Mixing man

Holy smokes, time flies! I just realized I didn't blog anything during the month of February!

What's new? Well, I got a cool little mixer on Ebay ... the Behringer BCF2000 :




It works great with Tracktion 3. It has motorized faders, so when I open my project in Tracktion, it immediately sets the faders to where I had left them the last time I mixed. I can also mute and pan tracks with it.

I only use it at the end of the project to really fine tune my mixes. I try to keep the mixing process at the very end so I don't end up fiddling around for hours instead of recording and working on the track.

It has 8 faders, but I read somewhere where some guy bought two so he could mix 16 tracks. That would be sweet, but for the time being, I rarely use more than 8 tracks ... 2 drums, 2 guitar, 2 bass and 2 solo guitars.

I've been keeping busy playing guitar pretty much every day. I recorded 7 tracks in February and one today. I store them at Sloppystrings.com

Back to playing. Cheers.

Learning ALL the notes on the fretboard!!!

I read a great article about learning the notes on the fretboard tonight. Basically you go through all the notes from A go G# (A / A# / B / C / C# / D , etc), by starting one night with the A and find all the A's on the fretboard and play them for a while until you got it down. The next day you take A# and find all of them (next to the A obviously), and you quiz yourself by going to various A's and A#'s. Next day the B, then quiz yourself for A, A#, B, etc. In two weeks you should be good to go.

Let's see if it works, and see if I can stick to it.

Theory?!? I don't need no stinkin' theory!

Haha. NOT. I've been trying to get into music theory so I can learn more about the reasoning behind scales, chords, keys, modes, sheet music, etc.

I bought this really helpful book two weeks ago: The Everything Music Theory Book by Mark Schonbrun . It takes a simple approach to explaining music theory.

I have also started to learn scales, which will help with finger coordination. I had been practicing the pentatonic scales because a lot of folks say it's a good starting point. I've since been learning more about blues scales, major scales, and minor scales. Another advantage is that I'm starting to learn the notes on the fretboard. Now I know that if you play a C on the low E string, if you move down 2 strings and two frets forward you'll have a C also, but one octave higher.

I never noticed how the guitar was tuned before:

E ( F, G )

A ( B, C )

D ( E, F )

G ( A )

B ( C, D)

E

Wild and wacky stuff. I'm even starting to learn notes on sheet music.

Pimp My Axe: Part III

I finally settled on some pickups for my project guitar. I decided to go with the pair of Zakk Wylde EMG active pickups (EMG 81 and EMG 85):

First Step was to make adjustements to the body of the guitar because the hole from the input jack to the other wiring was too small so I had to drill a bigger hole to pass the 9volt battery connector. I also had to drill, saw, sand the body for the neck pickup becase the hole was too small. Lots of saw dust when I was done with that:

Then it was time to start soldering the different parts of the volume and tone pots. I had never soldered before so I had to practice a bit. It turned out pretty good. Not the prettiest joints but it worked. The wiring instructions from EMG were pretty good. It provides for different scenarios. I chose to wire my strat copy like a Les Paul, since my existing Gibson Les Paul came with Active EMG pickups.

I also had to drill a hole in the body to pass the 9volt connector to the back cavity of the guitar. I ordered a battery box to install later. The second photo shows the back of the guitar without the cover. The battery box will be screwed into the back cover once I cut a hole for the battery box.

This is what it looks like so far. I had to make a temporary humbucker ring for the bridge pickup until my new double humbucker pickguard comes in. I had to do this because I cut out the bridge pickup hole too big. I also had to cut a larger hole in the neck pickup slot because it previously held a single coil pickup.

I placed an order today for a new pickguard, screws, a battery box, knobs, 2 humbucker rings, and a new tremolo arm.

It was a pretty fun part of the project to undertake. I got to learn about guitar electronics and learn about the inner workings of guitars while researching it. I was completely shocked when I plugged her in and it actually worked. I would not hesitate to install new pickups on a guitar. The second time around would be much quicker.

Previous Pimp My Axe Posts:

Pimp My Axe 1 (Nov 17, 2007)

Pimp My Axe 2 (Dec 8, 2007)

Studio Monitors

I picked up a pair of studio monitors at my local music shop on Christmas Eve. I was getting tired of playing through my headphones and mixing with them. It's liberating to just have speakers to play through. I could use my amp to use amp/stompbox modelling software but I couldn't get it to sound right. These monitors are neutral so I know what I hear will sound pretty much sound the same on my ipod.

You can hear all the little nuances, and it forces me to clean up the tracks that insert into songs. Here's a link to the speakers:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOBX5A

Jacko the Producer!

I've been playing guitar for two months and I wanted to start recording some stuff. My recording guru friend JMan suggested that I try Tracktion 3 because of its intuitive interface. It took me about an hour to get going but now I'm in love with it. I use my Pod XT Live to connect my guitar to my computer to record.

I've been recording for the past two weeks and I'm getting the hang of it. After my second night of fiddling with Tracktion 3 I recorded a quick mash up of We're Not Gonna Take It (Twisted Sister) : Downlard the MP3. I later recorded some other tracks. You can listen to more at my website http://www.sloppystrings.com/.

I found a little software on the web called Beatcraft to generate drum beats and insert into Tracktion as a track. I then record through Tracktion 3 to accompany the drum beat. In the song Breaking the Law (Judas Priest) I even included a bass section for the song.

I'm just learning this recording and mixing business but it's a real good time. I look forward to learning more and improving my tracks.

Mic!

I've been looking for a mic in order to record a bit of vocals and different things. I went to my local store to see what I could find. The guy showed me the Apex 435 condenser mic with shock stand for $60. Since this type of mic needs "phantom power", I'm not exactly sure what that is but it's power to activate the microphone, I had to get a small mixing board with mic inputs and phantom power. He showed me the Behringer 802 for $90 which is great for what I need it for.

I also got a mic stand to go with it. I also had to get a mic XLR cable and and a stereo-out with 1/4" jack to go to my POD XTLive so I can actually record on my computer. The cool thing is that I got a $20 gift card from the store because of a special that week on the mixer, and the cables were actually part of the promotion for the mic. The whole thing cost me $175 and I'm all mic'd up and ready to go ... and with a cool little mixer too.

It took me about 30 minutes to set everything up and record clips with good levels.

Gotta love toys.