guitar junkie
Guitar User.
First a disclaimer that this is a copy and paste from my blog over at wordpress.com
I have been working with computer based music creation/production since the age of 16 I was using Audacity and Gold Wave before moving to Cool Edit and finally moving to Mac OS X and there I learned to use Garage Band
Finally deciding I needed something that would do higher resolution audio I moved to Mackie Tracktion2. Sadly Tracktion which I would love to keep using if it were still being developed for Intel Mac would most likely be my choice still today… It was my understanding that version 3 was very sluggish on the Mac and chewed up a lot of resources….
All those packages were great for the time but as my skills improve and my hardware keeps getting nicer I find myself ready to make some some changes…
See I play acoustic music with my wife Hannah, and together we are the Deep River Roots Band.
This season finds us recording new CD and I am really looking into what I want to use to track and mix this album…. Since we are an acoustic band I really don’t feel we need any sort of Midi editing options at all, because we play real stringed instruments rather than synths, and I don’t really need a lot of fancy editing options that are often used in big budget studios…. Fake drums are not needed either so that pretty much in my mind has ruled out Midi altogether… I have only a few needs… I need a DAW with high resolution audio recording and support for the Mac OS as well as support for Core Audio and more importantly being able to select from any of the 10 inputs on my firepod!
I have liked Logic 8 which has been the main DAW for the last two CD’s but as I get more set into the idea of how I like to work I just find it a little bulky with all it’s library of loops and Midi options and scoring windows and editing windows and all the other bulky messy stuff it seems to throw on top of my musical space. Though I will say Logic has some great effects I rarely use more than two or three of the ones that it comes with… (more on this later)
I know the next thing I am about to hear is “Have you tried REAPER?”
My answer is yes I have tried it and so far I find it to still not be stable enough for the Mac but getting closer… I feel it is pretty close to what I would like to end up using but it just doesn’t work well enough to trust my takes to when I have random crashes going on within the software.
Today I took a few moments to set up some templates in both Logic and REAPER in order set up my four main Aux sends and the four tracks or so that we’ll be tracking our vocals and instruments into…
I also made a set of four basic sends for a reverb effect and a tape simulator for adding a little distortion and slight compression. I made a send to an EQ which might see use from my acoustic guitar, but might not… I then made all these sends into a folder track to hide them away from view for when I want to just track everything and forget about being an engineer while putting down the songs to… er hard drive?
I like using Convolution Reverb as well as tape simulators, and a few times I reach for a couple nice but modest EQ tools, there is some compression and limiting someplace in my final stages of mixing but other than that I don’t use a lot of plugins… Sure I love delay and even then I mostly use a sort of slapback effect when doing something with a 50s sort of sound….
But when it comes down to musicality how much do you really need to make a good sounding record?
My need here is something more like a big tape machine inside my computer with something the extent of a 1950s console with just a handful of rack gear to complete my final mixes before they get burned to disk…
Does anybody else think like me? Am I the only person who wants to go back to a simpler style of recording where I might not have the tools to make millions of different sounds, but I have just what I need to make one really good one?
I would love to get some feedback on others thoughts when it comes to this…
I have been working with computer based music creation/production since the age of 16 I was using Audacity and Gold Wave before moving to Cool Edit and finally moving to Mac OS X and there I learned to use Garage Band
Finally deciding I needed something that would do higher resolution audio I moved to Mackie Tracktion2. Sadly Tracktion which I would love to keep using if it were still being developed for Intel Mac would most likely be my choice still today… It was my understanding that version 3 was very sluggish on the Mac and chewed up a lot of resources….
All those packages were great for the time but as my skills improve and my hardware keeps getting nicer I find myself ready to make some some changes…
See I play acoustic music with my wife Hannah, and together we are the Deep River Roots Band.
This season finds us recording new CD and I am really looking into what I want to use to track and mix this album…. Since we are an acoustic band I really don’t feel we need any sort of Midi editing options at all, because we play real stringed instruments rather than synths, and I don’t really need a lot of fancy editing options that are often used in big budget studios…. Fake drums are not needed either so that pretty much in my mind has ruled out Midi altogether… I have only a few needs… I need a DAW with high resolution audio recording and support for the Mac OS as well as support for Core Audio and more importantly being able to select from any of the 10 inputs on my firepod!
I have liked Logic 8 which has been the main DAW for the last two CD’s but as I get more set into the idea of how I like to work I just find it a little bulky with all it’s library of loops and Midi options and scoring windows and editing windows and all the other bulky messy stuff it seems to throw on top of my musical space. Though I will say Logic has some great effects I rarely use more than two or three of the ones that it comes with… (more on this later)
I know the next thing I am about to hear is “Have you tried REAPER?”
My answer is yes I have tried it and so far I find it to still not be stable enough for the Mac but getting closer… I feel it is pretty close to what I would like to end up using but it just doesn’t work well enough to trust my takes to when I have random crashes going on within the software.
Today I took a few moments to set up some templates in both Logic and REAPER in order set up my four main Aux sends and the four tracks or so that we’ll be tracking our vocals and instruments into…
I also made a set of four basic sends for a reverb effect and a tape simulator for adding a little distortion and slight compression. I made a send to an EQ which might see use from my acoustic guitar, but might not… I then made all these sends into a folder track to hide them away from view for when I want to just track everything and forget about being an engineer while putting down the songs to… er hard drive?
I like using Convolution Reverb as well as tape simulators, and a few times I reach for a couple nice but modest EQ tools, there is some compression and limiting someplace in my final stages of mixing but other than that I don’t use a lot of plugins… Sure I love delay and even then I mostly use a sort of slapback effect when doing something with a 50s sort of sound….
But when it comes down to musicality how much do you really need to make a good sounding record?
My need here is something more like a big tape machine inside my computer with something the extent of a 1950s console with just a handful of rack gear to complete my final mixes before they get burned to disk…
Does anybody else think like me? Am I the only person who wants to go back to a simpler style of recording where I might not have the tools to make millions of different sounds, but I have just what I need to make one really good one?
I would love to get some feedback on others thoughts when it comes to this…