Nov. 10 2024
The Project:
I had the opportunity to do a little production work on a Stu Hooten original song recently.
He gave me his acoustic guitar / vocal version and I added the music and arraingment behind it.
I didn't think I was going to get back into recording again because that was another part of my life. However, certain pieces came to me through various thrift store and yard sales that begged to be put together.
Equipment:
Boss BR1600CD: https://www.boss.info/us/products/br-1600cd/
Multitrack recorder. A stand alone 16 track designed for songwriters leaning towards guitar players. Outdated, but a workhorse.
Ardour: https://ardour.org/
Open source music production workstation / DAW.
Fluidsynth: https://www.fluidsynth.org/
A soundfont based software synth used as a plugin for Ardour to act as the soundsource for the MIDI sequences. All I can say is "Wow" after finding some amazing piano soundfonts online.
Ibanez SZ320 guitar, Yamaha bass, Yamaha YPG-235 as midi controller, Audio Technica mics.
I owned a BR1600 new ( around $1400 ) but sold it. I bought a used non working one from eBay. It needed a new hard drive and the buttons replaced.
I have several older ( 10 year old ) laptops. I changed the drive from mechanical to an SSD. I installed Ubuntu Studio ( a Linux release that comes with all the latest audio / video production tools configured and read to run ).
I love the BR1600 because it's straight forward. I used to record on real to real multitrack and was used to that. The BR1600 is useful out of the box without having to worry about configuring a computer with an audio interface then dealing with latency issues and possible other configuration issues. I could use the BR1600 for everything, but somethings are much easier on a computer screen, as well as the computer can access newer software as the BR1600 is discontinued.
The BR1600 has a complete GT-6 / GT-6B guitar processor onboard which is great for all the traditional sounds I typically use. These days I tend to choose clean sounds as my heavy rock days are a bit behind me.
I use Ardour for mixdown. It comes preloaded with every effect you could possible need. I mostly used the equalizers to reduce sub bass on tracks, compression to suit me ( mainly as a limiter and/or leveler ), and a little reverb / echo to taste. Nothing crazy - no multi band stuff or loudness competition on this project.
For editing midi drums I used Hydrogen for the basic track and some other linux tools. I mainly record MIDI realtime without quantizing so it's more of a recorder than a sequencer. This allows for the parts to sound natural, but gives the benefit of editing the sound during mixdown.
I usually overdub unquantized drums ( shakers, bongos, toms, hi hat, etc. ) so it's not all that sterile. Since this was a quick project I didn't flesh out the drums with an entire unquantized arrainged track. Maybe later but that takes quite a bit of time.
The piano and horns soundfonts were found online. There are TONS of soundfonts online.
Any old velocity sensitive MIDI keyboard does the trick.
The BR1600 does not directly interface it's inputs to the Ardour DAW software. I have to record then move the files to the computer via USB v1 ( slow ). Newer multitracks such as the ZOOM R-16 / R-24 will interface directly.
Technical issues:
This was a quick two hour session once everything was in place. The longest part of it was setting everything up and deciding how to use everything. Ardour recieves MTC ( midi time code ) so syncing was straitforward but it took a while to find all the settings. Back in 2008 I was using N Track Studio on Windows.
I had to get a USB hub to link in the Yamaha , the BR1600, computer mouse, and keyboard to the laptop. These use the older style USB cables. Fortunately I save all that stuff.
I did a few sample tracks to make sure it all worked together. I had to adjust the Ardour's buffer size to limit latency.
For the bass I used the BR1600's 'Fliptop Soul' bass preset. Love that sound. The guitar was recorded using a preset called 'Big Funk'. This later turned out to be a problem because it's so compressed even the slightest sympathetic noise from the guitar makes it's way into the track. You can hear one or two in the final product but I'm not saying where. It sounds like a glitch or crackle. To fix it I would replace the entire guitar track with another patch or modify the current patch.
There were a few spots in the original audio where the vocal did not directly sync to the dead on midi quantized 4/4 beat. I aligned them by using Audacity to slice and dice the vocal line so it hit on the beats. This created some odd artifacts due to gaps in the audio track. I smoothed these by adding micro fade ins and fade outs to the cutout portions.
Another issue that came up was entirely my fault. I had recorded his vocals and acoustic guitar simultaneously. This left large amounts of acoustic guitar in the vocal track. I tried to separate it using AI stems, but this left the vocal in poor condition. Ultimately I left the guitar in and micro edited the points in conflicted or caused audible issues. This resulted in the HUM outro being a little lower in the mix than I had wanted.
The correct solution, in my opinion, is to have the entire vocal track replaced.
Overall it was fun getting back into this after so many years. It's been 15 years since I've recorded anything but have kept up with the tech.
Also NO AUTOTUNE was used in this recording and no animals were injured.
After thoughts:
This is an "idea" mix. It's not intended to be a final. I can hear background vocals, more drum accents with instrument support, better choices of guitar fills, etc... these things can go on for years.
I used to record very produced sounding things with louder drums and lots of synthetic sounds and effects. My approach to music these days leans towards what actual humans can play and leave in those imperfections that make things sound human but I still insist on the bass and drums creating a listenable groove.
The last thing I recorded prior to this was in 2008 - Ken Sings Christmas Songs 2008