Category Archives: Recording and Production

Remix our single for a chance to be on our debut EP.

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Crater Maker Cover PicWell, it’s been about a week since the release of our debut single No Holds Barred. Now, we’re kicking things up a notch and calling on all our remixers out there to take a crack at remixing the single for a chance to be on our debut EP when it drops later this fall.

It’s real simple. If you haven’t heard the single, stream or purchase it or check it out on our youtube Page. Then, download the zip file containing all the individual stems of the tune. So pull out your weapons of mass deconstruction and give us the best remix you got. The top five will be chosen by the band and featured on our EP, which will be available in iTunes, Amazon, etc. Your name, company, website, etc will be credited in our liner notes and other web properties. It’s fantastic exposure for you or your company.

So where’s the fine print? There’s not much, but it’s located in a text file inside the .zip archive which you must read before proceeding. Contest will close on Tuesday, October 25 at 11-49 P.M. Eastern.

Well, That’s about it. Download the stems, and get to manglin’.

My musical tribute to Andrew Gold.

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The music community was shocked to hear of the recent passing of singer, writer, producer and arranger Andrew Gold, known most notably for Lonely Boy and Thank You for Being a Friend in the mid 70′s. “Friend” garnered further popularity in the 80′s as the “Golden Girls” theme. Just these 2 songs alone spoke volumes about Gold’s brilliants as a writer/arranger. I absolutely loved Lonely Boy, and about 8 years ago, I recorded a cover of it as a first attempt to record a full song in Pro Tools. I had no intentions of sharing it with the world, as it had tons of timing issues and the sound choices on the keyboard weren’t the best. Upon hearing of Gold’s passing, I was encouraged by a friend of mine to post it in it’s raw form as a tribute. So, here it is.

Geek notes

At that time, I had the mac and Pro Tools for about 8 months, but due to the riggers of my senior year in college, I had trouble finding the time to really sit down and learn how to use it. By the time I recorded this, I knew how to create a session, create and arm a track, set the inputs, record, rewind and fast forward, and punch. This song wasn’t recorded to click because I didn’t know how to set it up. Also, I did no sequencing. . I recorded the raw audio from the keyboard as I played because I had no idea how to configure midi. In result, you’ll definitely hear some tempo issues. Once the tracks were recorded, I enlisted fellow student Rod Kim to come in and mix it, because I had no idea how to add effects yet and even create a workable bounce. Needless to say, I was an infant in my Pro TOols knowledge. Rod got me a nice mix and we were off and running. Even if my recording attempts at that time were juvenile at best, It made a fantastic memory for me that I’ll never forget.

Thanks Mr. Gold for making such great music. I’m sorry I never took the time to dig further into your catalog and unearth the other treasures I know are there. Well,. I guess there’s no time like the present. While I’m doing that, I invite you to download this song in tribute.

BGV Template 1.0: A fast, easy, and efficient way to track, manage, and mix your background Vocals.

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If you’re familiar with my music, you’ve probably realized by now that I am a huge fan of that “Wall Of Sound” backing vocal technique employed by such greats as Queen, ELO, The Beach Boys, 10 CC, Godley and Creme, Jellyfish, Muse, etc. Current technology allows us to use harmonizers to create very quick vocal stacks that sound extremely convincing. While I love to use harmonizers live, I always create my bgv’s the old fashioned way: track by track. At the end of the day, I will have tracked 24 voices in all: 6 per part. It might seem tedious, but I have developed a Pro Tools template that allows me to quickly and easily manage all of those tracks. After years of perfecting this concept, I now want to share my template and technique with all of you. Here’s how I set it up.

The Basics

The 24 tracks are divided into the 4 major choral parts, Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass. The session is further broken down into 6 voices per part: s1-s6, a1-a6, and so on. I chose the letter/number method for easy reading along a control surface scribble strip and to reduce text clutter in the track lists. The first 12 tracks, s1-b3, are panned 100 left, and the remaining tracks, s4-b6, are panned 100 right.

The Groups

P T’s implementation of groups makes tracking, mixing, and editing multiple tracks an absolute breeze. In this case, I have created several groups, which will allow you to single out tracks by part, quartet, and even pan position.

Parts

Each part has it’s own group. When active, you’ll be able to mute, solo, and edit the sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses separately. What’s brilliant about pro tools is that you can assign any letter to the group name. So, I have assigned group S to the Sopranos, A to the Altos, etc. You can turn each group on and off by pressing the period on the numpad, followed by it’s respective letter, followed by the period again. So, by hitting “numpad period A numpad period,” you can activate the alto group. Pressing the above key combo again will deactivate it.

Quartets

I have created 6 quartets. s1-b1, s2-b2, etc. This allows you to single out 1 voice per part. This will help you quickly locate any pitchy vocals that you might be hearing. By auditioning each one, you can quickly pinpoint a flat track. The groups are named Quartet 1-6. Since Pro Tools allows you to have 4 groups of 26 letter assignments, I have assigned Q to quartet 1, 2Q to quartet 2, 3Q to quartet 3, etc. For Quartets 5 and 6, I have given the pneumonic f and x respectively. I couldn’t use S, due to the use of S for the soprano group.

Panning

There are 2 groups with single out the left and right sides of the stereo field. They are called “Left” and “Right,” and have the letters L and R assigned to them. This allows you to gain further perspective on your vocal tracks. Sometimes you may need to hear one side or another and compare.

BGV’s

Lastly, I have created an all encompassing “BGV’s” group, which is assigned to the letter V. This will help you solo, mute, and edit the bgv’s as a whole.

The BGV Aux Track

All track outputs are assigned to Bus 7/8 and fed to an aux track named “BGV’s. It has been included in all groups for convenience. I picked an arbitrary bus like 7/8 in an attempt to avoid interfering with most common bus assignments. You can change the bus assignments to fit your routing needs.

The Compressor

On each vocal track, I have instantiated the standard compressor and selected the “Vocal Leveler” preset. This brings the track up to an optimal level, and helps level it out a bit. I chose not to put the compressor on the aux bus, as all of those vocals tend to cause it to breathe, so I opted to make it an insert effect. Don’t worry, 24 compressors don’t really tax a system.

Package Contents

Within the zip file, you’ll find 2 items. The vocal template .ppt file, which will allow you to create a new session using the template, and a demo session folder. The demo is the chorus from a tune called “Euphoria,” which uses all 24 tracks for stacked BGV’s. This will give you an idea of how to make use of the tracks and groups.

Terms

This file is yours to do with as you please, whether it be putting it on multiple Pro Tools rigs, emailing it to a friend, etc. However, I kindly ask that if you are wanting to post this on twitter, facebook, another blog, etc, please post a link to this post as apposed to deep linking to the file or putting the package somewhere else and linking to it.

Donate

If this template and accompanying pro tools session was helpful for speeding up your workflow and inspiring you, please consider leaving a tip. Time went into putting all of this together for you, so donations of any amount is greatly appreciated.


Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out this file. If you have any modifications and enhancements that would greatly improve the template, feel free to email it to me, and I’ll incorporate it into the next release. I’d love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks again, and now go record some awesome bgv’s.

Now available! Pro Tools Tutorial Part 1.

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Since the Release of Pro Tools 8.1.4 last year, the blind musician community has been all abuzz about the implementation of accessibility with Voiceover. Now, with the upgrade to Pro Tools 9, the barrier to entry has been lowered even further with the added ability to use any interface: including the internal core audio interface on your mac. In the meantime, a list was created. Folks have been slowly getting in on the ground floor of this journey of exploring a newly accessible Pro Tools. What folks have been wanting all along is a comprehensive demo of Pro Tools to get a real good idea on how it operates in order to make the ultimate decision on whether or not this daw is for them. It has been my intent all along to create some very basic getting started tutorials that show off the windows, and demonstrate some basic practices for navigation and operation. I began with a stream of consciousness podcast where I gave a basic outline and backstory regarding the journey towards accessibility. I also provided a brief overview of the strengths and shortfalls of the implemented accessibility. Upon the posting of that file, I was approached by Jason Dasent of Overdrive Recording to partner together and create a tutorial. I would demonstrate everything to him over the phone, while he guided me with questions and comments. I recorded our lessons on my end and sent it to him for editing. And now, after hours and hours of diligent editing, we have ourselves the first installment. Part 1 will guide you through the basics of the mix window, showing the track list table, groups list table, channel strips, and plugin windows. We also take a quick look at navigation and selecting segments of audio for editing. Part 2 will be all about editing, comping, etc. We’ll take a in-depth look at the edit window and show you how to cut, copy, paste, import, export, consolidate, and nudge regions. We’ll also do some drum comping. For now though, I give you part one of our tutorial. Click Here to grab the file. Windows users, right click and choose “Save Target As.” Mac users, press Option Return on the link to download the file.

Just a few disclaimers.
1. Due to the lack of some equipment while I’m here at school, the podcast was crudely recorded using the macbook internal microphone, which sounds quite good. As these tutorials progress, they will get better in quality. I’m not going for a pristine production here. I have lots to teach and little time to do it in. I need to get this con tent out to you guys as fast as possible to keep up with the demand of people wanting to learn. I apologize for the recording quality at spots. Please forgive.
2. I am not teaching how to use voiceover in these tutorials. While I do give you some very basic ideas on how voiceover reads the screen, this is not attempt to teach voiceover and Pro Tools. If you are planning on getting a mac, I advise you to begin learning about the voiceover interface and it’s commands. You can learn all you need to know by checking out the Voiceover Getting Started Guide provides the best way to get rolling with learning voiceover.
3. We didn’t get a chance to put any contact info into the tutorial, so feel free to hit me up on Twitter with any questions.

Now that we got that out of the way, I invite you to download the podcast, kick back, and enjoy.

Little known Pro Tools shortcuts for navigation and editing.

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A very helpful blog post came across my Twitter feed yesterday morning. 10 Pro Tools Tips For The Newbie. It must have been a popular post, as it spawned This addendum. If you’re an avid, excuse the pun, Pro Tools user, or an experienced daw operator in general, some of this is old hat, but there’s some little gens in these posts that most people aren’t really aware of. I felt inclined to do a post of my own, because I feel like there are a great deal of shortcuts that are still unknown to most PT users. I say shortcuts here not only to denote shortcut keys, but time savers. So many times have I been in a session and gave a set of instructions to an engineer and was met with 2 minutes of mouse clicks before the deed was carried out. Allow me to cut your click time down to a bare minimum. Use these shortcuts, and much time will be saved in your sessions.

Using the * for quick transport.

It blows me away how many people don’t know this exists. 99.999 percent of engineers I work with do everything in grid mode, but never pay attention to measure numbers. In result, when you want to get somewhere, they are pressing the rewind or fast forward buttons in the transport, or dragging the playhead with the mouse in order to find where the client has requested to go. There went 2 minutes I’ll never get back. All on the numpad, press the Star key. Then, enter 21.1.000 followed by the return on the homerow. This will take you to Bar 21, beat 1, tick 000. As an engineer, it’s good to get familiar with certain key points of the song on the grid so you can get back to them very quickly. Obviously, you’ll want to put markers throughout the session such as verses, choruses, etc, but if you needed to recall a place that wasn’t marked, the above keystrokes would do the trick.

Speaking of markers.

Since we’re on the topic of markers, let me run through some little known tricks to get the most out of this awesome feature. Most people know how to drop a marker. It’s simple, hit enter on the numpad and a box pops up with some parameters showing marker name, number, etc. Press return, and there you are. What most people don’t know is how to move from marker to marker. They literally use them as visual signposts in the session, instead of using them to command the transport. Obviously, you can hit the next and previous buttons in the transport window, but there’s an even easier way. On the numpad, press period, 1, then period again. This will take you to your first marker. Hit period, 2, period, to go to marker 2, etc. Want to select from marker to marker? It’s easy. Hit period, 1, period, to get to marker one. While holding down shift, hit period, 2, period. This will make a selection on your desired tracks.
You’ve got 999 locate points. Lets start using the higher numbers to further break down the song. Lets say you’ve got an occurrence of “Oh Baby” in each chorus. You want to hear each one in succession in order to figure out which one is the best one to fly if need be. Lets also say that your choruses are on markers 2, 4, and 6 respectively. What we’ll do is drop a marker right before each occurrence of “Oh Baby,” but this time, we’ll tell PT what marker number we want to use. Go to your first chorus. Find the “oh baby” phrase. Just before it, hit period, 20, then enter, all on the numpad. This will drop marker 20 right at that spot. Repeat the steps for each chorus, adding a 0 at the end of it’s respective marker numbers. This allows you to break down the chorus in chunks so you can hear things in quick succession to get a good sense of context. What you’ll be able to do is hit period, 20, period, period, 40, period, and period, 60, period, to hear all 3 “Oh Baby” phrases. Find the one you like, and fly it to each of the choruses if need be. What I suggest is to quickly drop these markers in while you’re doing an initial listen to the tune, so that when you go to cut the vocal, you can really have this tune broken down. If you’re really wanting to edit phrase by phrase, go ahead and drop markers at the beginning of each phrase in verses and choruses. For example Verse 1 is marker 1. Then, phrase 2 of verse one is marker 12, 3 is 13, 4 is 14, etc. Chorus is marker 2. Phrase 2 is 22, phrase 3 is 23, etc. Not only will you become familiar with the tune so you can edit with ease, but you now have some awesome punch points for when you cut the main vocal. When a vocalist says, “Can you punch me in right before “Oh Baby?” You will be able to do just that, and in seconds flat.

Using the / to edit the from, through, and length fields.

We all know that the start, end, and length fields help us determine what is selected and how much. But were you aware that you can edit said fields without even moving the mouse? On the numpad, hit /21.1/25.1 then press return on the homerow. Now look at the start, end, and length fields. You should see start, 21.1.000 End: 25.1.000, length: 4.1.000. With 2 quick steps, you’ve created a selection on the ruler. If your insertion point was in a track, that track would now be selected with the above parameters. Every time you hit / on the numpad, you move the cursor to a field on the ruler. Hitting / would take you to the start field. Hit it twice to go to end, and 3 times to go to length.
Speaking of the Length field, allow me to point out one more very important shortcut that, in my mind, makes pro tools one of the fastest editing platforms out there. Most engineers use the Length field as a simple readout of how many bars/beats or minutes/seconds have been selected in the timeline. However, the length field is editable. Whatever you place there determines how much will be selected on the ruler, or on any tracks that have the insertion point. This allows you to select data in 1 easy step. Lets say you have a chorus vocal you want to fly into another chorus. You know that your chorus is 16 bars long. Here’s the quickest way to select it. With your insertion point in the vocal track at the start of your chorus, hit ///16.1.000 on the numpad and press return. Instantly, you have selected 16 bars and are now ready to copy and paste it into the subsequent choruses.

Well, there you have it. A small arsonal of some of my favorite Pro Tools shortcuts. To many advanced PT users, this may seem like old hat. However, I’m surprised how many seasoned engineers are not aware of these tricks for very quick and efficient navigation and editing. I hope this has proven helpful to you, aiding you in the process of increasing the speed and efficiency of your tracking and editing sessions. My deepest thanks go out to Slau for teaching me these tricks at the beginning of my Pro Tools experience. This has made my life much easier, allowing my sessions to run quicker and smoother. Thanks so much for reading.