markd21
New Member
I have been working on building a catalog of little instrumental pieces for potential sale. Haven't gotten that far on the sales stuff yet, but I am really enjoying the creation of these little tunes. I usually just title them by the date they were started, so this one is 10/26/18. I finished it up this morning. It's 3 minutes, and relatively simple.
https://soundcloud.com/mdenman/10-26-18a
Here's the gear rundown....
The acoustic guitar is my P22 with an IR of a Martin D28. I used the Line 6 Helix Rack for that track. The patch is pretty much the IR with a mic preamp and a couple of compressors. Real simple. The Helix runs into two channels on my console. Even though I have nice EQ on there, I rarely use it unless it helps me shape the tone in a drastic way. In this case, everything was defeated.
In Protools the guitars were sent to a bus, where I used an Abbey Road REDD 3.7/5.1 console plug-in to process the stereo guitar. An Aux track was set-up as a reverb track for the guitars. I used an Abbey Road Chamber for the reverb.
The bass is my Warwick FNA Jazzman. I love that bass. It's a German Master-Built. Ash body, flame-maple top, Ovankol neck, Wenge fretboard - and 24 bronze frets. It has MEC active and passive electronics. There's a MM humbucker at the bridge and a Jazz pickup at the "neck" position. There's a defeatable 3 band EQ, and the MM pickup can be full/series/parallel. LOTS of tones in this beast.....
Anyway, the bass was recorded DI through a passive box into my console. I copied the DI signal in Protools, and processed each differently. On the left the bass was processed through a MarkBass rig - a Little Mark 800 with a 1x12 cab. The bass on the right was done with a SansAmp SVT plug-in. The basses were sent to a bus, where I used the Abbey Road 3.7/5.1 console plug-in for EQ.
For my synths I use Arturia V Collection 6 with an Arturia 49 key controller. Those are played from a dedicated laptop. That laptop is connected to a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 via USB. I use it as my "soundcard" only. The line outs feed my analog mixer. That lets me utilize the analog preamps to "warm up" the soft synths before tracking them back into Protools. I do my synth work as "audio" not MIDI. It's an odd approach, but I think it helps keep things more "alive".
The swirling organ is a Farfisa. It's basically a chord pad with a flanger, a phaser, and a chorus (lots of swirlies, lol). With headphones you can hear it moving back and forth across the spectrum. It gives a nice psychedelic vibe.
The melody is two different instruments playing subtle variations on the melody. The lower of the two is played on the Matrix-12. The goal was to get something softer that had a "dream-like" quality. Originally, this track wasn't there. I was missing something in the "midrange" of the synths. This instrument filled it perfectly. The higher - the "main" melody, if you will - is played on a Jupiter 8. I used a bell-like patch to give that ethereal tone to the melody.
All the synths were processed individually with an SSL G-Channel plug-in. Then the bus was processed with a Fairchild 660, and then the REDD 3.7/5.1 channel strip.
Drums are the Ezdrummer 2 "Big Rock Drums" expansion pack. Inside the Ezdrummer mixer, I turn off all compression and ambience. I prefer to do my own compression and reverb.
In Protools, the drums are inserted into a stereo instrument track. Then I make an Aux track where I insert an 1176 Compressor/Limiter. I blend the compression track and the dry track - parallel compression, I love it!!! Then I set-up a second Aux track for the reverb. I used the Abbey Road Chambers reverb. THEN (lol) I created a bus track, blended all three stereo drum tracks and processed them with the REDD 3.7/5.1.
Then I took all the Busses, and processed them with the Waves NLS. I inserted an NLS channel at the bottom of each Bus, and assigned it a group. I dialed in some drive and adjusted the faders to keep my levels where I liked them.
On the Master bus, the first thing I inserted was the NLS Buss. There, I added "noise" to each group, pumped the trim a bit, and added a little bit of drive. The second insert was the EMI TG12410 Mastering Chain. Finally, I added the Abbey Road J37 Tape Saturation plug-in.
Hope you enjoy!!!
https://soundcloud.com/mdenman/10-26-18a
Here's the gear rundown....
The acoustic guitar is my P22 with an IR of a Martin D28. I used the Line 6 Helix Rack for that track. The patch is pretty much the IR with a mic preamp and a couple of compressors. Real simple. The Helix runs into two channels on my console. Even though I have nice EQ on there, I rarely use it unless it helps me shape the tone in a drastic way. In this case, everything was defeated.
In Protools the guitars were sent to a bus, where I used an Abbey Road REDD 3.7/5.1 console plug-in to process the stereo guitar. An Aux track was set-up as a reverb track for the guitars. I used an Abbey Road Chamber for the reverb.
The bass is my Warwick FNA Jazzman. I love that bass. It's a German Master-Built. Ash body, flame-maple top, Ovankol neck, Wenge fretboard - and 24 bronze frets. It has MEC active and passive electronics. There's a MM humbucker at the bridge and a Jazz pickup at the "neck" position. There's a defeatable 3 band EQ, and the MM pickup can be full/series/parallel. LOTS of tones in this beast.....
Anyway, the bass was recorded DI through a passive box into my console. I copied the DI signal in Protools, and processed each differently. On the left the bass was processed through a MarkBass rig - a Little Mark 800 with a 1x12 cab. The bass on the right was done with a SansAmp SVT plug-in. The basses were sent to a bus, where I used the Abbey Road 3.7/5.1 console plug-in for EQ.
For my synths I use Arturia V Collection 6 with an Arturia 49 key controller. Those are played from a dedicated laptop. That laptop is connected to a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 via USB. I use it as my "soundcard" only. The line outs feed my analog mixer. That lets me utilize the analog preamps to "warm up" the soft synths before tracking them back into Protools. I do my synth work as "audio" not MIDI. It's an odd approach, but I think it helps keep things more "alive".
The swirling organ is a Farfisa. It's basically a chord pad with a flanger, a phaser, and a chorus (lots of swirlies, lol). With headphones you can hear it moving back and forth across the spectrum. It gives a nice psychedelic vibe.
The melody is two different instruments playing subtle variations on the melody. The lower of the two is played on the Matrix-12. The goal was to get something softer that had a "dream-like" quality. Originally, this track wasn't there. I was missing something in the "midrange" of the synths. This instrument filled it perfectly. The higher - the "main" melody, if you will - is played on a Jupiter 8. I used a bell-like patch to give that ethereal tone to the melody.
All the synths were processed individually with an SSL G-Channel plug-in. Then the bus was processed with a Fairchild 660, and then the REDD 3.7/5.1 channel strip.
Drums are the Ezdrummer 2 "Big Rock Drums" expansion pack. Inside the Ezdrummer mixer, I turn off all compression and ambience. I prefer to do my own compression and reverb.
In Protools, the drums are inserted into a stereo instrument track. Then I make an Aux track where I insert an 1176 Compressor/Limiter. I blend the compression track and the dry track - parallel compression, I love it!!! Then I set-up a second Aux track for the reverb. I used the Abbey Road Chambers reverb. THEN (lol) I created a bus track, blended all three stereo drum tracks and processed them with the REDD 3.7/5.1.
Then I took all the Busses, and processed them with the Waves NLS. I inserted an NLS channel at the bottom of each Bus, and assigned it a group. I dialed in some drive and adjusted the faders to keep my levels where I liked them.
On the Master bus, the first thing I inserted was the NLS Buss. There, I added "noise" to each group, pumped the trim a bit, and added a little bit of drive. The second insert was the EMI TG12410 Mastering Chain. Finally, I added the Abbey Road J37 Tape Saturation plug-in.
Hope you enjoy!!!
