Impulse 101
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Over the last few days I've been working on getting a sound for the intro to a song I've been working on for a LONG time. (8 years on and off) It's a really pretty fingerpicked guitar melody that sets the mood for the whole piece, which is 17 minutes long right now. (Ah, for the love of old school prog...)
I've been fighting with the way to record this track for a long time. My biggest mistake up to now was trying to record it dry. The effects are part of the sound and part of the performance. Without them I play it differently, and while the plugins sound good, they don't sound the same.
I set up my Guytron and my Vox Valvetronix via a switchbone and layered some reverbs, delays and chorusing to get the sound I wanted. After playing with it for a while I came up with a tone that I can only describe as being made love to by a guitar. One of those epiphanal moments where the stars align and the sound is everything you ever wanted it to be.
I knew that I had to get this sound into the computer as quickly as possible so I went to my standby mics for clean guitars. AKG414's. I used a ULS for the Guytron and a TLII for the Vox, then into an ART MPA Pro and directly to my ADATs and into the computer via an RME Digiface card.
Both mics were placed about half way up the cone, with the edge of the mic being even with the dust cover of the speaker. I used the -10 pad so I could run the amps hotter and get about the noise threshold of my house. The pattern was set to cardiod.
When I went into the control room I hard panned the mics and THERE IT WAS! The same tone, no monkeying around, no running back and forth. Just a quick tweak of the mic pre to get the levels under control.
It took at least 20 takes to get the part cleanly in one pass. It's a delicate part for my ham handed guitar style and didn't want any edits on it so I just went until I had both the performance and feel that I was going for.
I think I'm going to be doing a lot more "wet" recording. I don't usually record that way but I'm way too happy with the results not to do it more often. I took some pics of the amps that I'll post later and maybe a sound clip if I can figure out a good place to host it.
JT
I've been fighting with the way to record this track for a long time. My biggest mistake up to now was trying to record it dry. The effects are part of the sound and part of the performance. Without them I play it differently, and while the plugins sound good, they don't sound the same.
I set up my Guytron and my Vox Valvetronix via a switchbone and layered some reverbs, delays and chorusing to get the sound I wanted. After playing with it for a while I came up with a tone that I can only describe as being made love to by a guitar. One of those epiphanal moments where the stars align and the sound is everything you ever wanted it to be.
I knew that I had to get this sound into the computer as quickly as possible so I went to my standby mics for clean guitars. AKG414's. I used a ULS for the Guytron and a TLII for the Vox, then into an ART MPA Pro and directly to my ADATs and into the computer via an RME Digiface card.
Both mics were placed about half way up the cone, with the edge of the mic being even with the dust cover of the speaker. I used the -10 pad so I could run the amps hotter and get about the noise threshold of my house. The pattern was set to cardiod.
When I went into the control room I hard panned the mics and THERE IT WAS! The same tone, no monkeying around, no running back and forth. Just a quick tweak of the mic pre to get the levels under control.
It took at least 20 takes to get the part cleanly in one pass. It's a delicate part for my ham handed guitar style and didn't want any edits on it so I just went until I had both the performance and feel that I was going for.
I think I'm going to be doing a lot more "wet" recording. I don't usually record that way but I'm way too happy with the results not to do it more often. I took some pics of the amps that I'll post later and maybe a sound clip if I can figure out a good place to host it.
JT