Review: Dr Bonkers Sound Lab Impulses (with video sample)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're reviewing some impulse response pack from Dr Bonkers Sound Lab!

Dr Bonkers Sound Lab produces Impulse Responses for guitar and bass, both in Wav format and in Fractal Axe Fx Format, in a variety of sample rates, up to 96khz and 32bit.

Each cabinet impulse comes in 7 versions, tracked with different microphone settings, and in 4 different folders: the HyperReal version (which is the main version these impulse should be used and consists in a mix of several microphones), the Choice Mixes version, which is an alternative version of the HyperReal ones, and the version with the single microphones, both unprocessed and created with the addition of a power amp for extra harmonic richness, both in 200ms and 500ms version.

Today I spent some time playing around with the HyperReal versions, and since I imagine these "almost mix ready" versions will be the ones that will be used by most of the users, I have made a video comparison of my favourite impulses of the 5 cabinets Dr Bonkers suggested me would be more suited for metal.

For the video I have just plugged my Ltd Mh-417 with Emg 707 pickups to my Focusrite Saffire audio interface, and from there I have used exclusively Free Ignite Amps vst plugins:  Ignite TSB-1 - Ignite The Anvil - Ignite NadIR.

Here's a short description of the 5 IRs I have chosen for the video: 

- Mesa Boogie Recto Cab 4x12: this is a classic cab for metal, and it is probably the one that will need less fiddling during mixing. The tone is balanced, with a tight low end and a very usable, aggressive midrange.

- Marshall 1960 Jcm 800 Lead 4x12: totally different flavour compared to the Mesa Boogie one, this cabinet sounds more scooped and with a more sparkling high end, I bet it would give its best in standard tuning, maybe in a hard rock song or old school thrash metal.

- Marshall 8x10 Bass Cabinet: This is a bass cabinet that is usable also for guitar, but of all the impulses I have tried in this package is the most "boxy sounding". I would see it more suited for a mid rangey bass than a guitar tone, but surely it lends itself to many creative uses.

- 1960 Sunn 2x15 Guitar and Bass Cab: This tone is extremely bassy as the wide speaker suggests, and works in my opinion particularly fine with genres like doom or stoner. The mid range is slightly scooped but the highs remain intellegible and defined.

- Oahu 1x6 Guitar Cab: from this small speaker I would have expected a radio-like sound, yet it produces a very nasty, aggressive high mid range that puts in the spotlight all the gain of the amp. Obviously it lacks in the low end area, therefore a combination with another impulse would be suggested.

Before recording I have played with both the suggested microphone combinations and with the single microphones, trying to blend them in the impulse loader, and I must say the possibilities are really infinite, also because for each microphone there are several positions, and I am also quite sure that spending more time in mixing and matching the single microphones in various positions makes possible to come up with even better results than those in the HyperReal mixes, so I incourage all of you guys to check out these impulse packs and spend some time with the various combinations, because the possibilities are really infinite.

Thumbs up! 

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Everything you need to know about drum triggers PART 2/2

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Now that we know the basic concepts behind a drum trigger let's try to understand its practical applications:

- Live environment: a drumset can be triggered entirely (except for the cymbals) or partially (for example just the kick or the kick and the snare) to make the sound cut through the mix better, and send the samples from the drum module to the mixer.
This way the sound engineer can use the samples and the microphoned drum parts the same way as they were all microphoned, with all the perks of the samples: more clarity, less dynamic range (usually drum modules features also effects like compressor, reverb...), and so on.
As in all environments, it is very important that the hits acquired from the trigger are received correctly from the drum module by setting the sensitivity, and if necessary, adjusting the pressure of the trigger on the drum skin.

- Studio environment: this is the environment in which drum triggers shines the most.
A recording engineer can record a whole drumset both with microphones and triggers, and decide during the mixing phase what part to use natural, what part to use triggered and what part in which to use a blend between microphone and sample (except for cymbals, which is better to keep acoustic because they are the drum part that result more "fake" when sampled).
Here the setup is crucial: the trigger must be placed correctly, not too tight because it would interpret hard hits like double hits, not to loose from the skin because it wouldn't notice the lightest touches, and the sensitivity must be carefully tuned in the drum module.
Once everything is set, the drumset will be recorded both acoustically and in a Midi track in the computer, and the mix engineer will be able to easily edit the Midi by removing doubles, reducing or evening out the dynamic range, quantizing, snapping to grid, "reintroducing humanity", or even rewriting certain parts.
This is very useful if the drummer is not very good and if the microphoned part is so bad that can't be fixed, but also just to add a sample on top of the microphoned drum part, if needed.
Finally, if we don't have triggers, we can always put a sample on top of a microphoned drum part by using a drum replacer.

- Home practice environment: there are electonic drum kits, usually pretty small and foldable like the one depicted in this article, that features skins made to reduce the sound to the minimum to not bother anyone in the house, and these drum parts (included the rubber "cymbals") have a trigger inside of them, so that the drummer can connect them to a drum module and play with the headphones (sometimes also playing along with a song). This is a very useful home solution for those who doesn't have a rehearsals room, the drum parts offers a feeling similar to a real drum skin in terms of "bounce" of the drum sticks and it can be used also for recording drum parts.


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Everything you need to know about drum triggers PART 1/2

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to talk about a topic very sensitive among drummers: drum triggers!

Why did I say this topic is sensitive among drummers? Because a drum trigger is a tool that takes a drum hit and turns it into a Midi impulse and sends it to a drum module (or to a computer with a drum VstI), so that we can replace the original drum sound with a pre recorded drum sample or with any other sound we want, and being Midi we can also quantize and manipulate the impulse in everywhich way possible.

Drum triggers started to be popular thanks to heavy metal music in the early '90s (especially with bands like Pantera), a moment in time in which music productions demanded more and more clarity, especially to make the super fast kick drum parts pop out of a dense mix with a lot of snap.
For these parts a normal microphone didn't seem to be enough, so the producers started to trigger the kick and replace the original sound with a very clicky one, capable of cut through everything and be very audible.
With time the bands started to use triggers for all drum parts for reasons that went also beyond the sound: to make drum editing way easier, and to even out the dynamics; today, especially in pop, rock and heavy metal is quite hard to hear a totally acoustic drum sound, as most of the songs features samples or a blend between samples and the acoustic sound (to make the sound a bit more natural).

This led to the paradox that often we can hear in an album an extremely complex drum part played perfectly, and then when we go to see the band live we realize the drummer would never be able to play it the same way it appears on the record.
This lack of "humanity" in modern day drums is perceived similarly to the "loudness war": since everyone is editing and quantizing the hell out of their drum tracks, the listener's ear is by now used to that super perfect performance, and the bands that does not edit and quantize to perfection will sound like the drummer performance is sloppy, and nobody wants to sound sloppy.
This led to an odd detachment between the record performance and the live one for most of the bands, as anyone can notice going to a live gig.

Going back to the main topic, a drum trigger comes usually in the form of a clip that gets attached to each drum part except the cymbals (but if we want we can trigger also just the kick, or only snare and kick and so on), then the trigger is connected to a drum module with normal jacks, and the drum module will interpret the signals received from the trigger and apply a pre recorded sample to the hits.
The "replaced" drum sound will then be sent via the output jack to the mixer and it can be used both live or in a recording session.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/2


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Review: DDrum Redshot Trigger Kit

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to review the low cost tier of the DDrum trigger kits: the Redshot Serie!

DDrum is a well known swedish-american producer that creates drums and percussion instruments, both acoustic and electronic, plus triggers and other drum accessories, and it is used by many professional bands such as Korn, Pantera, Megadeth, Rihanna, Evanescence, Suffocation, Machine Head, Snoop Dog, Queensryche and so on.

This trigger kit places itself in the least expensive tier of the DDrum production line due to the fact that it is a very light piece of aluminum, which does not guarantee a super long product life, but on the other hand, if treated carefully (as everything should actually be) it can provide the same response of its more expensive versions at a fraction of the price.

The set is composed by one kick drum trigger and four snare/tom ones, and they can be easily attached to the drum part via an included screw. The installation is very simple: you fix the triggers in the desired drum parts (you don't need necessarily to trigger the whole drumkit) and connect them with a regual jack to a drum module, which can be made by DDrum or any producer, and from there we need to choose the desired sound and the sensitivity.

Once we are satisfied with the tracking of the hits (meaning that every drum hit is tracked with no double hits), we are ready to connect the drum module to the input of the mixer and play live or record.

I have personally used these trigger kit on several records and I must say they do their job, although sometimes I had to add some layer of paper between the trigger cushion and the drum skin to even out a bit more the sensibility, and once everything is perfectly calibrated these tools work very well.

Obviously in the long run I can imagine that a touring band that heavily relies on triggers might want to pass to some more solid unit, but for a home recording studio this kit could be an amazing bang for the buck.

Thumbs up!

Specs taken from the website:

- 1 Bass drum kick trigger with spacer

- 4 snare/tom Triggers (single zone)

- Red shot Triggers are compatible with 1/4 to 1/4 instrument cables




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6 Strategic decisions to make before starting a mix Part 2/2

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4) Dynamic mix: these are the types of mix that contain extremely dynamic parts, which means strong differences between the loudest and the quietest parts.
This type of mixes are often used in jazz records in which the band wants to recreate a vintage vibe, since in the 30s the bands were recorded live, with only few ambient microphones and compressors were practically non existent in the way we know them now.
Bands like the aforementioned ones likes to play with dynamics, which means alternating extremely quiet and gentle parts to others much louder, and today we can recreate this lively and breathing sound, instead of overcompressing the mix, by using automations.
We can automate the volume of the single parts in order to make them stick out more when needed and to tame them when they are excessively loud, rebalancing constantly the mix (some light compression though will still be needed, expecially on snare, cymbals and horns): it is more complex and more tiring than putting a strong compression on each instrument group, but this way we will preserve the natural sound of each instrument and we'll arrive to the mastering phase with much more clarity and headroom; during mastering the engineer will have to preserve our style, by using a very gentle mastering, otherwise all our careful work will be wasted.

5) Non dynamic mix: this type of mix is exactly the opposite of the previous one, and it is the one made to be heard as clear and stable as possible even in a car radio that doesn't receive a good quality signal. It is used in the most mainstream and ear catching rock and pop music (but also in metal, which is usually a genre very low in dynamics), and often it is involved in aggressive masterings that fight in the loudness war, since the mix already offers low headroom and it's made to be pushed.
In this type of mix every sound must be super stable (a good example would be any latest Nickelback song), which means that every snare or kick hit, every vocal part, every bass note must have the same volume, and in order to do this we must rely heavily on compressors (and sometimes also limiters at the end of the chain of every group, just to be sure).
This type of mix is extremely popular because it is relatively easy to achieve, there is a reduced need for automations compared to the dynamic one, and usually everything is loud and clear, but it works better with a songwriting that doesn't rely much on dynamics, otherwise the result can sound flat.

6) Acoustic / orchestral mix: in this last category I am grouping several song types very different between them, but that all have in common the use of acoustic instruments.
According to the number of instruments (for example just a voice and an acoustic guitar, or on the other hand a big strings ensemble), we need to think strategically on what to put in the spotlight and what in the background, and usually it will be the lead parts in the forefront, and the secundary parts, for example groups of violins performing the same notes, in the background. These decisions, unless we are close miking every single thing, must be taken during the recording phase, so if we have many violin players we can group them by tracking with one single microphone per group of them or just recording the left and right side of the stage, according to our gear.
The main difference between recording acoustic bands or orchestras and the other types of band therefore is that most of the strategic choices here happen actually in the recording phase, since then in the mixing phase we should try to preserve sound as natural as possible; this mean that we will have to get the tracking right, even if it means experimenting, doing and redoing the same part until we find the perfect mic placement.
Once the recording is done, in the ideal world we would have mainly to set the levels, high pass and low pass where needed, compress and add some effect, but we will have less room for completely change a sound, unlike what happens for electric guitars, drums or other instruments.


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6 Strategic decisions to make before starting a mix Part 1/2

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This article takes the basic guidelines of how to define the focus of a mix and tries to adapt them to different types of song, because every music genre gives its best when the mix engineer has clear in mind the final result and knows the steps that lead there.
Obviously there are many more approaches than those in the list, and often the song we're mixing is somewhere in between two or more of these mixing styles, but these are in my opinions some of the mix archetypes we can come across when we approach a new project, and each of these types is made to draw the attention of the listener towards the main element of the song.
It's important to clarify our vision with the band before starting mixing because we need to make sure we know what the client expects, and they must know the direction we imagine for the final sound to avoid misunderstandings.


1) Vocals / keyboards driven mix: this is a type of mix that is usually very common in pop and rock songs, for example many classic Queen or or Elton John tunes. In these type of mix we need to carve in the eq of the other instruments (guitar, bass, drums) the space to leave the vocals or keyboards as full as possible: their position in the mix must be prominent compared to the other instruments, which should have a lower volume. Once we have nailed the sound of the most important element in the mix (for example in the case of vocals we can fine tune it in terms of eq, find the compression sweet spot and play with effects until we find a satisfying result), we can place the other instruments in the space that's left, for example we must not be shy in equalizing the guitars to make them less invasive, even if this means pushing them into the background, or making the snare drum transient less "poking".

2) Guitar driven mix: this type of mix is very different from the previous one, and it is very common in '80s and '90s heavy music, from hard rock (Van Halen) to classic metal (Iron Maiden) to thrash metal (Megadeth) up to the various forms of extreme metal (At The Gates).
That was the golden age of guitar heroes, and everyone wanted the guitar, both rhythmic and lead, to be the main focus of the mix.
A mix focused on guitars relies on thick layers of rhythm guitars, one for each side or sometimes two, and this wall of sound requires us to push the bass in the lower part of the spectrum and squeeze the eq of vocals and drums to make them thinner and with a very strong transient, this way they will cut through the noise and avoid frequency masking.

3) Rhythm driven mix: This style is more suited for edm and certain aggressive styles of funky,  rock, pop and rap music.
In this case we need to put in the spotlight drums and bass, because they will be the main driver of the song, and hopefully they will get the people moving.
In this style vocals are still important, but a powerful beat and bass line will share the same level, (unlike what happens in a vocals driven mix), leaving to the arrangement (synths, guitars, keyboards and so on) a background role. It's very important to nail the drum tone, especially to have a snare and a kick sound in line with the modern commercial productions, and a low end that will perform well also with the p.a. of a club (in which it is strongly emphasized both in terms of volume and frequences), therefore a very accurate monitoring and testing will be pivotal to avoid unexpected results.


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Free guitar tablature and notation software: Tuxguitar

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to talk about a free, open source songwriting tool: TuxGuitar!

Tuxguitar is a notation, tablature writing and songwriting tool, similar to the more famous Guitar Pro, but free and open source.
The software lets the user write in staff format (the one for classical music) and in tablature format (for guitars and bass), letting us choose tuning, number of strings and so on, and it features a real time midi engine that allows multitrack playback, so that the user can write also complex, multi instrument songs, using a variety of General Midi sounds (drums, classical guitar, distorted guitar, orchestra and so on).

The software lets us visualize a guitar keyboard or a regular keyboard and see the notes played in real time, import and export midis, and export the music sheet in a variety of formats, from to ascii, to pdf, letting us also import Guitar Pro files (but not the latest version ones).

I come from a generation of musicians that still likes to share the songs with the other band members by writing a drum track with a VstI and tracking on top of it the guitar and bass parts, and handing them also the tabs exported via pdf with this tool (here is a guide on how to make rough mixes super fast), but there is a new generation of guitarists that writes songs directly on these notation tools and hands the files to the other band members in order to give them directly the tabs and notations of all the instruments, using the integrated sequencer to create a song structure by copying and pasting the various song parts.
For some of these guys using a software like Tuxguitar is faster, more complete and easier to share, and probably it is the most rational solution.

Recording the guitar and bass tracks, on the other hand, gives us a clearer vision of what we can do and what we cannot, and the risk of not recording real instruments is to write parts that are completely beyond the musicians skills, so it's important always to keep in mind the band members when writing their part, or letting them write the part on their own.

Finally it's important to add that a drum track exported in midi format from Tuxguitar can be imported in any Daw and used with a Drum VstI, if someone feels more comfortable in writing it with the notation tool instead of the piano roll.

Thumbs up!


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