Bryan Baker Blog
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The Encyclopedia of Home Recording: A Complete Resource For The Home Recording Studio
Recently, I figured it might not be a bad idea to sort of go back and learn the basics and maybe unlearn some bad habits and pick up some better ways of doing things the hard way.
This book was a big help for me.
The Encyclopedia of Home Recording: A Complete Resource For The Home Recording Studio
October Sketch #3
The third sketch reveals a backing track and I'm improvising in the studio. I like the randomness of the backing, how it's not really tethered to a time which allows the guitar to wander through that space. Yet, it still feels like a song maybe. I've been exploring this kind of random thing lately.
October Sketch #2
Another piece of the song this morning.
October Sketch #1
As always I'm playing around with a lot of different fragments songs and whatnot. I thought I might try something different and piece something together by posting bits to YouTube each day as I work it out. Here's a stab of something starting in Am (and ending, as it turns out).
Dusty
So I play around with ideas on an acoustic guitar and nothing gets done.
Well I've got some ideas. I'll let you know if I manage to get to work on them.
New Loop Project @ tapegerm.com
Go do it.
Interview with Russ Stedman -- Cherry Creek album
Tell me everything about writing and recording "I've Given Up Again."
In April of 2010, I stopped taking the anti-depressant that I had been taking for ten years. Lots of really crappy things happened to me over the next 8 months. It was probably the worst time I could have ever picked to go off meds. Who knew? By November, I "gave up" and went back on (different) meds. I took the first pill the day after Thanksgiving. By late afternoon, I was sitting in front a microphone with a guitar, pretty much writing this song on the spot. It was one of those songs that came completely together in about 10 minutes, and I think it's the best "pop" song I've written in years and years. I kept the original scratch vocal for the final version because you can hear my voice crack at one point. That was pure emotion, not a mistake. I added the rest of the instrumentation the same day. It sat until January...when I recorded almost all the other songs on the album.
Acoustic guitar has more of a presence on this album than usual for you (definitely not an acoustic album though). I like how you mix acoustic guitar with overdriven electric rhythm guitars. Tell me how you recorded your acoustic guitar.
Always having an acoustic jangling behind overdrive guitars is a trick I learned from KISS, most notably the "Dressed To Kill" album, although I think when they remastered that album, they removed the acoustics completely. Idiots. Anyway...I like recording with acoustic guitars a lot, I just haven't had one around for years. Evan lent me one last Fall, which was perfect timing, because you can't really record a depressing album like this without an acoustic guitar It's a Yamaha FG-75, which probably means nothing to anyone.. I recorded it with an SM57, and I'm very proud of how it sounds on the album, because in person it sounds like shit.
"I Don't Know What I'd Do" is a such beautiful, heartfelt lyric for a Ramones-type guitar bang. Tell me about the lyric and (I've gotta ask) what came first -- the lyric or the arrangement?
It is a thank you song to my wife for helping me through and putting up with my complete emotional train wreck, which climaxed in early January 2011. This was a very unusual album for me, because all of the lyrics came first except for the first two songs. I don't ever write lyrics ahead of time anymore. In fact, I've had about enough of writing lyrics altogether.
To me, this album is a wholly artistic work, laying bare a personal part of your life; but your characteristic humor manages to remain intact. Also there's lots of the expected Stedman ear candy, but your lyrical voice is more the focus. Tell me about that.
Well, I managed to write in a notebook while this crap was all going on. Usually when I'm crashing, the last thing i feel like doing is anything creative. This time was different. This was obviously a "concept album", When I played it for Evan, he said it reminded him of Pink Floyd's "Animals". That's a huge compliment as far as I'm concerned, because no one's better at writing songs about being fucked in the head than Roger Waters. Roger Waters Pink Floyd was a huge influence on me when I was a kid.
"Cherry Creek" encapsulates the album extremely well for me. What do you mean when you say, "Cherry Creek was just flooding"?
It was a metaphor for the fact that my brain was too full to take anymore.
Collaborating live via Skype, Part 2
I got a note from Gerald Biggs of Gasoline Ice Cream and the Filthy Grin recording project. I reference his article in a recent blog about Skype collaborating below and he kindly fills me in on an update:
I recently reorganized the info on gasolineicecream.com for the article on skype.
This link - I would consider the central home to refer to any articles I relate to skype. It'll link to examples of music recorded with it, and the two approaches I've been able to work out.
I like the idea about utilizing your iphone. Although, with the audio interface I don't really develop a huge bottleneck for my computer's resources. I typically run softsynths, and a lot of mic'd percussive elements - so it holds up to the stress test in that regard.
I'm sure there are a couple more tricks to pull with unique pros and cons. Once we got this working, we were just happy enough to start making music.
One thing I plan on writing up someday - is how we mix. In our DAW's, we record our own sides individually of each other - and combine them after the session. This preserves stereo information, and quality. Since we approach this conceptually from the Two Tape Mutations idea - our method is a bit more complex than normal. I imagine most people would have easier requirements in this area.
Good luck, let me know how the iphone works!
Thanks for the link. If you post any results, let me know and I'll put a link up in my article somewhere.
Gerald Biggs
Hey Gerald,
Joe and I made a second attempt this morning. We haven't tried the 2-system to 2-system approach yet. Earlier in the week we tried it to begin with, but I think Joe was doing a group call on one system on his end so my iPhone was just supplying an unwanted echo on my end so I just dropped it. But with the one-to-one system everything on his end was great and it sounded like I was plugged into his board on my end and it recorded fine with no latency. However, I wasn't able to hear him while I was playing. So it was partially successful.
This morning we tried again, but the results (with the same setup) were reversed. Everything was great on my end but I cut out when he played on his end. I think at this point we're going to try wrapping our head around the 2-system approach, but right now I only get so far before my head wants to explode. It's sorta like the chicken/egg question.
Thanks for your email. Of course, I couldn't help exploring your website and I'm liking what you're doing there. Dug the sounds -- Very cool!
"I'm thinking an issue with Skype could be duplexing: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=100451. The problem of one person not hearing the other while playing at the same time sort of sounds like "ducking" audio during a voice over or a gate trigger. Oddly, for me and Joe, it only happens on one end. It happened on my end on our first attempt and then on his end on our second... We're so close though."-- bfbaker (on 05/22/11 09:22:13)
New Track: Baby Talk & app review: Thumbjam
Over the years I've recorded a number of songs using kids vocals. The first itme it was jamming with my neice, Cara. Usually it involves taking the vocal (either pieced together or the raw recording) and building music instrumentation behind it.Yesterday, my nephew, Dan, Cara's brother, posted a video of his 8-month-old son, Daniel jabbering away and I just had to do something with it.
I was thumbing through loops and found a jazzy horn groove that sounded like what little Daniel was riffing. The rest is pieced together from various sources: a snippet from Bjorn Erriksen via the Tapegerm Collective, a slice of piano from one of my own loops, a TR707 pattern I created from an iPhone app emulator, and the horns and percussion culled from platinumloops.com. The vocal "scat" break is played taking a sample of Daniel's voice and played chromatically on one of my favorite iPhone apps, thumbjam. Oh, and the bass is played using thumbjam too.
Thumbjam allows for a great deal of expression in your performance. You can quickly tweak the settings for things like a smooth glissando, delay, attack, etc. And there are lots and lots of keys to choose. I've used the app in a few recent recordings like the remake of "Rain Come Down" with violins and cello courtesy of Thumbjam. Highly recommended app.
Live jamming online
I did a search for "online jamming" and came across an idea that seems promising.ONLINE JAMMING ARTICLE
It involves playing together online via Skype. I've never used Skype, which is not an online jamming solution per se, but I've played around with a few other online jamming solutions and have not been all that impressed with anything so far. The fact that Skype is not built to be an online jamming solution actually works in its favor in being an effective online jamming solution, according to the author of the article linked above; and when you think about the things that work against other sites and software that are meant to be online jamming solutions, you do get the point.
Sites like ejamming.com have launched with a bit of buzz, but mostly settle down to being utilized by people you don't know playing music you don't care about. Strange as that may sound coming from me, since the argument against that is the same argument as every site (like homemademusic.com) which is based around people participating together -- you've got to actively participate in order to get anything out of it, before the experience is valuable to you.
But I'm getting off topic a little. At this point I'm interested in the possibility of working out songs live with my songwriting partner, Joe, who lives across the country. I'm interested in approximating the experience of being in the same room and working out songs live.
The Skype solution explained in the link above makes sense in terms of practicality in that you use two Skype connections (two separate computers for each person), one for the audio and one for the communication. I'm wondering if it would work to use my iPhone for the communication and the PC workstation for the audio and maybe Joe and I could try that briefly this weekend. I'll let you know how that works out.
On a related note is Hal McGee's announcement of a live video stream of his Apartment Music performance series. A bunch of artists get together in his apartment for a live concert every so often and this time it's going to be going out over justin.tv live on Saturday 5/14/2011 at 2pm eastern.
Vocal Booth
It could be the PC box I bought out of the classifieds from a Russian guy out of his apartment hear in Bountiful. It screams. Also the fact that this room is like a sound magnet or something, situated next to a bathroom with a possessed toilet, encircled by old steam heating vents that speak in alien barroom tongues, and having a window that takes up almost the entire back wall and faces a backyard which happens to be the gathering place for all the neighborhood kids during the day and all the adult parties at night.
Anyway, I began thinking of ways to isolate mic'd recordings and this morning decided something must be done and began searching Google for portable vocal booth solutions and found the ingenious idea pictured here and explained by creator and voice-over pro Harlan Hogan in his article about his portable vocal booth which he calls a Porta-booth.
Now, as simple as this looks to make, I am known far and wide as Anti Mechanic. I do break anything mechanical I try to fix. So if I manage to make this work you'll know it's within the means of any hometaper.
I'll keep you posted.
"I was thinking of building something like that. We always stick Mark in a closet with a condenser micro do vocals but the closet is lined with shelves full of paint cans and I swear you can hear them."-- stegor (on 05/13/11 23:11:34)
"One other thing: it appears I've mastered time travel. Notice the date stamps on our respective remarks? Start posting winning lottery numbers, will ya?"-- audball52 (on 05/10/11 07:38:42)
"The beauty of that contraption is near other-worldly. 1 milk crate, 10 bucks worth of foam (does it have to be Sonex? Maybe not for our purposes), some duct tape to shore it up. Done. With the holes already in the milk crate, you might be able to mount it on a mic stand with relative ease. Alas, as in your world, my simple home improvement tasks often end up requiring government intervention. Worth a shot, though."-- audball52 (on 05/10/11 07:36:01)
Album Collaboration Day 3
Here's a pattern I made. Feel free to download and use it with attribution:
DAY 2
Test entry.Joe Maki Collab
We've set a deadline for the album's completion of mid-July. No title or concept at this point. Hopefully we can write and recording a dozen good songs we'll be proud to call our own when it's done.
I'm going to blog about my side of making the album here and maybe Joe will be inclined to do the same and maybe not.
DAY 1
Which will usually be night (after work) or early morning as the inspiration strikes. I played around with something on acoustic guitar. The progression is more complex than my usual fare and I'm thinking I will flesh this one out a bit before committing anything to disk. The old 4-track days are long gone, of course. I did most of my last recent album through an Alesis MultiMix4 USB mixer (cheap $80 unit), but this time I'm starting out with the intention of returning to my old MOTU828 firewire rack. I run everything through a Mackie 1202-VLZ Pro mixer. All of my equipment is reaching the 10-year mark except for a plethora of iPhone apps and couple free/cheap VSTs. I'm using ACID Music Studio as my DAW of the moment, but will probably fire up Reaper again and try it with the 828. It DID NOT play well with the Alesis on my Windows XP box. I actually like ACID as a multitrack. I don't really do a lot of complicated MIDI or automation.
This morning I also created a couple 8-bit bits in an iPhone app called TweakyBeat which I highly recommend for that kind of thing. It comes with 16 sounds you can easily manipulate (waveform, release, pitch decay, pitch start, pitch end). There is a randomize function which will randomize the sound of the selected sound on the 16-step pattern sequencer (you can only have one sound per step). It stores 8 patterns per song which you can save in the app. Overall, I like it. It's very easy to make fast adjustments which you can hear on the fly so it's a lot of fun the tweak out some cool chip beats. Plus it's free.
MOTU 828
I was noticing I have one of those 1394 connections on the front of my pc box. It's the kind that goes into my old camcorder so I got that chord and put it into my motu firewire rack and downloaded the software and drivers and what do you know? It works. Hoping this will help with the latency since I had no latency using the 828 with my old iBook OS 9 laptop. Only other difference would be that I had a Glyph external hard drive with that setup. I guess we'll see.Also Synthstation25
I've been playing around with the SynthStation 25 with my iPhone4. I'm not getting good results. There is alot of inconsistent behavior, latency and system messages in regards to unsupported peripherals. It does work for the most part and at those times it's a really great system. I love the software and it's quite inspiring to play around with, so I may just go to playing without the keyboard and see what happens and hope that Akai supports the iPhone 4 soon.Avid KeyStation with ProTools SE
I happened to pass by the musician area at Best Buy the other day and saw a box with Avid's KeyStation/Micro USB/ProTools package. I've been wrestling with my Alesis QS7 synth for years, unable to get it working with the latest DAW and softsynth/VST stuff and generally missing out on all the cool things happening outside of plugging into an audio jack.I am not happy with this Avid package so far, but I'm still fighting with it and hope to report good results.
I'm trying to get it working on my music PC (a Windows XP box). While the keyboard was plug and play fantastic on my G5 iMac with Garageband (although there were other issues there), the install on the Windows box has been a frustrating task.
Seems Avid doesn't care to really support any configuration except the standard; although the install software seems to make way for several options.
I'm off to the day job, but I'll return with more weeping and wailing later. You can count on it.
chaba sound review
chaba sound review is a new review blog by John Hudak reviewing digital-only releases of music in the categories of: experimental, unusual, sound art. Send links for review to: chaba [at] duchamp [dot] inbox5 [dot] com.http://chabasound.blogspot.com/
Hannah Galli vocal session
Hannah came over last night for a vocal session to create some vocals for Tapegerm's 10 Years Infection project. We didn't have much planned, but I thought it would be cool to do some vocals with the Infection theme in mind.Hannah warmed up by doing an improv vocal of Poe's Annabell Lee with me on acoustic guitar. Then she did some vocals of "10 year infection" in various ways, including a track of harmonies.
Then we ran through some old lyrics of mine; recorded basic run through of "Bandit" with me on acoustic guitar. I'm thinking I may try and flesh this one out over the weekend.
We also started work on one of Hannah's songs. Hopefully I can come up with something behind it. I got something in mind which I think will be cool.
Not bad for a couple hours. Go check out the Tapegerm Infection project where you'll find a growing number of loop elements and people making crazy recordings.
180 Degrees
When I set up my studio in the small room of my 2-bedroom apartment, I set the drums up with the throne sitting in the corner of the room which made it so I had to cinch my way past the hi hat and snare. Which was a big pain. I set it up that way, because then I could watch the meters while recording. Which really makes no sense because even if there was an issue while recording, it would have been difficult to stop and start it, trapped as I was behind the drum kit.
So I finally turned it around today and it's so much better. I don't know why it took me so long to come around to doing it, but it's a big improvement. I also did something a little different with the mic placement. I'm using my usual SM57 setup, but I've raised the mics up a bit. I wasn't really doing this out of any thought about bettering the sound, but more about getting them out of the way. But, you know what? The loops sound pretty good, if you ask me. Check 'em out in my profile collab area.
4/20/10
I've been active creating music and loops at tapegerm.com recently with several new compositions. Over the weekend I contributed 30+ loops to the 10 Years Of Infection project, which celebrates Tapegerm's 10th anniversary next month. The loops were culled from sessions for my song, "Black and White Rainbows."An interesting thing about DAW recording is how each software package maintains each audio take. You might have a rhythm guitar on one tracks which behaves like rhythm guitar take, but if you've recorded that over the course of several takes, most DAW software will actually save the other takes as well -- they're just hidden. You can access the previous takes, depending on the features of your particular DAW.
I was using Deck at the time I was recording "Black and White Rainbows" for my Homemade Music double CD album. Deck has been discontinued by Bias since it was really becoming outdated in comparison to other packages. Its features were limited in terms of access virtual tracks, but you could always access the raw audio files which are saved in Sound Designer II, a native Mac OS format. Fortunately, the format can be read by Audacity which is my current sound editor of choice.
So anyway, I was able to go through all the raw audio from the "Black and White Rainbows" sessions and pick out a bunch of loops from unused takes, which is really cool if you ask me. I mean, think about it -- I've got 100+ songs in the old Deck format which all have many unused takes hiding away in the raw audio files just waiting to be culled into loops and re-used.
I've already used a nice synth bed for a new composition at tapegerm.com called "Homage" which also utilized open source audio from archive.org, along with a very cool loop from Tapegerm artist Cystem. Check it out HERE.
Welcome
homemademusic.com is being remodeled and refocused."We've pulled out some old merchandise."-- homemademusic (on 02/21/09 07:00:32)
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