We're talkin' DAW here:

So:: use a DI box to send the dry guitar signal to one track and then send the amp/room mic signal to other tracks.

You then get both to play with. And if necessary/desired, reamp the dry for grins.

J

It's all a matter of style and goals I guess. Are you looking to *capture* a great performance, or *create* a performance after the fact? Obviously, if you are a professional mixer, you better be good at the latter, since your getting paid probably depends on your being able to make silk purses out of sow's ears.

For me, as a self recorder, I'm way more interested in capturing a great performance. My performances aren't at the great level yet. However, by the time they get there, I want to have learned how to capture them very well with a minimum of complications. So I'm concentrating on learning how to put the actual performance onto the disk and then leave it alone as much as possible.

I don't want to spend days doing automation on tracks, when I could have just performed it that way. I don't want to spend half a day on every track going through 25 takes and laboriously comping out stuff. I want to mix it while I'm playing it, as much as possible.

Most of the greatest music ever made was made that way, and most of the rest of it only used techniques that weren't much beyond that. As someone said over on Gearslutz, today it's all about sounding perfect at the expense of sounding good. I don't want to create any illusion that I'm better than I really am. Then I'll have to actually get a lot better.

Today, it's really the opposite. It's almost ONLY the home recordist who has the luxury of doing what I'm doing. I doubt any commercial content that is on the charts today is ever made like that. Obviously there are indie labels doing lesser known bands that are still doing direct to tape stuff. But the stuff on the radio is all completely artificial.

If you are a self recorder, you have the luxury of just taking the time to do it right, because no one is waiting outside to buy your stuff when its done anyway, and you aren't paying anyone to sit there while you twiddle around. It's just your own time. You also have the luxury of just taking a pee on the current trend of artificiality, so you can do music that sounds like real, human produced music if you want, which is what I'm interested in.

From a *commercial* standpoint, all that matters is how it sounds. But if you are a self recorder you have no commercial constraints. All that's driving people like us to do incredibly artificial music creation is an attempt to sound better than we really are, i.e. vanity, or somewhat more charitably an attempt to emulate the plastic sound of today in a vain hope of becoming rich and famous. I have just turned off that part of my ego. What it is is what it is. If I can't actually play it or sing it, then I don't want pretend like I can.

There's the occasional Amy Winehouse, but they are dwarfed by the opposite, at least wrt to the primary music market of teens. If you go to a site like Gearslutz, and post a thread asking how many projects all of the folks there get to track a year where it's of the Dap Kings variety vs, the tedious hand assembly of artificiality, I'm sure you would end up with an almost infinity to one ratio.

I know what the response will be, which is why I made that suggestion :-) I read the conversations there all the time. It's pretty much a constant complaint that it's all nothing but comping, auto-tuning, drum replacement, etc... these days.

Yes, I think you may be missing the forest while being preoccupied with the trees.

I maintain that there is more recording activity than ever in the history of our planet.

I think it is a mistake to think that just because the commercial mass distribution segment sells millions of records that they define the norm for production processes.

That does not seem like a logical conclusion.

best,
mike

Yes, I think you may be missing the forest while being preoccupied with the trees.

I maintain that there is more recording activity than ever in the history of our planet.

I think it is a mistake to think that just because the commercial mass distribution segment sells millions of records that they define the norm for production processes.

That does not seem like a logical conclusion.

best,
mike

:-)

That kid made some awesome eclectic music. How cool Mike. Thanx for sharing this find-

I wish he would have taped some up the visual performance live. Tha would have made the video better to see that kid doing his thing.

Very cool-

I said I was talking about people who do this work for others, not self-recorders. Obviously self recorders can do whatever they want. But they aren't what kids are listening to, otherwise they wouldn't be self-recording anymore. You can easily to find the top 100 list and go through them. And you can easily go back through the top 100 lists for the last half a decade and they'll likely be pretty similar to what the current 100 are, i.e. quite artificial.

And, yes, Amy Winehouse is a pretty significant exception. And I imagine that the folks who vote for those things are not the kids who are buying (or downloading more likely) music. What people who mix for a living are likely to be dealing with is a lot more likely to be the top 100 style stuff, since it's the current norm for commercial music and if you are investing money in making a record, it's probably because you want it to sell, and so you probably are going to try to do something in the mainstream. The Daptones recordings are definitely unusual these days. The number of studios that are doing tape based recording is dwindling to a small few, which is why tape decks that used to cost tens of $K now dost a few thousand or less.
 
That doesn't mean that there's not a lot of other types of stuff out there. There's always been a lot of other types of stuff out there. But in terms of the professionals, they are way more likely to get the mainstream customres. Anyone way out of the mainstream probably won't get much of a chance to do a professional album unless it's a vanity project. 
  
http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100#/charts/hot-100
 
I think if you go through that list, it seems to me that throwing up Amy Winehouse as a counter balance to that isn't very meaningful. That's a pea compared to an elephant.
 

mike_mccue

This example IME is unconventional.  Maybe splitting hairs but instead of a "reamp" box you would actually just use a normal DI box which will have a "thru" jack.

As far as the main topic-- I prefer to record dry whenever possible, but sometimes I record people who use FX pedals that are a "major component" to their main riff.  In that case I will use their pedals unless they are just atrocious.  Although sometimes a sucky DOD or Behringer pedal will have just the right character for the song so you never know. 

"This example IME is unconventional.  Maybe splitting hairs but instead of a "reamp" box you would actually just use a normal DI box which will have a "thru" jack."

Yes, I don't disagree. This technique was taught to me when I sought a way to avoid using a passive direct box as a splitter.

When one searches for a *better* direct box one will eventually end up at the realization that the very best direct box for a hi-z passive guitar pickup (especially when a split is required) is "active" and has a full scale power supply with good buffering. That's more energy than anything designed for batteries can provide... so I'm speaking of some sort of AC power supply with great rectification etc. You'll want fat capacitors in the filter circuit to act as reservoirs when there is a demand for power.

At some point you realizes you are describing a preamp... and if you have a rack full of very good preamps you may already have some great options. Certainly better than even the best boxes labeled "direct box".

I've been using the Great River MP-2NV for guitar and a UA LA-610 for bass... sometimes I use a Chandler TG-2.

Using a top of line preamp as a splitter has almost zero drawbacks... just make sure you don't get a ground loop.

Using the Reamp device in this manner makes it easy to drive your efx and amp in a way that is familiar to a live player.

The dry signal that you capture simultaneously can be used at any time to Reamp again and again... if you want to do that sort of thing.

I think as Reamping becomes more common you'll see more people becoming aware of a technique like this... in the mean time I prepared and share this illustration to help spread the word.

I tend to use close mic techniques on my amps...so I don't worry much about phase coherency.

If you run your mics further back you may want to address phase coherency.

Little Labs sells both reamping devices and phase correction boxes. They also sell a device that lets you run something like a pedal board or efx rack in the control room, so the guitarist can hang out near the main monitors, while the guitar amps are out in a recording room. It's basically a way to send a hiz signal a long distance via a hi-z>lo-z>hiz conversion.

I don't use the long run tools because I have a smaller layout.

Anyways Dave, I'm really just sharing the details because IIRC, you are a serious Reamping tone freak.

This system works very well for me, and it was taught to me specifically when I asked for help... I didn't just make the system up.

all the best,
mike

Verse, Chorus, Verse Chorus, Bridge, Verse, Chorus.

Same thing.

I was just looking at some charts... it was too difficult to do at home on 56k.

FWIW The Amy Winehouse Album Back to Black is the 3rd best selling album in the UK for the period between 2000-2009.

"Back to Black is ranked as the 18th best selling album of all-time in her native country,"

By a rough summing of the various countries the album sold well over 17,000,000 copies world wide.

Not so bad.

I was surprised at how large the numbers were.

best,
mike

It's all a matter of style and goals I guess. Are you looking to *capture* a great performance, or *create* a performance after the fact? Obviously, if you are a professional mixer, you better be good at the latter, since your getting paid probably depends on your being able to make silk purses out of sow's ears.

Interesting thread.

If a record company is behind an act (lets assume a singer here) they still will more often than not make sure there are players in there that can lay the stuff down cost-effectively in a few takes than pay an engineer the time needed to meticulously post assemble sub-standard fragments into the real deal for everything but pure machine based music (which still requires a great deal of talent to produce).

I think the surprising thing is the persistence of real talent hasn't waned even in the light of mechanical post production techniques and greater opportunities 'to fake it'.  For me it's still the home producers that have the least access to talent other than their own but even that is diminishing the more people realise they can collaborate on-line and just choose the people they dig for a particular track.

The myth that you can have no talent at all be it for creation or performing and come out of a 'pro' studio with a grammy winner is as perennial as the recording industry itself, and it still doesn't hold any weight at all.

If you can't do the initial business in some way shape or form then no amount of skilled sows ear re sculpting will make a jot of difference although if you want paid work as a professional mixer when the studio is quiet it might pay to perpetuate the myth a bit longer.

Talent stands out in stark relief and I don't see or hear any less of it today than I did 30 years ago and the other perpetual truth of the recording industry is that there's plenty of it on a par with our Amy, mentioned here, that doesn't see the light of day.

So staying on topic in the light of all that is keep the initial signal as near to real as you can (whether 'real' means sans effects or dry to you is your choice.)  but work on getting 'that' performance that you need and don't be satisfied with less (there's usually no point in even listening back if you 'think' you may have fluffed it because recording is unforgiving. In my experience 99% of the time even if you vaguely 'think' you fluffed it YOU DID!  Just retake.).  You may be able to make something mediocre acceptable after the event but if you end up capturing real magic you'll be hard pushed to mess it up after the event.  And whatever happens you'll always be in possession of that pure unadulterated take.