Keith Handy 1.999

Tracktion 3

I write about Tracktion a lot, because it’s affordable, has a cool (dare I say “fun”) interface, and it’s what I use when I’m doing my stuff. So basically, I can’t not be writing about it. But, I’ve been putting off upgrading from 2 to 3. The upgrade doesn’t cost all that much, and since this is something I use all the time, I might as well.

I haven’t had time to really dive into it yet, but just from playing with the demos, one thing I like right off the bat is the “text” plugin. It’s a plugin that doesn’t actually do anything, except that you can write notes to yourself in it. You can insert as many of these in as many relevant places as you need, sort of like leaving 3M stickies all over the project to remind yourself what you were doing. Yes, I’m sure the developers spent a whopping 20 minutes implementing that feature, but still, I think it’s great.

I suppose I will either amend this post or write follow-ups if I discover any other goodies.

Newly unearthed Handywisdoms

By “unearthed”, I mean I’m sifting through notebooks and miscellaneous papers that have accumulated in a small cardboard box in the corner. The wisdoms below were written around the edges of a staff memo, while sitting in an eighth-floor office where I processed auto loans — a data entry job — sometime around May 2003. I’ll even kick things off with an inspirational photo of the sky across my street after yesterday’s thunderstorm, so it’s like those cheezy new-agey feel-good posters — only more verbose and neo-quantum.

Every event has some relationship with every other event in the great family tree of things that happen everywhere.

Everything that happens is a member of a family and can be connected to everything else that happens.

Whenever you move something, you make something.

Every object that you have is a thing that is happening.

Every action you take is an object that exists.

What you’re doing right this second is probably not exactly what you think.

Everything that seems wasteful or irrelevant is actually necessary, but usually for reasons far more complex than you would guess.

All the things that bother you can be looked at in an entirely different way when you really think about how they are connected to everything you care about.

Whether there is a “master purpose” or “ultimate meaning” is irrelevant, because every event and every object is related to any purpose or meaning you could ever choose for yourself.

Funnily enough, I actually kind of believe all this, or at least believe that there are benefits to looking at life this way — and just think, it predates all that “Secret” and “What the Bleep” stuff! As I recall, it actually made me feel better about trudging through auto loan applications that day as well.

Ideas

Here are a few ideas that have been vaguely floating around in my brain:

1. Improvisation club/network - advertise locally, inviting musicians and singers who like to improvise to join a network or mailing list, so we can all call on one another to participate in projects. For me, in particular, to get more recording projects going that start as improvisations, but can then be refined with editing and overdubbing (this is just something I really enjoy).

2. Microfilming - filming things so up close that they are unrecognizable. A children’s version of National Geographic magazine, called World, used to do these, but they were done as a “guess what this is” game rather than an artistic expression, so some of the pictures weren’t as aesthetically pleasing as I’d like to… “shoot for” (pardon the pun).

3. Live sessions - bringing a laptop with partially-complete sessions on it to a gig (making sure there are backup copies on another computer!), and actually recording guitar and vocal tracks in front of an audience. I wouldn’t be able to do multiple takes or punch-ins — without alienating the audience — but if I performed like this more than once, then I could cherry-pick the best bits from each show. Yes, there would be some bleed-through and audience noise on the vocal track, but I can manage with stuff like that. I could also have the software I’m using projected on a screen behind me.

Added 7/23/08:

4. Music theory book - “Music theory for people who hate music theory”. Kind of self-explanatory here.

5. DVD based on the “So You Want…” series - again, self-explanatory.

Vocal session, 7/12/08: Bemoaning Moments

Vocal for “Bemoaning Moments”:

I’ll start embedding higher-quality versions instead when I figure out how. These look so much better when I play the Quicktime right on my computer…

Questions from internetland: amps and mics for lead guitars?

Reader and musician/music enthusiast Jordan Hoek chimes in with a question:

I really like the lead guitars in workers theme, undue strain, and broken wheel. What amp do you use, and what kind of effects do you use? Could you go into more detail in how you record it? Just stuff like, mic positions you generally use, how loud you put the amp, and whatever else.

I almost never use amps or mics for lead guitars! I know it’s sacrilege, but I have a lot of fun simulating amps. There’s such a diverse range of tone you can get with a few effects and adjustments. I’ll tell you one trick that I use a lot, to make it a little more “live” sounding: I use a good deal of compression BEFORE the distortion and/or cabinet simulator. This gives it more sustain and almost feedback-y sound. Also you can have more sustain with less actual distortion this way, and have long, sustained notes without turning the tone of the guitar into a total square wave (i.e. still have some guitarish “character” to it and not need to make it “metal”).

My current chain of effects for lead guitar tracks in Tracktion: multiband compressor set to only compress the midrange, resonance filter (with resonance set to zero) to act like a noise gate with a more interesting roll-off at the end of notes, an equalizer to give a pre-distortion midrange boost (inspired by Brian May), the amp simulator (includes distortion), and finally, subtle touches of chorus and reverb.

For Workers’ Theme, since it’s a remix, the lead guitar was done within the last year or so and I used a special stored combination of effects I have set up within Tracktion. There’s a YouTube video of me playing it, too, and I punched in a short section using slide instead of fingering… and I had a capo on the first fret, because I guess I wanted to be able to occasionally hit open strings, and the music is in F minor.

For the last part of Undue Strain, I actually used my Crate amp (80 or 100 watts, not a huge amp), probably at a medium-ish volume, and an SM57 hanging in front of it. Using an amp is extremely unusual for me! This was about ten years ago. I’ve never been careful about mic placement, so I’m not the person to go to for tips on that; I’m guilty of just putting the mic “somewhere close” and then using EQ to get the tone where I want it.

For Broken Wheel, I was recording on one of those digital portastudios, and used a built in amp simulator, but probably tweaked it a bit. And I think I used one or two foot pedals before the input; I know I at least had a slow phaser on it. Sometimes it’s interesting to put an effect like that before the distortion, because it puts some randomness on which harmonics get emphasized by the distortion. I did takes both with a slide and with regular playing, and made a composite from bits of both. I remember sort of trying to go for a “Momentary Lapse of Reason” sound there, though I don’t know if I pulled it off. ;)

How I simulated amp tone in the mid to late ’90s

Before I had access to good amp simulator effects, I got reasonably passable tones just using an equalizer after the distortion. The main thing you have to do is completely filter out the upper frequencies, anything over 4K or so (so it doesn’t have that “buzzing bee” tone), and scoop out a big chunk in the middle somewhere too, so you’re left with an emphasis somewhere in the higher midrange (anywhere from about 2K to 4K), and then another lower one somewhere. Sort of an “M” shape. Even using a wah-wah pedal left in one position will kind of give you an interesting tone.

Thanks, Jordan, for letting me post your question!

P.S. - in the early 1990s, when I was struggling through my first solo project, I borrowed one of these and used it for most guitar parts.

Guitar overdub: Bemoaning Moments

Whatever question you’re going to ask me about the tie, the answer is “no”.

Gotta record the vocal for this soon, dammit…

Enjoy!