4 Ways to move your guitar sound towards the midrange without equalizing it

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we will speak about alternative ways to push our instruments, especially guitars, into their place inside of a mix without being too drastic with the eq!

The common mistake that a recording newbie does is to start with a bad sounding recorded track, and hoping to fix it in the mix with a drastic eq work, while the truth is that for example boosting strongly a midrange means recontructing digitally certain frequences, and the more we do it, the more it sounds digital and unnatural.

So, how does the pro obtain that sound? 

They surely have great microphones, great preamps, great a/d converters and so on, but most of all they nail the right sound at the source; this is a boring task, but they spend in finding the right amp settings, the right speaker to use and the right mic placement, probably more time than what they spend into shaping the guitar sound while mixing. 

1) They know by the experience how to get into the computer a sound that sounds already as much as possible "ready", and this is the first and most important method I can suggest to move a guitar sound in its place while keeping it natural and not overprocessed: to spend more time in the recording phase, trying ALL the different possibilities we have with the tool that we have, until we find a sound that we feel it can be acceptable even without processing, comparing it constantly with a reference track of our choice. 

2) The second method to emphasize the body of a guitar (but also any other instrument, like a snare or a vocal track, or cymbals) is to saturate it a bit. What do we mean a bit? Less than it becomes noticeable. Usually there is a sweet spot before it becomes too evident, in which you can add some harmonics without changing too evidently the base sound. A great saturation vst is Fabfilter Saturn.

3) A third method, which is sometimes less invasive than saturation, is harmonic excitement. A harmonic exciter add some frequency that makes the sound to pop out more, just watch out because, exactly as it happens with saturation, harmonic excitement must be added with care, avoiding it to become noticeable. A great Harmonic Exciter is the one included in the Izotope Ozone bundle.

4) A fourth and last method is to use a Console Emulation or a Channel Strip. Every piece of hardware in which we let our signal to pass through adds something and takes out something, this is obvious, and some piece of hardware is used specifically for the colour it gives to the tone.

Virtual emulators of these pieces of hardware can help us giving our tone that character that we need, without being too violent: some people just adds them in the vst slot and leaves'em there untouched, just to add their sprinkle of colour. A classic example of Console Emulation vst is Sonimus Satson, while a typical Channel Strip used to colour the sound in a nice way is Waves SSL.

Obviously these four methods will not replace completely an equalization work, but our mindset when approaching a guitar sound should be to record it as it should be perfect without any further processing, then equalizing it just to filter out the unneded-overlapping frequences (so high pass, low pass and some attenuation here and there), and finally just try to use one of these four methods in order to push the sound towards the midrange, if we feel it doesn't have a stable position in the mix yet.


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Interview: Onqel of TSE AUDIO

Hello and welcome to this week's interview! 

This time we had a chat with John A. Johansen, a.k.a. Onqel, Ceo/Lead developer of Tse Audio, one of the most interesting guitar and bass amp simulation developer around, which offers top quality free and paid products. He is also one of the most respected users of the Ultimate Metal / Andy Sneap forum, due to his proficiency in the vst developing field.

GuitarNerdingBlog: Hi! Can you give us some detail on how Tse audio was born?

J.A.J.: TSE Audio was born back in 2009 when I decided to take a dive into amp simulations myself.

I wanted a simulation of the Engl E530 since there was no software at that time simulating that kind of amps, and eventually the X30 was born.
It started out as a hobby, and it still is exactly that :)


GNG: What do you think about the digital amp modeling business nowadays?

J.A.J.: I think the digital amp modeling business has come a far way the last 5 years or so, but there's still parts of amp simulations that are considered more or less "impossible" to do in real-time with todays techniques without simplifying the circuit in one way or another.
at the same time I also feel the market has become more or less flooded with "hype" marketing schemes/slogans that I feel doesn't really represent what they actually delivers to their customers in terms of the progress of new technology. It's a shame but it's reality, it's a tough market out there so I guess some people doesn't really care wether or not to put some extra icing on the cake just to make more people taste it.
We have a freeware software background and is a lot more humble in that area I believe. 

We are not afraid to let the customer make their own decisions without us throwing in a pitch how good we think it is, we have a demo version of the X50 and that's it. What you see/hear is what you get! :)

GNG: What does the design and production process of a Tse Plugin is like?

J.A.J.:The X50v2 started out as a IPlug plugin (Cockos Inc.) but as the project got bigger it just got messy and hard to work on, we recently switched to the JUCE framework to make GUI implementations etc easier and more flexible without making it too complex.
We have a fantastic small group of very dedicated beta testers that has sticked with us from the idea is created up to the product is released, even after the product has been released they are hanging around to make sure we don't miss anything when the updates are made :)
The actual modeling process depends on the complexity of the circuit we're looking at, it is mainly analysis of the target circuits and turning them into a set of equations that represents the electrical and
(discrete) dynamic response of the system. in the end the model ends up looking like a SPICE simulator optimized to process oversampled audio signal at fixed time steps.

When we feel the response of the resulting model is meeting our expectations the work is then handed over to our graphics designer.
From that point we are mainly looking for bugs to make sure there are no negative surprises when our customers takes it for a spin at home or in a live/jamming session.


GNG: What is the philosophy behind your software: analog modeling, black box approach or else?

J.A.J.: We do analog modeling wherever it is possible.
So far we haven't needed any black box approach, but if it's absolutely needed to make the job done we are open for it.
Lately I have been interested in checking out the use of Artificial Neural Networks as a MIMO (multi input multi output) approach to replace large lookup tables that can eat up the memory for even smaller circuits. The biggest downside of this approach is that ANNs needs to be "trained" beforehand to know what they should do and that is a very time-consuming process with a lot of trials and errors.


GNG: What have been your career highlights so far?

J.A.J.: My biggest highlight so far has been the release of X50 v2.4 where I finally got the chance to bring back to life the X30 model inside a environment that I had been working on what felt like forever. 

The choice of not exclusively working on freeware projects anymore was also a big decision to make that I had been postponing for a couple of years. 

I'm not excluding the possibility of maybe releasing something free in the future though :)

GNG: What do you think the future of analog and digital amps and stompboxes will look like?

J.A.J.: I think we will see a lot of new software in the next new years as new simulation strategies/technology are developed.
There are many new and original analog amps and stompboxes being made every day by small one-man companies etc and I hope people will continue to support these guys. 

Personally I think it is still cooler to see a man crank up the volume knob on his analog amp rather than seing someone sweeping his fingers over a iPad screen ;)


GNG: The interview is over! Thank you for your time and give us one last message for our readers!

J.A.J.: Thanks for the opportunity to answer your questions! 

I have a message to the readers too :)
When it comes to purchasing new digital software I would highly recommend to get hold of a couple of demo versions of interest and actually compare them against eachother before making a final decision. 

Software is rarely a cheap investment, do what you would do when going to a store to buy a new TV or deciding between a couple of guitars to buy, take a moment to compare them yourself instead of
blindly trusting the salesman, you might have a different opinion than him after a while :) YouTube reviews are also a big business where the smaller companies usually aren't represented simply because of the ridiculous high fees set by the guys doing the reviews that only a big corporation can afford to pay. I think that is unfair to both customers and small businesses and it gives a one-sided view of the (big) market which has a lot more to offer than 2-3 programs.

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Review: Direct Sound Extreme Isolation EX-29 Headphones

Hello and welcome to this week's article! 

Today we will talk about headphones, and we will review a very particular type of headphones: the ones whose main purpose is to isolate the sound coming from outside.

Headphones can be used for many purposes, and most of the times they are for listening to something, but not always, or not just that.

Sometimes they are made specifically to isolate the listener from the external sounds (like the headphones used by those who use a jackhammer to not become deaf, or from those who needs to sleep frequently on a plane and wants to cut away the hum of the airplane engine).

There are basically two ways to lower the external noise with headphones: or by using an active technology (with battery powered headphones that takes the external sound with a microphone and creates for the listener an equivalent-off phase one to nullify it) or by using a passive one, which consists into applying certain construction criteria that leads to a significant decibel cut from the external sources.

Today we are taking a look at the Direct Sound Extreme Isolation Ex-29, the top shelf product of this company, which offers, by using a Passive technology, a decibel cut of 29 db.

The main purpose of these headphones is the tracking use: they are great as a monitor for the recording drummer, since there is no spill (so the click will not bleed into the overhead microphones, which is a classic drum tracking problem), and the track will be clear on the ears of the drummer, who will also be able to hear its recorded drum sound in real time.

Another typical use is when you have to to find the sweet spot while microphoning a guitar cab: although these headphones won't be able to completely eliminate the external sound, it will be lowered enough to make you focus on the signal taken from the microphone, and place it more consciously.
In conclusion these headphones do what they promise. the isolation is good enough, especially for tracking drums, and the reproducted sound is not bad at all: obviously it would be a risk to rely on it while mixing or mastering, but considering the price the sound is not bad.

If you own a recording studio, they are an essential tool!


Specs taken from the Direct Sound Website:

Type: Dynamic closed back headphones with closed back drivers
Passive Attenuation: 36.7 dB at 8,000 Hz, NRR 29 dB
Frequency Response: 20-20,000 Hz
Fidelity Response: TruSound tonally accurate
Drivers: 40 mm, closed back
Impedance: 32 Ω
Sensitivity: 114 dB at 1 KHz 1 mW
Cord: 9 ft (2,750 mm) premium twin-lead cable
Plug: Straight stereo 1/8″ (3.5 mm) gold-plated with screw-on 1/4″ (6.3 mm) gold-plated adapter
Rated Input Power: 500 mW
Maximum Input Power: 1,000 mW
IncrediFlex padded, fully adjustable headband
Foldable for storage
Convenient jack adaptor keeper
Made in the USA


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How to make pre-productions - rough mixes super fast! (with free plugins)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will focus on how to optimize the routine as best as we can to realize rough mixes to pass to the bandmates, in order to explain them the songs or the riffs we're working on.

Let's start by saying that everyone has his own method: Kirk Hammett of Metallica just records his doodles on the Iphone and then explains them to the others in the rehearsal's room, others use Guitar Pro or Tuxguitar (the open source version), to write down the midi parts of all instruments (with the upside that it can also generate you the pdf with the tablature of those parts), while others still prefer to cure their rough mixes a little bit more, but without wasting the time necessary to make a full record, and I am one of those, because this way I feel like I can understand better wether some part will work or not in the final version.

Important: when recording real instruments, as always, set the input gain on our daw to a point that the peaks does't surpasses the -10/-12db!

First off we should create a template on our favourite Daw with a decent relative mix, so that we will lose time only the first time, and for all the songs we'll use the same template.
After loading up the Daw, we must go to "create new project" and start by creating on a Midi track our favourite virtual drum vst, for example MT POWER DRUMKIT 2, which is a very good FREE vst drum sampler; from there we can adjust the Tempo Track and write down our drum part.
If we feel like our drum sound needs a bit of extra edge, instead of working on the single sounds, just add a single band compressor on the whole drumset and fiddle with it until you find just that small sprinkle that adds some body without making it too squashed.

Now we must add 2 guitar tracks (one for the left side and one for the right one, plus a third track if we want to add a solo or some part that we specifically want to keep in the middle).
In these tracks we can load some free, lightweight vst guitar amp simulator, for example Grindmachine Free. 
If we want to equalize the guitar tracks a little bit we can route all of them on a group track and give them all the same Eq adjustments.

Now it's time to create a bass track, and we can just slam there a good T.s.e. Bod plugin, which simulates a Sansamp, and a compressor to keep the wave on its place.

For the vocal track, same thing: we can add all the tracks that we need and route them (if they are more than one) on the same group track and add some compression, reverb and/or delay.

Obviously we can add also other vsts, for all the synth/orchestral parts we need, or take out from our template the tracks we don't use.

Once we have tracked down all the parts, it's time to create a mix: just set the volumes to a way that each track doesn't peak above -10/12db, and use the few vsts we have loaded to stabilize the most dynamic tracks.
Then, in the master track, just add a limiter to bring the volume up to a level that is easily audible (remember that this is a pre production, though, and its purpose is to be as understandable as possible, so don't push it to the limit or make it distort, otherwise it will become even more useless than an overly pushed final master).

If everything goes according the plan, you should have obtained a very simple and stable mix, so you can save the template, and the next times you will have to record a rough mix of a song, just load this template and record over it, you will save a lot of time!


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Interview: Jason Hausman on COOBS GUITARS

Hello! Today we are introducing an article made from our collaborator Tammy of Moonstruck Promotions: an interview with the Emmy award winning composer Jason Hausman, about the guitar producer Coobs Guitars!

EMMY award winning composer Jason Hausman is a renaissance man of sorts. His design company, Hot Sake, scores films and trailers, creates sounds for video games, music for commercials, children's toys, art installations and more. Hausman is known for his inventive take on the creation of sound; he plays pine-cones, records the sounds of falling water and coaxes creative noise from metal mixing bowls as he composes music in his Charlotte NC studio.

Hausman is also a wicked guitarist, singer and songwriter, and is always at the forefront of innovative music projects. In keeping with his penchant for all things cool, he is also a Master falconer. We mentioned the renaissance man thing, right?

Hausman is an astute collector of guitars. As a craftsman himself, he has a keen eye for workmanship and attention to detail in the work of others. Recently, Hausman enlisted the expertise of luthier Jack Coobs to create a custom six string work of art especially tailored for him.

“I had been admiring Coobs guitars for several years,” admits Hausman.

“I had strummed a couple briefly and could feel the resonance throughout the instrument, and they were, of course, stunning! After meeting Jack a few times and talking music, he handed me one of his acoustics to take it for a spin. It was a fantastic instrument. The tone, resonance, and attention to detail was some of best I had come across.”

A few months later, Hot Sake hosted an Aly Tadros concert and Hausman invited Jack.

“We really started discussing the possibilities of building me a guitar. A few days after the show, Jack asked me if I would be interested in collaborating on a signature model. He did not have to ask twice. I knew I liked him, liked his family, liked his work and felt that he could help me get what I was looking for in a new acoustic,” says Hausman.

Hausman showed Jack his first guitar. “It was my mother’s and the story goes that it was purchased at a yard sale in the early 70’s for $20. It is a Yamaha Red Label 110 (I think it’s a late 60’s model). I love this old Yamaha. Years later I bought three of the Red Label 180’s and picked my favorite and sold the other two. But the 110 remained the one. It stayed, while I went through several rounds of boutique and high end acoustics,” says Hausman.

“I asked Jack if he could make something light and open sounding like my 110. When he saw it, I think he might have thought I was crazy, or Hell, maybe it was just an insult!” laughs Hausman. “But he took it on. It is a small-bodied guitar, so being a falconer, I decided to dub it The Tiercel, which is the term for the male Peregrine Falcon. My friend, Ben Gibson, a fellow falconer and incredible artist created the artwork for the peregrine feather that adorns the headstock in abalone.”

Jack decided he wanted to make a mahogany one to adhere to the tone woods of Hausman's old favorite, and also a Koa version. Hausman says, “Jack was great about staying true to what I wanted. The only major deviation was on my request. I wanted a slotted headstock. I also asked for L.R. Baggs pickup, Waverly open tuners and the old style pyramid bridge.”

When Jack finished the guitars, he and Hausman decided to meet at Ben Premeaux’s studio smARTlab so the guitars could be photographed. “When Jack brought them in, he sat the cases down and we talked for awhile. He finally looked at me and said, 'Well, are you going to get one out or not, dude?! What the Hell?'” remembers Hausman.

“Laughing out loud, I admitted that I was terrified to play one. I was so locked into the sound of my old favorite that I was afraid that after all this collaboration and work that I would end up hating them! I knew they would be beautiful, and I knew they would sound great! But what I did not now is if they would have that special mojo from the get go.” says Hausman.

“Once I began to play them, I could not stop grinning,” recalls Hausman. “They were similar in a way, in that they both had that thing! While the mahogany one was certainly more true to the original, the koa model had a certain sharpness in the detail, a punch that would lend itself to finger picking. They were both, so open, so resonant. They just seemed to come alive instantly. Like they were waiting to be played. Everyone that has played them has said the same thing. They just evoke that subtle shake of the head and a quiet “wow…” from everyone that sits down with them.”

Hausman's mom's inspirational 110 still hangs on the wall of his studio. “I think she might be jealous,” he admits. “Since I got my Coobs Guitars, I just haven't been able to put them down and pick up anything else!”

Tammy

Moonstruck Promotions

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Guitar Building Diary Pt.1

Hello everyone, today we're hosting the first part of the guitar building diary of an artisan luthier from Città di Castello (Italy), in which he will describe the process behind the creation of a guitar from scratch!

Here Luigi Valenti from Unique-CustomGuitars, I handcraft custom and numbered electric guitars under request; I've been asked from Atoragon to write a little diary, following each step of the construction process wich brings from a chunk of wood to a proper instrument, with a beatiful sound, perfectly setted and which satisfies its owner's musical needs.

By the way, this is not meant to be an online tutorial on how-to-build a guitar, I'm not a teacher and also it will take much more than a single little diary to fulfill all the topics and building methods; I'm here to show you what's behind the planning and building of a brand new instrument made by an artisan, and to give you some advices on tonewoods properties and on how the components of a guitar affects its tone, with the aim to help you choosing your next guitar with a little bit more of knowledge-on-what-you're-going-to-buy (hopefully!).

So, let's start! This is the building process of the Unique #004:

CUSTOMER'S REQUESTS:

This time I've been asked to build a seven string guitar with a fenderish sound and shape (Stratocaster); the customer has also made some other request:

1. A neck shape as close as possible to a Fender Stratocaster neck.
2. Maple neck and fretboard.
3. Scratchplate.
4. Tremolo bridge.
5. Half-scalloped fingerboard from XII to XXIV fret.
6. Possibility to switch from humbucker to single coil.

Nice! I've already have some ideas...

WOOD CHOICES:

I would never stop writing on this topic, so I'll be very simple, but hopefully not banal: to a certain type of wood that you choose corresponds a certain sound that your guitar will have. How big is the difference? It depends. Let's say that roughly the wood affects from the 30% to a 40% of your total guitar sound, the rest is done by the hardware, frets, nuts, string type and gauges, electronics, and obviously the pickups, which are the biggest players in this equation.

Now, speaking about bolt-on and set-in constructions, of this 30-40% the main work is done by the neck, this because the strings vibrate for a 70% of their lenght over the neck itself, so the string vibrations are transferred mostly here, instead of the body! If you take a neck-thru body construction you'll then have that basically all the strings lenght is over the neck wood (or woods!) and the two body wings and eventually the top (if thick) will affect the final tone in a much minor percentage.

You also have to know that wood acts as a passive equalizer, in other words it cuts out some frequencies of a given vibrating string. What frequencies are cut out depends on the type of wood, basically we could say that hard woods have a tendency to cut out the low frequencies, giving a bright sound and good attack (hard maple) while a soft wood such as basswood cuts highs and some middles, giving a bass sound and a not-so-clear attack; then there are woods such as mahogany (wich I love) that are pretty much neutral, but with a tendency to boost low frequencies, which gives a good attack and sustain, with a very warm sound...

I should stop here because it could become a very long topic.

Other characteristics that should to be kept in mind are the elasticity coefficient (this is very important on acoustic and classic soundboards, for istance) and the amount of resin and oils (rosewood has a darker sound compared with ebony not only due to its lower density, but also because it's an oil-rich wood).

With all this (and so much more) in mind, lets see what we can do for #004: as I said before the customer wanted a fenderish sound, and his choice to have a maple fretboard and neck are coherent with his whishes; as I do like high figured woods, I'll go for a flamed maple neck and fretboard. Plus we have to keep in mind that flamed maple could be a little bit unstable, compared with classic hard rock maple, and the added tension due to the seventh string might make things even worse. 

To avoid problems, I'll go with a 3 pieces laminated flamed maple neck; remember that a laminated neck (if properly glued) is always stiffer, stronger, and more stable than a single piece neck, this because on a ply-neck the single parts are glued togheter in a way that each piece balances the tendency to move of the others.

                         an example of not yet glued laminated neck taken from the internet

What about the body? If I'd be scholastic, I should go for an alder or ash body, but I want something very special: some month ago I have found a beautiful one piece flamed maple body blank that would be perfect for this situation, so we'll have an all flamed maple guitar! 

Talking about the sound, this brings to a brighter sound than a standard Strat', but we will compensate this with the pick ups choice and an accurate selection of the wiring components. Also remember that a single body piece (especially if highly figured) could be very unstable; to avoid this, the blank I have chosed is very old, and it has been left to dry for more than 10 years, giving it the time to stabilize properly; so in this case, there won't be any problem.

Good! The wood has been chosen, next time we'll talk about the construction method, pick ups and wiring, and shape, then we can start with the real work!

See ya, and check out my brand new page www.facebook.com/uniquecustomguitars !!

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Punching in & Punching out! A guide for dummies

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's article, in which we celebrate our article n.200 AND our Facebook page fan n. 500!

Today we're focusing on an option featured in almost every Daw (although in the pic above we are showing the Cubase/Nuendo u.i. version): the Punch in (and Punch out) funcion.

This funcion basically lets you replace a section of a take on the fly, by deciding before when to start recording and when to stop.

In the Cubase/Nuendo interface you can see, in the transport panel, a section in which you can type the positioning of the left and right locators (otherwise you can set them manually by dragging them in the top part of the interface). There is also a downhill icon and an uphill one: activate both those icons to tell the Daw that you want it to start recording at the left locator and stop when the marker reaches to the right one. 

Now "arm" the track you want to record in by clicking in the red button of the channel, set your marker anywhere prior the beginning of the area that will be re-recorded and press play (not record, play). 

The song will start playing, until the moment it will reach the left locator, then it will start recording in the armed track, and it will stop when it will reach the right locator, but the song will go on playing.

Why is this function useful? 

Essentially for one reason: let's imagine we have tracked the perfect guitar take, and there is only one small flaw to re-do, but we can't re play it on its own, it would lose the swing of playing the whole take together: we can re-play the whole part and tell the Daw to record just the small bit we need to re-do, and if we're precise enough in setting our locators, we won't even need further editing.

If the new track appears to be BELOW the old one, thus we can't hear it, we can right click to the old track and select it from the drop down menu, choosing it and clicking on To Front.

Additional info:

If we select only the left locator from the transport panel, it will go on recording until we press stop.

One last thing: in the transport panel, in the locators section,  under the numbers that sets where the locators are, we can also find a smaller number: this is the PRE ROLL COUNT, it makes a pre-count before playing, but make sure you don't have it in the metronome too, otherwise the DAW will give priority to that one.
In the Preferences section, finally, we can also decide the Daw to stop playing when the marker reaches the Punch Out locator.


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