bats brew

so, for rhythm guitar track #1, i wear the baseball hat forward... but track #2, i turn it backwards. LOL shot of whisky, then a shot of tequila. puff of this, then a puff of that. standing up one take, sitting down the next. look for the ugliest tone you can find, and make it work.

hey mark! i appreciate your comments... you know, when i'm writing, i'm doing 'demos'. the idea is, i'm throwing the cooked noodles on the wall, and seeing what sticks. but later, i'll listen to it, and cook it a bit more, thin it out, whittle it down, and when it comes to the 'performance' of the track, i try to make it as authentic as possible, because for me, the FEEL of a track is more important than the performance or the idea of it. so, when i'm 'performing', i already know exactly what i'm going to play, and all that's left is adding the sauce. which is the tones, and choices of gain. so i'll set up 3 or 4 guitars, and with my modeler and boogie, i've got almost any tone available. so i'll mix it up, and every track will be a new 'event' in the performance. at least, that's the way i envision each song i put together, i'm trying to capture something special, if i can. so next time you're going to record a song with 'keeper tracks', get prepared in advance.. i'll even do that the evening before the day i'm going to record. i'll get everything set up in advance, guitars tunes up and on the stands, amps, effects, extra cables, whatever, so if i hear a tone in my head, and it takes a certain guitar, amp, pedal, or even VST Fx, i can just grab it, check the tuning, and run. nothing gets in the way of quickly getting it done.

hey Paul! thanks for the comments. normally i write drum parts in Superior Drummer. i like the Rooms of Hansa drum pack the best, but also have some superior drummer 3 kits put together that are really awesome but for THIS recording, this is an older drum track i wrote over 10 years ago, using Sony Acid. these are loops (pre recorded stereo drum tracks) that i organized into a specific arrangement. i've run them thru several processes (waves Magma BB tubes, studio one Pro EQ, waves SSL bus compressor) to get them to honk the way i want. i actually re-mixed this just last night, worked on the drums so more. i'll post an update this week's end.

hi englandBross! thanks so much for listening... i used three guitars on this composition... left to right, 1984 Carvin DC200k, with a duncan custom custom in the bridge... 2008 USACG custom strat build, with Wilde L500 in the bridge... 1977 Ibanez Artist 2618. i used 3 different amp models (strymon Iridium), one with each guitar, fender deluxe, vox ac30 and marshall super lead. various cabs.

hey andy! glad you checked this one out, i've made some changes on it since i first posted the demo.... yea, i cut my 'guitar' teeth on blackmore, so that statement makes sense. i think i play more legato than blackmore, tho i do like digging in with the pick.

Thanks jack!

the race is this weekend! to celebrate, i have written a new song to honor the british Grand Prix. https://batsbrew.bandcamp.com/track/silverstone

i bought my strymon iridium, during the pandemic.. i thought it'd be a great tool to quickly lay down tracks, using either the fender deluxe, vox ac 30, or marshall plexi 100 as a basis for sound. it does that exactly. and i can use it direct into my interface, or hook it up as a preamp into my mesa boogie mark 2b head. and it works perfectly! and one of the reasons i bought it, over any other hardware amp modeler, was the simplicity, and the way it responds to my playing. i do not use presets. i walk up to the unit, turn the few knobs, get what i want for the track i'm going for, and boom, done. it just works. i never spend more than 5 minutes dialing in a tone. zero problems. and it's one of the reasons i don't use software amp sims. they take forever to dial in a sound that's just right, and there's always a feeling of latency to me. i'm super happy with the iridium.

didn't pat boone do war pigs?

i need a pallette cleanser after all this... black sabbath, paranoid, will set me right.

yep, same idea behind my using the Waves F6 dynamic eq.

"Whats people take on the mix bus?" i'm to the point now, where i KNOW, if i don't mix into a 'mastering chain', too many things change during my mastering. so, i have a customized "MASTERING" chain that i MIX into, a mastering chain, that i put on my MAINS channel. i have a MASTER channel, that all my individual tracks route to, either directly or more likely thru a SUB BUSS channel for each grouping of instruments, guitars, bass, vox, drums, etc. so tracks>>Sub bus>>Master bus>>MAINS. on my MASTER channel, i mix into a G Series SSL Compressor. set very lightly, no more than -2db reduction, it's a 'glue compressor' at this point. but i have on the MAINS, a parametric EQ, Pultect EQ, another SSL compressor, Waves L2 set with a ceiling of -0.3 and doing only 1.0 db of reduction, fast release, to just catch the first peaks that get thru, then a Waves L3 multi band limiter, for the final limiting, that i set the ceiling for about -1.0db, and push it til i get to the LUFS i want, usually about -10 to -11. then i turn that all off, when i bounce my actual mix, and that target it K-18. this is working currently for me, better than what i did before. but it's constantly changing. just cuz.

one of the great things about the Iridium, is it's simplicity. the jfet front end makes it feel right.

thanks for listening Ross! appreciate it.

wow, thanks markno999! playing thru the Strymon Iridium, just makes the process so much less 'engineery' and more musicy. if you know what i mean. so the playing just becomes more easy to get to, and then i'm just trying to find that vibe. watching these grand prix races kinda jacks me up, and playing after watching one, well, this is the end result.

it's super easy to do in studio one. look up 'pipeline'

MAN, what a race!

Thanks freddy Appreciate the comments

dont forget to watch the race this weekend!

hi Rik! thanks for listening! it was really fun tracking this thing...

thanks tom! thanks for listening. i was trying to capture the vibe, you know, the energy.. i'd love to make that trip myself. maybe one day.

HEY, this week is the Monaco Grand Prix! nice to revisit this tune

and with the Monaco Grand Prix this week! timely

ha! thanks lynn yea, i was looking forward to the italian grand prix last weekend, alas, global warming. heheh what's coming up? MONACO, baby. https://batsbrew.bandcamp.com/track/bullet-train-to-monaco