This very versatile VSTi has got a ton of great sounds that can help you out with your projects. Since the product is fully discontinued and is not available anywhere anymore for purchase, I’ve put it up in the vault to allow those who are need of a versatile VSTi to grab this one for free.

My personal favorites in this particular VSTi are the Brass and Orchestral presets. The Orchestral side has Spicatto strings that sound pretty realistic in terms of how they sound when the player brings the bow upward or downward.

For an example of the spicatto strings and the brass (particularly the French Horns in this song) you can listen to Black and Blue Ink.’s song Insurgency.

Head on out to our Production Vault and get the VSTi today!

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More coming your way!

-mnshyn

This kit packs 700+ samples, and a good thing about this kit is that it includes more than just drums. There’s some saxophone samples, guitar samples, organ samples, horns and more.  If you can’t get your hands on VSTi’s, the instrument samples can be useful in a pinch.

Head on out to our Production Vault and get your free drums today!

Also, remember to sign up for our Mailing List to get weekly updates on our music, the blog, and our production vault!

More coming your way!

-mnshyn

This week, we have some lo-fi drums.  These are perfect for classic hip-hop production.  If you’re a fan of Timbaland’s production, then you’ve noticed how his drums are not exactly that clean.  These drums are filtered similarly, so they have that feel to them.   In addition, there are distorted guitar and bass samples in here.  All in all, we’re looking at almost 200 samples for you to mess around with.

Head on out to our Production Vault and get your free stuff today!

Also, remember to sign up for our Mailing List to get weekly updates on our music, the blog, and our production vault!

More coming soon!

-mnshyn

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:

1. Ibanez Acoustic/Electric direct with the bass slightly up into a Studio Projects VTB1 Tube Preamp  into one channel on the 0404
2. 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.

I think it’s pretty good.  What do you think?

More to come people.  Stay tuned.

-mnshyn

I was working on Bomb Squad again last night to try to change a couple of things.  The set part of the beat for the hook was too strong melodically for Harmony Speaks to be able to lay a hook down.  I took a part of the guitar solo from the sample and had it originally set as the rhythm section for the beat of the hook, but after reviewing it was just too strong.  I decided to play the guitar myself instead, toning down the melody a little bit in favor of a more supportive, accompanying style.  It came out pretty nice, I think.  This is actually the third project on this upcoming album that uses a custom distorted guitar heavily, two of which have actual full fledged solos played by moi.  (Thank you Amplitube for the free plugin via Tunecore!)

My first three blogs have all been about this “Bomb Squad” project, and the funny thing is that if I had ran this blog from a while back, most of my blogs might have been about this.  This, of course, aside from the other songs I have completed this past year.   This is the last song that I need to finish (not counting “Call to Arms,” because I just have to lay down the vocals, I already wrote the last verse) for this album before moving on to Phase 4.  Phase 4 will be a completely different beast.

Lastly, it’s ADM’s birthday!  Wish the brosef a happy one!

-mnshyn