My First Album

I think it will be a 9 track album (w/ lyrics and art and stuff).

It's all recorded (with the exception of a couple of synth parts), it just needs mixing and mastering (does not nessacarily mean release is imminent as this can take some time).

I will upload the finished album to http://www.foolswood.co.uk and do a post to announce when it is ready.

Kick
-Compress hard (3.5:1 usually)
-If too flabby sounding tighten with a transient mangler
Overheads
-highpass filter
-if necessary compress ~1.1:1
Snare
-compress 1.9:1
-eq cutting v. low and boxy mids

Bussing the whole lot and putting it through a slight stereo compressor sometimes works too. (Recommend the invada one)

More or less by following this (the pam way) I was able to get my latency down to 0.7ms, which is great. Basucally it seems to be a matter of getting the right priorities for the sound threads.

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Low_latency_howto

Also I finally upgraded my kernel which makes the whole system faster, it seriously knocks about 10 secs of boot time.

Ardour is a good multitracker, but it doesn't have a system for dealing with gradual tempo changes.

This is where the magic approach of jackd with lots of pluggable programs saves the day. Simply pick a program that does support them (I recommend klick which is a metronome only). Set it to be the jack time master and it will synchronize with the daw transport so when you hit record at any point the tempo at that point will be as outlined in the tempo map (nice plain text file with klick).

It's a fantastic way to work.

For some reason large diaphram condensers don't work well with mandolin. My recommendation is a slightly from above angle on the soundhole from about 1.5-2 feet away with a small diaphram condensor (I use a samson c02). Works quite well, gives a really biting sound.

It very much depends what kind of sound you want, and obviously also the guitar. But some basic startpoints are probabally useful.

Single Mic. For preference a medium/large diaphram condenser.

1 The traditional placement for single mic recording of accoustic guitar is 2 feet away and pointing at the 12th fret.

2 The places I have had most success with are above the guitar past the bridge end from the front pointing at the wood above the soundhole from about 2 and a half feet away. This needs tweaking for taste but can give a really biting direct sound with a lot of brightness and attack.

3 The other one I was trying yesterday is about 4 feet and pointing more or less level with the soundhole. But the player sits facing slightly to the right of the mic. This gives a really open natural sound but requires a better mic as the distance needs a decent signal to noise ratio (I am using the SE).

Double Mic.

The one I tend to use is placement 2 but a bit nearer the soundhole with a second (pencil condenser) mic about in line with the headstock but about a foot away and pointing straight at the soundhole. This gives you a bright blendable mix of noise (fingering pick etc.) and direct tone.

That's more or less it, if I find something else I like I'll add it as a comment.

Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote, I was on holiday then on tour. Dull review warning, there are no annecdotes or hidden interesting bits, the title says it all. Anyway I'm back and the gear is here so let's go.

Preamp: Behringer MIC100
The feature set is clearly intended to be a competitor for the ART MP Studio that I already have, but there are a few notable differences.
-The needle level set display is replaced by LEDs, much better, looks less classic but actually works.
-It is smaller and silverier.
-It's slightly cheaper.
Yeah basically it is more or less the same as the ART, more time will show the sonic characteristics, but, since they use very similar valves (the ART has an 12AX7A while the Behringer has a 12AX7) and both are of similar low voltage design there probabally won't be much in it.

Mic: SE2200a
So much better than what I had before, you can stand back from it without the hiss overtaking the signal (doesn't sound much but unless you have a drumkit or a guitar amp you can't get more than a couple of feet from the Samsons), tried banjo with it, so much better, not just general twanginess or a middly mess but a real nice open banjo sound, not just that but it even sounds like my banjo. The signal level from it is much higher too, so quiet sources won't need huge amounts of amplification.

I'm happy with both bits of gear and I hope I'll get to try them out on the accoustic piano soon. I'll chuck you a sample when that happens.

I'm finally getting a proper recording mic. An SE2200A large diaphram condenser. Also I'm getting a second preamp (Behringer MIC100) so that I can have 2 mic inputs to the computer.

I'm really looking forward to this as I have been having some trouble getting the right sound for banjo out of my current mics, also I would really like to be able to record the accoustic piano but my mics hiss a bit too much to get back far enough for the full sound, hopefully this will get me the sound I want.

Ok, first off I should probabally explain that the song Peroxide Blondes is a new orleans style jazz like song. Think Bugsy Malone.

This means strummed banjo (it is usually a picked instrument (bluegrass style) but for this strumming was required), on a 5 string banjo such as mine one of the strings starts halfway up the fretboard and is often used as a drone. This is fine as long as the song hangs around in nice simple chords, suffice to say this one doesn't so I had to remove the highest string.

I also had to make up a tuning for the 4 strings as standard ones are C D and G, I'm in Eb, so they didn't work dropped, anyway I ended up with:

lowest
C
G
Bb
D
highest

as my tuning. Then I spent ages working out how to voice the chords and writing out tabs.

Then to record. First I tried using a Samson C01 (medium/large diaphram condensor), it produced a fairly muddy middle heavy sound and the transients (v. important to banjo) didn't cut through. So I tried a C01 (pencil condensor) instead, it worked better, more top end clarity and less middle frequency mush. I would ultimately have liked more bass in the sound but since I had then run out of options I went with that.

It then took a huge number of takes to get a reasonable run, banjos are heavy, my arm aches...

You know how when you neatly wind all your cables and put them away, when you get them back out they're always tangled.

If you put each cable in its own carrier bag with a sandwich bag tie around it they don't tangle.

If you are mad like me you can even use different bags for the cable types so you don't have to look in the bag when you collect them up.

It also means that since you have a bag for each that tells you what type it should be, it is much harder to leave cables behind.