Archives
July 2011
There are millions of ways to record guitar, and in our July issue we're bringing you some of the newest and coolest. This issue is packed full of worthwhile tricks for getting great guitar sounds, and a huge variety of guitar gear reviews to feed your six-string urge.
Using guitar pedals in the studio can be risky business -- if you don't set them up properly, you can end up with a tone that's a poor imitation of that slamming sound you're used to on stage, or worse yet, with noise and gain issues that ruin your tracks. In this issue, the guitar-effects maestro known only has Har brings you page after page of useful advice for making your pedals sound their best. And what good is a feature on stomp boxes without a nice big pile of reviews to sharpen your appetite? We bring you an overstuffed Christmas-in-summer grab bag with over a dozen reviews of pedals by BOSS, Dwarfcraft, Eventide, George Dennis, Hardwire, TC Electronic, Tech21, Totally Wycked Audio, WMD, and more!
And that's not all. Ace guitar recording engineer Brian Tarquin covers the best methods for adding downtuned guitars into your mixes without turning them muddy, and Paul Vnuk Jr. reviews a portable, powerful, sweet-sounding acoustic-guitar recording preamp from Rupert Neve Designs. We cover cool new guitar software from IK Multimedia, hardware and software tools for guitar recording on the iPad, and lots more... all aimed at getting you the very hottest sounds for the hottest days of summer.
If great guitars are your goal, you can't afford to miss the July issue of RECORDING!
Pick it up now on the newsstand... and so you get your next issue early (and save on cost), why not hit the big red Subscribe Now button on this page and have RECORDING delivered to your door each month?
A Guitar Gear Grab Bag
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay with Darwin Grosse
A Guitar Gear Grab Bag |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay with Darwin Grosse
Fill up your guitar toolchest with 14 cool new products from Dwarfcraft, George Dennis, Godlyke, Hardwire, Malekko, Radial Engineering, Totally Wycked Audio, and WMD.
Effects pedals are one of the more affordable vices a rec......Expand
Fill up your guitar toolchest with 14 cool new products from Dwarfcraft, George Dennis, Godlyke, Hardwire, Malekko, Radial Engineering, Totally Wycked Audio, and WMD.
Effects pedals are one of the more affordable vices a recording guitarist can enjoy. There are thousands of them out there from dozens of makers, ranging from huge companies known worldwide to one-man shops turning out designs no one has ever heard of. In your quest for a signature sound that makes your tracks stand out from the competition, a cool effects box in the right place can inspire you to play better, help you work faster, and give you something extra in the sound department, without breaking the bank. The phrase you might hear yourself saying is... "Why not?"
Well, why not? In this Grab Bag, we review a wide variety of pedals from makers pedals from makers large and small. Some happened into our offices as part of the regular review procedure of our Spanish-language sister publication, Músico Pro, which does a lot more with guitar effects than we do on a month-to-month basis; others were selected for special inclusion for a variety of reasons. If we left someone out that you’re curious about, let us know! And enjoy this cornucopia of weird, wild, and wonderful pedals in the meantime...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5017
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5017 |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Everything you need for exceptional acoustic guitar recording -- miked, DI, or both -- in a portable package.
Thirty years after selling the first company to bear his name, and after three decades spent consulting and design......Expand
Everything you need for exceptional acoustic guitar recording -- miked, DI, or both -- in a portable package.
Thirty years after selling the first company to bear his name, and after three decades spent consulting and designing for Focusrite, Amek, and others, Rupert Neve returned to the fray in 2005 with new high-end studio gear bearing his name once more: Rupert Neve Designs. RND hit the ground running with a lineup of eight half-rack units, dubbed the Portico series, featuring various combinations of microphone preamps, compressors, and eqs as well as esoteric gear like a tape emulator and a stereo field editor. Back in our June 2008 issue, Justin Peacock gave us the scoop on each and every one! His overall synopsis of the line was that it had "a character unto itself" and was "the calling card of the new Neve, rather than a recreation of the old." In simple terms, he was impressed.
One of the more interesting pieces in that review was the Portico 5016 Mic Pre/DI, which featured parallel microphone and DI inputs along with transformer-coupled outputs. With the 5016 you could record a direct signal from a bass or guitar while simultaneously miking and tracking the amplifier. This was made even more efficient by a variable phase knob that allowed you to adjust for and tighten up phase issues between the miked and direct signals without having to wait to adjust phase at the console or in your DAW. This box quickly became popular as a tracking front end for both bassists and guitarists alike, and soon found more use out of the rack and on the studio floor.
Sadly for some, the 5016 has been discontinued, but in its place we now have an even more purpose-built version with some cool new features, the new Portico 5017...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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iOS Music Tools for Guitarists
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
iOS Music Tools for Guitarists |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
The iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch are turning up in more and more studios, with a wide variety of useful hardware and software for a variety of tasks. We check out 7 guitar-friendly interfaces and apps by Agile Partners, Alesis, Frank Mantek, Peave......Expand
The iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch are turning up in more and more studios, with a wide variety of useful hardware and software for a variety of tasks. We check out 7 guitar-friendly interfaces and apps by Agile Partners, Alesis, Frank Mantek, Peavey, Studio Devil, and TheGigEasy.
On the back page of our April 2011 issue we joked that the iPad was rapidly becoming the most important musical tool of this decade, and that everyone who was anyone had to have one in their studio. While we wouldn't really recommend what came next in the article (smashing the iPad with drumsticks while miking it), the simple fact is that devices using iOS are indeed becoming, if not indispensible in the studio, pretty darned handy.
We've already reviewed some hardware and software for the iPad, most notably the excellent FourTrack recording app and GuitarJack by Sonoma Wire Works; see our December 2010 issue, with a future issue hopefully to cover the new GuitarJack 2, which is under final review by Apple as of press time. And every day, iOS versions of some of the best-known Mac and Windows programs are released to the delight of musicians everywhere, like Peterson's fantastic iStrobosoft tuning software (reviewed December 2010 and recently supplemented with an even more feature-rich iPad version) and Apple's own GarageBand, which has so many cool features the Mac version lacks that it's getting a review of its own in a forthcoming issue. While even the new iPad 2, with its dual-core processor, isn't ready to completely replace a laptop yet, you'd be amazed at some of the things you can do with iOS and the right music gear.
We'll be looking at a lot of iOS Music Tools in the coming months. You can look forward to reviews of recording software, virtual instruments, unusual performance and music composition platforms, remote control apps for music hardware, looping and sampling tools, handy utilities, and all kinds of interfaces and add-ons to improve your iOS experience.
For this, our Guitar Gear issue, we're going to take a quick gander at some new tools guitarists will love...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Reviewed and Revisited: BOSS RC-30 Loop Station
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Reviewed and Revisited: BOSS RC-30 Loop Station |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
BOSS has added unique new features to its looper pedal; we run down the changes for you.
The BOSS Loop Station has been around for ten years! That's a mind-boggling number to an old loop hand like me, whose experiences with ......Expand
BOSS has added unique new features to its looper pedal; we run down the changes for you.
The BOSS Loop Station has been around for ten years! That's a mind-boggling number to an old loop hand like me, whose experiences with creating looped and layered music go all the way back to the 1980s and experiments with dual reel-to-reel decks pioneered by Brian Eno... just as digital delays were becoming practical to do the same thing. Since then, a whole menagerie of digital loopers have come into being, and while some have died out and others nearly forgotten, BOSS has continued to be a key player in the game.
The Loop Station family began with the RC-20 (which we reviewed way back in our January 2002 issue), then the RC-20XL with expanded features, and the powerful multipedal RC-50, putting the power of looping into the wider market in a way that the machines from the smaller companies couldn't. In 2011, looping is everywhere, gone from a quirky pastime of a small community of experimental musicians to a technique that put Imogen Heap and others on the pop charts. With this expanded attention, BOSS has updated the Loop Station with new features, and seemingly a shifted focus in terms of the audience it's trying to attract. Let's take a look at the RC-30....
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Reviewed and Revisited: IK Multimedia AmpliTube 3.5
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Reviewed and Revisited: IK Multimedia AmpliTube 3.5 |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
This famous plug-in that models an entire guitar signal chain now has a free version -- does that get your attention? Also a new paid version, new features, and a new way to buy models... and we auditioned them all!
Many of ......Expand
This famous plug-in that models an entire guitar signal chain now has a free version -- does that get your attention? Also a new paid version, new features, and a new way to buy models... and we auditioned them all!
Many of our readers will be familiar with AmpliTube, IK Multimedia's product line of guitar/bass amplification and effects modeling software that comes in a variety of packages.
Available in standalone mode or as a plug-in for your favorite DAW, Amplitube is more than just your average plug-in, it's really an entire virtual guitar environment, made up of individual modules that each represent a component of an entire electric guitar or bass chain -- effects pedals, amps, speaker cabinets and rack effects, as well as microphones and rooms.
In November 2007 we reviewed version 2 of the main program and also the first-ever specialized artist package, the Jimi Hendrix edition. Other releases have included a Fender version, a Metal version, and an Ampeg SVX bass version, as well as bundles with IK's interface products, the StompIO, StealthPlug, and StealthPedal, and iOS versions that work with IK's iRig I/O interface. Today we'll look at the revamped and expanded version 3.5 of the main AmpliTube program...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Tech21 Blonde
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Reviewed by
Har
Tech21 Blonde |
Reviewed by
Har
Sweet and tasty Fender amp simulation in a pedal that fits any rig.
Tech21's Character Series of pedals are modeled (in an analog sense, not digital) to emulate the sound and feel of a number of classic amps, craftily-rename......Expand
Sweet and tasty Fender amp simulation in a pedal that fits any rig.
Tech21's Character Series of pedals are modeled (in an analog sense, not digital) to emulate the sound and feel of a number of classic amps, craftily-renamed: "Leeds" to designate Hiwatt amps, "British" to designate Marshall amps, and so on. Recently released are their Version 2 series of some of these pedals, which now feature a switch to defeat the famous SansAmp speaker emulation in case you want to run the pedal into a real amp with a real speaker.
Their Blonde model -- based on Fender amps -- specifically grabbed my attention, as I'd hoped it would address the one thing I personally found lacking in my own older SansAmp GT2: a clean, clear ringing amp tone that could make my Strat sing. The GT2 is wonderful for big distorted tones, but never seemed to "clean up" the way I'd hoped, even at its "Tweed" setting...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Eventide Space
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Reviewed by
Har
Eventide Space |
Reviewed by
Har
Reverb junkies, take note: some of the most famous spaces in the world now come in a stompbox.
We reviewed Eventide's TimeFactor and ModFactor guitar pedals in November 2008 and the PitchFactor in November 2009. After those ......Expand
Reverb junkies, take note: some of the most famous spaces in the world now come in a stompbox.
We reviewed Eventide's TimeFactor and ModFactor guitar pedals in November 2008 and the PitchFactor in November 2009. After those releases, rumors, speculation and flat-out wishful thinking started flying around the various guitar-effects online forums as to what would be next. The near-unanimous hope was for a pedal featuring Eventide's famous reverbs, and discussions about what this mythical "VerbFactor" pedal would do ranged far and wide.
At the beginning of 2011 Eventide finally put all the speculation to rest with announcements of their new Space reverb pedal, with promotional photos delivering the money-shot front and center on its glowing display: "BLACKHOLE", Eventide's legendary algorithm for creating deep, super-massive reverbs, the one that so many people had been specifically clamoring for.
Eventide further announced all twelve of the algorithms they would be pulling from the flagship H8000FW and Eclipse V4 rack units, including Shimmer, a pitch-shifted reverb effect made hugely popular by The Edge of U2. The bait was set, and folks went all kinds of hook-line-and-sinker with it... pre-ordering and breathlessly awaiting for its release, which finally occurred earlier this year. So does it deliver the goods?...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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RECORDING's Showcase Of Sounds
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Reviewed by
Allen Goodman
RECORDING's Showcase Of Sounds |
Reviewed by
Allen Goodman
Vir2 Instruments Electri6ity.
In this issue about getting great tones, allow me to mention a way to do it even if you don't have a guitar in your studio! Electri6ity, produced by Southern California company Vir2 Instruments,......Expand
Vir2 Instruments Electri6ity.
In this issue about getting great tones, allow me to mention a way to do it even if you don't have a guitar in your studio! Electri6ity, produced by Southern California company Vir2 Instruments, is an electric guitar library intended to provide all the nuance and articulation of a real guitar performance. It ships on four DVDs containing 24-bit samples taken from eight of the world's best known guitars -- over 24,000 samples for each one...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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TC Electronic Flashback, Shaker, and Hall Of Fame
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay with Darwin Grosse
TC Electronic Flashback, Shaker, and Hall Of Fame |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay with Darwin Grosse
These pedals offer great sounds, flexible features, and the unprecedented ability to be instantly and completely reconfigured using Internet downloads.
TC Electronic has been making guitar effects for decades; I drooled over......Expand
These pedals offer great sounds, flexible features, and the unprecedented ability to be instantly and completely reconfigured using Internet downloads.
TC Electronic has been making guitar effects for decades; I drooled over the TC Stereo Chorus/Flanger 30 years ago, and always wished I could have found a way to buy one... but at the time, it was worth more than my bass and my amp put together (which says about as much about my bass and amp as it did about the pedal!). Fast forward a fair number of years, and TC is still innovating madly when it comes to giving guitarists cool new tools for cool new tones, more powerful than ever and way more affordable.
There are several exciting new faces in the TC pedal world: the PolyTune, which lets a guitarist tune all six strings at once by simply strumming (available as a stompbox and as an iPhone app); the all-analog MojoMojo Overdrive and Dark Matter Distortion pedals; and a set of five digital effects stompboxes that offer a killer new technology called TonePrint, which allows the user to quickly reconfigure the pedals by downloading parameter settings from the Internet. In this review, we tested the Flashback delay/looper, the Shaker vibrato, and the Hall Of Fame reverb; the others are the Vortex flanger and the Corona chorus...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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It's Your Music -- Know Your Rights. Chapter 16: Licensing Music For Video Games
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Reviewed by
Todd Gascon with Bruce Kaphan
It's Your Music -- Know Your Rights. Chapter 16: Licensing Music For Video Games |
Reviewed by
Todd Gascon with Bruce Kaphan
The game market is booming, and there are real opportunities for up-and-coming musicians out there. Know the details of these licensing agreements, so you can collect what your music earns.
Over the past several years the co......Expand
The game market is booming, and there are real opportunities for up-and-coming musicians out there. Know the details of these licensing agreements, so you can collect what your music earns.
Over the past several years the computer and video game industry has changed dramatically. In a recent report published by the Entertainment Software Association (Siwek, Stephen E., Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2010 Report, Entertainment Software Association (2010)), U.S. sales of computer and video games have grown from $7 billion in 2005 to well over $10 billion in 2009. Unfortunately, the music industry has not been so fortunate. In 2009, the total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing plunged to $6.3 billion, according to a recent report published by Forrester Research. This is less than half of the revenue earned by the music industry ten years ago!
Given the recent growth in the sales of computer and video games, there are more opportunities today for independent artists to license their music for computer and video games. This is particularly true given the popularity of multi-player online games, social gaming and the emerging mobile market (i.e., apps sold for Apple and Android handsets). This article will provide you with an overview of the key terms in a license agreement when your music is used in a video game...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Put Your Foot Down!
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Written by
Har
Put Your Foot Down! |
Written by
Har
Guitar effects offer a universe of tonal possibilities... and a world of hurt, from noise, gain mismatches, and unintended consequences when they're wired in the wrong order. Here's a pedal master's primer on how to get the most from your stompbox......Expand
Guitar effects offer a universe of tonal possibilities... and a world of hurt, from noise, gain mismatches, and unintended consequences when they're wired in the wrong order. Here's a pedal master's primer on how to get the most from your stompboxes.
In many ways, the role of the guitar effect pedal has come full circle over the years. It started out with analog pedals being the "only game in town" for guitarists looking for interesting sounds. But then those pedals were pushed aside to a degree in the 1980s when rack-mounted digital effects became more affordable and all the rage of axe-slingers touting their perceived "cleaner, more professional" sound.
Fast-forward to the present, and we find that high-quality analog and digital effect pedals are not only available, but happily coexist side-by-side in many a player's pedalboard. But this doesn't necessarily mean that you can now just slap together all these little Boxes Of Sonic Inspiration, without first putting some serious thought toward the ways they can be chained together to give you the unique sound you're looking for, with the least amount of noise and hiss. Time to get wise!...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Fat Guitar Tones Without The Mud
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Written by
Brian Tarquin
Fat Guitar Tones Without The Mud |
Written by
Brian Tarquin
Downtuned and drop-tuned guitars are all the rage for some genres of modern music, but recording them without turning them into muck can be a real challenge. Learn the tricks of the tuned-down trade here!
A fat tone is one o......Expand
Downtuned and drop-tuned guitars are all the rage for some genres of modern music, but recording them without turning them into muck can be a real challenge. Learn the tricks of the tuned-down trade here!
A fat tone is one of the great and never-ending quests for guitarists and for recordists. It can be a trap -- the quagmire that so many fall into is the bassy muddy sound that fights against the frequencies of the kick drum and bass guitar. There have been many guitar tracks where I've had to roll off the low midrange frequencies to make them fit into a mix. It may sound good in the room when woodshedding, but in the real world it just does not work alongside a band mix.
Come at these problems with an 8-string electric guitar and you are in a new realm. Math metal bands like Meshuggah, Botch, and Revocation have used the 7- and 8-string guitars very well, without drowning out their band mates. Those two extra low strings of F# and B really become a very effective tool when used efficiently. Here are some ideas on how to smash some heads without getting trapped in the mud in the mix....
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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Fade Out
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Written by
Brent Heintz
Fade Out |
Written by
Brent Heintz
ASCAP's "I Create Music" EXPO 2011.
In late April, ASCAP held their sixth annual "I Create Music" EXPO at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, CA. The conference, which caters to musicians and composers aiming to make their m......Expand
ASCAP's "I Create Music" EXPO 2011.
In late April, ASCAP held their sixth annual "I Create Music" EXPO at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, CA. The conference, which caters to musicians and composers aiming to make their mark on the music industry, is a stone's throw from the iconic Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame-destination points for tourists to literally walk all over their beloved stars.
For the 2500 working musicians attending the EXPO, there was no shortage of stars, A&R execs, CEOs and producers willing to impart their wisdom...
Read more in the July 2011 issue of RECORDING!
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