What's it all about, Jean Paul?

  • Thread starter Thread starter LI Slim
  • Start date Start date
Seems to be, but shouldn't be. I noticed that as well. Ther is obviously no adjustment whatever, so its one of 2 things:
1) They screwed up.
2) They do it on purpose to try and avoid clicks on "hot" files.
 
still waiting for those nice people at MP3 to "approve" the listing.........
In the meantime I've put the demo on www.nowhereradio.com if you want to listen, look for Uru there
 
it keeps hanging up on me. any other location where i can listen?

guhlenn
 
wow, this is the best thread I've read in a long time. very exciting.

Sjoko, from looking at uru's picture, I'll never have guessed that she was Nigerian. Guess what, I'm Nigerian also. I guess from her accent that she is from the south(yoruba), which is where I am from, and I can hear some Lagbaja/fela influence in her singing. What does uru mean in english?.

THe first thing I heard on that mix was that it had the kind of air or space that has eluded me for a long time and I would not have believed it if anybody said it was done on home-recording equipment.

Which brings me to my next point. I agree with shailat that we will not get the big studio sound from our bedroom, but where do we draw the line? When I do a song, I compare it my references, and believe me, it is agonizing to hear a sound on your system, and not be able to duplicate it. You know what you want, you can even describe it, but you just don't know how to get there. Very agonizing

So where do we draw the line?
 
Hey Cyan - OhChineke!! :)
Uru - Ibo - short for Uruaku = Gift from God, and she is, second daughter of Chief.... etc.

Cyan! you're from "peppa land!" I love that stuff!

This was done in a bedroom. The "space" you hear, most of it is a result of very careful and minute application of delayed reverb on the lead vocal. There is no EQ on the lead, nor on any other vocal track. The low end of the lead was shelved.

Because of the small # of tracks available, I grouped the various sets of backing vocals, panned them and brought them down to 2 tracks. After that I used different shelving on each group. On some I cut the high frequencies, in one case quite dramatically, on some I cut the low end.

The room itself is has horrible acoustics, it is cube shaped, one wall a mirror top to bottom. I made a vocal "booth" with 4 x 7' high tube traps in a semi circle, with the mic poking through the middle. I can really recommend these things, I'm using them all the time, even in a "real" studio.

MP3 still awaiting approval...... hopefully it should get "on" today.
 
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sjoko2 said:


OK, I think I should back this up somehow. I've never made an MP3, so I better have a go at it anyway.
What if I downloaded Pro Tools free, did a basic track, at my friends apartment, not in a studio, .............
Now pleeeeeeeeeease don't think that I am trying to show off. If I was so inclined I would use my real name here, wouldn't I? All I will try to do is prove that you CAN do something that sounds good without using a mountain of gear.
(Saying that, it might sound like total shit:)
Click to expand...
'

I can do it with one hand behind my back!
 
peppa land! haha

its true that most of my american friends don't have half a stomach for spicy food, and you can feel them freaking out when I pour some hot sauce on my food. THey suffer from spicyness by just watching me eat.

Chineke meh o! You know of course that if she did a cd with songs like those, it would be an instant hit in Nigeria.

I would like to be able to get that kind of nice reverb sound on my vocals.

I might need some more descriptions of your vocal booth, because I want to build me one too.

thanks
 
Well....

I didnt hear it yet as I am having download problems but lets asume it is good

I think sjoko that your mp3 has missed the point.
It has only proven mine :) and the beginning of the thread. It is the gear and the man behind the gear.

You are not using home recording gear.
Is a $3000 mic (and a pre god only knows how much it costs) and a Lucid converter ( hardly a soundcard converter) and a vocal booth you would use in a pro studio as well considered a homerecording only becuase it was done at home?. I doubt the fact that you are using PT free had any strong effect on the quality of the sound so to claim that you are using home
stuff doesnt apply here.

I understand from you that this is what you do for a living and that you have over 20 years of experience.
The only think you have proved from this is it takes excellent gear and a Professional engineer to get good recordings at home but yet can be done even better at a studio.

Your honor, I acuse Mr. sjoko2 of putting false hope in the hearts of members of this BBS. He admited to not using the Rode mics and claiming that the magmic has no match. I showed you all exhibit 1 2 and 3.
I suggest your honor, that Mr. sjoko2 be put in a cell
with a SB and a free limited cool edit version with a mic made by "toys are us". Oh.......he can take the cheap Yamaha keyboard with him

I rest my case your honor.
 
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Man.......

You know, I really believed in that fella...
So he was fooling us all the time. Jee.
:D


Well, Shailat, now you've done it. Now I'll go buying pro-$ gear again instead of just trying to get most out of what I have, and saving money for 'later'. There goes my big house with a nice family and happy children with toys.
Later, when my kids will be beating eachother up with a drumstick again, because they both want play the toy-keyboard which will actually be the only toy they have, cause there ain't no money left and it's the only thing I will keep for the rest of my life (Isn't worth nothing, and you can play tunes on it, so why throw it away?), so then, I will tell my crying and depressed wife that is about to leave me, and finally got to me in between mixing songs, about the only thing I still do sober by then, that she really has to blame YOU for this all...
 
yeah, but what else can you do? it's not like you have a future *NOW*...

LOL

guhlenn;)
 
roel roel roel,

I bet you don't listen to Tom Leikis. The first mistake you made was having children. I hope that you have not bought a minivan yet. :)

I listened to the post you put on sjokos link in the clinic, and I thought that you did a pretty good job. I was half expecting hard metal, with too much 5k but the sound was very good. Congratulations.

I agree with Shailat to the extent that you need an awesome engineer to turn out the best in a good product, but sjoko has proved that you can get awesome mixes with our homerecording gear.

He did it in ptFREE, which I would not even condescend to use.

He mixed on event 20/20s which definitely fall into the category of homerecording equipment,

he used a $400 keyboard for the instruments

He vocal booth can be built by anyone here, and he mixed in an acoustically regular room.


The only conclusions that I can get from this are:
1. It is entirely possible to do commercial sounding stuff at home, or

2. We can keep all the equipment we have and go buy dedicated converters.


I prefer to choose number one because sjoko said that his mike beats a u87, but a u87 would have sounded pretty darn professional as well.
 
Shailat! My man! You left 10 years off - I suddenly feel a lot younger!

To counteract it you statement:
1). The Lucid converter. As I have written in some other threads, I keep trying to explain to people that digital sound stands or falls with the quality of conversion (and the clock, but that's another story). A huge number of homers spend their money on things they could well do without, they would be much better of with a decent converter then for instance spend money on tube pre amps. tube microphones, small noisy consoles etc.
Fact: Had I used a 10.000 bucks mic / pre combo through a soundcard, it would have sounded like a soundcard "sound". On the other hand, had I used a cheap mic on the setup I used, it would still sound good.
In this case, I used the mic 'coz it's Uru's standard thing, she's used to it. I would, actually, have been better off with a much cheaper mic, like an AT4055, as the tracks are filled with ambient noise from the house and outside. If you heard each track in isolation you'd really laugh, there are footsteps, a toilet flushing, etc.
2) A vocal booth? I recorded. like I said, in a room of the worse possible shape and size. To counteract this, I used 4 tube traps. Tube traps tube traps. A circle of 1/8" thick pressed board with a thin layer of glasswool glued to the inside, and inside that a circle of 1/8" pressed corrogated board. Cover the lot with burlap, fix the burlap onto the outside with spray glue. Total cost for 4, 2 sheets of straight, 1 sheet corrogated, burlap and glue under 40 bucks! I don't think thats out of reach for most homers, do you? Is that pro gear? Yup, 'coz it works.
3) I used PTfree, of cause there is no difference in sound quality if you use PT free or a $10.000 Mix plus system - its the same software, with less tracks, and its free.

So let me see, you can get pretty much the same results like this:
AT4055 $425, reasonable pre $250, I/O $100, Lucid $750, some removable acoustic stuff $40 etc.
Total under 1500 bucks

Have I counteracted that?
 
Woooow... man. That was future talk, I don't even have a girlfriend at the moment... :D

Why did you expected to hear metal? Too much 5k on metal is obvious, but metal?? I've been listening to jazz, (rather modern) classical, and -rather-weird-kinda- music for the past 3 years now. (This last means anything from Zappa over Zorn to Klezmer and 16 century polyphonic stuff... Anything my mother hates. :) )

Maybe the idea of quality convertors isn't that bad. Main difference between the software is not the soundquality, that's just a bunch of basic calculations (not talking plugins here) but rather the functionnality and performance I guess. So the quality is mainly dependent on mic, pres and AD... And the guy that is turning the knobs ofcourse.

What Sjoko used for that was high-end... Only the mix and editing wa done on homerecording-equipement.

So maybe one of us with mediocre results, for instance me :D, should get the opportunity to get pro-gear for free (maybe by means of donations?), and do the same test? Another possibility: I get a free trip to CA, and try it with exactly the same gear as Sjoko...

All in favor say "OI".
OI. :D
 
I hope I haven't created a monster!

Bullshit. I hope I HAVE.

People are funny. After engaging in extended discussions and learning experiences, we tend to say that what we learned is what we believed to begin with.


Sjoko's project, I think highlighted something different than it's original intention. That is, a homerecorder (homerecordist?) can improve his/her quality by taking a good merciless look at which links in the chain, from your brain to an mp3 file, can be improved, and then developing a realistic plan for either doing it or being satisfied with things as is.

I think that I, for example, was kind of in denial. I was so in love with the idea of elegant simplicity that I wanted to believe that my Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96 would give me all I could desire in a pre-amp and converter (I still think it is a pretty amazing little tool though even if not a panacea). And trying to deal with acoustical treatments just made my head spin so much that I wanted to believe that it was unimportant.

I think another important thing to consider is what these recordings are being compared to. What's their real-life context? In the mp3 jungle, for example, even modest equipment when used well by a good musician gets you pretty high up in the food chain. And as I said before, I think that for demo purposes many of us can produce better recordings at home than by spending a few rushed hours with an engineer.

Sometimes I think we also minimize the performance. Some people are just fucking great, and would come through using two dixie cups, a piece of string and a radio shack cassette recorder with an internal mic. Almost nobody becomes rich and famous, even if they have the best equipment money can buy.
 
I agree dobro.

What I tried to demonstate is that everything is possible, as well as exactly the point slim made.
Everyone can come up with something decent, but think before you buy stuff, think before you spend your money, get you chain as perfect as you can, design it so you can add and improve along the way.

I think the other point, which has not been discussed, is time. Sonusman in another post stated something that ALWAYS happens. He said; "you start a mix and after 1 hour the band is really happy with it" - this is when you have just started. Almost to a fault everyone seems to do that - and it never fails to amaze me.
The songs I put up are demo's, thats all. I spend a very limited time on mixing them, because they are demo's. But ... in one hour of my time I can do more than a "homer" can do in a week. Pro Tools has become part of my brain, its my tool, so when I said I did it quick.....
Point i'm trying to make, everyone tries to do it to quick!
Take your time!
 
sjoko2,

I was going to post a answer to the gear issue but
I suggest we leave it as it is and let anybody conclude what he wants from this thread.
 
ok,

sjoko, you said lucid for $750. Where can I get this.
Also, what would you recommend as the minimum d-a converter for getting wow sound. WOuld you recommend the rosetta or maybe RME?

hey guys. Ok Sjoko did not use a soundcard but a converter. Now listen to this song that was done on the original MOTU 2408 an mixed in Digital Performer, in her living room, and see if you agree that we can get pro stuff in our bedrooms.

By the way, the song made it to a record and the writer has previously gotten 5 grammy nominations.

Nonetheless, this was done in DP using MOTU 2408 converters.



www.mp3.com/suzanneciani

and listen to "turning"

"turning" is the only song that was done in her studio. THe others were from previous albums.


Now do you agree that it is possible?
 
hey skojo2,

I listened to "You Know", and I know this is more related to the vocal style, but the words just don't seem to flow together, there's too much space between them. It sounds as if each word was recorded separately and then phrases were cut/pasted together. Don't tell the Nigerian model, but she kinda sounds like a speak-n-spell. Again, I know that's not the engineering (which I thought was great)...just an observation about the song.

Anyway, I really think we all need to remember that its all about the music. I know through the process of setting up a DAW, researching mics, etc. I've virtually stopped making music. This seems to happen to me with nearly all my interests. I get caught up in the gear side of things and lose sight of the actual goal. Its so easy to think of the shortcomings of your gear - you really need a better mic, a better compressor, a better A/D converter, but when it comes right down to it, its the song thats going to make whatever gear you have sound good. Focus on your music and when it sounds good enough to record, you'll get it done, whether that's in a studio or at home. At home, you may run into problems with wearing too many hats. You also lack the high-dollar studio equipment. But if you're patient and willing to learn and you buy the right cheap gear, you'll have complete artistic control as musician and engineer without sacrificing quality.

If you're ever lacking for inspiration, take a listen to God Lives Underwater. If you flip through the liner notes of any of their 3 CDs, you'll find the phrase "recorded at home". Now I'm not sure what kind of setup they have in their home studio, but it couldn't have been anything fancy when they recorded their first 6 track CD in 1995. I'm probably a little biased as they are among my favorite bands, but the recording/mixing/mastering quality of even their first CD is never lacking. In fact, its as good or better than anything I can compare it to. Keep in mind they do get outside mastering, but from what I know, everything up to that point they do at home.
 
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