Troll Cave Gear

I've had a few questions recently about what gear I'm currently using in my studio, so I thought it was about time to give a quick breakdown on my studio equipment. I will update this list as I add or remove gear.

Guitars
Washburn Idol Series WI-64
Epiphone SG Special
Samick Strat (80's vintage, I think)
Daisy Rock Wildwood Artist Acoustic/Electric
Daisy Rock Mojo Jojo Guitar (for decoration, mostly)

Bass Guitar
Canvas Bass CTFB10

Microphones
Peavy PVi2 Microphone (XLR)
Battlerap.com branded microphone (1/4")
Radio Shack Realistic micphone (1/4")
3 or 4 random generic PC microphones (mini plug)

Interface Hardware
Line 6 UX1 (Blackface)
M-Audio KeyStudio 25
Steinberg USB-2-MIDI Interface (2 x 2)

Misc. Guitar Hardware
Danelectro Black Coffee Metal Distortion Pedal
Epiphone Studio 10S practice amp

Monitors
Audiovox Home Theater System (junk, but it's all I have)

Computers
Dell 3.4 GHz Hyperthreaded CPU, 1 GB RAM (primary), Win XP SP3
Compaq 1.4 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM (slave), Win XP MCE
Dell 933 Mhz CPU, 512 MB RAM (slave), Win ME

Software
REAPER (primary DAW)
Psycle (nice retro tracker)
Audacity (sample editor)
Session (junk)
MIDI-OX (great for monitoring MIDI signals)
MIDIYoke (virtual MIDI cables to connect MIDI programs)

VSTs
I have a massive collection of several hundred VSTs (all free except for POD Farm)
My current favorites are:
POD Farm
Independence Free
ShortCircuit 1
Tweakbench plugs
GTG plugs
Kjaerhus Audio Classic series
ArcDev Noise Industries plugs


If you are interested in finding out more about any of my gear (buying recommendations, reviews, etc) drop me a line.

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In Memory of Matthew Schultz

Faithful readers, bear with me, or skip this post. There will be no tips and tricks in this post, but perhaps a few memories and food for thought in the grand scheme of things. I do feel the need to say goodbye to an old friend and pass along what I have learned about life, death, and how the choices we make affect everything. If you choose to join me, you are more than welcome. If you pass by without a glance, I understand.
On Friday, June 5, 2009, Matthew Schultz drown in the Missouri River. He was an old friend of mine, though we hadn't seen each other in a decade. He and I formed a band while I was in college and he was just out of High School. We had 3 names, as the writing and demoing process went: Wampa Spectrum, Wombat Spectrum, and Susperia. (We always preferred Wampa Spectrum, but figured if we ever released an album, George Lucas might take us down for using "Wampa".) Anyway, I was the principal songwriter with my Amiga-based studio (running OctaMED, with a Yamaha RY-30 Drum Machine and Casio CZ-101 keyboard slaved to it). He was the impetuous kid I met at work who styled himself to be somewhere between Paul Stanley and Rob Zombie - he was neither, but his voice really worked well with my writing style.

We started to cut our demo in Pumpkin Shell Studio (owned by musician extraordinaire Richard Schultz). We completed one rough demo for the song "(E)motion Violation". This has been my favorite song from my catalog for a long time. I recently began to re-make it in my current studio, because state-of-the-art home recording has come so far since that demo was cut in 1995 or 1996. I cannot continue on that project at this time. The rough mix with Matt singing will stand. I plan to release it here in the near future.

Anyway, we had compiled the songs for an EP. We had it priced out, planned out, and were going to start auditioning local guitarists to replace some of the scratch guitar samples I had used. I took a vacation, he had a change of heart during that time, and we called it quits. End of the band, end of my music for many years. We exchanged emails once in a while for a couple years, but then he disappeared for a while, and I had no idea where he was until last year. Yet I put off getting in touch with him, and now it's too late to send him an email.

So what, right?

Here's what: I went to the Memorial service his brother held for him (on the shore of the Missouri River, close to where he died). I only knew a couple people there, but most were from Matt's life after I lost touch with him. Everyone said the same basic things about him - his quest for knowledge, his drive to pursue his dreams, the way he was on a journey through life. There were Rocket Balloon Races, Belly Dancers, Singing, Glow Sticks, Drums, and a solemn sing-along of KISS' "Shout It Out Loud", all in Matt's honor.

Near the end of the memorial, I realized that the person they were talking about was not the same person I remembered. All the talk of his being on a journey, and his journey had come to an end in the river. It was then that I realized that I knew Matt at the beginning of the journey, when he was still the impetuous kid idolizing his big brother and not yet seeking answers to the big mysteries. He had grown, evolved, and pursued a life much bigger than any normal life.

And that's when I realized why learning about Matt's life in the past ten years and his untimely death shook me up so much: I could have been him. He pursued some of the same topics I myself had been studying earlier in life. He chased his dreams. I took the safe path: went to college, got a steady job with a conservative company, got married, had kids. Safe across the board.

Matt lived life boldly, and he died boldly. He left his mark on all the people he ever met. I am known as being more reliable than spontaneous. Matt's death is a wake-up call to me in a lot of ways. I know I need to live life more fully, instead of putting it on the "to do" list. Pursue my creative goals doggedly, not passively. That's not to say I'm quitting my job and running away from responsibilities. It's about unlocking the passions and the fires that burn inside. If we don't fan the flames, the dreams will die in a vacuum.

Adding a little more kindling to my "wake up call" - the day before I learned of Matt's death, I was in a car accident that left my car pretty much totaled, but somehow I walked away from with only a slightly sore arm and shoulder. (I was hit directly in the driver's side door and the car was thrown a considerable distance.) I have been living a safe life. Even when bad things happen to me, they happen to me safely.

Matt lived a spontaneous life, and a spontaneous decision to wade into the Missouri River led to his death being broadcast on the evening news. I envy Matt his choices in life. It's not often that we can see a glimpse of what we might have been had we made different choices. I have seen that alternate history of my life, in the shapshots of Matt's life. And the single biggest impression I saw of Matt's adult life is how many people he touched, and how deeply he connected with life on every level.

Although I regret not getting to see the "upgraded" Matt of the last ten years, I cannot dwell on it. I am assimilating what I can, and will move forward with more purpose in my life. I will straddle the line of the safe and the unsafe and grab for that brass ring.

I'll miss you Matt. We all will.

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Gear Review: REAPER v.3.01 now available!

REAPER has now released version 3.01, and there are some nice changes to it. There is so much new about it, it's hard to know where to start. REAPER's website (http://www.reaper.fm) also has been given a very slick overhaul that now screams "I am a serious contender!". They also appear to have raised the prices slightly (now $225 for full commercial and $60 for discounted) and gotten away from the previously confusing "commercial" vs. "non-commercial" terminology. Basically, if you use it for yourself only, as a business with less than $20K annual income, or are a educational or non-profit, you qualify for discounted pricing. And they still adamantly refuse to engage in any strange copy protection schemes. It's the honor system, folks!

My favorite new features are probably the addition of Automation lanes and the ability to have multiple MIDI items in the editor at the same time. However, there's a lot of other goodness packed into version 3. I'll try to give my take on some of the features here. The full feature list for version 3 is at http://www.reaper.fm/whatsnew-300.txt.

Automation Lanes
Automation lanes are a really nice feature that already exist in a lot of other major DAWs, so seeing REAPER add them is a great step forward to full equality. In prior versions, you could see your automation lines as overlays over the track itself. If you were trying to automate a lot of parameters on the same track, it got rather messy and I was always either having to memorize exactly where I was shifting other parameters, or when I displayed multiple lines at the same time (for reference) I was always grabbing the wrong line (i.e. changing the wrong setting). Now with Automation lanes, the automation parameter lines appear as separate sub-track "lanes" that you can display, hide, or bypass on an individual basis. With all of the parameter-heavy VSTs and VSTis out there, this is a great thing.

Edit Multiple MIDI Items
It's sometimes hard to keep track of what is going on between different MIDI tracks. Previously, to edit multiple MIDI tracks, you had to open separate MIDI windows and fiddle with the window sizes so you could get everything on screen at the same time. As of version 3, you now have options in the "Options" menu of the MIDI window named "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items" and "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items, keeping items as secondary". The first will just reuse the window. No big surprise there. The second one - wow. It will shade the notes and parameter settings (like velocity) for any items in the window that are not currently active. The really nice thing about this is that all MIDI items are shown in proper time-context. In other words, all notes are exactly where they should be in relation to one another. This is great for trying to harmonize different synths together - you can actually see what you're doing without a lot of trial and error. You can switch between which MIDI item is active in the window by either using the "Filter" button in the top left, or by simply clicking on a note from the item you want to edit. The clicking on a note can be problematic in a couple of ways - you can't directly write a note over the top of another MIDI item's note, since it will select that track instead of putting down a note - and you can't always see the other item's notes if the current track overlaps. But really, these are spatial issues, not UI issues. I'm loving it!

Multiple Tabbed Projects
Another exciting improvement is the ability to have multiple projects loaded at the same time. This is handled beautifully by the addition of a simple tab control at the top of the screen. Obviously, this adds load on your system as you add more simultaneous projects, but the flexibility this allows is so much better than the prior one-at-a-time design.

A Lot More...
There are so many improvements, many behind the scenes performance upgrades, it is an exhausting list to read. There are a lot of MIDI enhancements (MIDI sysex is now fully supported, for example). Ther are also quite a few general performance enhancements to make REAPER play nicer with some potentially unruly plug-ins. And a lot of memory management improvements. Bottom line: you need this upgrade. If you're not a current REAPER user, now is the perfect time to jump in and try it out. The trial version is NOT time limited or crippled in any way. You've got nothing to lose, and version 3 continues the trend of growing stronger and more powerful with each release.

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Improving Your Drum Track, Part 1: Getting Started With Independence Free

In a home studio, it is easy to make electronica, techno, and dance tracks. There is an expected level of machine-like precision to the music. Perfectly accurate precision and artificial drum beats are readily acceptable. (Let me go on record with a disclaimer: making those forms in a home studio are easy. Making good or great tracks is another story. I am not trying to downplay the level of artistry involved. I saw Aphex Twin spin live in the mid 90's, so I can appreciate the level of complexity of the art form.)

Where it becomes much more of a challenge in the home studio is when you're trying to sound like a traditional band (guitars, bass, drums, vocals). There is some level of trickery that is required to achieve your desired sound for all of these instruments. Right now I want to focus on the difficulty of drummers. Much like Spinal Tap, I have always had a hard time keeping a drummer on call. And then you have the acoustic issues of sound isolation, excess mic bleed, having enough mics and inputs to record the whole kit, complaints from the neighbors, etc. As usual, I will be focusing on use of this within REAPER.

My Dream Drums, For Now
Years ago, I had a Yamaha RY-30 Drum Machine. Bought it used for $330 in about 1993. Like an idiot, I sold it around 1998. Now they're hard to find, but it had very sweet sounding drum kits. Their natural kits were extremely beautiful, using 16 bit samples at a time where the average home user was rocking out to 8 bit. Listening to old recordings I did with that drum machine make me once again regret having parted with it. I have been working to try to achieve the "is that a real drummer?" sound and feel using only free tools.

This is the first part of an ongoing series of posts that will be focused on the best tools I have found to "fake a drummer" and how to tweak your drum tracks to get the "real" drum feel.

Yellow Tools Independence Free
One of the best all-in-one packages I have found so far is Yellow Tools' Independence Free 2.0. As the name implies, this is the free version of their very robust sampler tool. There's a couple features disabled in this version, and the bundled sample library is "only" 2 GB of data. The "Basic" version ships with 12 GB of samples, and the "Pro" version ships with a whopping 70 GB sample library!

My initial goal is to have one or two good "natural" kits. Included in the free 2 GB library are 6 acoustic drum kits, so there are plenty of options. The kits have multiple velocity samples for each sound, so there's more detail than your average single-sample kit.

So What's Missing?
The Free version lacks a couple of major items. The most notable is the lack of ability to import your own samples. The other is the lack of ability to import 3rd party VSTs. Of course, if you're hosting this in your own DAW (like REAPER), that's not really a problem. You can add your VSTs to the chain after Independence Free, and have as many add-ons as you want. Lacking the ability to import your own samples is more of a concern if you want to branch out into custom kits. Later in this series I will tackle this issue with another tool.

How Do I Start?
You can start by going to Yellow Tools' website at http://yellowtools.com. Under their "Products" section, you can find Independence FREE. You'll have to register on their site to download it, but registration is free. All of this is detailed on the page. (Alternately, you can pick up a copy of the UK magazine "Computer Music", which comes with a DVD that includes the "Independence Free CM Edition". Same thing, with an extra logo on the UI. You will still have to register on the site & download the instrument files separately, however.)

When you install it, the installation location is for the standalone app only. It will prompt you separately for the location for the VST. Either install in with your other VSTs, or add a path in REAPER's VST configuration screen to find it. Either way, the next time you boot REAPER, you should see a new entry in FX "VSTi: Independence Free (Yellow Tools) (24 out)"

Starting Simple
To start a simple track in REAPER, open a new project. Insert Independence Free as a VST, and then open it. Your first view is probably going to be overwhelming. This is a very complex and sophisticated interface. Since we're starting simple, look for the layer controls. There will be a highlighted item that says "01 click here to load instrument". When you click on it, you will get a popup menu. Select "Load Layer". When the standard file requestor opens, navigate to the "Independence Free - Instruments" folder, and then into "01 Acoustic & Electronic Drum Kits". The .ytil files are the ones you care about. Select "Acoustic Drum Kit 1.ytil", and click "Open". Now your Drum Kit is ready for you on MIDI channel 1.

If you want to hear the sounds in this "layer", click on the "Mapping" button at the top of the VST's display. You will get a piano key layout, with colored bars representing the samples. If there are breaks in the line, that represents different samples used for different velocity ranges. As you can see in this kit, there are 11 velocities for B1 and C1, which are your kick drums. You can play the samples on the keyboard by clicking on them, but it is not going to be easy to trigger at varying velocities that way. It's easier using REAPER to control it.

Close the FX chain window and insert a "New MIDI Item" in the track where you set up Independence Free. Hit some notes, and you'll hear your new drum kit. How simple is that?

Ummm....What Happened To My Octave?
The first thing you might notice when you compare Independence Free to REAPER's piano roll is that the octave notations don't match. What Independence Free calls C1, REAPER calls C2. This is a common problem across music apps, because of differences in opinion on what octave is considered to contain middle C. You have 2 options: make a mental note of this difference, or reconfigure REAPER to honor the offset.

To reset REAPER to use the same notation as Independence Free, go to Options->Preferences->Media->MIDI. The option "MIDI octave name display offset: 0 octaves". Change the value to -1. Now REAPER will call the notes the same as Independence Free. This change only affects the labeling in REAPER's piano roll. The same/correct MIDI note numbers will be used regardless of this setting.

What Now?
Start experimenting with the kits available and see how good the samples are. Be sure to vary the velocities, so you can get the full impact of the multi-sampled drums. So far I've been quite happy with the kits in Independence Free. Keep in mind that this is a sampler tool, NOT a drum machine. Look at all the other instruments that come bundled with it. They are of equally high quality and very useful in their own right.

Up Next...
In Part 2, we will go into more features and uses of Independence Free as a drum machine, including adding effects, using multiple ins and outs to minimize CPU usage, and some other random tweaks.

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Site Review: Tank-FX.com

In any reasonably priced studio (home or pro), one of the elusive sounds is reverb. Sure, there are any number of free reverb effects available, both software and hardware, but they all fall a little short of the ideal mark: real echoes in a real environment. Sure, you can get those echoes by recording vocals in a bathroom (a la Jim Morrison), but that is really impractical for most reverb needs. Some effects are getting closer (like convolution reverb) but there is a lot of CPU power you'll eat in a hurry when you use one.

I have recently found a German site that is a really fresh take on the problem of reverb. Tank-FX (http://www.tank-fx.com) is a site with a unique claim - they will play your sample in a concrete water tank and record the resulting sound. As their subtitle says, it is "Non-Virtual Reverb".

The Tank
My apologies if I get any of these details wrong - the details on the site are only in German, and I'm at the mercy of a semi-garbled translation by Babelfish. The tank itself is part of the Oberhausener train station, built in 1932, and was originally built to hold water that was used to refill steam locomotives. This tank is massive - 11 meters (36 feet) tall, 7m (23 feet) in diameter. Look around the site (especially the tab "aufbau", which translates as "structure") for pictures of the tank that they're using. Massive. Somehow, the operators of the site were able to get the permission to install speakers on the bottom of the tank and suspend microphones in the top of the tank. This is all wired to a Unix server, and suddenly you have a new FREE reverb toy online.

How To Use It?
This is really simple to use. Click the red "Record Sample" button at the top of the screen, and you get a clever rack-mount style interface. Samples are by default Normalized, but you can skip this with the "Bypass Normalize" button. Output format is selectable as MP3, FLAC, or Ogg-Vorbis formats. You also select you Wet/Dry mix.

When you hit the "Record" button, you are taken to another screen where you Browse to select your upload file. Uploaded files must be WAV files. This seems odd, since you can't get the output back as a WAV file, but we can still work with it. In a non-user friendly move, the "Do It" button is instead labeled "Submit Query". Then you wait for it to do its job and it gives you a file back that you can do a "Save as..." to save locally.

My Experiences So Far
I've been playing with Tank-FX for a couple days, and the results are pretty good, with a few words of caution. First, I have had mixed results when using any wet/dry mix. It seems that even a 50/50 mix causes the dry to seriously overpower the wet. I think the much lower levels of the wet sound are not properly compensated for in their mixing routines.

I have also found that as of this writing, the right channel is basically dead. You get a wash of static and only a faint trace of the sound. This was done with 100% wet signal, so you can hear the tank by itself. It's fairly simple to pull the MP3 output into Audacity and split the channels (and discard the right channel), and the sound really jumps out at you.

My recommendation is to run everything at 100% wet, strip the right channel, and mix it back to the original either in Audacity or within your DAW.

I have also seem on their comments board some people have gotten unwelcome environmental sounds back in their samples. Mostly banging, most likely from construction or other heavy equipment in the general area. This seems to be more of a problem if you're running sounds during the daytime (in Germany) and not a problem if you're running during German night hours. Do a little time research, and you should be fine.

Limitations
The limitations on the Tank-FX site are fairly few. You have to upload in WAV only. The file cannot be more than 60 seconds. Output in MP3, FLAC, or Ogg-Vorbis only. The space is a single defined BIG space, so you're only getting BIG reverb.

Yet, it would seem that all of these limitations still beat the heck out of digital fake-reverb if you're going for the big hall reverb sound. Of course, this is not the type of reverb you'd want to put your whole track through, but for enhancing a specific instrument, voice, or sound bite, this is a great option.

Wrap-up
I honestly think Tank-FX is one of the coolest net freebies I have ever come across. The limitations are really a lot less than your average free VST's limitations. And there is no "this is nice, but how about pay for more options" angle that we have all grown so accustomed to seeing. Check it out and give them praise on their board. This is one site that deserves to get some positive credit.

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