Click the link below to hear 6 amp sim guitar tones.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3406793/tone%20testing.mp3
This is what I consider to be the best of the best, however I do still have my likes and dislikes. What is your favorite? I'll post the answers to what they are later. Keep in mind this is how I would set up these amps, it might not be the way the general public of guitarists who enjoy these amps a certain way because x artist/guitarist said this is how to do it. Was that a runon sentence fragment? Who cares, I'm tired and don't care to fix it right now...enjoy the rock!
Thanks to redoubt9000 from the Guitar Amp Modeling Forums for the tracks in the form of DI .wav files.
UPDATE: this may be misleading, notice there are 6 sound clips and 5 amps listed. The sims used are Bogner Ecstacy, Soldano, Rectifier, Engl and 5150. Also note that IR's made using a particular amp might slightly color the IR with that amps characteristics. High/Low pass filters where used and there is no bass guitar. This is a biased test, meaning some of these have been disected and put back together in order to sound GREAT and others have been put together in 5 minutes. I highly recommend a good set of headphones while listening so that you may hear the little differences as well as the big.
*WARNING - ANSWERS BELOW*
I host all of these amps as if I'm using a real amp. For example, one amp sim instance for each speaker cabinet per track. using a different setting on the individual amps helps bring out more harmonics and I believe makes it just that much more realistic....and if not realistic, at least much "bigger" sounding. It's hosted inside Revalver MKIII because I like Revalver's IR loader. It does color the IR's slightly, but I like the end result much better than Kefir or Lecab or whatever other IR loaders. Also, when I refer to Tube Screamers, I'm using Simulanalog's TS with settings 0,5,8 for the most part. As stated before, these might not be the typical uses for these amps, but It's how I use them.
clip 1: the unprocessed signals
clip 2: this is my Alice in Chains "We Die Young" tone. It was my attempt at capturing that airyness of the guitars at the beginning of the song. 1 Lextac amp for each track, with Alu's new 01 on the left and Dimi's Bogner 4x12 IR on the right. The panning is a little weird on this one because it's compensating for the thought that Jerry Cantrell actually used 3 tracks, left ,right, and center to record this. I'm only using 2 here, so it doesn't quite sound right, but you can hear it's pretty close to the tone. I'm pretty sure I used a Tube Screamer on this, but I might not have. I really like using this by itself for solo's.
Clip 3: This is "My Tone". This is what I'm using for basic rhythm tracks on my recordings right now. Four tracks total panned 100%, 84%, 80 %, 100%. Volume is mixed to taste. Left side: Clean 1, doubled and Lextac red channel on each track, this is basically the clip 2 tone, but all in the left ear. Tube screamers on each track. Right side: clean 2, Doubled and lextac red channel on each track and tube screamers. Ir's for these two are a Damien (marshall from recabinet free trial) and Brohymn's Mesa V30. By far, I've spent more time working on this one than the others.
Clip 4: SoloC on 2 tracks, Catharsis Ir's, no tube screamer. This is a great little warm crunch to heavy setting. It actually works best for a warm tone that's not too over the top. Since at the moment there's no real great Diezel sim out there, I might use this for a very rhythmic associated guitar part, similar to what Tool's guitarist does with less distored parts.
Clip 5: Revalver's 6505, 2 tracks. I think I used Catharsis Ir's and Brohym's Mesa V30 on this, but for some reason I think I might have switch out the Mesa IR for Demi's Bogner at the last minute. One of the under-used wonderful abilities of the 5150 style amps is they've got a mid range that will cut through a mix like a knife. I like to bring that out because when mixed with something else, it can really be heard and sounds good. I use this for solos and parts that I want to stand out very clearly. Tube screamer on both tracks. Other than the normal high/low pass I believe I added a little extra mid boost post eq at around 1k.
Clip 6: I'm not a fan of the "mid cut" sort of tones from the past decade or so. But I do recognize that these amps sound great if that's what you're looking for. This clip is LE456 with Alu's New 01 on the left and x30TSE with New 01 on the right. Tube screamers on both tracks. I'll admit, someone else can probably do much better than me with these amps, but I hope i did them justice. I can't remember at the moment, but i'm pretty sure there's a notch filter to tame some fizz.
Clip 7: Last but not least, Revalver's MKIII Flathill (Mesa duel Rec). I've never hated an amp so much in my life than the Rectifier. It's not versitile and every guitarist who uses it sounds exactly the same (but that's opinion I know, please don't hate me :mrgreen: ). Anyway, I wanted to give this one a try so I can at least say that I tried it and I'm fair. 2 Tracks, Tube screamers and Brohymn's Mesa V30 (what else would I use :lol: ) Ir's. Modern channel. I used a notch to filter out some fizzyness in the upper mids just before the low pass filter.[/COLOR]
I hope that I did these amps justice. If you guys have any questions, I might get a few moments free this week to sit down and look over the project files better for more details.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Basic Recording Setup and Getting Started - My take on the subject
This will require a little upfront recording knowledge, but you can find this anywhere on the web these days.
A wise man once said, "Keep it simple stupid." Sometimes it's hard to do that these days with all the options and hearing that this famous producer says do it this way or that. But in all honesty, if you're not a famous producer or engineer, chances are you don't know why it is you do it that way anyway. This is especially true when using software these days that makes it so easy to switch and swap and try this and that quickly. Now, I'll admit that if you're actually micing and recording a drum kit from scratch, the rules change a little bit. But for some amateur engineers, guitarists just trying to get a decent recording of their songs, or simple songwriters, we don't need to go to all this trouble. My entire setup consists mostly of software found for free on the internet. I have purchased a few things to make life easier, but all in all I've spent hundreds less than what a brand new Marshall half stack will cost you...and through the software I have just about any amp I could ever want.
First we need to start with good sounds. My guitar uses passive Gibson pickups, most likely along the lines of Burstbuckers or PAF's. I've heard people say that active pickups will work best for amp modeling because the signal is stronger. But in all honesty I'm not sure it's all that much better than a good set of passive pups. Decent cables will work and clean fresh strings of your choice. If you're using an interface of some type, you want the pickup gain to be strong enough so that you're getting a nice loud signal, but you don't want it to clip....at least until you know why you want it to clip. Add your amp sims or whatever until it sounds good. The same goes for drums. I make the kit sound good to start with, which makes the rest of the process much easier. There are plenty of tips and tricks that can be found on forums across the interweb or youtube. Test out different things until you find something that works for your ear.
Now on to a few more details. For guitars, I use Peavey Revalver MKIII as a shell program to host it's amps (this one might cost a little, but I was fortunate to be given a copy) and outside amp sims, like Lepou's amp sims (free - see the link to the side.) I use Revalver this way because I like the sound of the IR loader, or speaker cabinet simulation (there are free IR loaders out there that work great). If you're using guitar amp simulators, just plug it in and think of it like you would a real amp, only this one is in your vst chain. You have your amp, your cab, and your effects. If you can get a good tone through your real amp, all you need is basic mixing knowledge to get a decent tone from an amp sim (although some are better than others). And with all the options of free sims out there these days, you can get REALLY good tones. In fact, most people (even guitarists that won't admit it and say "sims will never sound like the real thing") can't hear the difference between real and sim when done well...and it will cost you nothing.
The only real recording knowledge you need is how to setup tracks like a real studio. Most studio rhythm guitars are 2 or 4 separate playthroughs. I usually use 2 playthroughs, one for the left side and one for the right. I then double them to make 4 tracks total. Pan them somewhere around 100%Left, 80%Left, 80%Right, and 100%Right. This will differ based on your tone and volume. I tend to use 1 amp instance for each track with all four guitar tracks using 4 seperate IR's (Impulse Responses) for the speaker cabinet simulation. After that, EQ is recommended as a high and low pass filter at least. You get rid of the high's to remove unwanted fizzyness and the lows to get rid of frequencies that can interfere with the bass guitar. I don't like mid scooping very much, but if that's your cup of tea, do a notch filter. Most DAW's will come with a decent EQ to get you started with this stuff. If your ear is good enough, you should be able to tell what you like and dislike. If I'm feeling froggy, I might send the 4 tracks to rhythm guitar bus for a little extra verb or something to help it sit in the mix a little better.
I use the same basic principles for bass guitar except that I tend to use two tracks. One with Ampeg SVX (free version) bass amp simulation for the lows, and then a guitar amp (I'm loving Lepou's lextac blue channel for this) for some highs and string noise. It's usually easier for me, not being a bassist really or knowing that much about mixing bass, to get my final bass eq after I've got a drum track and guitar track. This leaves me the ability to EQ around those parts, to add and subtract frequencies where they are needed to fit the other tones.
My drums are handled with Steven Slate drums EX. I picked this up not long ago for $20 on sale. It generally go's for around $99. This program sounds great out of the box. But to get it so sound good in the mix, you need a little more than that. I send the output to a separate track for each drum in my daw. Each drum is then EQ'd, gated, compressed, reverb-ed, etc to my taste (it might be best if you do your own reading up on drum mixing for more details). It's then send back to a master drum bus with more reverb and compression to pull it all together. Plugins of note that I like using for this process are Stillwell's 1973 EQ and Major Tom Compressor and Bootsie's Density MK II and Epicverb. The bus uses Epicverb to add a little extra verb than what you get from the room mics, Major Tom adds a first stage compression for a slight "pumping feel" and then a light touch of Density MKII brings it together as a whole. The only real headache of doing drums this way is the endless hours you can spend tweaking the midi note placements. But I actually kind of think it's fun and it really doesn't bother me that much like it does some people.
So this really isn't that much work yet. My philosophy of "keep it simple stupid" means that I save these tracks as templates or presets after they are individually sounding good. After that just bring up the volume levels. Although some settings will need to be adjusted, at this point, you should have a fairly decent sound and you didn't have to send kick and snare to a bus and do crazy routing things to do parallel compression and such. Last but not least I do a little more eq if needed on the master track, a limiter to bring the volume up, a tape simulator for some saturation and more compression to glue it all together. I actually prefer to mix into this final compression instead of adding it after the fact. I also don't use a lot of compression on any one compressor. I tend to stay around 4:1 or less on all of them.
While using more advanced techniques is of course the goal, it's not hard to get a good sound without them if you start with good sounds. I know this explanation isn't going to give anyone a step by step process, but it explains my theories a little behind the recording I'm currently working on.
A wise man once said, "Keep it simple stupid." Sometimes it's hard to do that these days with all the options and hearing that this famous producer says do it this way or that. But in all honesty, if you're not a famous producer or engineer, chances are you don't know why it is you do it that way anyway. This is especially true when using software these days that makes it so easy to switch and swap and try this and that quickly. Now, I'll admit that if you're actually micing and recording a drum kit from scratch, the rules change a little bit. But for some amateur engineers, guitarists just trying to get a decent recording of their songs, or simple songwriters, we don't need to go to all this trouble. My entire setup consists mostly of software found for free on the internet. I have purchased a few things to make life easier, but all in all I've spent hundreds less than what a brand new Marshall half stack will cost you...and through the software I have just about any amp I could ever want.
First we need to start with good sounds. My guitar uses passive Gibson pickups, most likely along the lines of Burstbuckers or PAF's. I've heard people say that active pickups will work best for amp modeling because the signal is stronger. But in all honesty I'm not sure it's all that much better than a good set of passive pups. Decent cables will work and clean fresh strings of your choice. If you're using an interface of some type, you want the pickup gain to be strong enough so that you're getting a nice loud signal, but you don't want it to clip....at least until you know why you want it to clip. Add your amp sims or whatever until it sounds good. The same goes for drums. I make the kit sound good to start with, which makes the rest of the process much easier. There are plenty of tips and tricks that can be found on forums across the interweb or youtube. Test out different things until you find something that works for your ear.
Now on to a few more details. For guitars, I use Peavey Revalver MKIII as a shell program to host it's amps (this one might cost a little, but I was fortunate to be given a copy) and outside amp sims, like Lepou's amp sims (free - see the link to the side.) I use Revalver this way because I like the sound of the IR loader, or speaker cabinet simulation (there are free IR loaders out there that work great). If you're using guitar amp simulators, just plug it in and think of it like you would a real amp, only this one is in your vst chain. You have your amp, your cab, and your effects. If you can get a good tone through your real amp, all you need is basic mixing knowledge to get a decent tone from an amp sim (although some are better than others). And with all the options of free sims out there these days, you can get REALLY good tones. In fact, most people (even guitarists that won't admit it and say "sims will never sound like the real thing") can't hear the difference between real and sim when done well...and it will cost you nothing.
The only real recording knowledge you need is how to setup tracks like a real studio. Most studio rhythm guitars are 2 or 4 separate playthroughs. I usually use 2 playthroughs, one for the left side and one for the right. I then double them to make 4 tracks total. Pan them somewhere around 100%Left, 80%Left, 80%Right, and 100%Right. This will differ based on your tone and volume. I tend to use 1 amp instance for each track with all four guitar tracks using 4 seperate IR's (Impulse Responses) for the speaker cabinet simulation. After that, EQ is recommended as a high and low pass filter at least. You get rid of the high's to remove unwanted fizzyness and the lows to get rid of frequencies that can interfere with the bass guitar. I don't like mid scooping very much, but if that's your cup of tea, do a notch filter. Most DAW's will come with a decent EQ to get you started with this stuff. If your ear is good enough, you should be able to tell what you like and dislike. If I'm feeling froggy, I might send the 4 tracks to rhythm guitar bus for a little extra verb or something to help it sit in the mix a little better.
I use the same basic principles for bass guitar except that I tend to use two tracks. One with Ampeg SVX (free version) bass amp simulation for the lows, and then a guitar amp (I'm loving Lepou's lextac blue channel for this) for some highs and string noise. It's usually easier for me, not being a bassist really or knowing that much about mixing bass, to get my final bass eq after I've got a drum track and guitar track. This leaves me the ability to EQ around those parts, to add and subtract frequencies where they are needed to fit the other tones.
My drums are handled with Steven Slate drums EX. I picked this up not long ago for $20 on sale. It generally go's for around $99. This program sounds great out of the box. But to get it so sound good in the mix, you need a little more than that. I send the output to a separate track for each drum in my daw. Each drum is then EQ'd, gated, compressed, reverb-ed, etc to my taste (it might be best if you do your own reading up on drum mixing for more details). It's then send back to a master drum bus with more reverb and compression to pull it all together. Plugins of note that I like using for this process are Stillwell's 1973 EQ and Major Tom Compressor and Bootsie's Density MK II and Epicverb. The bus uses Epicverb to add a little extra verb than what you get from the room mics, Major Tom adds a first stage compression for a slight "pumping feel" and then a light touch of Density MKII brings it together as a whole. The only real headache of doing drums this way is the endless hours you can spend tweaking the midi note placements. But I actually kind of think it's fun and it really doesn't bother me that much like it does some people.
So this really isn't that much work yet. My philosophy of "keep it simple stupid" means that I save these tracks as templates or presets after they are individually sounding good. After that just bring up the volume levels. Although some settings will need to be adjusted, at this point, you should have a fairly decent sound and you didn't have to send kick and snare to a bus and do crazy routing things to do parallel compression and such. Last but not least I do a little more eq if needed on the master track, a limiter to bring the volume up, a tape simulator for some saturation and more compression to glue it all together. I actually prefer to mix into this final compression instead of adding it after the fact. I also don't use a lot of compression on any one compressor. I tend to stay around 4:1 or less on all of them.
While using more advanced techniques is of course the goal, it's not hard to get a good sound without them if you start with good sounds. I know this explanation isn't going to give anyone a step by step process, but it explains my theories a little behind the recording I'm currently working on.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Song - A Quarter Inch Crazy
-An instrumental - The main theme of this song, the chromatic riff that appears over and over through the rhythm guitars, strings and even in the solo's, kept nagging at me. I experimented with speeding it up (which sounds real good, but made no sense for the expression as a whole - hear it much faster in the solo starting at around 6 minutes), but ultimately settled with it around 150bpm. In my writing of this song, I was initially thinking of it in similar fashion to a Canon and then Sonata, but settled somewhere in between but falling short of both.
I really liked this song when first coming up with the initial pieces, but never could get it to sound quite right. I finally came up with the "chorus" section that's played at the beginning middle and end of the song, and it finally came together. The song is quite modal and alternates between a feeling of Db minor and Ab Major. I really stopped short of taking it full circle, but it was getting too long and unfortunately I was getting tired of working on it. In the end, I think I'm happy with the results even if at this point I do believe it's a little more straight forward and less "prog" than originally planned.
Recording techniques are almost exactly the same as the previous song "Beyond the Beginning", with the exception of the lead guitars. The "wah" lead part is the 6505 from Revalver MK III amp sim and the other is a mix of two different IR's using Lextac by Lepou Plugins.
I also used the free version of East West Symphonic Orchestra for the string parts. I wish I had the full version (and with it a full orchestra for the low low price of close to a thousand dollars), but even this extremely basic version sounds great. If you're into that kinda thing, I highly recommend checking it out. I filled out a survey on their website which enabled me to download the "free version". It was a pain to get the program to work, but totally worth it.
In the next few posts I'll be discussing which plugins I like and why. Everything from amp sims to why I like this compressor and how I've got the computer setup to work best. I hope you can stay tuned!
I really liked this song when first coming up with the initial pieces, but never could get it to sound quite right. I finally came up with the "chorus" section that's played at the beginning middle and end of the song, and it finally came together. The song is quite modal and alternates between a feeling of Db minor and Ab Major. I really stopped short of taking it full circle, but it was getting too long and unfortunately I was getting tired of working on it. In the end, I think I'm happy with the results even if at this point I do believe it's a little more straight forward and less "prog" than originally planned.
Recording techniques are almost exactly the same as the previous song "Beyond the Beginning", with the exception of the lead guitars. The "wah" lead part is the 6505 from Revalver MK III amp sim and the other is a mix of two different IR's using Lextac by Lepou Plugins.
I also used the free version of East West Symphonic Orchestra for the string parts. I wish I had the full version (and with it a full orchestra for the low low price of close to a thousand dollars), but even this extremely basic version sounds great. If you're into that kinda thing, I highly recommend checking it out. I filled out a survey on their website which enabled me to download the "free version". It was a pain to get the program to work, but totally worth it.
In the next few posts I'll be discussing which plugins I like and why. Everything from amp sims to why I like this compressor and how I've got the computer setup to work best. I hope you can stay tuned!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Song - Beyond the Beginning
This is the first multi-track song I've recorded all by my lonesome. One day it will get some vocals, but we'll save that for another time. This song went through many different versions, remixed and rerecorded several times before we get to where we are now.
All of my recording is done with Reaper, God bless everyone behind that wonderful piece of software. For this recording I use Lepou's Lextac amp sim, based on a popular Bogner amp, Revalver MKIII 6505 for the lead and additional parts, and impulses (IR's) found at guitarampmodeling.com. Credits for those impulses go to Brohymn, Dimi and Alu. Steven Slate Drums EX is used for the drums. Amplitube Ampeg SVX free version BA-500 bass amp for the bass. My guitar is a 1990 Les Paul standard and the bass guitar is a Dean Zone XM. There is also a whole mess of reverb, delay, compression, eq, etc. plugins used. I'll get into more detail about all this at a later date though.
The guitars are double tracked into 2 separate amp instances for each take. That's 4 amps total, one on it's own track. Lextac is loaded into Revalver and I use it's RIR to load the impulses. I just really like the RIR for an impulse loader. One impulse per amp and a different impulse on each track, blended to my ear's personal taste.
The drums, even though they are vsti and sound pretty good out of the box, I've eq'd them heavily. The midi channel is sent to a total of 15 different tracks. One track for each drum. Each mixed, compressed, gated, eq'd, reverb, delay, panned...well you get the picture...by itself as if it were a real kit, then sent to a group bus track for more compression and reverb.
The effects at the beginning are from the free Kore player from Native Instruments.
This song was created not only for the music, but for the recording templates and such that I'm going to use as a starting point for all projects until it gets packaged together on a full length record.
At this point I've left the standard charge of 99 cents for a quality download. I figure it's not that much and if you're just wanting to listen quickly anyway, you can right here as much as you want. But for the luxary to take it with you, what's a dollar?
All of my recording is done with Reaper, God bless everyone behind that wonderful piece of software. For this recording I use Lepou's Lextac amp sim, based on a popular Bogner amp, Revalver MKIII 6505 for the lead and additional parts, and impulses (IR's) found at guitarampmodeling.com. Credits for those impulses go to Brohymn, Dimi and Alu. Steven Slate Drums EX is used for the drums. Amplitube Ampeg SVX free version BA-500 bass amp for the bass. My guitar is a 1990 Les Paul standard and the bass guitar is a Dean Zone XM. There is also a whole mess of reverb, delay, compression, eq, etc. plugins used. I'll get into more detail about all this at a later date though.
The guitars are double tracked into 2 separate amp instances for each take. That's 4 amps total, one on it's own track. Lextac is loaded into Revalver and I use it's RIR to load the impulses. I just really like the RIR for an impulse loader. One impulse per amp and a different impulse on each track, blended to my ear's personal taste.
The drums, even though they are vsti and sound pretty good out of the box, I've eq'd them heavily. The midi channel is sent to a total of 15 different tracks. One track for each drum. Each mixed, compressed, gated, eq'd, reverb, delay, panned...well you get the picture...by itself as if it were a real kit, then sent to a group bus track for more compression and reverb.
The effects at the beginning are from the free Kore player from Native Instruments.
This song was created not only for the music, but for the recording templates and such that I'm going to use as a starting point for all projects until it gets packaged together on a full length record.
At this point I've left the standard charge of 99 cents for a quality download. I figure it's not that much and if you're just wanting to listen quickly anyway, you can right here as much as you want. But for the luxary to take it with you, what's a dollar?
Here We Go!
Ok, so I've launched and we're live. This is going to be my attempt to actually do something with my music. I will hopefully be able to do a lot of stuff with this blog. I'm planning on putting the music here so that you can at least listen to it. I'll probably get around to some free downloads and promo codes for all my friends when I can get more in depth and learn how all this is going to work. Until then, if you like it, download it and tell me what you think. I'm always open for some good feedback. I'll also be posting about recording techniques I use, plugins, reviews, etc, all created digitally. In fact, the only "real" instrument I'll be using is my guitar. For the most part this will be instrumental, but I've got a few tricks up my sleeve for some vocals and I might call in a favor or two along the way. Also, I'll be happy to answer questions like "how to's" and explain this or that. Until I can get some time to actually do some blogging, check out the tracks I've done so far. Soon I'll tell you a little more about the songs and what I used to record them. Thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoy it!
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