How to use a Vst Plugin once installed (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to answer a question that I have probably took for granted but that recently a user asked me (thanks Jewfro), so I have noticed that we have actually no dedicated article about it.

Once you install one of the many Vst plugins suggested on this blog, how do you actually use it?

The answer is "you need a real time Vst host".

What is a vst host? A software that lets you load your Vst plugin and use your instrument (a keyboard, a guitar, your voice and so on) through it, giving the processed signal as a result.

Which are some good Vst hosts?
The most commonly used Vst hosts are the Digital audio workstations (DAWs), here is a list of the best ones:

Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) overview.

How do you get your signal in your pc? Here are my tips on how to build your perfect home studio with the smallest budget possible:

How to build a Home Studio.

Once you have an audio interface and a Vst host it's very easy: you open your (Vst compatible) Daw, create a new track, and you'll notice that for each track there will be several empty slots called Vst inserts (or Vst chain). Here you can load any Vst you want, in any order you prefer, and experiment with it. In order to be visible in the menu that lets you load the plugins in the slots, the Daw must know where to look for them, so you must specify in the options of the workstation where to look for them, but once everything is setup your Vst plugins will all appear in the list and you will be able to load them in the insert.

One last thing: if you are trying to play through a plugin in real time and there is a bit of latency that doesn't let you play well, you must reduce the size of the buffer:

Here is a guide that explains the relationship between buffer size and latency.

I hope this was helpful!


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How to build the perfect tracklist for your record PART 2/2

(Nine Lives, from Aerosmith, another excellent example of tracklist picking)

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/2

- After the wave has crashed we can slow down in the fourth position with a slower, more reasoned song, also to create a change in the album dynamics and to give some rest to the listener's ears: this is a good place where to put some ballad or anthemic mid tempo.

- The fifth song (or in general the last song of the first half of the album) is the one that in the vinyl and audio cassette era was closing the first side of the album, therefore concluding a chapter and forcing us to get up and change side. This today has no meaning anymore but in terms of strategic disposition of the songs in the tracklist this could be a good place where to put a song that is not so strong (I don't want to say a filler because the ideal album should have no fillers), considering that it will be statistically one of those songs that will be noticed the less.

- The sixth song (or in general the first song of the second half of the record), similarly to the fifth song, had in the past a special role: being the first song of the second side it had to be almost as captivating as the first song of the first half. We need to win back the attention of the listener and navigate him through the second half of our record, since he trusted us enough to spend one hour of his life in listening to our music, therefore this position could be good for a nice, melodic uptempo that energizes the listener.

- The seventh song, similarly to the second, should make the listener recover from the blast of the sixth and prepare him to the final part of the album: this position often is reserved to mid tempos, or songs that can have the listener relaxing a bit.

- The eight place is probably the last one we can use for a second "single", intended as a song that came out particularly well and that we could use as a business card for our album: it is the moment of the album in which the listener that has arrived so far is deciding whether to stop listening or not, and we need to give him a good reason to keep going: this is a good position for a nice ear-candy, and statistically, if the listener finds a reason to arrive this far and he likes the eight, he will much probably arrive to the end of the record.

- The ninth song is the song in which we can experiment: do we have a song very different from the rest of the album, like sang by another singer, or played unplugged, or performed in a way that is very different? We can put it here as a gift for those who have arrived until here with the listening, without the risk of giving a wrong impression to those who were casually just giving a listen to the beginning of the album.

- The last song, finally, should be decided since the beginning. The idea would be to close the album with a reason, like the ending credits of a movie, so this is a good place for a song that is particularly long and articulated, or with a long fade out ending that gives the impression that the band will keep on playing that part forever. Some bands likes also to put here some connection to the beginning of the album, so that if the listener would play the album in loop he would find a circular connection between the end of the last song and the beginning of the first one.

And now click here for an in depth article about the A-side and B-side division!

Do you have other interesting tips? Let us know!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/2


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How to build the perfect tracklist for your record PART 1/2

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will go on with our songwriting tips talking about the best ways to create a tracklist for your record: how to decide the order of the songs to make them effective and to keep high the attention of the listener.
Let's start by saying that a tracklist is a concept of the past: those of you coming from generations in which internet was not yet mainstream will remember creating compilations on tape or on cd, carefully picking the perfect tracklist in the perfect order to be the ideal soundtrack of our life, or to be a gift to our significant other.
Today people listens to music often by the phone, the computer or the car stereo with an usb drive, so they are not tied as in the past to a certain tracklist to be forcefully listened in order, but nevertheless an artist should create and suggest still today a certain sequence for his album to be listened, if he wants his message to be delivered in the way he intended it to go; then if his songs ends up in some Spotify playlist.... It's not a problem.

P.s.: why did I choose Painkiller of Judas Priest as a cover image for this article? Simple: because I think it is a perfect example of excellent tracklist creation skill.

Let's begin by saying that there is a difference between a single (usually 2 songs), an Ep (usually 4 or 5 songs) and an album (usually around 10 songs): the album lenght is different, the attention span in the first 2 cases is not a problem, because if the album is 20/25 minutes or less the attention of the listener remains high, therefore there's more freedom in choosing a tracklist: the important is to have an impactful beginning and an ending that sounds as a conclusion, that doesn't leave the work incomplete.

For a full lenght album as we have said the situation is more complex, and in this psychoacoustics can come in our aid, helping us in picking the right song order, making them flow one into the other gracefully.
Let's say we have 10 songs, each one 5 minutes long for a total of 50 minutes of music: our aim is to keep high the attention of the listener, to not bore him and to not make him change album; let's add also that in this example we are not talking about a concept album in which the songs needs necessarily to be played in a certain order because of the lyrics.
Last forewords: as always these are not fixed rules, it's just a collection of tips I've gathered through my years in songwrting experience, and by making reverse engineering on some of the best tracklists in the history of music.

Click here for an article that explains all the various types of record more in depth: Demo, Single, Ep, Full Lenght, Split, Mixtape, Live etc!! 

- Obviously we should start with the introduction, if we have one, or with the song with the most attention capturing first 20 seconds. Since the first song will be the one listened the most and will decide whether the listener will want to proceed in playing also the other ones included in our record we must consider it as the shopping window of our album; the first impression is crucial, therefore we must showcase the best that the album has to offer: the best impact, the best melodies.

- The second song is often overlooked, like the second page of Google: people is often still thinking about the first song, so the main purpose of this position is to be pleasantly connected to the first one, to consolidate the good impression to and prepare the listener to the big wave.

- The third song should be the heart of the album: we have done our introductions, now we can get into the real business. There is a reason why in many pop-rock albums the big single is at the third position: the listener is already hooked in the album, and this is the moment to serve the main course. In this position it is a good idea to place the best song we have, maybe a nice uptempo with a very catchy chorus.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/2


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Review: Randall RH50T

Hello and welcome to this week's article! 

Today we're going to talk about a currently discontinued tube amplifier that is still easy to find at a very affordable price in the used market: the Randall Rh50T!

This is a small, lightweight, 50w tube head which pioneered the current trend of downsizing tube guitar amps to play nicely both in a home environment and in the stage-rehearsal room.

The amp is 2 channel with independent eq, each one with two modes, the normal and the boosted one, so that in total we can choose between a clean, a crunch, a rhythm and a lead sound.

A spring reverb is also included and does its job beautifully.

I have owned this head for six months, and during this time I have been able to appreciate the incredible sturdiness of the build quality, probably one of the most solid-feeling amplifiers I've ever owned, and the warmth of the EL34 tubes, which adds a lot of harmonics and mid range to the tone.

This is a double edge blade: the characteristic EL34 tone is present, and if you like it, it's a blessing, but if you don't, be prepared because it will permeate all the four channels.

The Clean and crunch channels are very pleasant, with extremely creamy clean-slighly overdriven tones, the sound is rich and bassy, and for pop, rock, hard rock, punk etc this head is absolutely a good bang for the buck, if you can find it used.

Unfortunately if we want to push it towards modern metal tones, which was something I needed, the gain did not have a nice texture: at the levels required for metal it tends to get muddy and fuzzy, probably due to the combination of tubes and low wattage, and it takes quite an effort and some good pedal to achieve a satisfying tone.

My bottom line is: for low to mid gain genres this head is a good compromise between price, wattage, tone, and it is 100% tube. For genres like metal, it will need to be boosted and carefully tweaked because otherwise probably you will not obtain the tone you are looking for.

Either way, a head that definitely deserves a try!

Specs:

- 50 w tube amp, 4 12AX7 Tubes in the preamp, 2 EL34 in the power amp
- effects loop
- 2 channels (Clean / Overdrive) / 4 modes
- Spring reverb
- 4 switches footswitch included

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RMS levels in mastering (with free Vst metering tool)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going about Mastering, and in particular of RMS levels when using the last plugin of our chain in the stereo bus: the limiter.

As we know, a limiter is a tool that prevents any peak to surpass a certain ceiling, and does this by applying a strong gain reduction that blocks the loudest part of the signal.
We have also already talked about the Loudness war so I won't repeat myself here, what I think is an interesting addition is though the reading of the RMS meter.
In order to introduce this concept we need to explain the difference between Peak Level and Rms Level.

Peak level: this is the loudest peak reached by our track. When mixing it could be -12db, but when mastering we can use a Limiter and stop it at -1db, or -0,1db.

Rms level: root means square level. This level is the AVERAGE loudness of the master, and the difference between the peak level and the rms level is an approximation of the amount of headroom left in our master.

What is a good compromise between a mix that is loud enough and that is not squashed?
A good starting point is to limit not more than 3/4db of peak, but keeping ourself at around -9/10db Rms.

In this interesting article Ian Shepherd on his mastering blog compares several recordings, showing the average (raw) rms levels:

-6.2 Oasis - "Some Might Say": Severe clipping distortion
-4.9 Metallica - "The day that never comes" (CD): Massive distortion & clipping
-7.7 Feeder - "Pushing The Senses": Heavy clipping distortion
-10 Katatonia - "Consternation": Awesome (clean) sound, massive choruses
-13.1 Sugar - "Fortune Teller": From 1993
-16.9 Metallica - "The day that never comes" (Guitar hero 3) Needs to be louder !
How do we measure the Rms level? A good free tool to monitor our Rms level is Sonalksis Free G, which offers a master fader and a serie of metering tools (place it after the limiter in the post-fader insert).

And you? What Rms level do you like to master your music? Let us know!


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