John Bradley

Thanks! And no it isn't, at least not for an old guy who doesn't play fast and rarely strays outside the pentatonic minor HappyZone. Though I'm sure there are 14 year olds on Youtube that can nail it at 125% speed... <grumble grumble> Thanks @DeeringAmps -- btw, per your earlier feedback I've been paying attention to the excessive brightness of my vox, and reigning them in to be more in line with 'normal', so as to minimize the ear-bleed factor.

"Now you're talking. Keep the nasty big-lipped trollop, bring on the giant plate of bacon." "But John, the nasty big-lipped trollop could, at least theoretically, be taught to cook giant plates of bacon." "Intriguing. Do go on."

Much better. Perhaps you could fix those giant, disturbing lips of hers. It looks like she was trying to suck the chrome off a tailpipe while the engine was running. Yeowch!

Hey guys, thanks so much for taking the time to listen to my track and comment on it. Very much appreciated! Also, if anyone's interested, I've updated the original post with a set of links to my previous releases. If you liked this, you'll probably enjoy some of those as well. (I'm particularly pleased with 'Submarine', 'Fame', 'Sandman', and 'Paradise'.) Fair enough. Every track I make at least theoretically serves double-duty as a backing track for my 3pc band to play over, so I pretty much always put an "exclamation point" at the end of the songs rather than a fade.

Hear hear! If I'm going to buy yet another reverb I don't need, and probably won't use beyond the initial dicking-around-with stage, let's have it cost $16 instead of $50!

FWIW, I'm at MPBundle2 + O8N2, which I think might equate to "MPS 1". (Damn their confusing and poorly documented bundles!) Basically what I've got is O8 Advanced, Neutron 2 Advanced, Nectar 2, RX 6 Standard, VocalSynth 1, TBC 1, Trash 2, and so on. I could upgrade to MPS4 for $299, which would get me incremented versions of everything (O9, Neutron 3, Nectar 3, RX8 Std, VocalSynth 2) as well aa NIMBUS (already own R4) and this new reverb thing. It's not outrageous as upgrade prices go, but I'm not certain that newer versions of stuff that I already have is worth $300 to me. Perhaps I should watch some hype videos selling me on the new versions. Then again, perhaps I should avoid those same videos!

I'm not sure exactly what you do for a living -- that's more a hobby thing for most of us guys -- but if you can get paid for it more power to you! 😜

It sounds dirty when you phrase it that way.

Also, you don't have to start recording at bar 1. In fact, unless your timing is super-perfect, you run the very real risk of chopping off the start of the first note/chord/etc. (assuming it hits on the 1 of the first bar). I typically start my projects at bar 5, giving me up to 4 bars of click intro (I make backing tracks for a live band) and/or pre-song sound effects or a pick-up of some sort.

“Pumper? Hell, I hardly even know ‘er!”

A while back I had an issue where randomly some instrument in my mix would be out of tune. And not always the same instrument! Eventually figured out that the pitch wheel in my keyboard has a bit of jitter around the 0 position, and occasionally spits out non-zero values when I'm not touching it. CW had auto echo enabled on whatever instrument track I was most recently adjusting. Solved the problem by disconnecting the keyboard when I'm not actively using it, and freezing all instruments.

Dirty Laundry An ‘80s song by an artist that epitomizes the '70s. A bitter (and deserved) denouncement of the journalistic profession, which since time immemorial has given lawyers and used car salesmen an “at least I’m not a journalist” morale boost every time they look in the mirror. As for Mr. Henley... well, thankfully you don't have to like the man (or trust him around your daughters) to appreciate a fine song. Note: If you've previously heard this track on my SoundCloud, this isn't that. This is a brand new mix, about 7 ‘final mixes’ further down the line than the old one. --- Drums: Session Drummer 3. Running my normal setup. 6 outputs (kick, snare, hat, toms, crash, ride). A BREVERB send on each. A “shell comp” send on the kick/snare/toms (BOZ Manic Compressor doing the grungy squashed parallel compression thing). A “cymbal comp” send on the crash and ride (ProChannel PC76 comp doing instantaneous (0ms) 8:1 compression to smooth them out). All going to a drum bus where an Ozone 8 Maximizer adds loud. Bass: IKM's MODO Bass, P-bass model, direct out, running through Blue Cat Axiom for amp/speaker sim, a little BREVERB, and the dual-compression trick in the ProChannel (PC76 for the transient, CA-2A for general leveling). Percussion: A 2getheraudio CL4P does some 16th note clapping during the choruses and outro. The percussion breakdown that happens after each chorus deserves some explanation. There’s a pair of VSTs each playing a low-hi-low percussion pattern, in different ‘octaves’. (TX16Wx playing some samples, 2getheraudio’s SN4RE doing some tuned snare-ish percussion). Both have pan automation going on, so they switch sides several times during the bit. One of them has an iZotope TRASH 2 on it, doing some general sound-destruction, a bandpass filter, a dotted-8th delay, and assorted tomfoolery. Looking at it right now and soloing that track, I’m not sure exactly how it’s doing what it’s doing to the sound. A happy accident of knob-fiddling. The breakdown does not sound like the original, but it’s an interesting thing that fills what would otherwise be a several bar ‘hole’ in the song. There’s a telephone sample (back before phones were obligated to play you a little song when someone calls you) that gets played on a TX16Wx, though it's not especially percussive. Synths: An Arturia MINI does a subbass ‘moo’ an octave below the bass guitar, on the 1 of every bar. For gravitas. There are three organ parts. An OP-X PRO II does the lower organ part (as heard in the quiet intro, before the fun starts). The high organ part is a pair of VSTs (Arturia’s Farfisa and B-3) playing the exact same notes. Those two go to an aux track where they get an Arturia ETERNITY adding an 8th-note delay and a BREVERB for medium hall-osity. Guitars: Three of them. Guitar 1 is a crunchy rhythm playing the ol’ Chuck Berry 5/6 boogie, more or less. Guitar 2 is a clean chorused thing that comes in for the VII / IV turnaround at the end of each verse, as well as punctuating the chord changes in the choruses. Guitar 3 is the lead, using ‘boner-tone’ technology (aka, high gain, huge reverb, and delay). All three recorded dry from my old EMG’d Strat, running through their own instances of Axiom. The Solos: Took about a week of practice to be able play (most of) the notes of the first solo, in the correct order and at speed. Not sure what goofy chromatic/modal runs are doing in some boomer rock (Damn you, Joe Walsh!), and none to happy to depart the minor pentatonic zone I’ve been living in since I was a wee lad, but it is what it is. The second solo (which thankfully stays in ‘normal’ mode) starts off following the original and then veers off into “the sort of crap I always do” territory. I like it, unsurprisingly. Vocals: The lead vocal is single tracked in the verses, doubled in the chorus. Both tracks are run through a Nectar 2 chain (gate / de-esser / phaser / compressor / saturation / eq), followed by a Neutron Exciter for excitement or presence, or something, and a ValhallaDelay doing a ducked 100ms slapback. BREVERB plate reverb on the bus. Backing Vocals: Three voices, each double-tracked and panned l/r to varying degrees. Those go to a bus where I’ve got a 2getheraudio RE4ORM FX (for some rhythmic filter sweeping and such) that gets enabled in the extended breakdown and the outro. The bus also has a 2getheraudio ST3REO widener and another BREVERB for general bigness. Melodyne Studio 4: As always. Tokyo Dawn Slick EQ (free version) on the master 'music' bus to thin out the mix a bit (-1.7db at 540Hz), giving the vox a little more space, and also rolling off the highs a bit (-0.7db at 8kHz). As usual, a GW MixCentric and Ozone 8 on the master to add a little bit of 'magic' and loud, respectively. ------ Previous Releases: Paradise by the Dashboard Light • Ashes to Ashes • Lies • Enter Sandman • Wanted Dead or Alive • Too Much Time on My Hands • Are You Gonna Go My Way? • Blue Monday '88 • Fame • One of Our Submarines

The final test for any of my mixes is how they sound on my iPhone + $30 bluetooth earphones. They actually have more bass than the AKG phones I mix on, what with the tight ear-seal and all. Also, they're the only things I listen to 'real' music on these days, so I'm very familiar with how mixes should sound on them.

Every 6 months, like clockwork!

Cool, perhaps I'll give it another look-see. Thanks for the info!

Played with the $3 subscription briefly, and probably would have kept paying it indefinitely just for the large library of occasionally useful sounds, but the Zenology player annoyed me so much. In particular, the fact that the preset browser for same is (or was at the time) a modal dialog -- you couldn't have it open and still operate the DAW, making preset selection a great big pain. Terrible UI decision; whomever signed off on that should have been fired.

You could try the AKG K240 Studio, which sells for $67ish. Appears to be identical in every way according to AKGs website. Been mixing on mine (the $67 version) for years. They're great. If you do any live recording with mics (vocals, acoustic guitar) you'll also want a pair of closed-back phones to minimize playback bleed while tracking, but those don't need to be especially flat or 'good', unlike the ones you'd be mixing on for hours at a time.

Simultaneous recommendation!

Assuming you're in the US, I highly recommend having one of these (or equivalent) in your arsenal. Especially if you ever take your gear out to a venue -- could prevent some unpleasant shockery if you touch things that are plugged into two different outlets (say, your guitar and a microphone). https://www.amazon.com/Sperry-Instruments-GFI6302-Receptacle-Professional/dp/B000RUL2UU/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=outlet+tester&qid=1600904662&sr=8-5 Get one, test any outlet you plug your amps into.

Yep. I can play bass and have one hanging on the wall in my studio, and almost uniformly use MODO Bass (and click in the bass part on the PRV) on everything I do. Run it through a nice amp sim and hardly anybody could tell it wasn't real. And it's inherently on-grid. Saves the time of fixing it with AudioSnap. Only time I record real bass is when it's a sparse mix and/or the bass is the featured instrument. Or if it has lots of slides or percussive bits that'd be annoying to replicate in midi. See Flea, etc.

The musical notes on the left side of the PRV set the default note length when you're drawing in notes. View | Grid Resolution just sets the number of vertical line subdivisions per quarter note. Leave it set to 'follow snap' What you want is the snap setting, which is a pulldown on the top right side of the PRV, to the left of the little 5-pin-DIN icon. You can also just hit 'N' to disable snapping entirely, which is what I'd do when drawing smooth volume or other controller changes.

Modern scholars who have studied this imperialistic act of lexicographical appropriation now describe it as History's Greatest Vowel Movement. --- Yeah, I know, bad form to revise and extend my own joke. But in my defense, I did just leave it sitting there, for anybody to pick up. With a hanky.

I only ever record mono (vocals and direct guitar). Always leave the interleave set to stereo, because I typically throw at least one stereo effect in the FX bin, be it delay, chorus, reverb, etc. Only time I ever switch the interleave to mono is when after I've AudioSnap'd a guitar track and want to render it. If you bounce a mono signal (in stereo interleave) to another track -- just the signal, no FX or other processing -- the bounced signal is 3db hotter for what I'm assured are Very Good Reasons. Which in my case, changes the sound coming out of the Amp Sim in the FX bin due to the hotter input. Temporarily switching the interleave to mono, bouncing, and switching back avoids that. Though it's possible rendering in-place (via bounce to clips) may or may not avoid that. Have to try it, next time I fix a guitar part.

But my money, my precious money... however will I spend it!?!

Right, mate! You got a loicense for all those vowels in y' name? 👮‍♂️