Tag: mixing

New song release – Mountain High

Mountain High Song Release Solid Rock Blues Band

Mountain High (Valley Below) is an uptempo song, countryrock and bluesrock influenced, by the Solid Rock Blues Band project. Inspired by a short holiday trip to the Harz region in Germany.

While on holiday this song was written by Rudy and it took a few months before the melody and music were composed. After that was ready, recording and mixing the song was done in one day. Recorded, mixed and released on May 2, 2021 at The Loft Studio.

Video Mountain High

Audio only (Soundcloud)

More details about this recording

Recording
Drums – Digitech Trio
Bass – Harley Benton MM84ASB
Acoustic Guitars – Samick Greg Bennett (Electro Acoustic)
Electric Guitars – Ibanez AS53-TF Hollow Body
Vocal Mic – AKG C900 Condenser
Audio Interface – Behringer UMC404HD
DAW – Harrison Mixbus6

Video
Free stock video from https://www.pexels.com/nl-nl/videos/ and footage shot in the Harz region, Germany. Edited using Flowblade

Like this post? Please share it:

Unboxing & Review – Devine PRO2000 Studio Headphones

Today we’ve received a new set of headphones from BAX Shop, the Netherlands. The Devine PRO2000 Studio Headphones. We’ve bought them as an additional set of headphones for monitoring, recording and listening to music. 

Of course these headphones cannot be compared to high-end headphones. I did a comparison with the Audio Technica ATH-m20x. The ATH’s are twice as expensive as these Devine headphones. And yes, you can hear the difference. No doubt about that.

In short
Pro’s: the headphones are very well build, have a good sound and are very comfortable.
Con’s: they are not suitable for mixing.

The reason why they are not suitable for mixing is because the bass is too loud, there’s simply a little too much low end. The mid’s are fine, high end is slightly recessed. Still, it’s a good buy if you want to use them for listening to music or for monitoring. They’re dirt cheap! Only 27 euro’s.

Youtube video (unboxing and review)

Like this post? Please share it:

Morning Ritual (free download)

Free Single Morning Ritual

So what’s next when you have a new guitar (Harley Benton TE-52), a new vocal condenser mic (MXL770) and installed a new DAW (Mixbus5)? Record a brand new song! So here’s “Morning Ritual” – a song about how we try to survive in this world of ours these days.

The song is available as a free download at SoundCloud and there’s a video!

I must say we’re very happy with the new gear as well as the new DAW! Even though there are some hardware issues to overcome it is clearly the best DAW I’ve ever layed hands on.

Recorded at the ZolderStudio
Drums & Bass – Digitech Trio
Guitars, Vocals, recording & mixing – Rudy

Equipment used:
DAW – Mixbus5
Mic – MXL770
Guitars: Harley Benton Telecaster, Washburn Acoustic

 

 

MORNING RITUAL (Lyrics)

Words & Music (c)2019, Solid Rock Blues Band

Well here’s your coffee dear,
it’s in a paper cup,
I know you do adhere
to the morning ritual..
without you can’t get up,
so here’s your coffee dear
here’s your coffee dear

Well here’s your paper dear,
it says the end is near,
you might not want to read,
or hear the news today
don’t worry anyhow
here’s your coffee dear,
here’s your coffee dear

Chorus:
You can Leave Your Make-up on the shelf,
‘cus time, time suits you well,
and here’s your coffee dear

Here’s Your Coffee Dear,
though the End is Near,
You know we can’t give up
on our morning ritual,
yeah though our life is short,
at least there’s coffee dear,
so here’s your coffee dear.

Like this post? Please share it:

Professional Free Online Mastering

Is it possible to get free mastering? Even better: free professional, radio ready, mastering? Yes it is! Yesterday I recorded a hymn (“I Surrender All”) and even though the mix was fine, I wanted it to sound “radio-ready”. So, I went online to search for a quick fix. I do my own “mastering” most of the time using Audacity but it didn’t sound good enough.

Google is your firend, right? So, I ended up on BandLab’s website. They have been offering free online mastering for some time now (I never knew,.. and perhaps you didn’t either – that’s why I’m posting this!).

What to expect from a free mastering service? Well, .. to my surprise it does a great job! When you upload a track you have a few options: CD quailty, bass heavy (for radio: don’t!) and clear sound.

I uploaded a few tracks and was amazed to hear the difference!

BandLab’s new online mastering service is the first such tool with free unlimited use and is compatible with all major music formats. The new feature is also integrated across the entire existing BandLab creative workflow so that creators can share final mastered tracks across the BandLab social music platform or download their finished works as high-quality versions for distribution to other services. (MusicConnection)

Here’s a sample of the mastering at BandLab, the song “Summertime”

The mastering gives it a lot more ‘punch’ and depth. Of course the mix was very good also, thanks to Jay H.

Anyway — There’s no excuse not to use BandLab – it’s free, it delivers you a good mastered track. Head over to BandLab to get your songs mastered!

More of our songs at BandLab can be found at this link:
https://www.bandlab.com/band/band6816193038897138

Like this post? Please share it:

Summertime – Free Download!

What happens if you let someone who’s got great mixing skills as well is the writer of a good vocal plugin mix your track “just for the fun of it”? Recently we were recording a new song and our friend Jay H. from JHudStudio created an alternative mix. We liked it so much that we have decided to publish this mix instead of our own!

Jay H. is the author of the Vocal King plugin, and some other (free) plugins for Windows DAW’s. He put some good time and effort in our song and (re)mixed and produced it based on the original, unedited, stem-exports from our Ardour DAW. This resulted in an original, creative, mix of our song and we were so very pleased with it!

The song is now available as a free download at SoundCloud. We hope you like it. Feel free to share!

The mood of the song, as well as the style, is probably a “60’s” or “70’s” feel, in the vain of Bob Dylan, The Byrds and so on. Drums were created using Ditigtech TRIO, Bass, guitars and vocals by Rudy. Recorded using Ardour (Linux). Mixed & produced by Jay H. from JayHudStudio.

Like this post? Please share it:

Lost Faith, Lost Hope – New original song!

A new, original, song has been released on AudioMack. And there’s more to come in the near future as we’re working on yet another new album.

An acoustic demo of the song was released earlier on Youtube (click for the video). Below you’ll find the finished studio version.

Vocals, guitars, recording & mixing by Rudy, Soldi Rock Blues Band.
Drums & Bass: Digitech TRIO Band Creator.

Recorded using Ardour/KXStudio (Linux Audio).

Like this post? Please share it:

Down For The Count – Recording & Mixing with Ardour (Tutorial)

Recording and mixing with Ardour for Linux, Windows or OSX isn’t as challenging as many think. In fact, it’s pretty easy once you know what to do and how it works. In the below in-depth video you can see how I record and mix drums, bass, guitar, vocals and midi keyboard using Ardour. The duration of the video is almost 25 minutes.

The song that was recorded is an original song, written by RJF Mensies and me in 2015 and recorded for the “Telenovelas” album by the Barking Aunts Project. This is a new recording and although the music is more or less the same as far as the vocal line and chords are concerned it still is pretty different.

STREAMING

You can listen to the song on SoundCloud or Audiomack.

Click here for Audiomack
Click here for SoundCloud

 

VIDEO

This video will walk you trough the full recording and mixing process. Ardour is very easy to use and allows you to do a professional audio recording on a shoestring budget!

More (and shorter!) video’s on recording with Ardour at the Recording page.

FINAL NOTE

When the video was finished I’ve added tambourine and did some final tweaking on the midi track. After I recorded and mixed the song I “mastered” it using Audacity. Using a high pass filter (20Hz, -6 dB) and W1 limiter (-2.7dB, -0.3dB ceiling). Hope you like the song and video and if you do like the video: thumbs up & subscribe.

Like this post? Please share it: