Calendar

New Blog name. Using for musical projects.

Post!

Guitar - 7 String Build - P4

Finishing...

... ugh...

I initially dyed the guitar a vibrant red-orange but didn't like it so I resanded the entire guitar back down and gave it a coffee brown back, black top, and natural faux binding. I use Transtint dyes and have tried others but these are definetely the most concentrated. I have some quality water color pastes I will try for the next build...

Finish coats: Normally a super high-gloss lacquer finish would be called, but I wanted to try something else and I didn't feel like spending all the time a nice lacquer finish requires (call me lazy, yea, but I just want to play the dang thing already and have too many important projects going on right now). An oil'esque finish also is more 'ergonomic' in a sense. The finish wont hold a cold like lacquer does and high gloss necks are not fun to play on - sticky sticky! I also want to try some earth-friendly finishes now that I am old enough to care about my environment to some extent... Water-based it is! I'm giving Minwax's Polycrylic a whirl for a few reasons: 1) It's water-based. 2) It's cheap. 3) It's 100% clear (no tints like many oil-based products). You can also easily dilute it and use it as a wipe-on although, I would not recommend this for a 'gloss' finish. After a few wipe-on coats to soak in, I sanded with 220g and began the 4-5 top coats via spray. I am a firm believer that a wipe/brush-on finish is NOT suitable for anything other than satin or very 'light' coats which simulate an oil type finish. There's no way to avoid lines and for a semi-gloss finish you cannot colorsand and buff the finish to the final result. The last sprayed coat is the end of the road. Heck, in some sense it makes it a little less error-tolerant than something a lot of sanding could fix.

Phil

Guitar - 7 String Build - P3

The guitar is carved with nothing more than a 4 1/2" angle grinder, belt sander, and die grinder. This is a very sensitive procedure as one foul swoop with any of these tools can ruin the entire instrument! I don't like to use any 'guides' for the carving, instead testing the feel as I go along. 2 hours later:

pic

I wanted to do something neat with the string-thrus and figured a slight recess would match the bridge recess quite nicely. These pockets were done with a jig and router with a cove bit installed. The guide was angled so that the recesses actually appear as tear drops.

pic

After all of the carving is finished, it's time to get out the ol sanding block! After I've gotten the guitar up to 150g, I fill all open grains with McFaddens fillers (after raising the grain a few times!). I reduce the fillers so that they fill easier. You must be warned, however, that reducing a tinted filler too much will allow the pigment to seep into the wood, requiring heavier sanding to remove. The effect is exaggerated on darker fillers such as those for mahogany. After the entire body is filled, I resand back to 150 and raise the grain another 2-3 times and sand back out to 150g again. Time to stain (well, actally, 'dye')!

Guitar - 7 String Build - P2

The project is underway - I now have some direction with the project. I want a minimalistic/natural feel. Simple non-rigid lines and no clutter. The natural randomness of the top should be the main focus. To emphasize the top, I've decided to use a simple finish. I was thinking tung oil or Arm-R-Seal for additional protection. Color will likely be bright red/orange... although I really want a black guitar too... we'll see...

I've glued the top laminate to the bottom after first routing the body channels:




I don't have a bandsaw with a 30" throat so a standard ol jigsaw works just fine for rough cutting the outline:


The outside rout is done with a big 3/4" OD bit with 1" bushing. Using a large bit helps prevent chipout but you must still ensure you remove only a little material at a time. The direction you want to rout also changes depending on the curve/grain around the body. Another little tip I use when doing this rout is to manually put 'dips' in critical areas. Doing this prevents a massive chipout, instead limiting it to the next 'dip.'


By using a bit/bush combination, I have the option of creating a slightly smaller (or larger) outline depending on my mood by changing the bit-bush offset. Using the standard bearing doesn't permit this flexibility.

The inner routs are also done with the templates I made earlier (and yes, templates are the best way to do it!). This includes the recessed bridge, pickup routs, and string channel routs.


The back of this guitar also has some neat tricks. The electronics cover is actually a piece of thin steel with a veneer of ... overlaid. This allows the use of a few neo magnets to hold it in place. No ugly screws peeping through! Ideally (and if I didn't forget!) I would have drilled the magnet holes before gluing on the top - from the other side so that they are completely hidden... even with the cover off. This also ensures they won't fall out. That's where some decent epoxy comes in handy.




I don't like pickup rings and adjust the p/u height once - so why even have those ugly rings?! By simply cutting off the mounting tabs, one can use some type of high-quality double-sided tape, velcro, etc... Simplicity!

So for my lightening scheme is working out good. The guitar is pretty light already and I still have some more material to remove!

Next up: Carving!

- Phil

Audio - Sonar Automation with Battery 3

I posted this response over at the Sonar forum, but figured documenting it here would be a worthwhile addition.

So how do you get your MIDI controller to talk to Battery through Sonar (and visa-versa) and be able to save the automation envelopes?

Open up the Battery 3 window by double clicking the icon on the synth track. Have the cell and tab you wish to have automations on 'open' in the lower window before doing this: Goto View>Automation Page... Click the MIDI CC tab, and drag the 'parameter name' section of the table (it says "assign") to whatever control you want to automate. It will put a red strikethru on whatever cannot be automated just to let you know who's boss. Click the "soft" button (it will light up like a... well... an enabled button) then clickie on "learn" and give that knob on your controller the good ol jimmy. Declick the "soft" button. Repeat to add more. I don't know why, but if you don't click the 'soft' button when doing the learns it will add ALL automations to the last learnt button...

Anyway, in Sonar, if you open on up the Synth rack and select the Show/Hide Assigned Controls Icon, you can right click on the control (will be a little round thing) and select remote control. Then just hit learn and give the knob the ol jimmy again... To write the automation, select the write icon in the synth rack and hit play/record in transport. Then your envelopes will surely move and record in Sonar. I even made a nice screenshot... See:

Unfortunately, your journey is not yet complete... If you want Battery to track the changes made by any automation in Sonar:

Go back to Battery and Automation, goto the HOST tab, assign the control the same way (to whatever control you want the envelope to get kinky on) and manually change the ID to whatever it is under the MIDI CC tab with the same control (it may be the same but check anyway). Then just make sure your synth rack in Sonar has "read" icon enabled - should be green with envy. You should now have a 2-way mating ritual underway between Sonar and Battery.

- Phil

Guitar - New 7 String Build!

The wood's all dry and I'm ready to roll! This guitar is designed for all around playing. It will feature an erratic maple burl top, walnut edge stripe, cherry 'wing strips,' and mahogany back. The neck is a 5 piece mahogany/maple laminate which I had custom made by Soulmate (check him out - his necks are excellent!). The profile is somewhere between a Carvin and an Ibanez and is just right. The bridge is a good ol tune-o-matic for unobstructed rhythm playing and sustain. I will probalby only put one pickup in since I do not want to clutter this instrument. I hardly ever use the neck positions anyway.

Probably the most striking and radically new feature for this instrument is the introduction of what I have dubbed: "blind controls." This is an electronics project which is based on capacitive touch sensors to provide totally hidden controls. To operate you simply swipe your finger across an area of the body. This can be used to control anything - volume, pickup switching, tone, the lights in the house, etc... I am pretty sure (at least to my research) that I am the first to do this kinda thing for this application. I will offer the electronics and retrofits for other common guitars using this system shortly! There will also be another posting discussing the design. If you'd like a system for your project, drop me a line!

The past week I glued up the top and back/neck. The top is actually composed of a maple-walnut laminate which will appear as a walnut stripe around the guitar. Before the top is attached to the base, however, I've decided to do a few routs - for weight reduction and the wiring channels for the pickups (no more 12" long drill bits!)... This and all of the routs are made possible by the use of 3 separate Lexan templates which I've carefully drawn in CAD to provide all of the bushing offsets. Using a standard bit with a bushing set not only saves considerable money, but allows easier depth control and eliminates bearing marks.

Gluing the wings to the neck:

Milling the back half of the guitar with fly cutter to ensure a nice flat surface for gluing the top:

Maple and Walnut laminate for top:

Creating the neck pocket in the top billets:


- Phil

Audio - Sonar Color Template

I've been using Sonar quite a bit so I've tweaked the color scheme so it's easier to use and makes distinction between important elements straight-forward. It also doesn't affect my mood too much after extended use which keeps me plugging away.


If you'd like to use this color template, you can downloaded the file here

- Phil

Audio - Snapping at Zero Crossing: Timing Errors

Here I'm going to post a few tips for some snapping features that can offset an audio clip when cutting/copy/pasting and such (this applies to Sonar 7 in particular):

Audio zero cross - it's an option - disable it for Cut/Copy/Paste on audio clips to eliminate timing errors. I realized this when I cut and copied a few clips and realized two adjacent tracks were 'chorused' due to a very slight delay. Sure enough, zoomed out in normal viewing the clips looked perfectly aligned to the measure. Zoom in, whammo, you've got yourself a few millisecond delay. This will happen when the snapper tries to hunt for a zero cross on the audio waveform... the intent is to eliminate any sharp/loud clicks/pops due to high volume levels on the transition of a repeating audio clip. Unfortunately, this can and probably will cause timing issues!

The timing error will likely be small... think about it... even a perfect single note on guitar (well, it'll never be a 'perfect' sinusoid), let's say it's the low-E at ~80Hz... the time from zero to zero cross is T/2 or 0.0125/2s or 6.25ms! The low E on a bass guitar will be roughly double or 12.5ms. Thankfully though, many sounds are not pure clean single tones (esp. heavily distorted notes or chords, etc...) and the zero-crosses will occur more often, decreasing this time. Just be aware if you do use this operation that there will be an error added! If you were to paste several of the same audio clip serially, the timing error will sum.

If you do get a loud bleep at the transition of an audio clip, you can try using crossfades or a quick single fade.

- Phil

Audio - Recording Drums

Drums are the most difficult instrument I've tried to record. In reality, I am still rather horrible at the traditional method. This is a result of many problems including lack of knowledge, bad room, bad mics, bad isolation, etc... I am a guitar player, not an engineer (well actually I am, but the wrong type!) so I try and find the easiest, quickest, and least expensive ways to get good sounds. I would much rather focus on creating. For the drums, I realized quickly that I would not have the room to properly record drums and gaining the skill to properly EQ, FX, and mix drums was not something I had much interest in.

Solution: Triggering. yea yea... triggering is for cheaters. Well, go complain about it elsewhere. Music is music. It's the final result that matters. So long as there's a human still playing a real instrument and it's set up properly the feel of a real live human being will come through.

There are several issues to overcome when triggering a drumset:

1. Triggering Hardware (analog-MIDI conversion)
2. Latency
3. Samples and Layering

I'll discuss (mostly) the recording element to recording drums, covering each of the above topics. More detail in the "triggering hardware" category will be provided in another post, which will discuss our eDrum setup.

1. Triggering Hardware:

Triggering a drumset requires a few components: a drumset (well not really, just something to 'hit' that has the desired feel/response like a real set), trigger sensors (typically piezos), and an interface to interpret the analog sensor signals. The interface will apply some conditioning, digitally convert the signal, apply processing in the digital domain, then export the MIDI data.

The hardware is most important to retaining the response of a real set. You want the sensors to pick up the lightest desirable hit to the hardest 'crack.' This is a little more difficult than it may sound. We've spent a great deal of time trying many sensor configurations (additional post to come...) and it is important that you start with the sensor. You know the motto: garbage in, garbage out! Using a scope, we (BTW, we = drummer and I) were able to test each sensor configuration across the span of hits over the range of the amplification section of the eDrum's input modules. This is important to 'view' as you can quickly map the 'hit curve' (as we call it).

Latency:

When recording a real live drummer with triggers it is important the drummer be able to hear the resulting 'hits' along with the rest of the tracks. Any instrument has this feedback. Without it, the player cannot adjust. High latencies can cause serious problems or even disallow the player to play the instrument. Latencies should be dropped below 5ms to allow 'live' playback and recording. You can perform several tricks to drop latency - check out the forums of your particular DAW to see recommendations. Tips will include such things as buffer resizing, dropping running apps, and other OS-related tweaks. Some PC hardware configurations will not allow certain latencies without dropouts or other major functionality issues - if this is the case and you need those latencies, a computer upgrade may be due. If the drummer doesn't need to 'play along' with any other track, then absolute miminum latency really isn't an issue, provided the hits do not occur too fast for the aquisition and the drummer can still hear him/herself while playing. However, it is indeed much nicer to have the actual samples used for the mix fed back to the player in real-time.

Samples and Layering:

So now that we have MIDI data that corresponds to some real-live event, how do we make it output realistic sounds?! 2 major contributors: Sample set quality and decent layering/mapping tools (the drummer's skill doesn't hurt either!).

The audio samples are the actual audio components that play during each MIDI event. It is obvious that the quality of these samples directly defines the quality and realism of the drum track. I am using the Steven Slate Drums set (check em out - they're grrreat as Frosted Flakes). It includes high-quality .wav files for many different drums, each 'mixed' in a different way (including raw and room mic'd samples) and at many different hit strengths. Having a wide range of hit strengths in the sample set is far superior to simply increasing/decreasing the volume of a single sample since any percussive instrument makes vastly different sounds at different hit velocities (don't believe me - record (with any mic, doesn't matter) the snare... hit it light, then hit it hard. Normalize the volumes in your DAW and now you will believe).

This is where a decent mapping software becomes essential. There are several out there including: Drumagog, Hydrogen (if your using GNU/Linux or don't want to pay yet still have a decent mapper), Battery, etc... I am using Battery for my projects. I find it the easiest to use and it works seamlessly with Sonar (even in 64b Vista!). I used Hydrogen when I was running Ardour in Linux, but Ardour's MIDI editor is still not finished (meaning you have to use external: Rosegarden) and although it was awesome for the money :), Sonar still allows me to spend less time fiddling getting things sounding the way I want.

Creating a drum map consists of a layering procedure where the lighter hit samples are linked to lower MIDI velocities and harder hits linked to the higher MIDI velocities. Battery also allows crossfading between samples in the layer, which makes the hit range even more seamless. For snares, I usually place the 'rolls' at the lowest MIDI velocities and then go from soft to 'crack.' For most metal/hard rock work, the hits will be hard-crack regions. Having the soft/med. ranges allows ghost notes to come through nicely.

Battery 3's layering and crossfading:

Applying effects to the drum track in the DAW is quite minimal since I use the samples that are pre-mixed by professionals. All I really have to worry about are levels making my life 'recording' drums a dream!

- Phil

Audio - Recording Electric Guitar

Here are a few tips for recording the electric guitar. The techniques here are mostly for more aggressive types of music, where clarity is important on distorted tones and fast playing.

You:

The player is obviously the most important part of the equation. Any parts you wish to record, practice them over and over again till they are perfect. I used to spend so much time trying to fiddle with buttons, mixes, amp settings, etc... only to realize I just needed to practice the riff some more - to gain consistency with the track... Think of all of those awesome tracks, some over 50 years old - their equipment was no where near what we have today... it was the player!

Amp/Guitar:

The amp (this includes the cab) is the 2nd most important aspect. Many will disagree saying mic placement or the actual guitar is more important. I disagree. *Decent* solidbody electric guitars (esp. those used for hard rock or metal) will sound similar. A decent solidbody will have ample sustain and decent pickups. Other than the tone of the guitar, it is the actual playability I find more important. Just because it sounds good does not mean it will fit your playing style.

The amp, however, is not something that many players spend as much time with. I have built and played quite a few guitar amplifiers and it is my honest opinion that a good ol tube amp cannot be beat. Modeling amps and boards have come a long way, but they still haven't reached the level of a nice tube amp.

For those on a budget, or who can only record in small or 'low-volume-only' home studios, cranking a tube amp is not an option. This is my case when recording at home. Despite the many tube amps I have, I cannot use them in my recording environment for practical limitations (neighbors, no room large enough, etc...). So I compromise. I use a $100 Roland MicroCube. This uses the COSM technology you'll find in BOSS's higher end boards. While not as good sounding as my Mesa 295 through a few 4-12's, it is an excellent compromise. In addition, it only weighs a few pounds and will fit anywhere. Works for me!

Mic Placement:

I wont spend too much time here because it really comes down to experimentation. Moving mics around and listening to the result is quite easy so do it! I find for aggressive styles, having a mic too far from the speaker makes the track too muddy. This may be fine for slower styles or where clarity isn't desired. I use a 2 mic setup. The mics I use are 57s or Beta 58s. One mic is positioned orthogonal to the center of the speaker approximately 1" from the grill face about 1" offset from the speaker center. Another mic is positioned about 15deg from grill face (almost parallel to the face), again, about 1" from the grill face. Later, in the DAW, you can easily fade different combos of each mic to your liking. You can also add many more mics... toggling between and mixing sounds is much easier in software!

When I find the combo I like, I take a few pics of the setup and amp settings. These are documented in the folder for the DAW project. I started doing this when I would return to a track in a project and dig the sound I had there... reproducing it is impossible if you have not documented what you've done. You may have better memory than me, but I cannot recall anything I did if the project is over a month old.

Recording HW:

Simple - use a decent interface with nice-sounding pres with enough gain for your uses.

Environmental:

Windows, AC/Heater vents, fluorescents, dogs/cats, rain, thunder, etc... all can ruin a perfect track. Be sure to do a test track before doing a final run. Crank up the levels (just be sure not to accidentally pop the mic or play) and listen...

I hope these tips are useful!

- Phil

Phil's Blog - README - Content, Terms, etc...

This is a blog where I post current projects which include the following categories:

Audio (Recording), Electronics (microcontrollers, amplifiers, etc...), Automotive, and Other...

The information here is presented in hopes of helping others do related tasks and to database some of my efforts. The content of this blog may be used only with proper reference to myself. If you have any questions or concerns, just send me an email.

Comments: comments are to be constructive to the effort FOR THE COMMUNITY. Comments are subject to approval. Blatant assaults or vulgar content is prohibited and will be rejected. You may also email me.

Format: Each post will have a general category in the title: i.e. "Audio - something something" to make sorting a bit easier.

- Phil