More Comparisons--Crate VC508 vs. POD

I did a couple more test recordings. This time I set the Crate VC508 to a setting of gain 7. I lowered the volume to 1.5 to compensate for the gain. The microphone is the same E/V. I think it sounds a bit harsh.

Now compared that to the POD fed into the Grace 101. The POD is on the 7a setting. That's the Small Tweed #2, a 1960 Fender Camp amp. Effects were turned off on the POD, and the gain was set at around 9. I was trying to match the drive level of the Crate. I think it sounds fuller and smoother, don't you? It does lose a bit in the higher frequencies, but overall I think it sounds a lot better. I haven't given up totally on the idea of recording a mic'd amp, but I'm not optimistic about getting a good sound out of my cheapy, dinky amps in a converted bedroom. So it looks like I will continue to use the trusty POD to record guitars, and maybe also the GuitarPort, which is based on the PODxt.

On a happier note, I was playing around with Sonar 5 and found out that it has no problems with the Sonic Foundry Mick Fleetwood loops. I bought those a few years ago but could never use them. I have no idea, but for some reason, in Sonar 2.2 I would get pops and crackles when it transitioned from a groove loop to the fill loop. I had no problems with other loops like Smart Loops or Drums on Demand. It must have been specific to me, because I scoured all the forums and nobody had those problems with the Sonic Foundry loops in Sonar. So I'm happy now--I didn't waste 50 bucks!

New Hard Drive and Miking an Amp

Well, I went to CompUSA to buy a new hard drive. All the hard drives on sale were all gone. They usually are around here. I didn't expect any to be around on Tuesday. So I didn't get a 300 gig hard drive for $79. Instead I bought a Samsung HD300LD 300 gig hard drive for $129. It had a dinky $10 rebate. Still, that's a decent price--even if it's not on sale. I can remember buying a 420 meg hard drive for $270 and thinking that was a steal!

It took forever to format, but my DAW is now back and running in full force. It's a good thing that I archived the bun files to I live in losertown onto DVD, because otherwise I would have lost everything. I really need to make a conscious effort to do regular backups.

Anyway, I was messing around with miking an amp. The problem around here in 'ol Losertown is that when you have neighbors, you really can't crank up an amp to mic it. Which is why I always record using the trusty POD. I wanted to see what I could get though at a somewhat low volume for the amp.

I took an E/V ND267 dynamic mic and put it up close to the grill--slightly off center--of a Crate VC508 amp. The VC508 is a small 5 watt tube amp with a 8" speaker. I plugged in my Fender Stratocaster and this is what it sounded like.

The settings on the VC508 were Gain=3, Tone=7, and Vol=2. The amp has a line out to feed into an external amp (I also have a Peavey with a 12" speaker), but it's kind of pointless because the line out takes the signal before it hits the tube stage, so you don't get that creamy tubey goodness.

It sounds kind of tinny and lifeless, doesn't it? I wasn't expecting much. I may play around with miking an amp some more. I slapped some delay and reverb and eq on the track, and I think it helped the sound. By the way, to make a mono source like backing guitars sound more "open," you can duplicate the track and pan it hard left and hard right. Then put a delay on the right track, say around 40 ms, and pan that hard right. I like to do this because otherwise it gets too crowded for other tracks. With that middle opened up, the vocals can sit in nicely in the middle.

Hard Drive Crash!

Sheesh! My secondary hard drive crashed in my DAW. At least it wasn't the main drive. This secondary drive used to be the main drive in the DAW until I got a bigger 250 gig drive. Then I made this drive into a backup drive. It was only three years old (the warrenty just expired). This is the second Maxtor drive that has crashed on me.

Coincidentily, I just installed Sonar 5. The last time a hard drive crashed on me was when I had just updated iTunes.

This definitely makes me think about my backup plans. I do backup by Sonar files onto DVD, but I really don't do it often enough. Backing it up onto a hard drive is easier. Ooops, except when the stupid drive fails. Oh well, looks like it's time for me to go shopping!

The History of Anomie Train

For those of you who don't know (or perhaps never cared), Anomie Train is a fictional band. This blog though, is the real me. The band consists of the fictional me, along with my alter egos Steve, Jiang Qi-Hui (which is my Chinese name), and s.mon, otherwise known as the "S" man. Also, before Jiang Qi-Hui became part of the band, there was Stev, the surly bass player from England.

However, the music is all real, man. Okay, except I use drum loops.

I get emails from time to time asking me questions as if the band were real. I've never tried to fool anyone--I thought it was obvious from the losertown.org site that it was a goof, but I guess some people kind of just glossed over it.

The reason why I started Anomie Train was because I just liked the idea of being in a band, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of bandmates. I like to control everything about the lyrics, music, production--everything. Which can be bad, I guess. Anyway, I was also a big fan of shows like The Monkees and The Partridge Family. When I was a kid, I thought those were real bands. Well, okay, I guess the Monkees were kind of a real band. Sort of.

And thus was born Anomie Train. If I weren't so lazy, I would have more podcasts with the entire band and also webisodes. I even got myself a video camera for that purpose but I am SO LAZY.

So that's the deal with Anomie Train. Now, don't you want to take a ride?

The Life of Peasants

Do you know what my problem is? I can't stick to one idea. I keep going off into a million different directions, and I never finish anything. I got an idea last night for another little side recording project.

I watched The Story of Qiu Ju last night. If you've never seen it, you should. Well, if you like foreign films, that is. Actually, even if you don't, you should see it anyway. I also just bought from Amazon, Will the Boat Sink the Water, which is an expose (I guess you could call it that) on the lives of Chinese peasants. The book was banned in China after being briefly sold on the market. It was a hit before the ban, but after the ban it became even a bigger (pirated) hit.

So I was thinking, watching this movie about a peasant woman's search for justice after her husband gets kicked in the groin by the local village chief, and now just starting to read a book about Chinese peasants--well, I got the idea of writing a folk-rock album about Chinese peasants. I actually want to do it as a Chinese version as well as an English version.

The problem is, my Mandarin still sucks even after months of listening to Chinesepod.com. Well, the truth is, I haven't really been much of a student. Like I said before, I'm pretty lazy. So I was thinking about getting the lyrics of the eventual songs translated into pinyin, since I can't read Chinese characters.

I'll see what happens. I usually come up with these ideas and they eventually peter out on their own, so we'll see if this sticks with me.

Sonar 5

Well, I received the Sonar 5 package this week. I wasn't even going to install it, preferring to wait for the free upgrade to Sonar 6 when that comes out, but then I decided to take a look-see since I wanted to get a feel for how different the interface is from version 2.2.

It's different.

Hmmm...well, I guess that means I'll have to take some time to re-learn how to use it. I'm so lazy though--I hate to read manuals, but as I get older, I find it harder to just figure stuff out, so I may have to crack open the user guide.

A Good Pre-Amp is a Must

You're only as strong as your weakest link, and if you have sucky pre-amps in your signal chain, your sound is going to suck, too.

One of the best decisions I ever made was to purchase the Grace 101 pre-amp. It provides oodles of pure, clean, unadulterated power. Listen to this sample of a Fender American Stratocaster plugged straight in. The output goes straight into the Delta 66. I'm using the bridge pickup.

Now, listen to this sample of the same guitar plugged into the Behringer Eurorack MX1604A mixer.

The difference is obvious, isn't it? The Grace 101 puts out a clean, crystal clear sound. The Behringer delivers a muddled, colored sound. I bought the Behringer used from someone, and I kept wondering why my recordings sounded so dull. It took me a while to realize that it was the mixer.

So what's the lesson, folks? Don't skimp on a pre-amp!

You Too Can Record in a Crappy Room

The Losertown Studio is not an example of a modern, state of the art recording studio. It is a converted bedroom. Those two cheapy beige computer speakers sitting on top of the Hafler monitors aren't connected to the DAW. They're just sitting there. I think they're hooked up to a server sitting on the floor. Same with the 15" LCD monitor sitting on top of the DAW.

If I had space, I would use both monitors. I guess if I got a rack so I could get the Hafler amp, dbx compressor, and Roland JV-1010 off the table, it would give me enough room to have two monitors sitting side by side.

Probably the most important addition to the room itself is that foam you see. I had bought six sheets of Auralex studio foam. The bedroom had a really nasty, ringing echo, and the foam really cuts down on that. I didn't want a completely dead room, but I did want to deaden it enough to get rid of that annoying slap/ring.

I took two sheets and hung it off a cheap room divider I bought at Target. I use this as kind of a poor man's vocal booth. The Studio Projects C-1 mic sits right in front. By the way, the C-1 is a great sounding large diaphragm condensor microphone for only $200. I've never understood people who automatically respond with, "You can't go wrong with a Shure SM-57!" when someone asks what kind of microphone they should buy.

In general, condensor mics will capture vocals better than dynamic mics in a recording session. I'd prefer even a cheapo small condensor mic for recording vocals than a Shure SM-57. It depends on the situation. If you're a real screamer, try a dynamic mic. You're probably not concerned with trying to capture any vocal nuances.

Of course, my voice is pretty crappy, but I want my crappiness to be crystal clear instead of muddy.

Like an idiot, I bought only a 6 foot balanced cable for the mic, so I'm kind of tethered to the table. Why did I do that? Oh, yeah--it's because I'm a cheap bastard. Balanced cables are expensive!

Endless Upgrades

I went ahead and ordered the upgrade to Sonar 5.0 Studio Edition for $99. When version 6.0 comes out, they will ship it to me for free. I think it's ridiculous that they put out a new version every year. I don't think I'm missing much running version 2.2, but I figured I might as well upgrade since I'm now going to be four versions behind. One of the reasons why I kept putting off upgrading was because I thought that I would not be able to use the wonderful Timeworks Equalizer and Compressor plugins that came with version 2.2, but I read that I could install those from the Sonar 2.0XL CD. I certainly hope so. I wonder if it will be easy for me to get used to the new interface?

I'm not even going to bother installing version 5.0. I'll just wait for version 6. So the new CD will be recorded using Sonar 6.0. Will it make a difference? Who knows.

I forgot to mention that I'll still be using the Delta 66 soundcard.

Writing Lyrics Is Hard

Like I said before, I hate writing. It is such a chore. Writing lyrics is no exception. You really have to pay attention to meter. Coming up with lyrics with smooth meter is my biggest problem. Most crap lyrics have problems with meter. When you have problems with meter, it forces to singer to compensate with weird phrasing.

Another issue to worry about is rhyming. It's hard to write lyrics that are meaningful that also rhyme. A lot of lyrics out there don't make any sense, but end up rhyming just for rhyme's sake.

I usually scribble out lyrics on pieces of paper until I feel like sitting down and working on them all the way through. Since I'm so lazy, I constantly put this off. I'm currently working on the "sad" half of the songs because I find it easier to write. For instance, I've got this scribbled down somewhere:

I want to leave my mark on society
A big red one on the sidewalk beside me
It takes half an hour to get to the top
But 30 seconds is all I need to drop like a rock

Get it? He's thinking about jumping off a building. Heh heh. Yeah, okay, so it's not so clever. This song would be the "low point" in the sequence. The next song would be a transitional one. Something has to happen that alters the protagonist's point of view. Something dramatic. He saves a kid from getting hit by a car? I don't know. I haven't throught that through yet. But then that launches the second half of the CD where the songs get progressively happier.

But as you can see the lyrics have some problems. The second line doesn't make sense. Who refers to the position of the sidewalk? It's not like there are multitudes of sidewalks and you have to specify which sidewalk. If you're out on the street, there's only going to be one sidewalk. You don't have to say "it's the one beside me." And, it's not really beside you. So I'll have to mess around with that line.

The last line has a meter problem. See what I mean? It's got fourteen syllables. The top/rock rhyme doesn't bother me. I've never cared about perfect rhymes.

Anyway, that's what I'm working on right now. Jeez, it feels like homework.