Re: i just used a jazzmaster to record some HC-punk!

[mynameisjonas]

it turned out pretty good. it was the first time i used guitar rig (i´ve been using amplitube before... never again). i thought the JM would sound too thin for this kind of music, but i think the thin sound is what makes it sound good. check it out: slave digger

[zhivago]

woah man...pedal to the metal, all-out RAWK! 

excellent stuff, and friend request from my own music project sent

[Amber]

Sounds good. I use guitar rig A LOT. I can fool a lot of people with it. What settings did you have in it? Also, are those real drums?

[Superfuzz]

Sounds good. I use guitar rig A LOT. I can fool a lot of people with it. What settings did you have in it? Also, are those real drums?

+1
I use guitar rig every time I can't use my real amp,it's a whole lot better than use little cheap SS amp.
one of my fav settings is Bassman + 900 series cab or VOX 2X12

[mynameisjonas]

Sounds good. I use guitar rig A LOT. I can fool a lot of people with it. What settings did you have in it? Also, are those real drums?

the left guitar is the bassman with all the controls dimed, through the 4x10 tweed cab with the "size" slider fully to the left, can´t remember the mic settings.. :-\
the right guitar is the same as the left one but with a plexi instead of the bassman, and the size slider a bit more towards the middle, and different mic settings.
the bass is a JV series squier p-bass through both a plexi and a bassman with a bunch of cabs and mic settings i don´t remember

the drum samples are from Drumkit From Hell 1.0, and i programmed them in Fruityloops. i´m really pleased with the drums, i got them to sound pretty much exactly like when i play them IRL.

[sookwinder]

i got them to sound pretty much exactly like when i play them IRL. 

what ?  you are able to programme them to reproduce badly hit snares that sound like crappy rim shots 

btw , after downloading slave digger  (took about 20 minutes using my stupid 56k modem) it was well worth it... sounded great 

[mezcalhead]

Love the recording!

Your drums always sound great, so maybe you can help me .. I'm havng heaps of trouble with drums at the moment, none of my approaches seem to work:

1. Use drum loops, which sound fine but they're not really my ideas and it feels like I'm just rewriting someone else's song.
2. Program the drums myself in Garageband which is time-consuming and ends up feeling really stiff and unnatural.
3. Play my wife's electric drumkit which has beautiful triggered samples and sounds like the world's best-recorded kit but I can hardly play drums so it sounds really weird, like Neil Peart having a stroke or something.

I think I either need a real drum kit so my loose playing won't sound so out of place (but that's a whole new can of worms) or to buy a drum machine that proudly sounds just like a cheap nasty drum machine and is what it is. Either that or learn how to program drums properly.

[sookwinder]

Jon, IMO , one of the common things through out all music genres is the fact that if the drums don't sound good, the music don't sound good.  The project I have been working for the past 5 years  (shit is it that long) started off using generic drum samples I found on the web or stoll via a Roland drum machine.  These were ok for a while, until I (we) sat back and actually listened and we realised that even a straight simple beat sounds crap if the drum samples are crap.

In the end I actually recorded my own drum samples making sure that the sames lasted a long time and the whole ambience thing (rattle/shimmer/decay) was there.  None of this cut off sample after 0.5 sec.  I also bought some drum sample CDs.

So when I am setting up a snare drum, I will actually use 4 or 5 samples of the same snare drum and intermingle them so there is a variation.  same with the ride or crash or what ever.

One question... do you pre-programme the entire drum track and then record.  Or do you set up a simple (yet applicable) drum track and then lay down the bass/guitar/keyboard and then go back an embellish the drums samples/track ?

I use the latter method as I have also learnt that a lot of times a great sounding drum fill or  stangely placed cymbal smash doesn't always fall "on the beat"  .. sometimes it is just  there because "it works".  Drummers (good drummers) do this naturallly  ...  for me and my guitarist, it takes almost as long as laying down all of the guiatrs and bass.

[mynameisjonas]

thanks guys

jon, i´m afraid i can´t offer any better solution. my method is really time consuming too, although it goes quicker once you´ve got the hang of it. i like working in fruityloops simply because i´m used to it, but i´m sure there are way better programs to use for drum programming.


oh, just to be clear, it´s only "slave digger" that has the DFH-drums. the other songs have real drums (although "vesta grima" has a drum machine too).

[mynameisjonas]

One question... do you pre-programme the entire drum track and then record.  Or do you set up a simple (yet applicable) drum track and then lay down the bass/guitar/keyboard and then go back an embellish the drums samples/track ?

maybe this question was directed at jon, but i usually program the whole thing pretty much the way i want it and then record. then if i´m not satisfied with something, i go back and touch it up. as you say, the key to a natural sound is getting all the ambience. that´s what i like about DFH, it has two version of every sample; one close-miced and one "room" sample. and for every sample, every other mic is turned on, so you really get the whole picture.

[mezcalhead]

One question... do you pre-programme the entire drum track and then record.  Or do you set up a simple (yet applicable) drum track and then lay down the bass/guitar/keyboard and then go back an embellish the drums samples/track ?

So far I either just throw on a loop, or record the guitars/bass first along with a click and then add programmed drums after the fact. I hear what you're saying that it's probably a good idea to at least revise the drums after playing the instruments so that everything reacts to everything else.

At the moment, as I alluded to elsewhere, I'm trying to get a spontaneous feel to what I'm recording so I often just throw on a guitar and play the first thing that comes into my head, then layer more parts with it. That's working well except to then stop and spend hours painstakingly programming drums  kinda goes against the whole concept.

Still, if I'm going to do it I guess I might as well do it properly. Would the DFH samples work as imports into Garageband?

[mynameisjonas]

i´ve never used garageband, but if the DFH plugin itself doesn´t work, the individual .wav files certainly will, at least version 1.0 (which is what i´m using).

[sookwinder]

That's working well except to then stop and spend hours painstakingly programming drums  kinda goes against the whole concept.

I think the problem is (well at least for my guitarist and me) that although we both know what drum sounds/style we want on a track, it is all those unique fills and flams and things that makes a good drummer which just takes so long for those like us who don't wake up in the morning with the singular thought of :  "I want to hit something"


and in the end to make a piece of music sound mnore than just a demo, the drums have to be at least as good as the guitars, as good as the bass, the keys etc  .....  we have all heard crappy computer generated drum tracks on songs on the radio and they stand out like dogs balls.

For me at least ....  it just takes a long time... but the way I do it is that it is usually the drums (the humanity part of the drums at least) that we lay down last.  and adding a "realtime" recorded cowbell being madly hit with a drum stick or a tambourine or some other percussive instrument also add "life" to the track

[sookwinder]

i´ve never used garageband, but if the DFH plugin itself doesn´t work, the individual .wav files certainly will, at least version 1.0 (which is what i´m using).

I just use individual wave file samples and individually place every drum hit into a series of wave files ... like counting pieces of sand  ...

... but it works for me

[Amber]

Jonas, how long did it take you to get a to a point where you could pro gramme drums like that? Do you play real drums?