Universal Audio Plug Ins

I have had the pleasure recently to dive into the high fidelity world of Universal Audio Plug Ins. These cutting edge plug ins use the components of a dedicated hardware interface to replicate the circuitry of top shelf (or top rack rather) vintage studio equipment. The lines begins to blur ever more and the digital realm is engineering methods to pass even the most scrupulous listening tests.

The UAD plug ins engage the Apollo interface rack (and console) and based on the precision of voltage and circuitry measuring of name brands like Fairchild, Manely, Solid State Logic and even Ampex vintage tape machines, the circuitry is able to replicate the sound of the very transistors and capacitors that give these units their character analogue sounds.

I was most impressed by the UAD Ampeg tape machine plug in. Not only can you select the IPS or inches per second to get a more signature tape saturated sound, you can also choose the brand of tape. These choices are great, but what really impresses me is the sonic accuracy of this plug in. Ampex and Studer tape machines are notoriously difficult to repair and maintain and of course tape is very expensive. I have tried out many plug ins that attempt to emulate the tape sound by branding the plug in as a "vintage warmer" but nothing comes close to touching this plug in, it literally sounds like you went through the strenuous trouble of doing a tape pass through. You could buy this plug in 5 times over for what it would cost to get a studio engineer to bounce an 4 track EP on tape and back into the mix for that tape sound.

I use this pulg in on every band I produce and every beat I make as "glue" that holds everything together giving it that mastered sound quality that we are so used to hearing on our favourite records, most of which used the actually Ampex machine, the most popular mastering tool in the history of music.

Best of all, Ampex actually endorses this plug in claiming that Universal Audio nailed it.. and yes, no more fighting with spools of expensive tape or taking apart the multiple thousands of pieces for a repair. All you gotta do is get the Apollo and start plugging away! The plug in itself is about $200.00.

So much session guitar work lately!

The holidays were a great time to focus on running the Media Hub production studio that I have now grown so fond of. It is really amazing running a recording studio because the time that we are not in session with clients, is a time to work on crafting personal production skills.

Recently I have been lending my guitar playing skills to several electronic artists that have come through the studio, which has actually kept me quite busy just making "custom samples" as we like to call it. I realized that songwriting with a good friend of mine and client of the studio local poet and MC Pucona is an endeavour that enjoys a lot of productivity and fresh new ideas during every session. I have added many riffs to his new upcoming EP and we were discussing the possibility of starting a band together with our electronic producer collaborator Felipe. Pucona came up with the name Circus Familiah for the group and we started writing some live and studio material for the sound collective.

As I was working on some beats of my own in the studio, Pucona grabbed a mic in the vocal booth and just started absolutely slaying rhymes over the dubstep beat I was laying down, which was really great. We decided that with the collaborations that we have together to take the songs originally written by each artist and release the collection independently as our own EP's and then converge on all the new tracks. It looks as though I will be release my first solo EP at the end of February under the dubstep producer moniker AxCalibre.

I am really excited about this new EP release and I can't wait for my new tunes to hit the decks of DJ's spinning around town and abroad. I chose the name because I wanted to represent the fact that I write all my music on guitar and then I transfer it over to powerhouse synthesizers like Massive, Albino, Razor and Zebra. I leave alot of the raw guitar tracks in the mix using spatial imagers and many other processors to make the guitars sound fat and out of the rock n roll context. I will post some audio teasers on this blog before I drop this beast of an EP. Cheers

Free downloads for my blogger pals

Hey guys, I have talked often about the recording process and marketing the music off my new record, so here is two FREE SONGS for you guys! Tell me which song you like the best! Thanks for reading!

Brand new grunge inspired FREE MUSIC below! Wheew!
http://lastrelapse.bandcamp.com

Album Release

There is a lot of technicalities that go into the release of an album. I am slowly finding out and the hoops to jump through as I work through it with the Last Relapse release. 

ISRC codes are an integral part of all your favourite digital media and it is a code that I have just learned about when applying it to my own content. Basically ISRC codes digitally track the lifespan of digital media- all of it's plays and downloads. And reports the data to Sound Scan and SOCAN so they can accurately chart your songs and pay out due royalties. This is one amazing benefit of the digital media culture we live in: the ability to accurately track and report album stats without relying on major labels to coax Billboard reporters to bump up album spots. 

The ISRC codes come with a small price of $50.00 for an album. After paying this fee you get a unique ISRC code for your band and each song is issued a sub code as well. Typically these codes are burned into the disk with mastering software, but being a digital audio file the code can be embedded without major surgery to get into the file. 

It's amazing that you can get world wide distribution and album charting with a couple clicks of the mouse as a small payment. Of course you need a quality product and a solid fanbase to achieve real success, but it I great to know the tools of the trade before Ozzy comes knockin on your door to put you in his show roster. Cheers! 

Visiting a Mastering House

Two weeks ago my band, Last Relapse, finished mixing our first EP Glass Empire. We messed around with minor changes swapping out guitar solos and layering vocals till finally we were happy with the final mixes. So what next after that?

We then entered the process of mastering and sent our 24 bit mixes over to Scott Pinder at Polyphonic Mastering Labs. Mastering is essentially the process of applying precise EQs, compressors and limiters to create a stereo audio file that sounds great and loud on a wide range of systems. 

A big selling feature thsy attracted our business to Polyphonic Mastering Labs was the premium analog gear that is used in house. Analog mastering is simply in parelelled: you get the warm sounds of natural tape compression that sounds incredibly smooth to the ear. The instrument of choice to achieve this effect is the Manley Slam ADA Converter, which takes a digital signal and cycles it through an analog signal chain bringing out all the nuances and buried harmonics. 

After this conversion is complete then the signal moves through a couple premium EQs where slight corrections are. Made with great precision. Then back in the digital real, the audio is converted back to Wav digital audio where it enters the SADIE disk editing system. 

This was the point where Nolan and I jumped in to name our songs and come up with the order of songs to appear on our EP. Thankfully we had an idea. We decided to make the first song end right close to the beginning of the second song so they almost blend together: that was a pretty spur of the moment creative call the turned out great. 

Lastly we updated the ISRC codes, which actually tracks each audio file and how many times the song is copied ect. We printed two disks after Scott shared a story of how a previous client slipped getting into his car and ran over his only copy and had to come back. 

The EP will be available this weekend! 

Sound Garden guitar cover

Hello six string slingers

I have finally come across an accurate guitar tab that brilliantly transcodes one of my favorite songs from the 90's, Burden In My Hand by Sound Garden. I remember many hang ups as a teenager trying to learn this song and have a rough time because the song is in an obscure open turning and every "free" tab out there was getting baffled by this right off the start—pretty gruelling to learn a song that is tabbed in the wrong turning to say the least!

This last year I came across a website that has transformed my guitar playng by making tabs much more accurate and the rhythm of the song is built in so there are no guesses with the time signature or any other important piece of musical information that free tab sites seems to frequently get stumped on. Don't get me wrong, the LE version of this tab site is also free, but what makes it great, is that it employs a strong interface that is incredibly intuitive for the guitar player.

Check out the website, http://www.songsterr.com/ and skip the frustration that faulty tabs will bring you! Unnecessary frustration when a guitar player like yourself should be focusing on developing your own style and recruiting more groupies. Below is the cover tune, it is an ode to my former tab-frustrated teenager self and the awesome readers of my blog, enjoy!

https://vimeo.com/79762346 

E bow Demonstration Video

I have created a demonstration video to follow up from my Ebow post. I have been having fun with my new guitar tool and thought that it could be useful for those considering picking up one of these awesome gadgets.

Music First audio production seminar

Hello

I have recently taken on a new position as head of audio post production for film and new media with the Music First school.  I will be teaching intro to audio post production on October 21st at Skull Space studios at 125 Adelaide St. I am excited to announce that this will be the last seminar at this location because we have newly acquired the former Absurd Machine Studio space and are in the process of converting it to be a fully operational recording space! In November all of our classes will be held this premier location. Esteemed Colombian electronic producer, Felipe Munoz, will be teaching electronic music production and I will focus on teaching  production techniques for live instruments and of course the film and broadcast side of production.

I am very thrilled to have a co-teacher with Felipe's great talents and I know from experience already that we make a great team in the studio. We are newly renovating our program outline for the new space; we will be able to offer a much wider range of subject matter. When the classes aren't in session the studio will be working on client projects., which will be engineered by Felipe and myself.

The greatest thing about the space is that we have the capacity to launch huge album release concerts in house because  of the 600 person capacity of the space. I will post a demo teaser of our seminars after we record the intro session  on  October 21st. Keep checking in! I will update you on the  renovations of the studio.

Cheers!

Blackbird Studios

I recently got to use a product create by one of my most favourite producers George Massenburg. I got to sweep the master mix of a couple new Last Relapse tunes and to fill out mix before we sent it out to a mastering house. I always try to do a bit of a pre-master before I sent any records out to a mastering house: so they know the over all sound that we are trying to achieve for the final product.

I was working with the GML 8200 on the stereo mix bus to treat the final left and right mix. I was amazed at the surgical precision and incredible transparency of this mastering EQ. I found the design to be very ergonomic with the pots having a certain weight to them so you could turn them within a fraction of a Db to target the specific frequency.

I remember a photo of George Massenburg's EPIC studio intrigued me at a young age just starting my career in sound with Sound Art Calgary. The photo was half way through an issue of Mix Magazine and it just jumped out at me as one of the most amazing studios I have ever seen. The design is acoustically brilliant and doubles as a modern art installation. Check out Blackbird Studios below:

Fully functional surround sound mixing space.

I was surprised to learn the George Massenburg coined the term "Parametric EQ," this term is consider part of the essential studio vocabulary in any modern studio. His products were at the fore front of their day and many of the EQs George uses in the studio have earned a world class reputation for delivering the most true high fidelity audio.

Even more shocking than the reputation of the studios renowned gear is the client list that has put in blood sweat and beers to create great albums at his studio. I wonder how many ground breaking artists visited each other in this multi studio facility: there are 10 separate sections of this studio for high quality recording... I think he's just trying to rub it in haha

I was happy to get my hands on an innovative piece of gear that sings true just like the legendary studio that has been a long standing fixation of my pipe dreams.

The Amazing Ebow

I have recently purchased a new and amazing guitar effect product called the Ebow. I really didn't know what to think when I first saw this little gadget that looked very alien and fit in the palm of my hand. I was instantly blown away when I saw this mysterious handheld device in action as it hovered over my friends guitar and produced some of the most rich fully sustained guitar tones that beautifully mimicked a cello or violin—this sound was popularized by many artists notably Frank Zappa and Metallica. I was especially impressed at how the Ebow could sweep all six strings in one solid motion and unleash super fast arpeggios that sound like Jimmy Page gone mad splintering one of his massive cello bows.

I used this device on one of the guitar solos on my bands new record keeping it low in the mix and soaked with lush delays to create a sort of ethereal texture in the background of a guitar solo. The Ebow is a great tool for create complexities in this way: it does wondrous things to a mix when it is used as a guitar re enforcement tool. I highly recommend playing around with this unit to see if this tool suits your sound!

There are three stylistic ways to use the EBow as a tool for guitar expression:


1.) Arpeggio bowing - Run through arpeggio shapes as the Ebow is swept across the strings the ascend and descne the arpeggio notes.

2.) Spiccato bowing - Touch the Ebow to the guitar string in quick motions to target individual notes. Let the note sustain as you see fit. This sounds great with reverb and delay.

3.) Bowing - Move the Ebow back and forth to gently "massage" the string and let the guitar sing like a cello or violin.

All these styles can be incorporated together to create the most dynamic and crowd-stunning riff runs. A 9v battery fits into the top of the unit and weighs it out beautifully for great playability.

Happy bow'in!