VIDEO by Danny Danzi featuring Transient Shaper:

Hi guys,
 
I got a nice load of responses to the other video I put up. So here's a few more crappy productions showing the Cakewalk Transient Shaper and a few different instruments to explain the method to my madness. They come in 3 parts.
 
Part 1: The first video is more or less explaining what, when and why you might want to consider a plug like this as well as some other "feed your head" stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0D1xKbytt0
 
Part 2: In this one, we work on kick and snare. We'll also talk a little about verb, gated verb and width control over the verb.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh13O-6TCTA
 
Part 3: We finish talking about some other snare goodies and I show you how you can also use a compressor to get a similar result as well as what another company's Transient plug can sound like. (no worries Bakers, the TS64 holds precidence and so do other Cake plugs lol) We'll also cover toms and bass guitar and you'll hear more of my opinions on things in general.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpII7m3CCJ0
 
Hope you guys enjoy these. If you have any questions or anything, please feel free to ask. Sorry for the vids being cut up into parts. I didn't have the "15 minute limit" removed at the time, but I got that sorted now. Enjoy! :)
 
-Danny

Thanks, Danny. Will be working through these tomorrow. Stay awesome. ;-)

Thanks Danny! I love this kinda stuff.

Thanks Danny! I will put this info to use!

Totally appreciate this.

Nice!  I really enjoyed watching your videos.  I learned from them and your use of transient tools.  You need to do more of these, but only when you have the time.  Thanks very, very much!

Great videos. To be honest I'd never checked out the Transient Shaper because Transient Master has been my go-to. I'm excited about playing with the TS on some drums. 

My only gripe is your pronunciation of the word "timbre" - I have to point out that it's actually "TAM-ber," or if you want to be authentically French about it then it's "TOM-ber" 

That was great!. I have looked at the TS64 several times but didn't "get" it until now.

Great vids and great perspective. Keep em comin.

Thanks guys, I'm glad you've gotten a little something out of these. A few answers for some of you..but thank you to all of you. :)

Beeps: Hahaha..my little man cave isn't much to look at. It has just about anything and everything you could want, but it's all condensed in one spot now and all the big good stuff is at the other place. I have pics of both places somewhere....but we just redid a lot in the new place, so Thursday night I'll probably take some new pics if I remember when I'm there. But here in "the cave" or "the dungeon" as my mom used to call it, you'd see everything in 30 seconds until I started pulling things out of my boxes and vaults.

It's quite amazing how much stuff I've mananged to stick in this little 12x12 room....but it works and quite well I might add. :) So well in fact, I got rid of the other building I had. No reason for two places really. :) The key to "slick mixes" is to get the prints right to be honest. Sometimes you may have to buy some better gear to get that. When you play around with sounds and fail constantly, that's usually a sign that new gear is in order...or at least a better understanding on how to use the stuff you already have. But my trick there is to get the right prints, then the mixing part is actually very easy. :)

Robert: Yeah reverb can be over-kill, it depends where and when you use it. I rarely use any verb at all on stuff other than the UAD EMT 250 on vocals and my Anwida Soft gated verb on snares. It has a nice gate built in so I don't have to use the gate trick and it sounds a lot more transparent so you don't have to use much.

On the drum bus, here's what I do. I use compression on kick and snare. I'll send the toms to a tom bus (if there are several which there usually are) and compress lightly on the tom bus. I never go crazy here because I like toms that are super dynamic and really don't want to mess with that. Sometimes I don't even compress them. It depends on the drummer really. No comps on cymbals, but a little compression on room tracks for drums. Sometimes I'll hit the over-heads a little, but again, it depends on the drummer as well as the cymbals. If I don't have to compress something, I definitely will choose not to. Less is more as far as that goes to me.

On the drum bus, I run a UAD Fairchild which I think works extremely well sort of like a 2-bus compressor or "glue" type compressor for the drum kit. From there, I'll use that bus comp you saw me use on the snare and parallel compress the kit on the actual drum bus where the Fairchild is. So one is keeping the kit tight, the other is p-comping and just sort of allowing a bit more presence and allows the whole kit to resonate a bit more. If needed, I sometimes throw an impulse on that bus after the Fairchild to give the drums a light room sound if the need it. It seems to be really working well this way for me on both drum sampler modules as well as real kits.

cecelius: Thanks....I'll do a few more time permitting or at least upload some older ones. Glad you found this useful.

Mike: No problem. Ah you caught the Transient Designer vid? It was using the same sounds and instances as these other ones as I'm sure you noticed. The SPL you saw in THESE vids was the native version. The other vid I believe was the UAD version. I got like 5 UAD cards yet only one duo here on the good box I use over here. All the other ones are at the other studio. I don't seem to need a quad over here for the stuff I do. But we have 2 quads and 3 duo's at the other place and enough powerful pc's to heat the entire place. LOL!

sharke: I'm glad you decided to check the vids out. Yeah the TS is a pretty cool little plug. I didn't like it at first because I was using it wrong. Now that I know you get more "effect" out of the plug having the threshold counter-clockwise, it made all the difference in the world. Still not sold on the timbre controls....I'd rather eq that myself. But it's nice to have them just in case for a different sound.

On the word timbre.....you're English so every word you hear me say will be wrong. LOL! Nah, I'd never use the French version. I don't get along with the French for some reason and they don't like me either. LOL! I got one French friend....Zo from this forum! He's the only one that can stomach me for more than 5 minutes. LOL!

You should hear me fight with the French dudes on Xbox 360...man, if they could go to war with me and bomb the US, they would. LOL! :) I can't tell you how many times they've threatened to bomb my house. Hahaha...darn video games! :)

vintage: yeah, still some latency which they tell you about in the help file. I don't notice anything out of the ordinary though. The box I was using it on was a stock Dell with a Realtek soundcard. It "doubled" on me in one spot in the vid, but usually pressing space bar to stop and then start audio again clears it up. On my big box I don't notice anything. Something weird with that "weight" control though. You start to get a doubling effect when you turn it too much to the left. That's really the only time I get that sound. But if you have a pretty powerful pc, you shouldn't notice anything too weird latency wise. My Dell is an i3 dual 2.93 gig processor with 4 gig of RAM. So it's nothing special, but it never breaks a sweat or has any issues thank God.

M_Glenn: Thanks...yeah that's the problem I had with it too. I actually gave up on the TS because it just didn't do what I wanted it to do...until I turned the threshold counter-clockwise and it came to life with every control I touched. LOL! It's definitely cool for those that don't want to spring for a transient plug.

That guy from Stillwell Audio....his Transient Monster plug is pretty ferocious too. I've used that a bit also with great results. The only thing I notice with it is, sometimes certain transients lash out way more than others where it sounds like the plug isn't working right. You'll get like one hit that will sound like you had the attack all the way up yet all the others will be perfect. Not sure he knows about that, but it's the only issue I've encountered. Like the very first hit in a piece will sound like the attack is all the way up. So  I've had to automate it to make it behave normal on the first hit, then set the attack higher for the rest of the hits. It's weird, but that thing really works well and is quite a gem also.

Thanks again everyone...I'll see what else I got that might be useful. :)

-Danny

Danny Danzi

sharke: I'm glad you decided to check the vids out. Yeah the TS is a pretty cool little plug. I didn't like it at first because I was using it wrong. Now that I know you get more "effect" out of the plug having the threshold counter-clockwise, it made all the difference in the world. Still not sold on the timbre controls....I'd rather eq that myself. But it's nice to have them just in case for a different sound.

On the word timbre.....you're English so every word you hear me say will be wrong. LOL! Nah, I'd never use the French version. I don't get along with the French for some reason and they don't like me either. LOL! I got one French friend....Zo from this forum! He's the only one that can stomach me for more than 5 minutes. LOL!

You should hear me fight with the French dudes on Xbox 360...man, if they could go to war with me and bomb the US, they would. LOL! :) I can't tell you how many times they've threatened to bomb my house. Hahaha...darn video games! :) 

LOL - I never got on with the French either. I think it all stems from a trip to Paris when I was a kid...one of them obviously got stuck in my craw and it stayed with me. Didn't help that I went on to do battle with every French teacher I had at school, all of whom drove Renault 4's (the one with the gear stick on the dashboard). For what it's worth, I pronounced timber the same as you until (I think) I heard Frank Zappa say it in an interview years ago. Not that it's a big deal though, everyone understand what it means in the context and to be honest I think there are probably more people who mispronounce it than don't. 

sharke

Danny Danzi

sharke: I'm glad you decided to check the vids out. Yeah the TS is a pretty cool little plug. I didn't like it at first because I was using it wrong. Now that I know you get more "effect" out of the plug having the threshold counter-clockwise, it made all the difference in the world. Still not sold on the timbre controls....I'd rather eq that myself. But it's nice to have them just in case for a different sound.

On the word timbre.....you're English so every word you hear me say will be wrong. LOL! Nah, I'd never use the French version. I don't get along with the French for some reason and they don't like me either. LOL! I got one French friend....Zo from this forum! He's the only one that can stomach me for more than 5 minutes. LOL!

You should hear me fight with the French dudes on Xbox 360...man, if they could go to war with me and bomb the US, they would. LOL! :) I can't tell you how many times they've threatened to bomb my house. Hahaha...darn video games! :) 

LOL - I never got on with the French either. I think it all stems from a trip to Paris when I was a kid...one of them obviously got stuck in my craw and it stayed with me. Didn't help that I went on to do battle with every French teacher I had at school, all of whom drove Renault 4's (the one with the gear stick on the dashboard). For what it's worth, I pronounced timber the same as you until (I think) I heard Frank Zappa say it in an interview years ago. Not that it's a big deal though, everyone understand what it means in the context and to be honest I think there are probably more people who mispronounce it than don't. 

Haha! I can so relate man....I got one worse for ya. I was in Paris...my first and only time. Having dinner with a bunch of music industry people. I decide to pick up the tab and leave a pretty fat tip...like REALLY fat. There were 6 of us and we ate and drank like pigs. I literally was called yankee pond scum and a bunch of other things for leaving a nice tip! The dude got all in my face and said "what, do you feel sorry for me? I don't need your money....I ef your mother!" I won't share what happened next, but it wasn't pretty. LOL! I was so shocked, I had to replay it all back in my mind 5 times before realized what was said to me. THEN I jumped up and flipped out. Hahaha! Here I thought I was doing the right thing being nice....sheesh, never again. At least, not in France. LOL!
 
I really have nothing against those people....they just don't seem to like me. I don't know who's worse with hating me, the French or the Italians! In Italy, they didn't like me talking to their women. Hahaha! I was on a mission though...was hoping to land one and bring her back home with me. That's the last time I'll say "but but, I'm Danny Danzi!" You get tired of hearing "che? che Dobby Dobzi?" all the time I tell ya! :)
 
-Danny

The unspoken thing here is that Danny is using a free plugin that comes with X2. Its something I have been saying for a long time now the plugins that come with Sonar are extremely useful as well as, as good as any hight priced third party ones. 

Many users underestimate what they have with the stock plugins.  

I read where one user talked about the PC as if it were useless to them. My view is that those that have that attitude don't have a clue how to use them. This applies to nearly all CW plugins.  Give them a chance before going out and paying good money for redundant third party ones. 

People have to realize that CW plugins are as well coded as the program itself. They were never just thrown in. They have real uses.

Thanks Danny for hi-lighting  a very useful plugin.  

 

sharke

Danny Danzi

sharke: I'm glad you decided to check the vids out. Yeah the TS is a pretty cool little plug. I didn't like it at first because I was using it wrong. Now that I know you get more "effect" out of the plug having the threshold counter-clockwise, it made all the difference in the world. Still not sold on the timbre controls....I'd rather eq that myself. But it's nice to have them just in case for a different sound.

On the word timbre.....you're English so every word you hear me say will be wrong. LOL! Nah, I'd never use the French version. I don't get along with the French for some reason and they don't like me either. LOL! I got one French friend....Zo from this forum! He's the only one that can stomach me for more than 5 minutes. LOL!

You should hear me fight with the French dudes on Xbox 360...man, if they could go to war with me and bomb the US, they would. LOL! :) I can't tell you how many times they've threatened to bomb my house. Hahaha...darn video games! :) 

LOL - I never got on with the French either. I think it all stems from a trip to Paris when I was a kid...one of them obviously got stuck in my craw and it stayed with me. Didn't help that I went on to do battle with every French teacher I had at school, all of whom drove Renault 4's (the one with the gear stick on the dashboard). For what it's worth, I pronounced timber the same as you until (I think) I heard Frank Zappa say it in an interview years ago. Not that it's a big deal though, everyone understand what it means in the context and to be honest I think there are probably more people who mispronounce it than don't. 

Hah!

You and Danny would definitely NOT want to work for my organisation.

Rough estimate I'd say is about 33% French

OK, quick OT question.
What color options did you set to change your meters?

And thanks for the videos. 
Helpful as always.
I've never even opened the Transient Shaper...I will now.

Mike