Who is this Harvey Gerst jerk and why should I listen to anything he says?

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Harvey Gerst

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I suddenly realised that many of you might be wondering what some of my own recordings sound like. I mean, if I were you, I'd be saying to myself, "who the hell is this guy, and why should I listen to anything he says?". And that's a fair thing to say. So, I've gone thru and put some mp3s of groups I've recorded over the last few years, using a lot of the techniques I've talked about, and I'm posting the mp3 links here.

One of two things will happen: either you'll hate 'em (and then you can safely afford to skip anything I ever post here), or, you'll like them and ask, "How'd you do that?". The music is varied, and I'll try to give you a brief explanation of what each piece is (if you have any questions after hearing them). Some are snippets, others are full length. This isn't about "ooh, ahh, you're great, Harvey." It's just to help you hear what I do for a living.

John Nitzinger - Texas Rock/Blues

1. Going Back To Texas (short)
2. Cats And Dogs Blues (short)

Very typical studio mic setup:
Kick - AKG D112
Snare - Shure SM-57
Toms - Sure SM-57s
Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD-421
Overhead - 2 - Shure SM-81
Bass - Direct
Guitars - Sans Amp
Organ - Direct
Vocals - Beyer Soundstar Mk II

No Exit - Soft Rock Group

1. Rescue Me (short)
2. Move Up (long)

Kick - AKG D112
Snare - Shure SM-57
Toms - Sure SM-57s
Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD-421
Overhead - 2 - Shure SM-81s
Bass - Direct
Guitars - Sans Amp
Keyboard - Direct
Vocals - Beyer Soundstar Mk II
Backup vocals - Sony ECC377 Condenser
Saxophone - Sennheiser MD421

Ken Burton - Contemporary Folk

1.Rio Town (short)

Guitar - AKG C3000
Vocals - AKG C3000

Dreamstone - New Age

1. Incantation (short)

Very un-typical studio mic setup:
African drums - 57, 421, EVC15P, SM-81
Australian Digeridoo - EVC15P
Native American Flute - AT813B min. Condenser

Alex Whitmore - Country

1. Borderline Nights(long)
2. (I'm) Not At Home On The Range (long)

Kick - ATM-25
Snare - Shure SM-57
Toms - Sennheiser E-504s
Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD-421
Overhead - 2 -EVC15P
Bass - Direct
Guitars - Neumann TLM-103
Mandolin - TLM-103
Fiddle - TLM-103
Steel - Direct
Vocals - TLM-103
Backup vocals - TLM-103

F.F.T.N. - Metal

1. Merry-Go-Round (long)

Kick - ATM-25
Snare - Shure SM-57
Toms - Sennheiser E-504s
Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD-421
Overhead - 2 - Audix TR-40
Bass - Direct
Guitars - Shure SM-57
Vocals - Marshall MXL-V67G
Backup vocals - Marshall MXL-V67G

Charisse Lowe - Contemporary Folk

1. Life's Road Blues (long)

Kick - ATM-25
Snare - Shure SM-57
Toms - Sennheiser E-504s
Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD-421
Overhead - 2 -Audix TR-40
Guitars - AKG C451
Vocals - TLM-103

This represents about a four year span, and about 1/100th of 1% of what we've recorded in the lat four years. I encoded most of these today and some are just roughs. Hopefully, they translated to mp3 ok.
 
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woooaa... metal?? I'd call that pop/rock.... hehe...

The ones I listened to were "too encoded" to give me a picture of the real sound...
 
Whoaaah there...I don't think we're getting the full picture. Those MP3s are only 64kbps. I think they should be at least 112kbps for us to really hear it correctly...maybe I'm just a whiner, but I know they must sound better than that.

Isaiah
 
I downloaded mostly the 'short' ones. 8Kbps is way to low for me to tell what anything sounds like. Which encoder are you using?
 
Cool.

Harvey,

I'm glad you started this thread. I got more than a little pissed when I saw this thread, but then I realized you started it. :)

Even with the degradation of the sound clips you can still tell it came from a pro engineer and setup.

I know what the other guys are talking about. They want to use your clips for a reference and want the best encoding that they can get.

Too bad you can't send us all CDs. :)
 
Hehehehe

Here's a clip from my 2nd recorded song. Tremble:




Casio snare - direct
Casio kick - direct
Casio floor tom - direct
Casio keyboard - direct
Main vocals/Acoustic guitar - NT1
Acoustic guitar 2nd track - NT1
Lead acoustic guitar - NT1
Back vocals - NT1
Bass - Shit I don't have one. :) You think I could borrow one Harvey?

My next song will feature the NT1 mic. :)
 
I really haven't done mp3s before. So I should be down-converting them to 128kbit, 44.1@16 bit? Sounds like they'd be realy big files. I better make the length a lot shorter then. That would probably work ok, now that you have an idea of the song.

And the FFTN song? That's like their ballad !!!
 
128 is about the smallest Id do to judge audio quality....192 wouldnt hurt either.....
 
Just joking.

Harvey,

Just ignore my joking around. I'm not trying to piss you off.
Heck I been tellin my dad that I have been getting training from a
legendary recording engineer.

Thanks for hangin out with us!

Waiting patiently for the 128 clips..

This will be cool.
 
While waiting (ever so) patiently for the higher quality MP3's...

Most of what you've been sharing with us, Harvey, is technique. Pretty universal stuff. In my mind, it doesn't matter too much what your projects sound like since I'm going to be trying out all of these ideas and build my own experience with them. You obviously know more than I do about micing, so I'll listen.

What I actually use is going to depend on what my ears tell me. I've already discovered that some of the micing techniques sound *horrible* in my bedroom... ;)

Besides, for a home recordist, how often do I get such an awesome chance to borrow from someone else's bag of tricks? :D

Thanks for taking all this time to share, and to back up your statements with sounds.

Take care,
Chris
 
F.F.T.N. - Pop

1. Merry-Go-Round (740k file - 192kBits sample rate)

Kick - ATM-25
Snare - Beyer M201
Toms - Sennheiser E-504s
Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD-421
Overhead - 2 - Audix TR-40s
Bass - Direct (SansAmp TRI-O.D. into Drawmer 1960)
Guitars - Peavey Classic 50 head into Marshall 1960 cab. w/Celestion Greenbacks - Shure SM-57
Vocals - Marshall MXL-V67G (w/pop filter - about 8" away)
Backup vocals - Marshall MXL-V67G (same)

OK, here's a 192 kBit, 30 sec. sample of the same song. Any better? The vocal was cut using the Marshall MXL-V67G.
 
Whoops!

Small addendum:

Alex Whitmore, Charisse Lowe, and FFTN were all tracked with a Beyer M201 on the snare - not the Shure SM-57 as originally posted. Sorry about that.
 
Uhhhhhh....

Sounds like some guy screaming while someone is banging cardboard boxes and garbage can lids in the background !

It isn't you, Harvey. Everything I have ever downloaded on MP3 sounds that way. That's why the whole MP3 craze is a mystery to me !

Peace,
Rick
 
Hey, that "garbage can lid" is a $300 "China Boy"!!! It's supposed to sound like that! :)
 
I'm only getting a 5 second clip here, 130K....and there are a bunch of clicks and pops at the end. I've forced my browser to refresh, and i get the same file each time, so I think it's on your end?

Harvey, are you limited on space, or are you concerned about us having to download large samples? I think that posting up to 5-6MB files is more than acceptable to most of us since that's what we do in the clinic all the time.

Also what encoder are you using?

Thanks so much for the effort here man. It means a lot to some of us to hear the kinds of things that the people giving advice are able to achieve!

Slackmaster 2000
 
Try it again. When I uploaded it this morning, I musta screwed up at my end. I think I fixed it.

The encoder is in CoolEdit 2000 - the "Fruhofwhatever" encoder.
 
Harvey, the sample is filled with clicks and pops and dropouts! Something bad happened during the encoding!

Slackmaster 2000
 
Well, one thing good is coming out out of this:

Don't listen to anything Harvey has to say about encoding mp3s from wav files !!

I'm at a loss here. I don't see or hear any clicks and pops from my download of the file, but then ,I'm using shitty speakers on this computer. This is just my "talk on the Internet" computer and I don't use it for much else. It might be my download from the CD into the computer - I've never optimized this computer for audio (irq, video accelerator settings, video buss, sys.ini tweaks, etc.).

Oh well, maybe I can burn some CDs of some of the songs. :confused:
 
It's OK.

Harvey,

If it means anything, we all believe you when you say your
a pro recording engineer. ;)

Harvey,

Can you send my CD to:

Jerry Padgett
1401 Sussex Drive
Tifton, GA 31794

Thanks.
 
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