TC Helicon voiceworks

February 27, 2008 – 2:12 am

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us Coming to the rescue of those of us who were not born with perfect pitch is the all new TC Helicon VoiceWorks. With Pitch Correction, multi-voice harmonies, double tracking and more, VoiceWorks is a complete vocal kit. VoiceWorks delivers big with a high-quality mic pre with 48V phantom power, TC Compression and EQ, four fully-programmable humanized harmony voices, two lead voice doubling voices, Pitch Correction with special live control feature, HarmonyHold (which lets the singer freeze the backing harmonies while continuing to sing over them) and more. The list of vocal processing tools available in the VoiceWorks is all but endless, and the quality of its effects is second to none! TC Helicon voice works is one of the most versatile pieces of equipment I dont have. It can do so many things with your voice. It can take a bad singer aka T Pain and make them a star. This is the piece of equipment T Pain uses to change his voice. He has been on about 7 top 10 hits in the past 2 years and all the awards should go to the TC Helicon voiceworks.  Anyone can change there voice to sound good with this piece of equipment. If you have a studio either home or professional,this piece of equipment can make the singers with no talent marketable. Is it cheating? Of course it is, but does it work? Yes

By admin Posted in Production 2 Comments

Starting your own home recording studio

February 26, 2008 – 4:33 am

For some like me, starting your own home recording studio is a dream. I anticipated when I would get that first piece of equipment like a little kid counting down the days to christmas. Today you can start recording on a smaller budget than ever. To start basic recording in this day and age you only need 3 things.

  1. Computer- I prefer a mac but a pc will do to start
  2. Microphone- This is the area you do not want to go cheap on, always get the best mic you can afford.
  3. M box-This is a interface for your mic to computer. It comes packaged with Pro Tools LE recording software, which comes with dozens of plugins. There is only one problem with this M box and that is that it is not compatible with microsoft vista home version. I gave one of these to my daughter for a birthday gift and come to find out she has a vista on her laptop and could not run it. There is supposed to be a update for vista mid march.

We will see.But to summarize this is the most basic setup for home recording you can get. This setup would rival alot of professional studios years ago. This starter setup or mobile setup if you have a laptop is all you need to get up and running. Dont let anyone tell you that you need all the bells and whistles of years gone by to get started its just not true anymore.

By admin Posted in Production No Comments

Everyone thinks they can engineer/mix

February 25, 2008 – 7:51 pm

Source: www.recordingreview.com  check them out 

For whatever reason, when people hear a home recording, they almost automatically say “I could do better than THAT!”. Of course, it turns out being WAY more difficult and most people give up and move on to something else. This doesn’t mean they don’t try a few times taking a few potential clients with them.

Some Bands Won’t Need Much Of An EngineerThe best bands will always sound the best. I’ve seen this time and time again. The best bands usually won’t have much trouble tracking themselves after reading two web tutorials. If the band already sounds good, just about any idiot can place a mic on a snare or a cabinet. The hardest stuff is already taken care of by the good bands. Most of these kinds of bands do need a guy who can mix as that is an art to itself. So with that said the value of an engineer isn’t what it used to be. End Excerpt from www.recordingreview.com Image Hosted by ImageShack.usThis is true to a degree but another set of ears is always good. I have mixed down tracks for hours on end,then I take a break for a couple hours and come back to the same track and hear it in a completely different way. Engineering can make or break your song.  A good engineer sometimes has to put his ego and his personal musical tastes aside when he is mixing down a unfamiliar musical track. Some of the best engineers are also producers and that is a whole different subject. And I will add that engineering or mixing down a track in a million dollar studio is a little different than in most home recording studio’s as I have done both. 

By admin Posted in Mixing, Recording No Comments

Normalizing your recordings

February 25, 2008 – 6:33 am

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us One little word with two meanings.Normalizing, as far as Sound Forge or other digital audio editors are concerned, simply means to adjust the peak volume of a selection to a known value. Generally the recommended maximum is -0.5 dB (I think that’s 94.49% or something). Doing this is a no-brainer.Normalizing a set of tunes to be burned to CD, however, means something slightly different. Here it implies that you’re adjusting the average volume of those songs so that they will all sound about equal. Doing this is an art. I have been using sound forge for years and it gets the job done and a whole lot more.

By fast eddie Posted in Recording No Comments

Alesis and Ipod?

February 25, 2008 – 6:16 am

 Image Hosted by ImageShack.usAlesis reveals the iMultiMix 9R Mixer with Universal Dock for iPod.This sturdy, compact, all-in-one rack-mounted mixer with integrated iPod player features 5 mic/line inputs with inserts to allow for easy external processing of incoming channels, or iPod audio playback.The iMultiMix 9R also features 2-band per channel EQ, Mic/Line inputs and iPod playback in a single, intuitive package. The iMultiMix 9R can playback music from the iPod and mix your live performances instantly with iPod (Classic and 5th generation) or iPod nano (2nd and 3rd generation). This makes the iMultiMix 9R perfect for using the iPod as a backing track for solo or band performances, while mixing sound sources all in one compact, convenient place.Whoa thats right it has the iPod hookup. I for the life of me cannot understand why these respected companies think they must have some sort of iPod worship going on. Yeah I agree a iPod is a cool little music player, but using it for a live performance is almost laughable. No self respecting band would use a iPod as there backup. I just cant see it.

By fast eddie Posted in Mixers No Comments

Antares voice thing

February 25, 2008 – 12:47 am

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Antares Audio Technologies has announced the release of Voice Thing! They say this is a easy to use application for changing voices in real time. Designed for online gaming, voice chat, VoIP, and video and podcast production, Voice Thing! can change a person’s voice in an almost limitless variety of ways.Based on technology developed for Antares pro audio voice processing applications, Voice Thing requires only a microphone and any PC application that accepts audio input. Voice Thing lets anyone subtly or radically change the character of their voice, turn their (audio) self into a monster or alien, or create the effect of being in a wide variety of sonic environments, from small rooms to huge halls.With fun and ease-of-use as top priorities, Voice Thing features a playful user interface that puts the power of Antares’s advanced voice processing technology in the hands of any PC user. I can imagine the time wasted recording yourself and then tweaking out your voice. But from a production standpoint, I only see 2 uses 1 is for mixtape djs who want to tweak out there voice in a weird way. Or if you were like me you might want to tweak your voice and sample it into your sampler and plug it in a track here or there for effects. I would have to play with a while to see if its worthy of being a permanet part of my studio.I will say the design is really comic book like cool.

By fast eddie Posted in Plugins 1 Comment

Another level

February 25, 2008 – 12:16 am

music tech radar music knowledge

Well this is my first article. Maybe somebody will read this,maybe not. Either way this site is to educate and inform and explain and teach you about music production and music creation. I will do my best to cover the old ways of creating and producing music and the equipment you need along with the cutting edge just released equipment and techniques. All my opinions that I express in my articles aka if you should buy or not buy, or if the equipment is great or a piece of garbage are based on my own experiences and my super vast knowledge. If you agree or disagree leave me a comment and let me know.

By fast eddie Posted in Production No Comments