#machine blues

Today I finished the beats´n´drums work. I worked on the last details of the programmed drums and flew in some tracks from the demos I wanted to keep.

I send the tracks (it was mostly electronic drums) through the Fredenstein V.A.S. which is a transformer based mic preamp and D.I. box.

It gives the sound so much more dimension. I really love this box. And it gives you a lot of color. It´s everything else than a clean mic preamp. If you push it hard you also get a nice distortion sound out of the unit.

I have no clue if more expensive preamps (like Neve, API, etc...) would improve the sound even more. Nevertheless this is such a big step in comparison to the preamps of my Focusrite interface.

(Don´t take the sound from the video for reference. It´s  shitty camera sound...)

I suspended the recording process for some work on my live gear.

To be able to fly in some bass accompaniment I tested the first stage of what should become my bass player ;-)

Works like a charm! Now there´s some woodwork required.

After listening through my demos today, I thought that some of the songs could use a little more dynamic. I set up a microphone and recorded a few tracks with an acoustic guitar. My idea is to use these recordings instead of a click track for the further overdubbing of the instruments. I did three versions of each of the selected songs and chose the ones I liked the most. We will see how this works out.

After that I recorded beats for two more songs. I used the TEENAGE ENGINEERING PO12. It looks like a calculator and you can get one for about 70 Euro. It provides some cool lo-fi digital sounds and is the perfect companion for the analog KORG VOLCA.

It seems like a toy but you are able to get some serious sounds out of it. The kick of it is killer. It has a very interesting FX-section too.

To make it speak to the DAW you have to feed it with a click track. This works ok but the level of the click track has to be quite hot. It does not work with the sync signal of the KORG VOLCA for instance. Maybe it will if you would amplify the signal of the VOLCA.

During recording I did some knob-tweaking again. The results were quiet satisfying.

Hi! My name is Chris and I´m working on my electro-blues-punk-project OONAZOONA. I´ve got an EP out (MACHINE BLUES) and I am acting as some kind of electronic One-Man-Band.

Now that it´s time to produce my first full album, I decided to share the process of recording, my thoughts on it, and possible issues I may stumble across, with you, fellow readers. I hope you enjoy reading.

My music is a mixture of blues, grunge, and electronic influences. For this production I intend not to use any software instruments with the exception of a sample library for the acoustic drums. I´m going to use guitars (of course), analog synthesizers and hardware drum machines. The problem I often had to deal with in previous productions, was the „fix-it-in-the-mix“-mentality. With fully storable software instruments you are able to easily postpone your decisions regarding sound to a later production stage. I am trying to avoid that by getting the sounds right from the start.

The DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) I use is Cockos Reaper which is great once you figure out how it works. For cost concerns I will mix in the box. During a long pre-production stage I recorded detailed demos of the whole album, which means that the arrangements of the songs  are ready and I am able to focus on getting the performance and the sounds right. The tools I have available are a few analog synthesizers, two drum machines, my guitars and amps, three microphones, and a very nice microphone preamp I recently purchased. I will talk about that gear a lot in the next episodes of this blog.

One of the main differences to more common rock productions is the use of synthesizer instead of bass guitar. In addition to the acoustic drums I am going to use drum machines for the rhythmic background. My intention is to overlay vocals and a lot of dirty guitars over these electronic basic tracks.

Up to date I laid down some of the rhythmic background. I have used the acoustic drum library and the KORG VOLCA BEATS for this. IMHO the KORG is a fantastic dirty little machine. I´ve noticed that some users complain over the sound of the snare which is funny because that´s one of the reasons I like this machine so much. The drum sounds are editable but not storable. You can save a few drum patterns in the built-in sequencer though. The KORG has no velocity and no modern controlability. The only way to change parameters and to create a little dynamic is to tweak the knobs during recording. Very old-school and very awesome.

I had some issues with syncing it to the DAW. The midiclock from the DAW isn´t very accurate. Of course you can move the recorded samples until they fit to the grid. I often did a work-around by recording the analog sync-signal supplied by the KORG VOLCA on an audio track into the DAW.

Then I sliced the recorded sync-signal, changed the position of the samples until they fit, and lead it back to the VOLCA. It turned out that the communication between the KORG VOLCA and the DAW was far better this way. That´s the only way you are able to sync a TEENAGE ENGINEERING PO12 to other gear by the way. But that´s another story. More on that in the next episode.