tricks, tips & experiments

on this new page we hope to let you in on a few of the things we find quite interesting whilst recording; whether they be recording techniques that defy conventional wisdom; interesting things we discover about any software or equipment we use; or just interesting performance issues that arise during sessions.

some of these may not be new to you, but they are exciting to us when they happen to us!

if you have any comments, anything interesting to share, or let us know that we got it just plain wrong (!) please let us know at musingsATtollboothmusic.com

this was developed during the recording sessions for an enygmartyr song called 'sandance'.  i'd had this sound in my head of a massive bank of acoustic guitars (or similar) all playing big chunky open chords during the chorus of the song, so i set about trying to find a way to do it.

i was mindful of the phil spector 'wall of sound' technique, and thus a nickname was born (i think a snappy name for a technique is half the battle - any great producer will tell you!).  so with a plucky volunteer second acoustic guitarist (in this case alison eve from enygmartyr) i set about trying to figure out how to do this.

for a number of years now, i've often recorded my chorus overdrive guitars as two hard L-R panned mono guitars rather than a stereo track with chorus etc.  i have just always felt it gives a more natural variation to the sound and a livelier feel to the track (very few but the most annoyingly accurate guitarists EVER play their parts exactly the same way twice - it's a genetic thing - they can't help themselves!)

bearing this in mind, i decided to try a similar approach with the acoustic WoD.

you are looking for volume and resonance here so my theory was to record the two guitars together in the same room, and separate them well in space, but not worry too much about cross-mike bleed.

so with the two guitarists facing each other apx 6' apart, a condenser mic was positioned on each guitar.  on the takamine 6str we used a Blue BabyBottle aimed roughly at the neck/body join apx 9" away.  for the kimbara 6str same position but a GrooveTubes GT67 a little further away to prevent a little bass boom - apx 12".

The WOD in practice:  note the Blue BabyBottle at the neck position on the Tak and the GT67 pointing towards my guitar (behind the camera) - spill between the two mics is not avoided as it becomes part of the breadth of the sound.

both mikes were fed through my favourite pre, the tfpro P2.  a little brightening EQ (+1dB @ 10k) was added.

the chorus was recorded with both these guitars going full tilt.

a second pass was then done, this time onto a stereo track - and here's the clever bit - this time with the mic channels swapped over so L>R and R>L.  this way, the same guitar will appear on both sides of the track playing slightly different things.  this also prevents a skew in EQ from one side or the other from inequalities of the acoustic guitars.  make sure to watch mic phases!

for processing this track, the stereo width was 'trimmed' to cut the centre 10% of the field and the mono LR components panned to about 20-30% each.  this gives great acoustic field and separation of the dual monos, and the stereo channel, but also leaves that critical centre of the field for vocals and bass etc.

when played back this gives an awesome and dynamically full and interesting acoustic sound with lots of harmonics bouncing around both guitars acoustically.

this technique has also been used very successfully on matt dixey's new demo and an electric version appears on my first album 'Postcards From Aunt Cordelia' on 'Fear of the Analyst'.

matt d is subjected to the Acoustic Wall of Death™; note the addition here of Auralex Aural Expander tiles to the mic setup.  these shapers focus the sound beautifully in this application.  here the BabyBottle is set a little more down the neck of the Brunswick acoustic due to an elevated bass response.

the beauty of this technique is that it only requires two passes (one dual mono - one stereo) if you have two guitarists who can play well together.  this technique works really well if you each invert some of the chords as well.

("Acoustic Wall of Death" technique & name ©2004 tollboothmusic)

they're always a challenge and always fun!  just recently, paul cudby confronted us with a recent acquisition of his in the form of a hammer dulcimer.  well; what would you do???

the hammer dulcimer is a very bright instrument with massive amounts of overtones and harmonic content.  you hit one set of strings and the whole darn thing just starts to vibrate in a very pleasing way.

the instrument actually has sound holes, but we found that miking too close to those gave a very harsh and less 'delicate' sound, so we got to thinking that the most natural way to mike the dulcimer was to try and pick up what we were hearing.  i know that sounds like an obvious statement, but think about micing an acoustic guitar - seldom do we position the mic where we normally hear the guitar from, but either at the neck or bridge.  this is done for good reason - we can significantly reduce the noise floor if we mic closer and get more signal.  

however - fresh from a round of buying new mics and treating the control room with auralex foam, i felt confident that we could get a good sound even from a relatively distant listening position.

the final mic positions are shown in the picture.  signals were recorded to two mono channels (on the tfpro P2 again) so we could blend the sound later.  again, the GT67 was used for ambience, and the BabyBottle used close in for its brightness.

the rev cudby lays waste to the hammer dulcimer!  actually, it was a beautiful part he'd put together for the enygmartyr track 'sandance'.  the BabyBottle mic can be seen on the right of the picture low down to the dulcimer, with the GT67 higher up in more or less the player's listening position.

the results were fantastically pleasing!  a very natural but wide sound.  the sound remained surprisingly focused and controlled.

huge thanks must also go to Mary Faith at Breezy Ridge Instruments in the US for her help, advice, enthusiasm and warnings over recording dulcimers.  if you are looking to buy one, they are worth a visit and unbelievably helpful!  thanks Mary.

here at tbm we exclusively use MOTU Digital Performer audio and MIDI sequencing software.  DP (now in v4) is a fantastically creative and intuitive package, that is both powerful and remarkably flexible.

the manual is wonderfully comprehensive, but almost impenetrable and so there are tricks you learn with it along the way that either speed things up, or increase its creative potential.

from time to time we'll be posting things that we find along the way.  further notes can also be found in the Performer Notes section of Sound on Sound magazine.

Quick Monitor Mix - you know what it's like - the artist wants their part up slightly and the rest of the track down a nadge.  there's sooo many ways of doing this but the simplest way in the software mixer board in DP involves position of your 'MASTER fader'.

make sure you have a Master fader set up before setting up the new input channels.  when DP adds audio channels, it defaults to putting the new channels to the RIGHT of your Master fader (assuming you leave this on the far left of your mixer routinely).  

with tracks in this configuration, if you now adjust the Master fader, ONLY the main track level will shift NOT the input channel level.  that can still be controlled from the input channel fader you just set up.

this is the easiest way to adjust the track versus monitor level for an artist.  easy huh?

Half Speed Resampling - nice creative one this!  one of the best kept secrets about DP is its slow forward play.  DP has two speeds of wind forward - 1/2x and 2x.  these are most easily accessed via the Mackie Control but can also be done via the normal toolbar.

the great thing about this is how accurate that 1/2x play forward is!  it's smack on!  effectively dropping the tuning of the track by an octave.  the other great thing about this slow wind is that ... DP outputs the audio of it through its main outputs!!!!

so what? well, it means that you can do all sorts of wild rhythmic resampling of things you just recorded.  we tried it on some 'evanescence' style guitars.

we recorded the output to our audio cd burner (permanently linked to DPs SPDIF o/p) and then imported the audio back into DP!!

so we then had guitars at real speed, and a track of guitars an octave down at half speed.  the rhythm they created was fantastic.  (samples coming soon)  the final effect will be heard soon on the enygmartyr track 'sleep evades me'.

DPv4.5 added some crucial new features into its 'bounce-to-disk' utility.  for years, DP has been stuck with exporting to SD2 format, which is perfect for exporting to Jam for album compiling etc, but now there are a number of other formats including both AIFF and mp3 (using the LAME encoder plug-in).  i've had reservations about mp3 as a listening format for a while but the AAC lossless compression used on the iPod i think has great dynamic range with very little artefacting and for gross assessment of mixes is pretty good. (the artefacting on mp3 i think render it useless for mix analysis).  i now routinely dump mixes down onto the iPod, go for a walk, make some notes on my Palm, then go back to the control room, check my notes and make any changes.  it's a relaxed and efficient way to work.

yep - it's from the new p-a-d album, but you can't hear it!!  haha!

one of the other cool things about working from the iPod is that if you stick all your tracks for a new album into one playlist then stick the iPod into shuffle mode, you can sometimes find orders for tracks that you wouldn't have thought of while trying to shuffle titles round on paper!

tip: always carry a 3.5mm stereo-to-2 phono jack cable with you and you can pretty much plug your iPod into anyone's system.  a great accessory is the PocketDock with Line Out (from SendStation) - this plugs into the dock port and gives a dock-firewire converter (great for if you forget your charge cable but did remember your charger!) and a 3.5mm socket next to it.  the iPod top headphone socket is not great for line-out applications and is output restricted (due to european health & safety guidelines), but the PocketDock w Line Out is perfect.

i've used it for demo's to record distributors, radio stations and media agencies recently and it's a good method.  keep a pair of good mini speakers in your bag and you have complete portability!