Friday Technique "Tip of the Week"

This was suggested by kennywtelejazz, and sounds it would be a great addition to the forums. It's based on the Tip of the Week I do for SONAR, but would relate to more general techniques topics like recording, mixing, mastering, getting the most out of plug-ins, whatever. Here's how it works.

• Starting Friday at midnight East Coast time, anyone who has a cool technique can post it. Whoever gets there first is considered as having posted that week's tip. 
• If no tip is posted by Saturday at midnight East Coast time, then I'll post one on Saturday from my archives.

This way there's no pressure on anyone to constantly produce or feel obligated. If someone has something cool, they can post. I'll take care of changing the thread title each week to mention the current tip, and including hot links to the tips on this page.
 
Three more things:

• I've spent a lifetime editing articles, so I hope no one minds if I provide that function here. So for example if English isn't your native language, don't worry about it - I can do some tweaks.
• Please feel free to add screen shots or other artwork. An easy way is to go to imgur.com, upload your image, then link to it using the BB and Forum code.
• We can tweak things as we go along. For example if we have more tips than fit in the once a week schedule, we can modify it or allow for two tips per week or whatever.

Karyn
Where do we post Craig?  And as it's a first come, first served what happens if we spend half an hour creating a post, post it, and find that when the page refreshes there are five others above it..?

You post in this thread. You create the post in advance, then post it. If the spot has been taken, then post it next week.
 
BUT as mentioned, if we end up getting more posts than slots, we can certainly open it up and just make Friday "post your tips" day. I just assume there won't be giant amounts of participation at first (but then again, I figured I'd be lucky if the "tip of the week" hit 10,000 views). 
 
Also, I did say I'd be happy to edit. You may have noticed I go into the Tip of the Week thread periodically and clear out any comments that don't actually relate to the tips. If someone posts a tip here and it starts generating a major discussion, maybe it should be moved to create its own thread - the object isn't to start discussions, but post tips. And I think as time goes on, this thread will define what a tip is - something with some substance, applicable to at least a decent number of people, and hopefully has some thought put into it.
 
This is an experiment, so we'll see how it pans out. It will likely require course corrections. Remember, the "Tip of the Week" started as a "Tip of the Day" during August that would be left up for one month and then archived into the Cakewalk blog...uh...didn't quite turn out that way. 
 
 

Thank Bit!! Great stuff.

Anyone plotting a tip for tomorrow?

Great tip. 
 
The corollary to this tip is listen with your ears, not your eyes.  In other words, it doesn't matter what the wave form looks like on the screen, what the frequency curve looks like in the flyout quad curve eq. or what the meters or indicators show.  It matters what you hear (and what it sounds like).

Anyone got plans, or is it time to dig into my archives?

Guitar Recording: Combining Virtual and Physical
 
Amp sims and physical amps aren’t an “either/or” situation. Both have features that can make it easy to use the two together.
 
For example, some guitar players like the flexibility of amp sim effects, but want to feed an amp and speaker that actually pushes air. You can send the amp sim out to an external effect insert, drive the amp (or optionally, its effects loop input to bypass the internal preamp and tone stack), and then mic the amp. Or if you like the amp simulation but not the cabinet emulation, you can bypass the sim’s cabinet (virtually all amp sims let you do this), then using the external effect insert, drive a clean power amp that feeds your cab. Because powered speaker monitors have more or less taken over the world, it’s not too hard to find second-hand clean power amps.
 
Similarly, if you like the sound of your amp’s preamp but want the flexibility of using your sim’s amp and cabinet, you can take the amp’s post-preamp effects loop output (send), feed it into your computer’s audio interface, and run the signal through the sim’s amp and cabinet. If you want to use hardware effects, they can insert between the effects loop output and audio interface input.
 
Yet another option is to split your guitar into two paths (e.g., with a Y-cord). One drives a guitar amp (which you can mic), while the other goes “dry” into the computer. This has two big advantages. First, you’re playing through your amp, so you’re getting the “feel” of the amp and no latency as you play. Second, when mixing you can process the dry track through amp sims to get entirely different sounds. If you like these better than the miked sound, you can use them instead...or combine them with the miked sound.
 
Amp sims are so convenient, and so well-suited to working in a small home studio, some guitar players have forgotten how much a good, small amp can contribute to recording. You don’t have to record at super-high levels; you might be surprised how little difference there is coming out of a microphone at different amp volume levels. Even a practice amp can give tones that belie its small size...
 
Another trick is that if you have an open-back cabinet, you can lay it down with its back against a rug on the floor, mic it from the top pointing down, and essentially have a closed-back cabinet. However, if it’s a tube amp, make sure you’re not messing with the ventilation for the tubes. This may be something you can do for only a few minutes at a time, if at all.
 
Finally, don’t forget that the guitar sounds heard on classic recordings weren’t just about the guitar and the amp, but often took advantage of studio-quality rack mount effects to polish the sound even further. Don't be afraid to bring your full sonic arsenal to bear on creating the ultimate guitar sound.
 

I'm not Craig, nor do I play him on tv (yet), but I can wax on splitters, if you don't mind.
 
Short answer, yes, impedance gets changed a bit. The resistance of the guitar coil (assuming passive pickup) gets halved (half to each split), so the ratio between guitar out and amp in gets changed. Modern amps (not line-level, whole 'nother story) expect a wide range of resistance values from the myriad pickups out in the wild, however, so there's not danger to circuitry or anything, but there could be some coloration changes depending on the ratio between guitar out and amp in. That said, you (or whomever is the guitar player) may or may not notice any sound change caused by the split other than slight decrease in gain, which is easily solved. (Or there may be no sound change at all if you ask an oscilloscope, but the player may go ahead and notice it anyway! We're like that.)  If one is using a bunch of effect pedals as part of the scenario, then coloration by a split is classed as least-of-worry. Heck, using a "budget" 30' guitar cable on stage can cause a guitar pickup to get, um, picked up differently, too. (Through capacitance change more likely than resistance change.) There's a lot of links in the signal chain that can affect the outcome, point is not to fret (haha) over all those links, but just to know about them in case you don't like the sound you are getting and you want to "fix" it. A Y split is the easy/inexpensive link to get two outputs from one instrument. If the guitar player is noticing a sound change with a splitter, then a DI with multiple outs is called for. (Although a change in sound is what the player/recording engineer is after in the first place!)

Tip of the Week: More than You Ever Wanted to Know About Guitar Splits
 
Well since it's Friday, no one has posted a tip (but if anyone has one, feel free to post it), and I have played myself on TV, here's some more info about splitting, guitars, impedance, etc. to add to what czyky said.
 
First, as he mentions splitting affects only passive guitar pickups. If you split after effects, or an active guitar pickup, the subsequent impedance doesn't matter because the effect or active guitar pickup will have a low impedance output. This means it's only minimally affected if followed by a high impedance input, like from an amp, DI box, or well-engineered effects.
 
Second, lowering impedance will attenuate high frequencies more than low frequencies, so we're talking about a frequency-dependent level issue - not just level in general. In fact some guitarists like to feed a low impedance to take off more highs and give a "creamier" sound with distortion.
 
To my ears, following a passive pickup with a 100k impedance produces a noticeable dulling of the sound. At 250k, it's a very slight difference. Over 500k, you're not going to hear much difference, if any.
 
So why not make all direct inputs as high an impedance as possible? With really high input impedances, your cable is more likely to act like an antenna and pick up noise. A 1 Meg impedance is fine, and I wouldn't go above 2-5 Megs personally.
 
Now, about how a split affects guitar. We'll cheat and consider the impedances as equivalent to resistance, because that's close enough and I don't want to make anyone's brain explode. When splitting, the guitar sees two resistances in parallel. The formula for the value of two resistors in parallel is:
 
(R1 x R2)/(R1 + R2)
 
So let's suppose your amp has a 220k input impedance, and your interface's DI input is 1 Meg. Your guitar is seeing (1000 x 220)/(1000 +220) or 180k - not that much different than the amp by itself.
 
So the bottom line is splitting won't cause any significant degradation if:
 

• The split goes to two high-impedance inputs
• The additional split has a significantly higher impedance than the other input
• The split occurs after an active device like an effect
• The instrument has active pickups

 
 

Sounds like you need some soldering tips.

 

Anderton
GREAT advice, well-stated, and I agree completely. Thank you very much!

+1

Make sure your levels are correct and not in the red.

Happy Friday the 13th. In honor there which of, I call this tip "I'm feeling lucky" (or "this patch sounds awful, I think I'll use it").
 
This is a tip/creativity idea for your "stuck" projects. You know, the ones that are getting mixed, but don't seem to be getting any closer to generating a spark, much less setting things on fire. All the tracks kind of fit, but....it's just--I don't know--lackluster overall. (Not that this has ever been my experience--nor yours! I speak hypothetically.)
 
What to do? Here's an idea for potentially pumping some pizzazz (whoops, better use a pop filter!) into a project that works for me when a project gets stuck (um, hypothetically). Or if I'm just feeling goose-bumpy with creativity and I want to try something new.
 
This is based on the notion of, when you are mixing, NOT soloing any particular track to listen to it. Always mix (goes the dictum, to which I try to adhere) of not making any audio judgments out of context. As mixing progresses and each track is aurally "sculpted" to fit with the other tracks (the context), each track--listened to by itself--might sound yucky (to use the technical term). But that's okay, because it's out of context and so it won't be heard that way in the real world--so don't listen to it that way. Make all mixing/sculpting decisions and adjustments ONLY when listening to the piece as a whole--all tracks playing (at a modest listening level, of course--Messrs. Fletcher and Munson are watching you!)
 
So here's the tip to try (really, try it!): Purposely put a yucky sounding track into your mix and listen to what happens (in context). As an example, let's say you're using a Dimension Pro bass patch. Lots of them to choose from (many dozens), but, maybe like me, you only ever use a handful of your tried and true favorite bass patches with which you are comfortable. What I am suggesting is that you swap out one of your fav patches (currently in the mix that is going nowhere) with a bass patch that you know in your heart of hearts that you would never, ever use, or--even better--one that you have never, ever even listened to! (I mean, "FG Crazy Donald"? Really?) That's the patch to try, BUT don't listen to it by itself--don't even press a midi key. Slap it into the track, guess at the level setting and start the track rolling. Go ahead and hack away at the EQ and effects, etc. but always in context. You'll probably hate it, but...you might love it!
 
The bass example is a simple example. Try swapping a fat patch with a thin patch or an "8va" sound with an "8vb" sound. My example caters well to synth tracks, but the same idea will work with guitar track amp models, with keyboard tracks (try a dirty Wurlitzer instead of a Steinway, why not?), heck, with entire drum kits. Pick a kit you've not yet touched (because this is a ballad and why would I use a metal kit?), plug it into your soon-to-be masterpiece and give it a chance (just as if you had a "real" drummer come in and audition with your band--"let's take it from the top and see what you've got.")
 
This technique does not fall into a "traditional" record/mix/master model. That's okay, too. It's a non-linear (NLE)world now, so embrace it. So you're mixing, that no longer means the instrumentation is set in stone. (It could mean that, but you're then missing out on a lot of what a 21st century DAW has to offer.) And guess what? Sonar just added "take recall", so you can mess up--er, I mean, "constructively deconstruct" multiple tracks with multiple alternative patches/effects/kits etc. Be fearless! If you go too far afield with new, off the wall ideas that you just know will sound terrible, a) good for you; b) you can always breadcrumb your way back to civilization (eg, the bland mix that you're trying to spice up, remember?); c) hey, in context it doesn't sound all that bad! Why not print a copy--with the "new" track sounds that you swore you'd never use, why did Cakewalk (or whomever the vendor is) ever include those dorky patches anyway?--to a CD and try it in your car on the way to work tomorrow? Why not print a couple of alternatives and try them all out to listen to on the way to work? Tomorrow's car trip might start of a new friendship with your (formerly) lifeless project.
 
PS. I didn't use the phrase "think outside the box" even once during this diatribe. Pretty proud of myself.