see what happens, and often the results will be very cool and creative. 
Just keep an open mind and let us know if you find some interesting variation!

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: ,

sabato 1 giugno 2013

BITCRUSHER PLUGINS (With free Vst Plugins inside!)


Hello and welcome to this week's article! 
Today we continue in our analysis of how to distort, twist and manipulate a sound, analizing a particular type of plugin that takes a normal, clean sound and reduces its bit depth, obtaining an audible degradation of the signal that may remind the distortions of some old sound processor, like the ones produced by the primitive 8-bit Nes or Commodore 64 sound cards. 

Today BitCrushers are used mainly for creative purposes, to give a sound a sligh touch of vintage/lo-fi vibe, and it can be heard often in some Muse and Linkin Park record.
Unlike the other distortions, this one is usually not applied on guitar, but it's more used for drums, vocals and sometimes bass, adding a touch of noise and digital glitch to the signal to give it more character. 
Just beware to not overuse it, or you'll risk to ruin your sound!
Another creative use may also be to Automate this plugin, in order to make the tail of a song to become progressively degraded, until it ends in pure noise (not differently by how the Radiohead's Karma Police song ends).

Today many DAWs already feature an in-built bit crushing plugin, but if you want to try some free Vst (and in this case there may be quite big differences in terms of tone from one plugin to another), here are some good free ones:

- TAL Bitcrusher: an interesting and simple Bitcrusher with hi pass and low pass filters.

- DeLaMancha Thrummaschine: a multiband Bitcrusher, Distortion and Overdrive.

- ToneBoosters Time Machine: a simple Bitcrusher with a very nice interface.

- Cmt Bitcrusher: one of the best around, with a Gameboy-like interface

- Time Machine Vintage Sampler: this one reproduces a vintage C64 sampler


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: , , ,

sabato 25 maggio 2013

THE EFFECTS LOOP: what it is and how to use it



Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about an important aspect of every amplifier and mixer: the FX LOOP!
What is it?
The effects loop, talking practically, it's a part of a sound's Signal Chain (Click here for a dedicated article!), set between the preamplifier and the power amp (therefore, AFTER the Gain Related Area), and its relevance has been increasing through the years with the increasing of the amount of gain required from the players: if we set a Delay BEFORE the Gain Related Area, the repetitions will be distorted as well, often with chaotic results if the gain is high.
To make sure the effect is clean, the only solution is to set it after the gain area, and that's what the Fx Loop is for: we're going to take the signal of our preamplifier (and therefore of any stompbox set in the input of the amp) from the SEND out and we're gonna send it to the IN of our effect (for example, a modulation unit), then we will go from the OUT of our effect to the power amp via the RETURN of our amplifier.

There are two types of Loop Connections: Serial and Parallel.

- Serial: This is the simpliest connection, and it's the aforementioned one: Guitar -> Preamp -> effect -> Power Amp.
The upsides of this connection are the simplicity and the compatibility with any effect, the downside is that usually, except for the most expensive amplifiers, the signal with effects in the loop gets slighly degraded.

- Parallel: in this case we could say that the signal is split in two: part of the signal will be effected (Wet) and part will not (Dry). Most of the times, in amplifiers that features a parallel loop will even be possible to choose between Serial and Parallel; to know if our amplifier features a serial or parallel loop we just need to connect a jack cable in the send out: if our amp becomes mute, the loop is Serial.
The upsides of this connection are the fact that the Dry signal is not degraded, since it doesn't pass from the loop, the downside is that we will have less flexibility, and that if we use a digital
effect we're gonna set the signal to 100% Wet, because due to the AD-DA conversion, the processed signal could be slighly delayed, generating unpleasant results when used together with the Dry one.
Finally, since Parallel loop effects only one part of the signal, if we use a Booster, or an Equalizer or a Tremolo, they won't affect the Dry sound, and will lose most of their effectiveness.


Some digital floorboards (such as the Pod Hd or the latest Digitech ones) also lets the user to connect them with a Four Cable Mode, in order to separate correctly the effects that needs to go in the Input of the amp from the ones that must go in the Loop, and to connect them to the correct plugs while still using the preamp of the amplifier, without replacing it with the digital one (if we wanted to use just the preamp of the floorboard the connection would have been much easier: Guitar -> Floorboard -> Return of the amp).

Finally, there is an Effect Loop in the mixer too, in order to connect an external hardware or software unit and to place the effect after the Channel Preamps. The Dry-to-Wet ratio is controlled by the FX control present in the channel. This feature is present in the DAW mixers too, and the process of loading an effect and sending it to the various tracks in different amounts is explained in the article dedicated to the FX TRACKS.


Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!
alle Nessun commento:
Etichette: , , , ,
Iscriviti a: Post (Atom)