The duo of Black and Blue Ink. (which consists of K-Maculate and myself) are here to present you with a new track that’ll get satisfy that hunger for hard lyrics, metaphors, wordplay and punchlines. This one’s called “Insurgency,” and will be on the next BBI album coming out later this year called “The Lyricist Manifesto.”
If you like what you hear, make sure you like this blog entry, and also make sure you are a fan (or nowadays make sure you “like”) this song which is on the Black and Blue Ink. Facebook Fan Page which you can be a fan of as well.
Fourth track off of Roll Call ‘10! My contribution, “Casa de Luna [2 Seater].” This will appear on Roll Call ’10, and on ADM’s upcoming album “Chamber Waves.” A mashup version with a rendition by ADM is also in the works and will also be featured on both albums. This is a definite departure from what you’re used to hearing from me, as it is akin to the new house music that’s out today, combined with some elements of trance and other genres. It’s also the first track that I’ve completed that uses Illformed’s Glitch plugin, which people have claimed that Timbaland has used it in past tracks for reverse, gate, tape stop and other juicy mid-bar effects.
This past week has been really busy, and I finally had a little bit of down time to go work on some music. As I’ve have written in a previous post, I had recently bought a new Ibanez Acoustic/Electric guitar and an SM57. I’ll cover the SM57 in a future post, but for now I want to share my experiences recording the acoustic guitar.
My attempts at recording acoustic guitar were always fine. Never great, but they could pass. Now that I have my own acoustic/electric, I figured I can try to figure out what way would be best to capture a nice, thick sound.
Recording direct (whether it was acoustic or electric) always sounded dull to me. There was just a certain tone that was missing, and I could never put my finger on it, whether it was the missing reverb, or just the way the pickups were bringing in the sound.
With an electric guitar, you can always use plugins to mess with the sound because electric guitars are manipulated in so many different ways today that you can record something direct, then use effects to get the desired effect later. This goes for distortion, overdrive, flangers, chrouses, and whatever else.
Acoustic guitars are a lot more difficult, because the desired tone and/or sound for a majority of acoustic guitar uses will be very similar. The differences may come in the way it’s EQ’d, or some style of compression or reverb. However, that particular sound of an acoustic guitar cannot be created or be the product of a manipulation from an electric guitar and have it sound that accurate (at least during the time of this writing I haven’t found anything that would do that yet). Of course you can get VSTi’s that have acoustic guitar sounds, but where’s the fun in that? =] Especially since, unlike an orchestra or a chorus, you can buy yourself a guitar and a mic to record with for about $200 (of course at the very low end of the food chain.)
With an acoustic/electric, you have a choice of either mic’ing it up, or going direct, or doing both. Neither on its own for me ever fit the bill completely. However, recording both simultaneously covered all grounds and got me the sound I personally was looking for.
Keep in mind also that I don’t have a state of the art studio, and I’m stuck with an E-MU 0404 Sound Card with two mono inputs. I do have a Samson MDR6 mixer, which I thought would be useful for me when I bought it, but realized after I wouldn’t be able to simultaneously record four tracks and be able to manipulate post-session. I could, however, use two mics and feed them through one mono signal or two for a stereo, if I so desired.
The final setup that I came up with that got me the sound I wanted was the following:
Ibanez Acoustic/Electric direct with the bass slightly up into a Studio Projects VTB1 Tube Preamp into one channel on the 0404
Audio-Technica PRO37 small diaphragm condenser mic at the 12th fret about four inches away + Audio-Technica 2020 large diaphragm condenser about six-seven inches pointed at the third fret, going into the MDR6, then into the other channel on the 0404.
I then compressed both recordings softly and gave both a slight reverb.
The direct recording captured I’d say about 80% of the sound I wanted, but the mics gave it that extra 20%; that character and natural reverb. I then panned one 25% to the left, then panned one 25% to the right.
Third track off of Roll Call ‘10! K-Maculate’s contribution, “Terminicus,” featuring Black and Blue Ink.! This will also be on Black and Blue Ink.’s upcoming sophomore effort, “The Lyricist Manifesto.”
And if you haven’t seen it already, check the previous post for ADM’s Promo Video for “Screamer!”
I created a really simple video in Motion 4 as a promo for the song “Screamer” on the upcoming “Chamber Waves” album due out July 1st, 2010 by ADM.
Click play on the video and it will automatically start in 720p HD. Or click the ‘YouTube’ logo in the video to see the video on their site. Once there, switch to 720p (in the lower-right of the video) and see a larger version with clean audio.
