Music

To Mic or Not To Mic that is the questions. For guitarist that are looking to get there guitar to sound as they hear it coming out of the Marshall Stack or that great sounding Nylon Acoustic there is always that question. For me and I can only speak from what I have tried and my environment, I still don't know which is best. I do know that I only purchase acoustic electric guitars which I have had some hard core guitarist discredit as cutting out some of the sound quality of the wood but for me it's the best method to get my sound in the computer and on CD. My only issue with micro phoning an amp or the guitar itself is the noise factor. Regardless of what you do you are still getting more noise this way then you will by running direct. On my CD Island Life the song By Request, is all done on my Fender Acoustic Electric. I have been told that its one of the best mixed songs I have done full of layers but what I hear when I listen to this song is the strumming of the guitar and the clean sound of the strings.. This was all recorded by running out from the guitar into the mixer and routing through the Virtulizer Pro to add a soft chorus and Revered that's all. The times that I have tried using a microphone in front of the guitar or amp I seem to get some much more ambient noise that I spend more time cleaning it up then I do in writing the song or working on the mix. For me, it's a no brainer if I have the ability to take my guitar and run it directly to the my mixer then that is what I will do every time. Now this is not to say you wont have noise by going direct

-- R.E. Fort Without Music... Life has no Soul Life, Health and Prosperity

Hello Music fans. I plan on updating this blog at least once a week with new information I find online about sound recordings cool new software and anything music related and maybe not music related stuff that catches my eye. For this first installment a little background. I have been in the computer industry as my day job since the mid to early 80's. I started out with MIDI back then as well, and in fact it's MIDI that got me into computers. When I started with MIDI it was still a card you had to break out your soldering kit to make work in your PC and that was the upgrade I purchased from my first rig. I have recorded with pretty much everything from a boom box in the garage to a full digital studio over the years. Now I believe I have a pretty cool in home studio and I think that is where I will begin talking about what I have found works and doesnt work for a good home studio. With a good set of software a decent PC, good mixer and some skills you can create some great sounding recordings. Below I have listed some of my own gear. I plan on going into details on each with pictures and suggested settings. Mixers: This is the heart of any home / pro studio. With a good rack you should be able to decrease the noise from your other gear and get a clean as possible recoding to your hard drive. Remember one thing and I really believe this, if the mixer is the heart of your studio then the cables are its veins. Cables carry that hot new song you are working on that will change the world only if it can be heard correctly. Cables can make or break that connection. I know I have been in my fare share of studios with mixers the size of my first dinner table and could not get a good clean sound all because of cables. Bad cables will make the most expensive hardware sound like crap so dont be stingy but by all means dont go crazy either. We will go into cables another day but let's just say I still dont have a single monster cable.

Behringer EuroRack MX1604. Behringer makes some pretty sweet hardware and I have found that this unit sounds great and gets the job done. The unit I have has lots of ins and outs and for what I do that's important. This board does not have digital, coaxial or SPDIF inputs or outs but I let the PC / sound card take care of that. It has 4 ¼ or XLR inputs 4 ¼ stereo inputs, Tape in and out, AUX Send and Receive along with XLR main out and ¼ main outs. It also supports a Control out that took awhile to figure out how I was going to use it. I take both of my Keyboards and run them into two of the mixers stereo inputs. This allows me to pan them and send them to the effects unit if I need to add any other effects not supported by the computer. This unit has four ¼ or XLR inputs, I use two of them for Guitar inputs and I dedicate another to the bass guitar that way I dontt have to worry about mix changes. The last I use a XLR Sure mic but as you can tell I don't do and vocals any longer and I don't mic my acoustic guitars but that's a subject for another blog.

Effects Processor: one of the staples of every home / pro studio is a good effects processor. If its enabled with MIDI then your even doing better. This gives you control over the unit so that when you open your song those settings are enabled. One of the issues with doing this is finding a good sequencer program that supports this. I am still working on this one but so far it's been fun. Behringer Virtualizer Pro This was a big move for me. Forever and I mean forever all of my guitar work has been done straight or clean guitar and then I would add effects through whatever software I was using at the time once it was recorded, most of the time this would have been Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, Sound Forge or Audio Audition. The problem with this and why I made the move to this unit was. When you are playing with effects, you tend to play too the effects. You hear it differently and play solos or chords based on that sound the same you do for any other type of instrument. Now when I play I am able tweak the sound just right before sending it to the PC.

So I think I have talked enough for one session enjoy the music