Ross Worth – Music Producer

Sizzle Cymbal (in full jazz club fashion) NICE!

I have been working on  some more Jazz recordings at the moment, and thought I’d share this one with the un-initiated. How to make your very own sizzle cymbal to add that shimmer to your Jazz numbers. As you can see from the picture a bath chain tied above the cymbal is all it takes, try it you might like it!

Other similar effects can be gained by drilling and riveting your cymbals perhaps one to try if you have an old damaged cymbal! For the less adventurous ready made rivet cymbals are available in  a wide range of shapes and sizes …now where did I leave my smoking jacket!

Control Your Room With Bass Traps

Mixing and recording audio really shouldn’t be that difficult… Place a mic here find a talented and well practised musician there (eeeerrm) and hit the big red button (BRB). Unfortunatley some clever sole invented physics and decided that audio would be transmitted using waves and that, for no known reason, these waves should adhere to the so called laws of this physics!

 

 As many of you may know the higher the frequency of these waves the higher the musical pitch we deem to hear. So high pitched sounds have waves that complete a complete oscillation in a very short time. For example a frequency of 1000Hz repeats 1000 oscillations per second! Low pitched sounds have lower frequencies and therefore less oscillations per second. The distance travelled by each oscillation varies massively depending upon its frequency. A 100Hz wave will travel 3.4m* in one cycle and a 1000Hz wave only 34cm*!  For tis reason bass waves can be heard to alter more through a room due to the length of each oscillation. So I’m sure you’re wondering what on earth this has to do with you and well untill any of the waves we try to record hit a wall, very little, once they hit the wall however we need to rethink things somewhat.

 

If you were lucky enough to attend school before answering exams in txt speak was allowed then you may remember that when we add two waves together two peaks in the same direction make a bigger peak in the same direction and two similar peaks in opposite directions would cancel out completely.  Now you may wish to think that this is just fairy dust and only applies to men in white coats working in somewhere not disimilar to a research facility such as Cern however, unfortunatley all this stuff works in the real world to! I have looked and it is there, noise cancelling headphones, they use it, infact it even appeared in a car once upon a time to make the ride quieter, both of which are great applications of this phase cancellation. Of course to capture a perfect copy of a sound and reverse the phase to create the perfect out of phase copy without any time passing is very tricky, and the main reason why noise cancelling ear phones will never really work, neither will your car be silent untill, that is, brussles have forced us all to replace our engines with flowers and elastic bands. Waves adding togehter of course would not be a problem unless the same white coated beardies decided that these audio waves should bounce of anything posible. However in reality waves do bounce and very well as it goes, which means they get to be added together with each other a great deal more when in say a room!

 

So lets revisit recording again with our new-found knowledge of waves.  Recording studios can be very noisey places and thusly you may be forgiven for thinking that a little phase cancelation to quieten the rable down may be welcomed, the reality however is very different. You see to record a sound it is usefull for these little wave type things to be present, they perform the rather usefull function of moving the diapraghm in our microphones which helps us greatly in being able to capture a recording . The truth is the waves will rarely cancel out completely due to reflections in the room and other artifacts altering our waves before they have the chance to add together. Instead what we find is that two sounds out of phase will often thin out the source sound of make certain frequencies much louder/quieter depending on how they relate to the room size.

 

 These bouncing waves or reflections do lots to alter our source sounds, some usefull some less so. The plethora of reverb plugins and effects units demonstrates that creatively speaking there is no correct amount of reflections to have in a room only that said room should allow you to get the sound you want. The best way to acheive this could be to have a room that has little or no personality, picture a McLaren driver, and then add one using reverb effects after the recording. In practice I find recording in over treated rooms almost always ruins a recording leaving it lifeless and dull and lacking that je ne c’est que! I prefer for percusion instruments a room that is both live sounding yet still bland enough to be able to change the sound later. So I want reflections your honor just not , you know,REFLECTIONS!

 

The main problems in a room can generally be controlled using a combinaton of diffusers and bass traps/broadband abosorbers. When treating a mixing environment the emphasis is on creating a neutral sounding  environment that reproduces all the frequencys at similar levels and does not have flat spots in terms of frequency response. When treating a live room or other recording environment you goals may be similar but at the same time different!  I like reflections in the live room, it makes it sound live! What I dislike are reflections raining down on overhead mics, particularily in small rooms, which then  leave you with an unfocused mush of early reflections across the overhead mics, you can hide this somewhat in a mix but in my opinion it never sounds great.

 

This article could not possibly cover bass trap design and placement but there are various sources on the internet that would help you build your own for very little or even order pre made versions from respected companies. The important thing to know is that bass traps and broad frequency absorbers are used to absorb the energy in waves as they bounce off of a surface. Do they work, generally, yes and even better when combined with diffusers and good acoustic design. All of the spaces at Boston Recoring Studios – www.bostonrecording.co.uk have been acoustically treated and help me get great sounds in my mixes and recordings, it’s not the only piece of the puzzle but it helps!

 

Bye for now,

 

Ross Worth – www.rossworth.co.uk

 

Music Producer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 * Speed of sound at sea level taken to be 340.29/s all figures are for illustrative use only and rounded to 2.s.f.

LTD Viper 50 by ESP

I have recently decided I needed a new axe, most of my studio guitars are fine but I wanted something with a nice low action for live playing and something I could keep at home for personal playing as well as taking to work with me.

I could have ordered the guitar through the studio shop but it was some what of an impulse purchase so I popped over to Roadhouse music in Boston and they hooked me up with the LTD Viper 50.

The Brief…

I wanted a cheap, (sub £300) guitar with a fixed bridge, dual humbuckers and a nice responsive feel. I am amazed with what I got, Roadhouse gave me a good price, as cheap as any on the internet and even out of the box the set-up was good. None the less I set the truss rod and intonation back at the studio and now the guitar is awesome. The neck is so quick and responsive it makes the guitar easy to play, the pickups are OK but lack the depth of my favoured Seymour Duncan PAF 59 Humbuckers so I think I will upgrade them when I get around to it.

I would be happy to use the stock pickups for live and studio use as they have a certain charm and have a good balance with the bridge pickup nicely breaking up a good valve amp on demand. The machine heads are very smooth and sensibly geared however the head is a little small but for the price I am not even nearly concerned.

The finish is a little patchy and a close inspection reveals a few inperfections but again the guitar is great value for money and will live with much more expensive competition.

My rating 8/10

Other options -

Ephiphone SG (7/10)

Yamaha Pacifica (7.5/10)

Various others.