The Challenge 25/01/10

Renesongs

OK after a Long leisurely Cape Town style Festive break we back With the Challenge we don't have any new topics in stock so we giving you the pre Christmas topic at half price which is:-

Guy Onraet wrote: Yo
Let's do something to ring in the summer. So, something upbeat, uptempo, feel-good and rocking.

Entries to reach me by PM Sunset Monday 1 Feb 2010

Renesongs

Bump

mattayou

Aaaah we're back in business! Will try get back on track with these!

dee

I was actually wondering yesterday when this starts again...! ?

chris77

Last night I tried to record the rythm part with an acc. , and it sounded horrible! I just plugged the guitar straight into the interface and to the laptop - fiddling with the eq settings on the guitars preamp. Will I be able to get a warmer sound if I run it through an amp first? The guitar is an Ibanez EW something, and has the ussual undersaddle transducer pu. Lost cause, or can I still get relatively warm tone somehow?

Squonk

What Interface are you using Chris77

I run my Accoustic through my Zoom or Pod via the interface (In my case, Behringer external sound card) and I can tweak it a bit with EQ, Compression, or any other effect there is.
Still does not beat a condenser mic though!

AlanRatcliffe

Squonk wrote: I run my Accoustic through my Zoom or Pod via the interface (In my case, Behringer external sound card) and I can tweak it a bit with EQ, Compression, or any other effect there is.
Still does not beat a condenser mic though!

+1. A mic will usually give you the best results, especially a decent mic in a good sounding room. An effects processor (ideally an acoustic one) can be used with a DId acoustic to improve it (compression, chorus and reverb can all help), but generally DIing gives you the pickup sound perfectly - warts and all - without the benefit of even the sound of the room. A decent valve preamp (of the mic/instrument variety, not an electric guitar one) can help a bit too.

shaundtsl

Ahh this is so cool, I am looking forward to submitting to these competitions. I am still a new member on this forum so this competition is still new to me so I am quite excited to get going. I will not be entering this round though as I just bought a M-Audio fast track pro and apart from trying to figure it out, I am still getting a rather awful sound out of my gear when trying to record (getting alright clean sound with my Korg AX1500G, but dist sucks, maybe someone can tell me what I am doing wrong?). I want to polish that up a bit and maybe enter the next competition.

What I am actually saying is, I dig this competition idea big time and cant wait to get going! :woohoo:

chris77

@Squonk, Alan. Ja, a proper mic will be first prize for sure, but I cant seriously justify buying one. I also use a behringer interface, a Ucg 222 I think. No matter how I fiddled the eq settings, it sounded k@k. It went from brittle and harsh to hollow and distant. Acoustically the guitar has a very nice clean and defined sound, so I was hoping I could capture that. What Zoom pedal do use? I have a GFX 5 but hardly ever use it. Would it be worth a try?

PeteM

I won't be able to do anything this time 'round - just too darned busy. ☹ Pity, I love doing these things.

chris77

Mines in, but its waaay different than what I had planned. I wanted to do an Eels like summer rock tune but only ended up playing Mrs E's Beautifull Blues in 50 different ways. :-[ Not cool at all. So this morning I tried something else. Not Upbeat and Rocking at all actually, but its all I could come up with with a summer feel. ?

evolucian

shaundtsl wrote: Ahh this is so cool, I am looking forward to submitting to these competitions. I am still a new member on this forum so this competition is still new to me so I am quite excited to get going. I will not be entering this round though as I just bought a M-Audio fast track pro and apart from trying to figure it out, I am still getting a rather awful sound out of my gear when trying to record (getting alright clean sound with my Korg AX1500G, but dist sucks, maybe someone can tell me what I am doing wrong?). I want to polish that up a bit and maybe enter the next competition.

What I am actually saying is, I dig this competition idea big time and cant wait to get going! :woohoo:

I actually haven't experimented with plugging my rack unit into the fast track... one day i might. If you have something that can process your sound on your pc like guitar rig or amplitube (or if you can afford the Waves software, they have a very nice warm guitar amp sim) it may work better that way. Just make sure your latency is cool by using the asio driver of the sound card (maudio usb asio) which should drop it to about 5ms. Then just play via vst plugins... I'm sure they are available on downlaod in demo format somewhere as well. And there are one or two free vst plugins/amp sims around.

I can no longer take part in these cos my modem went bye bye so I'm on gprs at the mo... and it sucks... will probably take a year to upload a track... anyway, enjoy guys

mattayou

Mine is in... Hope we get a few entries this week!

shaundtsl

Thanks evolucian,

So basically record clean and let the DAW do the effects? Other options are to record from my line out on my marshall or cube 30.

It will just try experimenting, trial and error... my usual way of learning is doing it wrong the first (2nd 3rd...) time.