tim hall wrote:
>On Tuesday 15 November 2005 14:43, Dave Phillips was like:
>
>
>>I've uploaded a new song:
>>
>> http://linux-sound.org/keepmesatisfied.ogg
>>
>>
>
>Impeccable lead work and smooth vocal delivery. You just need someone like Ron
>Parker on drums. ;] Bluestastic!
>
>
Thanks, Tim. I admire your work too, it's some of my favorite stuff on
the LAM site.
Btw, *anyone* on drums would be a vast improvement, but for the record
here's some advice to recordists following my Ardour adventures: If you
need to use a drum track composed with a MIDI sequencer there are a
couple things you can do for greater realism. First, use a sample player
like Specimen or Linuxsampler, you can then set variations in pitch on
the snare and bass drums, it makes a big difference. Although percussion
is usually classed as "noise" instruments there is still a pitch
component that is heard. You'll certainly notice when it's missing, like
salt in a cake recipe. Alas, you can indeed notice it in my tracks,
indicating how lazy I am about this detail (of course it's also easy to
improve just by re-recording the MIDI track using Specimen). The other
trick is to add some sort of "disturbance" to the tempo track to upset
the metronomic regularity. Example: For a song in 4/4 time I'll make a
looping tempo track of perhaps three measures of 3/8 time, with tempo
events at the 16th-note triplet level in a series like
120-121-122-120-121-122-121-120 and so on. This tempo variation is
slight enough to be felt but not overly-noticed throughout the track.
You can also eliminate this tempo dodge just by using Hydrogen and
exploiting its humanization features. :)
Craig Anderton has written an excellent article on what he calls the
Tutt/Guerin effect. Basically he just analyzed MIDI recordings of some
top studio drummers and discovered how the various instruments in a set
are all acting at slightly different times. The temporal distances
between the activity of the bass drum, the snare, the hi-hat, and the
ride cymbal all add up to a feel unique to each drummer's way of playing
in the groove. Lately I've been listening to the drummers for the
classic r'n'b bands behind the Stax/Volt, Motown, and James Brown
sounds, really interesting stuff to compare in the light of CA's study.
But in the end, I'd only go to this much trouble (finessing a MIDI drum
track) if I really couldn't find a decent drummer to play the parts.
Alas, that is precisely why I write MIDI drum parts for my recordings,
there's no-one in Findlay OH who can play blues drums well enough. My
band's drummer is coming along, but he still listens to too much Robben
Ford (fine musician) and not enough Muddy Waters (blues titan). Yes, I'm
an unabashed blues purist. :)
It's my dream to someday journey up to the cold northern climate and
record at Mirror Image. Maybe I can get Ron to play drums then... ;-)
Btw, I've been working with JAMin too. What a great tool, thanks to
Steve Harris & friends !
More stuff coming soon...
Best,
dp
Received on Sat Nov 26 16:15:09 2005
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sat Nov 26 2005 - 16:15:10 EET