Goal tracking - update

I went into a shopping spree.

I decided that I needed better sounds and some awesome synths to complement some of my music. I had to take out flutes and violins from one of my songs because they sounded so wrong :-) Synths I need because I like electro and I plan to make more, with some layered guitars and stuff. So I went for Komplete Elements from Native Instruments. It's got all the basic sounds I need, plus some awesome synths plus a sample engine and also guitar effects to complement my Line6 POD if I need to. For $60.

It came with a voucher so I decided to buy The Mouth from the same company. Turn your voice into anything: beats, sounds, ... Can't wait to try it :-)

Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: a bass guitar. Yes! A found a Peavey Grind (new: $600) for about $130 used. I plan to replace the crappy midi stuff in my songs with some direct input bass and trigger/mix samples into that to get some better sounds. Can't wait to try it as well :-)

Budget wise, I was down to $270, minus Elements ($60) minus Mouth ($60) minus the bass (130) and I'm left with... $20.

I still need a good reverb plugin. Although I have been testing a few of them, I can't say I'm happy with what I see :-( Valhalla still makes more sense and looks easier to use. I'd go under my budget for the year, and we haven't reached end of April yet :-) We'll see. I might pull the trigger if I continue to struggle with adding space and context into my mixes, although thanks to The Recording Lounge podcast, I have learned that addind delay instead of reverb might just do the trick in some cases. More later :-) (maybe...)

Goal tracking

Update on the goal tracking for 2013: out of $430, I just took out $160. I'm now left with $270.

Valhalla Room? Bass guitar? Komplete Elements from Native Instruments?

Goal tracking

I said I would not buy for more than USD500 of gear/stuff for my studio in 2013.

Boy is this gonna be hard! :-)

I needed a second mic stand so that I could track acoustic guitar right off the bat without having to circle around the room for 20 minutes setting everything up (see this post for why that's important). I bought it for a bit less than USD 70 including shipping. A nice Samson BL3, like the other one I have.

So that's USD430 left.

On my buy list, there currently is:

1. Addictive Drums by XLNAudio: my drum samples suck bad. Drums and bass are the most important things to get right in modern music. AD gets the job done for a very reasonable price. I have my sight set on the a nice bundle of AD + the Reel Machine ADPak with electro sounds
2. Valhalla Room reverb plugin: the guys over at http://www.homerecordingshow.com have been raving about how good this plugin is; why buy a reverb? I can't hear a bad EQ or a bad compressor (yet?) but I can definitely hear a bad reverb. Plus the guy who makes it (Sean Costello) is really cool.
3. A bass guitar; yes, I can't play the bass, but the sound I get with my crappy sample and the keyboard is plain horrible. A real bass, even a cheap one, either direct in or through my Line6 PocketPOD will definitely sound better

The AD bundle is $149 and Valhalla is $50 so that's $200 less. I'm left for $230 for *everything else*, including the bass. Yikes!

God forbid something breaks. Do I get a break? :-)

Speaker / listening position placement

I was listening to some music on my speakers the other day and I noticed a very nasty boost at some unknown fairly low frequency, making certain section of a bass line atrociously ring.

For some reason, I yanked my head back in surprise or disgust - and the ringing was gone.

Thing is, that head movement might have been a few inches back.

I then proceeded to play around with my listening position (sitting in the same spot, mind you, I am lazy after all) and it is amazing how the sound changes, even a few inches in or out.

Next step is to go to the first step: better place my speakers so that I can actually measure sound bouncing around with REW. But for that, I need to buy longer cables - and most likely find a better way to conneect my speakers with my interface.

But that's for another day.

So proud

I am so damn proud of myself.

You see, and those who know me will confirm this, I am not much of a DIYer. At all. Blame it on not growing up in a house, not seeing my dad doing a lot of it, being lazy... You get the idea.

So here am I in my new house with a space dedicated to music. If I already had the basic equipment at the apartment (audio interface, a mic, a guitar, a MIDI keyboard), I didn't need to worry about acoustics because I was mixing on (bad) headphones. Yes, I know. It's like cooking pizza in a microwave: smells like pizza, looks like pizza, but it ain't pizza. So my music sounded boxy and pretty much sounded like *ss. So back to my music space in the new house: after having bought more equipment like we all do (electronic drums, new acoustic guitar, electric guitar, guitar amp simulator, new mic /stand / pop filter / shockmount), I decided to go for the real thing and mix on monitors. That was a very important decision, and I must confess I only really discovered how important it was until several hundred dollars and tens of hours later.

Mixing on speakers means that your untreated unbalanced weirdly shaped full of resonating material excuse of a room comes into play big time. It's actually even worse than that: it defines your sound. You can of course change the sound during tracking (somewhat) and during mixing, but it's tedious and unless you spend a lot of time on it, the sound will still be most likely crappy. After having done my research and bought monitors, I placed my listening position at the best possible spot in the room, and the monitors in a nice equilateral triangle with one of its corners where my head is.

Yikes.

The advantage with fairly decent monitors like mine is that you hear a lot of detail.The disadvantage is that you hear a lot of detail :-) The need for acoustic treatment became very apparent. Of course, the first order of things when you decide to mix on monitors is to treat your room, not to buy more equipment! This is obvious and is repeated on countless forums, but for some reason, I only "discovered" it too late. So off I went, reading about acoustics, treatment, and most of all, DIY treatment. There are very good commercial companies selling you everything you need from bass traps to reflections treatment to diffusors, but I didn't have the budget, most of these companies are in the US (I'm not), and a little voice in my head told me that I could really try to do something on my own, for once. After reading and waiting and reading some more and hesitating for a few months, I finally decided to try. I needed 3 bass traps and 1 reflection absorber, something to cover the bare walls, and curtains for the window and the shelf space in the back of the room.

I bought the following material: 2cm x 4cm wood for the aborber frames, rockwool for the absorption, glue / nails / clip, string, clip gun to hold everything together, fabric for cover; I also bought curtains in a fairly dense material, two carpets for the walls and a smaller desk to avoid early reflections. After a few errors and a lot of trial, my room is now finished except for the overhead absorption that I need to attach to the ceiling, the curtains that my wife needs to sew (thanks honey) and the one stand I still need to build for the bass trap that will sit in the corner where the door is. Fixing the carpets on the walls was a bit of a pain, and attaching one absorber on a corner was a bit of a challenge, but I somehow managed. It looks really cool. I also completely redid the cabling around the monitors and the computer and it is much cleaner.

All of this for a guy who had barely used a hammer more than twice in his life :-)

(if you want moe detail on how I built the absorbers, let me know)