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Posted by: Staffy Mar 15 2010, 12:49 AM

This is just another song of mine to comment on.... Im not really done with this yet, since I never had been playing slide-guitar before, and that will definitely require some practice.
I am also testing a new set of vintage-emulating plug-ins from Nomad Factory, and I think they sounds pretty good in order to sweeten the sound a little bit.
All comments on playing, sound or whatever are most welcome!
The lyrics can be found below, and its a story bout Your feelings when sitting in a dark Tour Bus in the middle of the night and longing for that beloved woman....

//Staffay

Record notes:
Not much here, just my Suhr Strat and the Deluxe clone
Drums by Superior and bass by Trilian

Loneliness Blues

On the road, after a few hours of rage
Some lights disappeared, nothing left but shade
The night is so cold, leaves me wondering why
how one can live alone - until he dies

Im alone, so lonely I could be

I miss Your smile, and the shine in Your eyes
You told me not to cry, but it was nothing more than lies
the sound of Your voice, like an echo in my head
tells me - Am I alive - or am I dead?

(might as well be dead)

Im alone, so lonely I could be

after some time, I got tired of beeing alone
I'm dialling Your number, but noone's on the phone
Someone else might be sleeping in my bed, using my woman - I wish he was dead

(he might as well be dead)

Im alone, so lonely I could be

Posted by: Emir Hot Mar 15 2010, 03:07 AM

Awesome song man. Sometimes reminds me of Pink Floyd - One of these days The slide sounds awesome.

How did you record this? Everything sounds so cool. Drums, bass, guitar, vocal, really no complains

Posted by: Crazy_Diamond Mar 15 2010, 05:19 AM

This is a cool song Staffy.. I really like your recording material... You did great with the slide ...

Posted by: JamesT Mar 15 2010, 06:35 AM

Great song Staff! I like the lyrics. Slide sounds great too.

Posted by: Staffy Mar 15 2010, 08:11 AM

Thx. Emir! I will try to describe the process below, the goal here was to make a more "vintage" sound without any harsh high digital frequencies, so in general I cut a lot of overtones out above 10 kHZ, and boosted some between 8-10 kHz instead.

The recording itself was pretty straight forward - guitar was miced with one SM57 20cm off-axis, and a RÖDE NTK condensor about 2 meters in the same height as Your ears pointed towards the amp at the floor. Furthermore basically all frequencies below 250 Hz was cutted and the high ones at 10-12 kHz was reduced a lot. Also I found a "sweet spot" at around 2,5 kHZ for the lead slide guitar. There is some delay added with Powercore as well as the main reverb, which is a plate-reverb at 3.7 seconds - instead of a hall, since those where heavily used in the old times....

The vocals was also recorded with the RÖDE NTK. I have a channel-strip on my Powercore, so that was used to do some compression, also I added the Renaissance Compression from Waves here, as well as cutted everything below 250 and made a dip at around 1200 Hz, which I always do, since my voice tends to sound more nasal in those frequencies.

The bass is from Trilian, and is a Fender P-bass I think, it was played "live" at keyboards and are not hardly edited at all - eg. its not quantisized. Also the Renaissance Compressor from Waves was added and some frequencies round 80 was boosted and some high at 11-12.000 was cut. And 120 HZ was alittle bit cutted as well, since I wanted to leave some space for the bass drum here.

The drums was EZ-drummer from the beginning with pre-made patterns - which I later edited a lot, adding cymbals and changed the groove a little bit, as well as modifying some fills. For the mix I changed that to Superior drums instead - the N.Y Legacy sounds - which was exported as .Wav files and imported in the project as separate channels, one pair for each drum in the kit including overhang & ambience mics. The reason for this is really that my 4GB maxes out pretty quickly, and having the bass & drums as .wav-files instead saves a lot of memory..... Also I eq'ed the drums a lot - eg. the same principles applied as before, cutting some frequencies for bass drum at 80 and boosted round 120, cutted all except the bass drum under 250. Applied a sweet spot for the snare at 4 kHz. Also the master reverb was added to all drums, the snare has a litlle more than te other ones though, and the BD a little less.

On the main bus are the Nomad Factory Inflator - which is a plug-in that simulates an old tube compressor, I believe. I just used one of the factory presets. It really sweetens the sound a lot, I think it evens adds a little distorsion. Furthermore there is a 30 band EQ from Waves that I only used for some small adjustments and last in the chain is a brickwall limiter from Powercore to keep everything under 0db, its not heavily used though and actually has no function other than keep some strong notes to go over the top. Also I added a stereo-imager from Cubase 5 here to widen the sound a little bit....

That was just about it.... goosh, I didn't realize that it was THAT complex.... It didn't felt like that, it was really made in a couple of day's, with me working on the same time - going down to the basement for some 20 minutes back & forth......

//Staffay



Thx.!!!



Thx!!! It was a hard time for me trying to play with slide, first I tried with the Les Paul, bit it didn't worked well at all - probably because of the short scale neck, which made it very difficult to keep the notes in tune. So I switched to the strat instead, even that I really would have preferred a thicker LP-sound for the solo guitar... I think I will go for one of this resonator guitars.

Posted by: Emir Hot Mar 15 2010, 01:15 PM

Awesome explanation man. I think I would go for quite similar technique. The mic position in the hight of ears is usually called "over the shoulder technique" and it always works good. You really did a great job here. I am a big fan of vintage sound do that's probably why I loved your mix.

Posted by: Rik Veldhuizen Mar 15 2010, 01:28 PM

really like it staffay... And interesting to read how you thought about setting up the rec sound.

Posted by: sted Mar 15 2010, 02:34 PM

Lol! I guess my reaper based all digital modelling recordings have a long way to go to be as good as this! You must have great set up for recording mate, when I get a bigger house I want a whole studio just like this!

Posted by: Staffy Mar 15 2010, 04:35 PM

Nah, it might as well be made with Reaper, and You can find some similar plugs for free. The heart & soul of this is really my RÖDE microphone and the sound-card. The RÖDE one was a pretty expensive one when I bought some 10-15 years ago, but I think its possible to get a nearly similar condensor today for bout 200€... Provided that You have a decent soundcard, You can easily come up with something similar or probably even better, with very small resources. It's more bout using the things You have, and really take advantage of the possibilities they have.

//Staffay

Posted by: Dennizzz119 Mar 15 2010, 04:37 PM

Reaper isnt free anymore ?

Posted by: tonymiro Mar 15 2010, 04:42 PM

Reaper is, and has always been, free to evaluate.

However, if you use it beyond evaluation purposes then you should buy a license. A personal license is about 60USD; a commercial license is about 200USD.

Posted by: Dennizzz119 Mar 15 2010, 04:43 PM

Ive used it free for ages

Posted by: tonymiro Mar 15 2010, 05:11 PM

Staffay - Might be worth you taking a look at some the Stillwell plug-ins Staffay. In particular this one http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=19.
I can't personally vouch for it as I've never used it but it does get some pretty good user reports. Much more expensive but a very good emulation of an analogue comp is http://www.softube.se/tubetech_cl1b.php by softube.

Just on stereo wideners - careful as plug-in stereo wideners sometimes really mess up clarity, placement and mono. Limiters - maybe peak rather than brick wall.

Sted - Reaper includes quite a few plug-ins from Stillwell btw and as most of Stillwell's stuff is about the 70s analogue vibe they might be worth looking in to.

Denizzz119 - Jason hasn't put a time limit on how long you can evaluate the software

Posted by: Dennizzz119 Mar 15 2010, 05:14 PM

That explains alot xD

Posted by: JVM Mar 15 2010, 05:18 PM

That was awesome. I really like your vocals, even with all of your swedish/staffayish eccentricities coming through. And the guitar sound is great.

Posted by: Staffy Mar 15 2010, 05:30 PM

Thx. Tony, I will look into Stillwell plugs, they seems very interesting, also I know bout Softtube, but haven't tested them - although I have some amp sim at my Powercore that is faaar to pricey imo.

I agree to You bout the limiting thing here, a brickwall will just put up everything in the same level and kind of the destroy the dynamics.

//Staffay



Thx my friend!

Posted by: OzRob Mar 16 2010, 01:05 AM

Hey Staffay,

That was really great! You obviously have a real soul/blues voice and a feel for it so slide is a great addition to your repertoire. I know you said you're new at slide (and doing well!) but I have one comment - I missed a nice vibrato, so that would be a good technique to practice.

Overall, fantastic! Loved that sound. I felt it, brother. ;-)

Ps. If you ever make a video of this for youtube, it will go in my Favourites. I've already linked this to share with my Facebook friends.

Posted by: blindwillie Mar 16 2010, 04:34 PM

I'll just say I love it!
Please come and play at a Svartöns Blues event

Posted by: Staffy Mar 16 2010, 07:52 PM

I would love to! My band is already set for the summer, and a recording is planned. The only matter here would be the long distance, I think.

//Staffay

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Mar 20 2010, 07:30 PM

This song has such a nice groove to it. The guitar playing is really tasty. Really enjoyed it.

The only complement I would do would be to throw in the really southern american accent, exaggerate it.

Posted by: Power_Arctica Mar 21 2010, 07:03 PM

The guitars sounds amazing!!!
Great job with this song, i really enjoy it!

Posted by: Staffy Mar 21 2010, 08:01 PM

Thx. guy's! :-) I will do a new mix on this one in a couple of days trying out some vintage emulators, but I will post it in another thread.

//Staffay