Anderton

If you need a condenser mic... Some of you may know that Gibson had a mic company for a while called Neat Microphones. The founders were the same people who started Blue Microphones, and the mics got excellent reviews from the few people who found them. Unfortunately there was a lot of issues that got in the way of success - people not liking the look (there was a bee motif to all their products), the packaging, uneven distribution, the stars not being in alignment, etc. etc. Regardless, the mics themselves are really good, except that the shock mount needs to be really tightened down (I believe there's a retrofit washer you can get from Neat if you have trouble, but don't quote me on that). Well, the founders were able to buy the unsold inventory back, and it's being blown out on Amazon. The King Bee (large diaphragm condenser) was original $349 and is going for $99. The Worker Bee (small diaphragm condenser) was originally$199 and is now $99. I think the real sleeper here is the Beecaster, a USB desktop mic designed for podcasting. It has four capsules for different mic capture options, used to cost $349, and is $99. It's what I use for Skype and VOIP. Tape Op had a pretty detailed review when the mics first came out. Anyway, if you need some extra mics for your mic locker, at this point I don't think you're going to get better for less, or even for quite a bit more. Their quad conductor mic cable is also pretty fabulous for $32. Just thought you oughta know.

Good riddance. Melanie (who played at the original Woodstock) is my neighbor, and she was supposed to go...but I bet her quality of life will be better with it canceled. And she probably wouldn't have gotten paid

Yes, excellent point - I wasn't really thinking of traditional cover bands. But in that case, if you don't hew to the original, people might throw things. On YouTube, they can't do that. I've never played in a cover band, so I don't know that experience. I bet it would be fun, especially if it was a tribute band for a band you really liked. Then again, I also like when a band reframes their own hits. I saw Steve Winwood awhile ago, and even though the material was ancient, it was fresh because he changed the arrangements around. Interestingly, he got a great response from a much younger demographic than his original fan base. I'm sure for many of them, it was the first time they'd heard the songs, and they just plain liked the songs. It was pretty cool seeing an "old guy" like that have the audience in the palm of his hand at an effing arena as he opened for Tom Petty.

A most excellent choice!

And of course, this begs the question...do tempo changes make a difference, and are they important? If so, why have they basically been kicked to the curb?

The post-click track world has meant that tempos never breathe and move, but that was common in the days before the click became prevalent. Even James Brown's rhythm section, probably considered one of the tightest rhythm sections of all time, had major tempo variations. But the key was that these were very deliberate - i.e., in "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" there's a tempo run-up just before even time Brown signs "papa's got a brand-new bag," and then drops back down again. But there's also a slight, linear speed up throughout the entire song. I found out a way to add tempo changes to a finished mix in Studio One - trick SO into thinking the mix has a tempo, then varying the tempo map. Here's a recent tempo map for my cover of "Walking on the Moon": And here's the song. Even though the tempo changes are fairly significant, the effect is more subliminal than anything else...but I think these tempo changes make a major difference in the "feel." [video:youtube] The more I experiment with tempo changes, the more important I think they are.

That is an excellent point. Music is so tied in with memory, and given that the average audience member wants to hear "the hits," to hear something that contradicts your memory could definitely produce a WTF moment.

Actually the reason why I ask for headroom is a bit sneaky. When people mix with peaks at zero, the intersample peaks when the DAC applies smoothing can exceed the available headroom by +3 dB or more. So when they're mixing, even though there's no distortion in the DAW, as they mix they're hearing clipping in the playback chain that gives a false idea of what the mix sounds like. When the master is set for True Peak at 0 or less, there can be subtle differences in the sound and even in the mix, which of course they think is due to the mastering . If I ask them to leave some headroom when mixing and just turn up the monitoring volume to compensate, then I know they're going to hear what I hear. This also helps if time-stretched files are involved (e.g., acidized loops), because loops that seem perfectly well-behaved at their native tempo can create peaks up to +6 dB when they're stretched, due to the crossfading and phase issues involved with stretching. I wonder how many of them compensate for the difference in perceived level between the limited and non-limited versions. I still think the purpose of a mix is to get the best balance among the instruments, and if you turn up the level to the same perceived volume as the limited version, the mix won't fall apart. The limiting may bring up some room sounds and detail you wouldn't hear otherwise, but I don't see that as something that should kill the balance, unless they're using a LOT of limiting. I much prefer mixing without any limiting, and if it sounds good, then a little limiting just makes it pop a little more. Amen!!!

Probably not But compared to a Fairlight or Synclavier, it really was a breakthrough.

I like doing the occasional cover, but I feel there's no point in being a slave to the original - I like to make a song my own, and put a totally different twist on it. But every time I've done so, and posted the song on YouTube, people pretty much savage it. I did an EDM version of "Can't Explain" by the Who and a heavy metal version of Buddy Holly's "Words of Love." I took them down because the reaction was so negative...it's not so much that people hated the music, they hated that I was defiling an iconic song by taking it completely out of its comfort zone. I don't think people were willing to see the songs as so good, they could survive anything Come to think of it, the only person who's really liked my covers is BMD, for the covers I've done of his songs... However, I never learn! So I just posted a cover version of "Walking on the Moon" that sounds more like Led Zeppelin than faux reggae. At least this time, I warned people to expect something different. Let's see how long it lasts before I have to take it down. [video:youtube]

Yes, I have a Peavey SP! Wrote the manual for it. Not sure it still works, a lot of old Peavey gear was subject to the Batteries of Death.

I HIGHLY recommend that!!!

In a direct contradiction or all that YouTube stands for, there are actually some really funny comments. But this one is my favorite: "How can this be terrifying and cute at the same time?"

Interesting you should say that. At one point when I lived in California, a fast-moving wildfire was putting my home in imminent danger. I only had a VW Beetle and started thinking about what I would take: Telecaster (didn't have any PRS or Gibsons yet), tax records, lab notebook, TAC A-3340S, and S-100 computer with my trove of 8" floppy disks. I realized I could basically reconstruct my life from that. The fire stopped about 300 feet from the house (!), and the ash made it look like it had snowed.

Welcome!! Please feel free to start topics...and tell your friends. The more, the merrier As to the cleaning process itself, empirically, I used only alcohol on the HR-16 and MMT-8, and the switches work as good as new (if not better, actually). I should have done the cleaning years ago instead of just hitting the buttons harder! Mike's right about keyboard contacts, however for edge connectors, remember that gold is one of the most malleable substances around. With something like cards that go into a motherboard slot, I find that just lifting up a bit and pushing back in wipes the contacts sufficiently to give me another five years. One more contact thing: I couldn't figure out why my OB-8 wasn't working. Upon closer inspection, the metals used for the chip pins and sockets were different. Small crystalline structures had grown between the two, and were causing shorts to other pins. It kind of freaked me out to realize non-organic things were growing inside my OB-8...

The order of appearance was Emulator (1981), Emulator II (1984), Ensoniq Mirage (1984), and EPS (1988). The Emulator II got the glory because it did what previously was doable only with Fairlights and Synclaviers, but at a much lower price point. The Mirage was far more affordable, around $1,700, but the sound quality and OS was sketchy compared to the EII. Does anyone even make serious hardware samplers any more, not just phrase samplers and such?

Cool! I had the same experience with a Kawai K3m (still a wonderful synth). I took it apart fearing the worst, breathed a sigh of relief when the battery looked okay visually, then was shocked when it read 3 volts.

I've given seminars where I recommend that people treat mixing and mastering as separate processes - get the best balance when mixing, then use mastering to get the most out of that balance. I specifically said if you were going to send a file to mastering engineers, let them make the decision about what processors to use for mastering, rather than committing them to whatever you insert in the master bus. I also recommended leaving some headroom for the engineer, and not to run everything up to zero. I know that in theory "doesn't make a difference with digital," but if the people mixing really are running up to zero, then they're probably hearing intersample distortion when they mix. Well, someone on GearSlutz took MAJOR exception. You'd think I'd said that people should go and shoot stray dogs, but only after strangling little children. A "professional mastering engineer" said I had no clue what I was talking about, that headroom doesn't matter, and that telling musicians not to attempt mastering in the master bus prior to giving the file to a mastering engineer was stifling the artist's creativity. He also accused me of cheating people out of their money in my workshops (which is interesting, given that I do them for free) because my advice was so contrary to the real best practices that today's MEs use. He basically felt that whatever the artist gave him was fine. He was incredibly incensed that I would send music back because I wanted it to be mixed without distortion (if they wanted me to add saturation, of course, I'd do that but c'mon...). So am I really that clueless? Is advising musicians not to do faux mastering in the master bus, and to leave some headroom for mastering engineers, too old school?

You're probably thinking of E-Mu's Emulator II. I did the manual for it and amazingly, still have it but haven't booted it up in a while. They actually got 12-bit operation through companding.

Thanks for putting the lyrics etc there, check your PMs for my email. Really glad you're doing music again.

These are great, I love the variety. I also love that people can make videos, and put them online for others to enjoy. I'm hoping that bouncing this to the top will encourage more people to participate...

They've done New Orleans, Austin, Indianapolis, and maybe Atlanta at one point? The Nashville show was the only "post-Chicago" venue that seemed to stick.

I already traded some web copy for a guitar But as much as I enjoyed my time at Gibson, I'm getting into some really cool ventures that couldn't co-exist with a full-time gig. I'm on the wrong side of the mortality curve, and I want my last chapter to be about helping people to get started in recording and music.

Here's a little inside baseball for you: back in 2015, the founder said the eventual goal was to either take it public, or get bought by Etsy. I'm sure Etsy thinks Reverb.com will make money, or they wouldn't be buying the company. But it's a pretty good fit. It's not like Etsy is diversifying into a line of cosmetics. My vote of confidence is that as of yesterday, craiganderton.com is being hosted officially by Reverb.com. The site is live now, but the actual launch won't happen for a week or two. The goal is to separate my commercial and educational activities. To that end, I've also created craiganderton.org, which is where I'll be putting articles, tips, and the like. I felt that trying to mix "teaching" and "selling" was going to become increasingly problematic as the number of products I have continues to increase - people looking for tips and such wouldn't want to wade through pitches for books and such, while people who wanted to buy the products wouldn't want to have to fish for them. It will take a few months for the .org site to develop (right now it's just the old craiganderton.com site), but I feel good about the change. Reverb.com has been very supportive, to say the least.

To be clear...when I mentioned using 12-bit converters being a problem, I didn't mean you could get only 12 useable bits from a 16-bit converter, I meant 12-bit converters. So they only had, what, about 10 real bits?