Lazarus Graveyard

There are about a gazillion ways of doing this and there will be many more posts on the subject. But for now Im going to tell you how to do it the absolute easiest way – i.e. plug n play, minimal setup and maximum results.

What you will need is a computer, an electric guitar and about £80-£300…I will introduce to what I consider to be the perfect starting solution at the bottom of this post, but I would like to give some background first.

If you are into electric guitar then the chances are you are a gear freak! Guitarists love their equipment. Nothing makes us happier than to see a nice Gibson Les Paul plugged into a valve amp with lots of famous pedals and effects. Now the problem with this is it costs a fortune to get decent equipment. Electronic and solidstate amps have been around since the 80s and are a lot cheaper than their pure valve counterparts, Valve amps are associated with ‘warmth’, fatness and shimmer in their sound, Solid state amps are generally associated with coldness and thin sound, often buzzy or fizzy when over driven. Some of these solid state amps have become quite desirable (such as the clean sound of the Roland JC-120 as made famous by Andy Summers of the police), There have been many attempts to make valve/solid state hybrids to give the balance of warmth and low cost – but most will agree a pure valve amp is the way to go – they cost a fortune, are invariably huge, and generally need to be turned up to a level of volume that is inappropriate for residential areas to get their best tones. Also if you want varied tones it would be nice to have a selection of amps to choose from as each big name amp is famous for its own special tone. Suddenly you are very poor, have fallen out with your neighbours and have no space in your house because of all the equipment and cabling..

Enter Line 6! what they do is make units/pedals and programs that have ‘modelled’ multiple famous amps and effects. So you can have a pedal, such as the POD XTL, that will mimic the sound of about one hundred famous amplifiers, speaker cabinets and a multitude of effects. Its easy to switch between the tones and everything is under 400 notes. You can carry it around under one arm (instead of needing several trucks if you owned all the equipment for real!)

The virtual amp/ modelling thing has been going for a long time now and a number of big names are constantly competing with each other trying to improve their algorithms, responsiveness etc.. Big Names include Digitech and BOSS, who specialise in hardware and then there are big name software companies such as IK Multimedia and Native Instruments. Those of us who are into this stuff can spend hours arguing online about the relative benefits of different companies and the quality of the sound their products produce and how realistic it is.

Most people will agree that Line 6 straddles the hardware and software side of the fence effortlessly and that the quality of sound, balanced against the cost of their equipment, is outstanding.

Also because this post is about home recording (for those of you who want to make your own album in your bedroom and be the next big thing!) they offer the best (IMO) one top shop, all in recording solutions around.

But first – a preface of the requirements of recording on your pc…

Recording Interface

Sound from a guitar is an analogue signal – to record on the computer you need a way of converting that analogue signal into a digital signal so it can be processed by your computer’s CPU. It then needs to be re-converted back into an analogue signal so that you can hear it. The bulk of this work will be accomplished by your audio interface or soundcard. Most pcs have soundcards so you can hear music and play games but generic soundcards arent man enough to step up to the role of acting as a recording interface because they dont work fast enough and dont have enough grunt. You need an interface that is designed for recording, generally having its own onboard memory and processing power to help with this arduous task – they can be PCI card based like the emu 0404 card in my base unit, or they can be external and connected to your machine by USB or Firewire.

If you imagine you pluck a string on an acoustic guitar you hear the sound immediately, If you pluck the string on an electric guitar the signal goes through a cable and comes out of the amp – this is delayed but the delay is so minimal that you cant detect it. If you pluck the string on an electric guitar that is hooked up to a pc the signal goes through the cable, into the recording interface – is converted into a digital signal, is processed by the computer’s CPU, is converted back into an analogue signal and finally comes out of your speakers so you can hear what you did. There’s a lot of steps here and if your equipment isnt upto the job it can be too slow giving the impression that you pluck the string and then hear the note a few seconds afterwards making it really hard to play. This is called latency. High latency is less intensive on your PC’s resources – its something that can be adjusted. When you are mixing down you can adjust the latency to stupidly high levels because it doesnt matter – this frees up resources for mixing and adjusting the sound. To adjust the latency to very low levels so you can actually record a take and hear what you are doing accurately eats up resources – often its a balancing act trying to get the best performance against the lowest latency. The Line 6 equipment im going to introduce you to (when I finally stop yakking!) copes with this really well.

PC power

Recording on the pc is extremely resource intensive, everything is done in real time so every spare ounce of your pc’s resources will be utilised to get the job done. Its common practice to have a pc setup specifically for this job (or setup a separate user account – read this to learn how to optimize windows XP for recording, Vista is not ‘that’ much different.) with unnecessary programs, features and processes disabled so that you maximise the pc resources for recording and avoid drop outs – which is when the recording process stops because the pc was asked to do too much at once and gives up (generally). You can get away with a slower processor and about 512mb ram but if you push the system or ask it to do increasingly harder work you will reach a ceiling limit that the machine cant cope with. My pc is maxed out – I made sure I got the best processor I could afford (AMD Phenom X4 – I know all the intel lovers will laugh but its a solid multicore processor that just keeps ongoing when I start to pile on the pain.) and the maximum amount of ram I could get. Im running Vista 32 bit so the most ram it will recognise is 4mb. Now I dont utilise this very much but its good to have some headroom and the machine copes with general recording that would have strained my old p4 baseunit without breaking a sweat.

Speakers, Headphones and monitors

You need a way to hear your sound. Ie speakers or headphones. For recording normal HIFI speakers are not good ebough because they are designed to make music sound nice. You need a recording monitor solution – these are specially designed speakers that have a ‘flat eq’ enabling you to hear what you are recording accurately. If you recorded using hi fi speakers as a reference when you finished the recording and exported the track as an mp3 you might find its too bassy or too hissy because the audio reference you were using during the recording wasnt reliable. Monitors can be horrendously expensive. A set of studio headphones can be relatively cheap but most producers would not mix with headphones. Im poor so I have a set of edirol MA-15d powered reference monitors that are under 150 notes per pair. I also have a set of Behringer HPS3000 studio headphones that are less than 30 notes. Behringer is a company that specialises in making musical equipment as cheap as possible. A lot of people will be quite sniffy about their products but ive always had a good experience with them.

Recording applications

You need a way of actually recording your music, ie a piece of software that is designed to capture real-time multi tracked audio. Windows sound recorder doesnt quite crack it im afraid. If you are lucky enough to have an apple mac you get garageband as standard on I life and its pretty awesome! There are a ton of solutions to this – some of which are free and some of which cost many thousands of pounds. Free solutions include Audacity and Reaper. Reaper is open source, kind of share ware not technically free but you can grab a copy for nothing and start work – it has an excellent reputation with recording professionals. More expensive standards are products like Cubase and Sonar. Cubase has been around since the dawn of time and many people will say its the definitive solution, Sonar is manufactured by Cakewalk and is windows only but its very powerful and its my weapon of choice. When I got my frist digital recording solution back in the days of yore ( a Digitech RPx400) it came with a ‘lite’ version of a cakewalk product. Its an interface I understand and Im comfortable with so Ive stuck with it through successive releases. I currently use Sonar 7 Studio. It can be expensive to get a product like this but once you are a registered owner you have upgrade paths to new products at vastly reduced cost.

The main thing to remember with these products is not to be intimidated – when you look at them its so overwhelming with all the information on screen – but they all do the same thing and its the same thing that an old 4 track cassette recorder would do in the 60s. It lets you record a track – rewind and record another track on top of it. All you need to know is how to;

• Play (hit the spacebar in Sonar)
• Stop (hit the spacebar again in Sonar)
• Record (press the ‘R’ key in Sonar – make sure the red ‘r’ icon is turned on on the track you want to record on)
• Rewind (press the ‘W’ key in Sonar)
• setup a new track (right click on a track, choose insert new ‘audio track’ – press the red ‘r’ icon to arm it.)
• Save (ctrl + S in Sonar)
• export – (in Sonar go to file/export and choose your medium – mp3/wav etc..)

Every other function and button on display is just dressing and its all cool – but just master the basics before you start experimenting with mastering, mixing, sidechaining, effects sends etc….

Some of the Line 6 products im going to show you (eventually I will I promise!) come with a free recording product called Ableton Live – very good but im not familiar with it – used it a few times…

Vocals and Microphones

If you want to sing you need a microphone – there are broadly two types, Dynamic and condensor.  condenser microphones are ‘generally’ more sensitive and better capture the human voice but they require external power to work (phantom power), they can also be very expensive. Dynamic microphones are  dont require power. The Sure SM57 is a dynamic microphone and has been a standard for recording guitar amplifiers for decades (it does a passable job on vocals too).

Mixer

How many sound sources do you want to record? Do you want to be able to record more than one at once? DO you want to record your vocals over a microphone while also recording your guitar and your buddy on bass? then you need a way of collecting and directing these disparate sound sources into your audio interface. You need a mixer! Mixers can be cheap or expensive – Behringer make some really nice ones – I have a Xenyx 502 that is pretty basic but works really well and is cheap as chips. How many inputs does your audio interface have? How many audio channels can your audio interface drivers cope with? These are thing you need to think about if you want to record more than one thing at a time.

Tone generation

You need something to make sounds. You can just plug an electric guitar into your recording interface and record it but it will be very uninspiring – you need a way to make it sounds as if you are playing in a cathedral through a marshall stack with a tubescreamer and an echoplex pedal to really have fun. As touched on above there are many hardware and software solutions for this – you can actually plug a microphone into your recording interface and use it to record your guitar amp – or you can use a hardware unit like the POD XTL or you can rely entirely on plug in software like Amplitube or guitar rig. Dont worry Line 6 got it covered…

MIDI

You may want to use MIDI – MIDI is a set of instructions used to control musical equipment or tell a device to generate digital sound. Midi is a tiny language that has no intrinsic sound it’s self its just a set of commands (like sheet music) that can be used by software/hardware to play music. You can control MIDI inside any recording application by using your mouse on a piano roll (a screen that looks like an excel spreadsheet) which is laborious and boring. Or you can get a midi controller – like a MIDI keyboard that will let you input the commands organically. MIDI is cool you can use it to add vast synth or orchestral arrangements to your tracks and it can be used to make drum sounds. One thing you’ll want when you start recording is some drums! An alternative to MIDI drums is to use acidized loops – which are wav file recording of real drummers that have been chopped up into useable clips. You can get them from places like Betamonkey. They work really well in Sonar btw! MIDI programs can be incredibly cheesy or amazing ly impressive and expensive – all pc soundcards come with some MIDI implementation – it aint great but you can get casio keyboard type sounds out of it. For drums I use a MIDI driven plug in application called Ez Drummer that i open inside Sonar to create my own drum beats. I can use pre made down loadable MIDI files to drive Ez Drummer or I can edit the MIDI information with my mouse or I can tap out beats on my MIDI keyboard. MIDI Keyboards come in many flavours but seeing as I cant play the piano there’s no point having a full size device so i have a cheap small 25 note MIDI keyboard made by Carillon called the Carillon control 25. Just plug it into your pc over usb. Tell your recording application that it exists and away you go. Actually that’s a little misleading – MIDI is not something that is immediately easy to get your head round – learn to record Audio from your guitar first.

Solution!

Ok! So thats the preface done with and now im going to tell you how to accomplish all of the above with one purchase under £300 (well two) – get the Line 6 studio KB37 and a pair of Behringer HPS3000 headphones.

Plug the KB37 into the USB port on your computer – install the software, plug your guitar and your headphones into the KB37 and off you rock!!

I love this product. Its the top product in Line 6’s ‘toneport’ range. It takes every issue ive identified above and just deals with it beautifully and in one compact and rather attractive package.

It is an excellent Audio Interface with good ADA converters (the bits the convert analogue signals to digital and back again) and copes with latency using its own proprietary ‘tone direct’ technology – which I wont go into ‘too much’ here but basically means the driver gives you a low latency monitoring signal so you can hear what you are playing without a delay between plucking a string and hearing the note. But this is separate from what’s actually being capture by your recording software. What this means is you can have very high latency in your recording application (by increasing the buffer size)  – therefore having low resource utilization and making your pc happier, but still be able to hear what you are playing accurately with no (or very low!) delay betweeen hitting the note and hearing it. This gives less powerful computers a shot at being able to do this stuff!

It is also a mixer as it has multiple inputs allowing you to record many sound sources at once.

It has inbuilt phantom power incase you want to connect a Condensor microhphone, you can turn this off if you want to connect a dynamic mic.

It (obviously) has an inbuilt MIDI controller keyboard, also some other MIDI controls that let you stop/start, rewind and record in your chosen application without having to use the mouse.

It also comes with a program called ‘podfarm’ which is a virtual suite of amps and effects that let you get pretty much any guitar or bass sound you could possibly want. There are effects and preset for processing vocals and well – there are no rules you can run your midi drums through it – there’s no end to the possibilities.. It starts of scaled back to a fe wsounds but you can buy add ons called ‘modelpacks‘ to flesh out the sounds. I have them all and they are fantastic.

You also get a copy of Ableton live lite so you have recording software to get to work with straight away – this package includes a lot of MIDI synth and drum solutions – so really if you buy the KB37 and plug it into your pc you have everything you need to get up and running writing and recording your own tracks. You wont be missing anything at all. The only configuration is plugging it in – installing the software and telling your recording software what your recording interface is – its sooooo simple and sooooo kewl! Did I mention it sounds great too?

I have bought traded and sold nearly every Line 6 product that’s been made. I dont actually own the KB37 right now but I always point people to it if they are interested in getting started because it does absolutely everything in one package.

My recording setup

Ive scaled my setup back a lot. I have the smallest toneport which is called the toneport GX – its an older version of the current ’studio GX’ but basically does the same thing. Its incredibly tiny – a bit bigger than a cigarette packet but while it lacks the ins and outs of the KB37 its still an excellent recording interface and comes with the pod farm software – what this means is with my headphones, laptop, copy of sonar, toneport GX and my guitar I have a fully fledged recording studio that fits in my ruck sack! aint technology cool? I got my toneport GX for under £40!!! how awesome is that?

I have a base unit setup with an Emu 0404 soundcard, Studio monitors, mixer and MIDI keyboard for big projects and mastering but I spend most of my time working with my portable sketch pad.

Tags: KB37, line 6, recording, Sonar, Toneport GX

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.