M-Audio Guide for the Recording Guitarist (Book)

 M-Audio Guide R

for the Recording Guitarist Chris Buono Course Technology PTR A part of Cengage Learning

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M-AudioR Guide for the Recording Guitarist Chris Buono Publisher and General Manager, Course Technology PTR: Stacy L. Hiquet Associate Director of Marketing: Sarah Panella Manager of Editorial Services: Heather Talbot

© 2008 Course Technology, a part of Cengage Learning. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Avid, Digidesign, M-Audio, Pro Tools, Pro Tools M-Powered, Fast Track, Luna, Solaris, Sputnik, Nova, MicroTrack, Xpand!, Prosessions, Eleven, Axiom, and Revolution are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Library of Congress Control Number: 2007932094 ISBN-13: 978-1-59863-423-5 ISBN-10: 1-59863-423-2 eISBN-10: 1-59863-674-X Course Technology 25 Thomson Place Boston, MA 02210 USA Cengage Learning is a leading provider of customized learning solutions with office locations around the globe, including Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan. Locate your local office at: international.cengage.com/region Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada by Nelson Education, Ltd. For your lifelong learning solutions, visit courseptr.com Visit our corporate web site at cengage.com

Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 11 10 09 08

To my one and only love—my beautiful wife Stacy, with whom I share a lovely forever.

Acknowledgments First and foremost, the biggest thank you possible goes to the people closest to me, starting with my wife Stacy and my two sons John and Wil for their love, patience, and sacrifice; without their support, I could not do what I do in this life. Thank you to the Buono and Lordi clans for making this life I refer to an extraordinary one by providing everything Italian families are known for. A forever thank you to my brother Louis for putting a guitar in my hand and to my brother Greg for always encouraging me to play it. Thank you to the B’Town clique for always being there for us; to Dominic O’Connell and the Bonetti family for being award-winning neighbors; to Gus Smalley for the years of friendship, knowledge, and pedal repairs; and to Adam Perlmutter and all my past and present guitar magazine editors for teaching me how to write. Thank you to those people who were beyond vital to this book: Jimmy Archey for starting it all (on many levels), Kevin Walt for taking me into the M-Audio family and always listening to my crazy ideas, Steve Nalepa for loads of expert advice and thinking I could actually do this, Mark Garvey for more things than I could possibly write in this criminally small space that has been allotted to me, David Muniz for his expertise and always displaying patience and compassion during my sporadic (many) episodes of naı¨vete´, and Adam Castillo and Vanessa Merring for believing in me. To Kate Shoup, my new best friend—this book would not be in your hands if it weren’t for the staggering amount of work this amazing person put in. Also big thanks to Mark Hughes for stepping in and fixing things and Jay Alders for the fantastic microphone photo session (and lunch to boot). To Vernon Reid, Bumblefoot, Peter Stroud, and Steve Lukather—my brothers who delivered—thank you for taking some time away from being the guitar gods you are. Finally, thanks to Doug Osborn for more things than I can ever say. As for the incredible people at M-Audio who contributed their time at different stages of this book, thanks go to Jeff Silverman for Black Box knowledge, Joshua Merrill for unparalleled kindness in all things pixels, Randy George and Josh Greer for making sure I had the gear, Laura Escude´ for the many iLok support calls, Eric Krug for following up on things, Alex Solano for those hours of tech support on the phone, and Matt Piper for even more hours on the phone! Thanks go, too, to the Digidesign people who also donated their time and resources: Bryant Sierra for the keyboard, Andy Hagerman for advice and support, Brian Carter and Phil Jackson for the tricks, and Brian Doser for the hookups. Finally, an eternal thank you to my parents, Louis and Mary Buono.

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About the Author With a guitar in hand, Chris Buono is multimedia machine. As a performing and recording artist, Chris has appeared as a sideman and guest soloist in myriad genres for various major and indie labels including Lava, Lion Music, LNR, RKM, and E-Magine; and he has performed all over the United States and various other parts of the globe with a dizzying array of legendary musicians. As a professor at Berklee College of Music in the Guitar department, Chris teaches performance labs, ensembles, and private lessons, and heads the world’s only guitar effects lab. Chris is also a senior faculty member for the National Guitar Workshop, where he played a key role in establishing the Music Technology curriculum. As a music journalist, Chris is a regular contributor to Guitar Player magazine, is a columnist for Just Jazz Guitar magazine, contributed to Mel Bay’s Guitar Sessions and Guitar Teacher, and authored Jazz Lead Guitar Solos for Alfred Publishing. Most notably, Chris was an industrious contributor to Guitar One magazine. His work included his effects column “Pedal Points,” featured lesson articles, gear reviews, and interviews with some of today’s most highly regarded guitarists. Plus, he performed all the lesson material on camera for the magazine’s CD-ROM. Chris is also an in-demand clinician in both live and video forums and can be seen regularly showcasing gear for M-Audio and First Act guitars.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii

Chapter 1 The Essential Gear

1

Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Pro Tools M-Powered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Black Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Plug-ins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 …Some More Gear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Studio Monitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Headphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Microphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 MIDI Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Loop Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Hard Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Chapter 2 The Audio Interface Explained

19

Signal Path. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 The Big Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Converters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Sampling Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Bit Depth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 I/O Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 USB and FireWire Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 1/4-Inch Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 XLR Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 MIDI In/Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Line Level Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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Contents

RCA Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 S/PDIF Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Audio Quality Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Signal-to-Noise Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Dynamic Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Total Harmonic Distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Two for the Road. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 The Mix Knob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Some Interfaces for the Guitarist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 FireWire 410 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 FireWire Solo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Fast Track Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Fast Track Ultra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Fast Track USB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 JamLab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Chapter 3 Setting Up Your M-Powered Empire

47

Optimizing Your Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Setting Up a Mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Setting Up a PC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Setting Up a Hard Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Authorizing Your iLok . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Installing Your Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Making Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Adapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Hubs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Power Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Getting Up and Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Startup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Playing a Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Creating Your First Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Setting Up and Saving Your I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Creating Session Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Microphones: General Guidelines and Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70 Types of Microphones. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Some Common Tech Terms to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

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Miking Electric Guitars: Speakers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Miking Acoustic Guitars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Pro Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86

Chapter 4 The Joys of Recording

91

Continuing to Create Your First Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 Creating Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Naming Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 The Click Track and the Countoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Recording Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Assigning Inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Getting Signal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Hitting the Red Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 How to Deal with Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 M-Powered Adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Hardware Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Gotta Bounce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Save! Save! Save! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Chapter 5 The Black Box Revealed

129

Quick Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Background Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Guitar Tone and the Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Working with Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Copying Presets to and from the Black Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Saving Presets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Sharing Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Editing Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Amp Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Beat-Synced Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Reverb. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Contents

The Utility Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Processing Fixed Drum Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 External Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Momentary Switching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Expression Pedal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Assigning Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 The Black Box and Pro Tools M-Powered. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Setup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Black Box Control Panel Adjustments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Opening a Black Box Session Template. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Setting Up an External MIDI Beat Clock from Pro Tools . . . . . . . 181 How the Black Box Conquers Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Multiple Input Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Recording Digitally Through S/PDIF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Chapter 6 Face to (Inter)Face with Pro Tools M-Powered

191

Menu(s), Please . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Properly Introducing the Edit Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 The Anatomy of a Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 The Track Control Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Additional Edit Window Columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 Track Adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Time Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Time Scales and the Main and Sub Counters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 The Timeline Display Area and Rulers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 The Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 The Edit Window Toolbar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 The Edit Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 The Edit Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 The Event Edit Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 The Transport Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Cursors and Related Markers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 The Playback Cursor and Timeline Selection Markers . . . . . . . . . 223 The Edit Cursor and Edit Selection Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 The Edit Window Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 The Side Columns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

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Meet the Mix Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 The Anatomy of a Channel Strip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 The Side Column and the Mix Groups List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 The Transport Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 The Transport Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 MIDI Transport Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Chapter 7 Editing 101 and Some M-Powered Empowerment

249

The Edit Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 Navigating the Edit Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 Spot Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Slip Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Grid Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Shuffle Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 The Edit Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 Navigating the Edit Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Zoom Controls and Zoom Preset Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Zoomer Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 Trim Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 Selector Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Grabber Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 Scrubber Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 Some Ruler View Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Memory Locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 Dynamic Transport. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Some Recording Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Loop Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Punch Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Chapter 8 An Introduction to Mixing and Mastering

291

Leveling the Playing Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Initial Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Creating a Rough Mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Clipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Creating Mix Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 Introducing Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Contents

Automation Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 Automation Enable Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 The Output Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 Writing Automation in Real Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Automation Creation with the Pencil and Grabber Tools . . . . . . . 312 Examining Channel-Strip Signal Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Plug-ins Exposed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 The Anatomy of a Plug-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 AudioSuite in Action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 RTAS in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 Some Tech Terms to Know for the Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 Signal Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Busses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 Sends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 Routing in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 Gotta Bounce … Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Pump It Up! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 Power Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

Chapter 9 Working with Loops

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Loops Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 Slice and Dice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 File Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 Importing Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Using the Workspace Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350 Searching for Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Auditioning Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 Dragging and Tempo Matching Loops to a Session . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Editing Loops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Duplicating Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Crossfading Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Repeating Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Extracting and Splicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

Chapter 10 Working with MIDI

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MIDI Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 The Numbers Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

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128 Revealed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 Number Crunching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 0–127 Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Some Common Tech Terms to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 MIDI Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Setting Up Your System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 The What, Why, and Where of Auxiliary, MIDI, and Instrument Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 The Who and How of Virtual Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 Xpand! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Calling Up Patches in Xpand! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Recording MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 MIDI Merge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 Quantizing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 Editing MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 MIDI/Instrument Track Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 Editing Tools Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409 Closing Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

Appendix A: The Black Box Fixed Drumbeats

423

Appendix B: Black Box Tempo-Synced Speed Settings 425 The Black Box Tempo-Synced FX Speeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 The Black Box Tempo-Synced Delay Times. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Appendix C: The Black Box Controller Assignments

427

The Black Box Expression Pedal Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 The Black Box Momentary Foot Switch Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

Appendix D: Transport Function Keyboard Shortcuts 429 Index

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Introduction Welcome to M-Audio Guide for the Recording Guitarist, the official how-to on all things pertaining to digitally recording your six-string artistry. The book you are holding in your hands was passionately conceived and written by a true guitar zealot—me—with all the care in the world with regard to how we guitarists do what we do. I and M-Audio want nothing more than for you to learn how best to record your guitar-fueled antics, while staying true to whatever fretted ethos you may follow. Simply put, it’s not a coincidence that a guitar player wrote this book! Throughout this book we’re a team, and I’m the captain; so trust me, you’re in good hands. And not just my hands, but also in the good hands of Course Technology PTR and M-Audio. Course Technology PTR books were a huge part of my learning how to do all this, and I have stayed true to the methods contained in those books that I found so helpful in my own development. From step-by-step tutorials that are clearly laid out with helpful screen shots to downloadable content (sessions, sound files, presets, etc.) on the Web, the Course Technology PTR style is super-effective, and this book follows suit quite nicely if I do say so myself. And let’s not forget M-Audio.… M-Audio is a forward-thinking company that consistently aims high and scores big in the world of computer-centric audio production gear manufacturing without blowing a hole in your wallet. Starting in 1988 out of founding father Tim Ryan’s garage, M-Audio (originally called Midiman) quickly became a pioneering industry leader by providing musicians with innovative tools to make music in this digital world. From the Macman to the FireWire 410, from the Oxygen 8 to the latest Profire 2626, M-Audio has consistently striven (and succeeded) to create tools that make working in the digital realm feel right—and to a guitarist, that says volumes (more on this in a moment). Even better news for you and me is that M-Audio is making conscious efforts to reach out to our infamously fickle community with guitar-related designs that are at the forefront of technology, while at the same time are intuitive to use and just plain rock! We will explore these incredible pieces, as well as other fantastic M-Audio gear, throughout this book. From the mighty Pro Tools M-Powered to mobile audio interfaces and

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much, much more, we explore the ins and outs of modern-day audio and MIDI production. Now let’s talk a little about feel. We guitarists passionately love and hate many things. Let’s start with what we hate: We guitarists strongly dislike (hate is such a nasty word) anything that threatens our way of life and anything that inhibits the way something feels. Because when things feel right—like a great setup or a fast neck—we’re at the top of our game. To us, feel translates in the abstract form of sound. It’s no secret that guitarists are loyal to their analog (non-digital) gear, and rightfully so—it sounds great and has helped make possible some of the most incredible-sounding moments in recorded music for the last 80 years or so. Take the guitar itself: It’s an extremely tactile instrument that exudes sheer power and reeks of coolness. You can feel every note as the string vibrates under your fingertips. Couple that with a raging combo amp or a full stack on 10 and you have a force to be reckoned with. Anyone who has ever fretted an open E chord on a Les Paul and let loose a Pete Townsend style windmill powered by a cranked Marshall Plexi or chugged away on the low B string of an Ibanez Universe plugged into a smoldering Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier knows the feeling I’m talking about. Many guitarists shy away from recording nowadays because everything involved in the process has gone to hard disk and silicon chips. That’s a scary thought to a community that can be solely thanked for prolonging what is considered pre-historic technology: tubes. Be it the subject of modeling guitars, digitally controlled analog pedals, or MIDI-fied multi-channel amps, there’s much debate as to what’s good and bad about all of this digitized machinery. Well, as I stated previously, M-Audio consistently strives and succeeds to create tools that make working in the digital realm…feel…right. This is some good stuff, folks, and I’m here to tell you how to make the most of it! We guitarists love to get our hands dirty, usually tossing the manual out the window so we can get to what we love the most—to play. With that in mind, I conceived this book with the explicit intent to provide you, the reader and fellow guitarist, with the most direct path to learning how to be a functional recording guitarist. I made sure before you read even half the book to explain the key components to your emerging recording rig, guide you through setting up that rig, and walk you through recording your guitar genius and preparing it for worldwide release—all the while covering a truckload of M-Audio gear.

Who Are You? You are a guitarist of any level whose goal is to learn how to record your artistry in this modern digital world. You have more than basic knowledge as to what exactly is sitting on your lap (i.e. the guitar) and its various components (i.e., amps, pedal, and the like). You realize the days of tape-based recording media

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are long behind us and that you need to learn how to record your music with your computer and other related peripherals. Speaking of your computer: You have ample knowledge as to how to control it. That is, you have enough computer savvy to be considered an intermediate user. Plugging components in and out, installing software, and making minor system adjustments are not tasks new to you. Most importantly, you have creativity, ideas, and vision—all the goods to make this completely awesome thing we call music!

Who Am I? I am you. Like you, I eat, sleep, live, and breathe the guitar. I teach, I do too many gigs to ever have a normal sleep schedule, I collect pedals, I read guitar magazines, I love Van Halen; I could keep going—trust me, I am you. Knowing that, trust in this: I wrote the book I wish someone else had written when I was learning this stuff. I wrote a book for the type of guitarist who desires—wait, make that demands—to know it what it takes to get things rolling so as to best utilize what it is they have with which to express their genius. Like you, I love to play the guitar and that’s exactly what I did while writing this book: I played and/or programmed every note you hear in the sessions you will soon be downloading and opening. I’m also what some call a hustler, a go-getter, a pro-active type who is constantly creating his own world (i.e., gigs, bands, compositions, lesson material). I realized early on you have to make your own way in this business, and one of the most important tools you’ll need to accomplish that is knowledge. Lo and behold, this book is packed with just that—knowledge!

How This Book Is Organized M-Audio Guide for the Recording Guitarist was precisely organized in a way that gets you right to the heart of the matter—recording—as quickly as possible. Instead of starting out with loads of information about what is going to happen, we go right into how to make it happen while examining why it happens as you go along. When the time is right, then you will be directed to geek out what more can happen. Here’s a rundown of the chapters and what’s inside them: n

Chapter 1, “The Essential Gear.” This chapter starts things off with a Guitar Center–style blast to your senses that introduces you to loads of delicious MAudio gear, as well as other essential components, that will make up your new guitar-centric digital production rig. Even in this introductory chapter, you’ll find loads of important information, as well as shout-outs indicating where a lot of this preliminary knowledge will be expanded upon.

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Chapter 2, “The Audio Interface Explained.” Here’s where I reach out to the inner geek who spends hours talking about scale systems comprised of components named after Greek islands by carefully explaining central

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component to recording your guitar in the digital realm: the audio interface. Understanding the essential properties of an audio interface not only introduces you to the basic ins and outs of digital recording, but also how to effectively produce outstanding music with your guitar and your computer. From I/O to signal-to-noise ratio to THD, I take you on a deep journey that ends with an in-depth look at some M-Audio interfaces to watch out for. n

Chapter 3, “Setting Up Your M-Powered Empire.” Putting aside any further ado, this chapter directs you to rip open the boxes of whatever M-Audio product you may have purchased and start building your empire of creation in both the hardware and software realms. You are directed to get your hands dirty by plugging in wires, getting acquainted with Pro Tools M-Powered, and setting up clever microphone configurations, not to mention checking out a full-blown session (Power 3) that is loaded with a plethora of guitar antics. You’ll also learn how to best prepare your computer (Mac and/or PC) for the rigors of audio production. There’s even a section dedicated to optimizing your most important piece of gear: your axe!

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Chapter 4, “The Joys of Recording.” Now it’s time to create some tracks, get a signal, and start recording your magnum opus. This chapter puts you right into the thick of recording real-world guitar tones via the M-Audio FireWire 410 receiving miked amp signals from the M-Audio Sputnik and then having your session readied for worldwide release! Not only do you learn about recording and transferring your session to a medium everyone else can work with, you learn about what latency is and how to conquer it, you get introduced to various components of the Pro Tools interface, and you discover how to properly save your work. Also, there are tips from iconic guitarists like Steve Lukather and Peter Stroud and the beginnings of a session (Chopper Genesis) that you will watch develop in later chapters.

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Chapter 5, “The Black Box Revealed.” Shifting gears, this chapter introduces you to the exciting new worlds of digital modeling, beat-synced processing, and direct recording with DSP through the only guitar effects processor that’s also a qualified interface for Pro Tools M-Powered: the award-winning M-Audio Black Box. Nowhere will you find a more thorough user-derived glimpse into this amazingly versatile unit. I take you through every nook and cranny of the Black Box, covering every button, knob, and port while at the same time discussing secondary hardware components that can be added to externally control the unit. After that, I show you how to integrate the Black Box with Pro Tools M-Powered with some useful tricks of the trade along the way. And if that weren’t enough, there are presets from myself and fellow M-audio artists Vernon Reid and Rusty Cooley on the Course Technology PTR

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Web site (http://courseptr.cengage.com/downloads), waiting for you to download and rock out with! n

Chapter 6, “Face to (Inter)Face with Pro Tools M-Powered.” This chapter pops the hood of your M-Powered machine so you can take a good look at what’s going on in there. Here you explore the two main windows in Pro Tools M-Powered (Edit and Mix), as well as an essential floating window (Transport), by examining every last component of this intuitive graphic user interface. In addition, some basic but monumentally important concepts are laid out for you, such as how M-Powered handles time and its use of multiple cursors. Along the way you’ll pick up some tips on how to customize the look and functions of various M-Powered attributes.

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Chapter 7, “Editing 101 and Some M-Powered Empowerment.” Chapter 6 provides you with a firm grasp of the power that you have available to you in Pro Tools M-Powered; in Chapter 7, you learn how to actually use it. The first half of the chapter guides you through step-by-step tutorials on how to use edit modes and edit tools in M-Powered. From there it’s time to empower yourself with some advanced navigational tools and recording techniques. Keep an eye out for another tip from guitar czar Steve Lukather, and a very clever tip from guitar architect Vernon Reid.

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Chapter 8, “An Introduction to Mixing and Mastering.” This chapter introduces the supreme arts of mixing and mastering your recordings, making them sound like you created them in a million-dollar studio even though you may actually be in your basement or bedroom. Here you learn how to make Pro Tools work for you (automation) and the wonderful and extremely powerful world of computer-based effect processing (plug-ins), including Digidesign’s incredible hyper-modeling amp simulator Eleven. Before this chapter closes shop there’s a tip from modern guitar marvel Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal.

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Chapter 9, “Working with Loops.” Just as important as it is to learn how to record your guitar digitally, it’s equally important to learn how to work with audio loops. These compact audio files can work wonders in your workflow. This is the chapter where you not only find out how to implement loops into your production flow, but also the basic principles as to what loops are. Also in this chapter is an introduction to what is regarded as the third essential window in Pro Tools: the Workspace browser.

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Chapter 10, “Working with MIDI.” If you don’t know what MIDI is beyond being a tool to for switching channels on your amplifier, then this chapter will be an epiphany! From discussing fundamental principles to uncovering common misconceptions, this chapter lays it all out. After you are introduced to MIDI in a general way, you are directed on how to set up your MIDI gear

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through the eyes of the M-Audio Oxygen 8 v2 MIDI controller and how to implement MIDI into your sessions. You will be introduced to Digidesign’s free MIDI workstation, Xpand!, and how to record and edit with it to make your guitar recordings fully realized works of art. In chapters 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10, you will be directed to the Course Technology PTR Web site to download content to coincide with each chapter. It’s important to get these downloads, as this allows you to really get inside the material presented to you. Besides, there are myriad guitar moments that will surely bring a smile to your face!

From Pro Tools 7.3 to 7.4… One thing to realize about technology is that it moves fast. (To some this may be the understatement of the century, but to others this could be a revelation.) So fast, in fact, that while I was writing this book there was a significant version update to the main software application—Pro Tools M-Powered—used throughout the text. So if you’re noticing some slight differences in the graphics on your screen compared to the screen shots in the book, this is why. To be clear, this update does not affect any of the information laid out in the book, so fret not!

Mac versus PC While many households have a Windows (Microsoft’s operating system) personal computer (PC) made by one of the various manufacturers out there, many people own Apple brand (Mac) computers instead. While I primarily use a Mac for all audio applications and used several models throughout the creation of this book, PC users will be able to use this book just as effectively. Throughout this book there are many references to keyboard shortcuts, and in every instance they are presented for both computer platforms. Also abundant in this book is the use of screen shots. While the lion’s share is from a Macintosh computer, the images are almost identical to what you will see on a PC. Whenever there are matters that have a distinct difference between the two platforms, I made it clear in the text as to what those differences are and how to proceed. In the end, M-Audio Guide for the Recording Guitarist was written for both Mac and PC users; rest assured, both groups will gain equal benefit from this book.

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The Essential Gear

here’s no better way to introduce a guitarist to the world of digital audio production than to start off talking about every guitarist’s favorite subject—gear!

This chapter takes a quick look at the essential gear that will be used throughout this book. Many of the components are included in the Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro software/hardware bundle. This all-in-one package features Pro Tools M-Powered software, the Black Box audio interface and digital sound processor, and much more; but most importantly, it’s a package that was specifically designed for the guitar player who wants in on the digital audio action. While this bundle is by no means the only piece of gear M-Audio produces that would be useful to the recording guitarist, it is a great start to building a guitar-focused audio-production rig. Be sure to visit M-Audio’s Web site (http://www.m-audio.com) for a look at its full line of gear and for product support, including up-to-date software upgrades and much more.

Take note: Even when another audio interface (i.e., a hardware device central to your emerging recording rig that is used for, among other things, converting your guitar’s voltage-based output signal into a digital code the computer can understand and converting that information back to a voltage-based state your speakers or headphones will then transmit to you for monitoring) is featured, such as the FireWire 410 used throughout Chapter 4, “The Joys of Recording,” you will be able to perform many of the same tasks on the Black Box and always be able to perform all the Pro Tools–related tasks. The idea is this: If you were reading this book and you had nothing to record with, there would be a central piece(s) of gear discussed in which you could make a safe 1

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investment, therefore enabling a scenario in which you can get the most out of this text. To add to that idea, the Guitar Box bundles were purposely designed to suit a guitar player’s needs, and I for one believe it does so very well! As you read subsequent chapters in this book, you will uncover more detailed information about the gear described here, while being introduced to other pieces of gear as well. Although much attention to detail will be given to the gear throughout the book, what you will not find is a list of specs unless it directly benefits your learning experience. Instead, you will find information on how to understand those specs and be able to use that knowledge to your advantage.

Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro Sometimes what keeps guitarists—and most anyone else, for that matter—from getting into digital audio and recording is the initial investment. Because it balances functionality and value, the Guitar Box software/hardware bundle merits some serious consideration if you are looking into building a home digital-recording setup. Being mindful of offering the most for your hard-earned money, this package is the first Pro Tools all-in-one recording system designed specifically for guitarists, featuring the following: n

Pro Tools M-Powered digital audio/MIDI music-production software

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The Black Box audio interface and digital sound processing unit featuring amp models, beat synced effects, and pre-programmed drum loops (see Chapter 5, “The Black Box Revealed,” for more information about these features)

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A massive collection of pro-level plug-ins (plug-ins are internal software processors and will be talked about throughout Chapter 8, “An Introduction to Mixing and Mastering,” and Chapter 10, “Working with MIDI”) from DigiRack and Bomb Factory, as well as a collection of premium plug-ins that make up the G-Rack bundle

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The Xpand! virtual instrument sample-playback/synthesis workstation featuring more than 1,000 presets (see Chapter 10 for more information)

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Pro Tools Method One DVD

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This entire package comes at a price that’s far below what it would cost to purchase each of these components separately. The Guitar Box Pro in particular, shown in Figure 1.1, significantly ups the value, adding even more premium plug-ins to the G-Rack bundle. Let’s take a quick look at what makes up the Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro.

Figure 1.1 The Guitar Box Pro gives you a powerful recording system right out of the box for a fraction of the cost it would be to purchase its components separately.

Pro Tools M-Powered Pro Tools is the software application for recording, editing, and mixing audio/MIDI projects on either a Macintosh (referred to as Mac throughout the book) or Windows (referred to as PC throughout the book) computer. Originally conceived by Digidesign, Pro Tools was one of the first digital audio workstations (DAWs) to emerge; with its powerful processing engine and relatively low learning curve, it quickly established itself as the industry standard. Pro Tools M-Powered is one of three configurations currently available and features virtually the same graphical user interface (GUI) as its Digidesign counterpart versions, Pro Tools LE and the mighty Pro Tools HD. (The main difference between the three versions is what outboard gear each application version is compatible with.) That means when you learn one version of Pro Tools, you basically know them all. Another valuable compatibility feature is that you can

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transfer sessions between all three versions without a glitch. So regardless of what version you’re using, it’s possible to take, say, a homestudio session and transfer the files to a fully capable professional recording facility. For example, the first Pro Tools session I ever opened on my M-Powered setup at home was originally recorded at Studio A at Berklee College of Music on a Pro Tools j HD rig. Pro Tools is used all over the world; by joining this global community, you can collaborate with other musicians anywhere on the planet and realize music creation like you’ve never dreamed. A standout attribute to Pro Tools M-Powered is that it offers 23 hardware audio interfaces (covered in detail in Chapter 2, “The Audio Interface Explained”) from which to choose, providing a wide variety of options to suit virtually any user’s specific needs and budget. All you have to see is the M-Powered logo (see Figure 1.2) on the interface’s packaging, and you know it’s M-Powered compatible.

Figure 1.2 To be sure the audio interface you’re looking at is compatible with Pro Tools M-Powered, look for the “bug” on the box. If it’s there, you’re good to go.

iLok

Not the most glamorous part of your rig, but essential nonetheless, is the iLok (see Figure 1.3). This USB security device comes with Pro Tools M-Powered and enables the application to ensure you have valid software licenses to run M-Powered and all the third-party plug-ins. You will always need to know the whereabouts of this easily lost key-shaped piece of plastic; without it, you can’t even open up Pro Tools M-Powered, let alone use it!

Mac or PC? You don’t have to worry about the platform on which you plan to run your Pro Tools M-Powered rig. It’s both Mac and PC compatible and performs equally well on both.

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Figure 1.3 The USB iLok security device holds your license key for Pro Tools M-Powered as well as all your third-party plug-ins.

Black Box The Black Box (shown in Figure 1.4) is an award-winning audio interface and, in general, a standout piece of hardware for guitarists of all styles. Boasting a wide variety of amp models (40 in all), 121 beatsynced effects courtesy of Roger Linn (designer of the Adrenalinn and Adrenalinn II), and 100 pre-programmed drum patterns, this is the only hardware unit that combines digital sound processing (DSP) with an audio interface for computer-based recording in one box that is compatible with Pro Tools of any kind. Because the Black Box can also be used as a performance tool, it’s possible to have the same exact tones you used for your session be able to go with you to the gig. For me, the most important feature that the Black Box offers is its ability to deliver nearly zero latency (more on that, see Chapter 3, “Setting Up Your M-Powered Empire”) as you monitor the actual tone you’re recording. If you’re brand new to desktop recording, you will soon come to understand and appreciate this feature. For those of you who just can’t wait to dive into the Black Box, jump over to Chapter 5

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M-Audio Guide for the Recording Guitarist

Figure 1.4 The Black Box is the only audio interface that is equally a performance tool with its amp models, beat synced effects, and pre-programmed drum patterns.

to explore the power, versatility, and ease of use this multi-purpose interface has to offer. Plug-ins Think of plug-ins as your virtual pedals and/or rack gear (take a look at the Moogerfooger Low Pass Filter plug-in in Figure 1.5 for an example). Plug-ins are secondary software programs that can be accessed only within a host program—in this case, Pro Tools. They provide a means for additional effects processing and can be used in every step of your project: tracking, editing, mixing, and mastering.

Standalone Plug-ins Some plug-ins may offer a standalone version that allows it to be opened and utilized without a host program such as Pro Tools. This is common with virtual instrument plug-ins (known as soft synths) such as the M-Audio–distributed GForce Virtual String Machine, for example.

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Figure 1.5 The Moogerfooger Low Pass Filter is one of four Moogerfooger pedals modeled and developed into a plug-in format.

In Pro Tools, there are two main types of plug-ins: n

AudioSuite. These are process-based programs that create an entirely new audio file and are only accessed through the AudioSuite drop-down menu from the main toolbar in Pro Tools.

n

Real-Time AudioSuite (RTAS). These are real-time applications— like rocking a wah pedal back and forth—and are only accessed through channel inserts in tracks in both the Pro Tools Edit and Mix windows (the two main views in Pro Tools).

If you’re brand new to this end of audio processing, don’t worry. Plugins are covered in Chapter 8 and Chapter 10. In the meantime, check

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out the following lists to see what’s inside Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro, and get ready to salivate! Following are Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro DigiRack plug-ins: n

1-Band EQ

n

4-Band EQ

n

Chorus

n

Click

n

Compressor

n

D-Verb

n

DC Offset Removal

n

Delay

n

DeEsser

n

DigiReWire

n

Dither

n

Duplicate

n

Dynamics II

n

Dynamics III

n

EQ II

n

EQ III

n

Expander-Gate

n

Extra-Long Delay

n

Flanger

n

Gain

n

Gate

n

Invert-Duplicate

n

Limiter

n

Long Delay

Ch apter 1

n

Medium Delay

n

Mod Delay

n

Mod Delay II

n

Multi-Tap Delay

n

Normalize-Gain Change

n

Ping-Pong Delay

n

Pitch-Shift

n

Reverse-DC Removal

n

Short Delay

n

Signal Generator

n

Slap Delay

n

Time Compression-Expansion-Pitch Shift

n

Trim

The Essential Gear

Following are Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro Bomb Factory plug-ins: n

BF76 Compressor

n

BF Essential Clip Remover

n

BF Essential Correlation Meter

n

BF Essential Noise Meter

n

BF Essential Tuner

n

Funk Logic Mastererizer

Guitar Box and Guitar Box Pro G-Rack plug-ins (plug-ins with an asterisk [*] are included in the Guitar Box Pro only) include the following: n

DINR LE Intelligent Noise Reduction *

n

Fairchild 660 (modeled vintage tube compressor) *

n

Fairchild 670 (modeled vintage tube compressor) *

n

Maxim (mastering limiter and sound level maximizer) *

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M-Audio Guide for the Recording Guitarist

n

Moogerfooger Analog Delay

n

Moogerfooger Low Pass Filter

n

Moogerfooger Phaser

n

Moogerfooger Ring Modulator

n

Pultec EQP-1A (modeled vintage tube EQ) *

n

Pultec EQH-2 (modeled vintage tube EQ) *

n

Pultec MEQ-5 (modeled vintage tube EQ) *

n

SansAmp PSA-1 (modeled amps and cabinets)

n

Tel-Ray Variable Delay

n

TL Space Native Edition Convolution Reverb

n

Voce Chorus/Vibrato

n

Voce Spin (modeled Leslie cab)

…Some More Gear With Pro Tools M-Powered, the Black Box, and the copious amount of plug-ins the Guitar Box bundles offer, you have nearly everything you need to start recording right out of the, well, the box. Technically, all you would need is a pair of headphones and a 1/4-inch cable and you’re ready to rock (all M-Audio products, if necessary, come with their corresponding cables to connect to the computer and/or other hardware). As you begin to learn your way around Pro Tools and gain more knowledge about audio/MIDI production, however, you will quickly see that there are a few more pieces of gear on the “essentials” list. Following are some pieces that are not included in Guitar Box or Guitar Box Pro, but should be strongly considered when thinking about your next acquisition as you build your guitar-recording rig.

But Wait…There’s More! I could list many pieces of gear outside the Guitar Box bundles that are important to have if you want the ultimate guitar production studio, but I don’t want to overload you or make you think you can’t make music if you don’t have the latest and greatest such-and-such.

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Studio Monitors During the recording process, you’ll need to play back your session many times over and intently listen to every detail, especially during the mixing and mastering stages. To effectively do that, you’ll need a pair of studiograde active (powered) monitors such as the affordable Studiophile BX5a shown in Figure 1.6. The BX5a monitors offer some distinct advantages over passive or consumer-grade monitors, like the ones that come with your computer, such as built-in power amps that are designed to work in a tuned system. This means both the high- and low-frequency drivers have their own dedicated power amp and, moreover, are only sent the frequencies they are meant to deliver. Also, because most of you starting out will have limited space to put your studio together, every inch of your workspace will count; fortunately, the BX5a pair is a compact monitoring system that produces 70 watts of bi-amped power with magnetically shielded domes to prevent any unwanted electromagnetic waves that could adversely affect your computer’s monitor.

Figure 1.6 Delivering 70-watts of bi-amped power in an affordable, compact package, the Studiophile BX5a reference monitors are a great asset to any studio setup.

Headphones I mentioned earlier that you’ll definitely need some headphones for your rig. Headphones, such as the M-Audio Q40 closed-back dynamic

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Figure 1.7 The M-Audio Studiophile Q40 headphones deliver a full frequency response due to superior design and construction that includes sealed backings, extra-large drivers, and vented diaphragms.

set seen in Figure 1.7, offer you the ability to tune out any outside noise when you need to finely tune in to your session at any stage (not to mention isolate your session from any people with whom you may be sharing a living space). Whatever pair of headphones you obtain, your “cans” should be lightweight and comfortable (a very big deal during marathon sessions) but strong enough to withstand the rigors of travel and constant use. Most importantly, they need to clearly deliver the fullfrequency spectrum (especially in the low-frequency range), which is determined by the size and construction of the headphones. Going back to the Q40’s, for example, they feature sealed backings that totally surround your ears, providing substantial isolation for acute monitoring, and extra-large 40mm drivers designed to deliver extended bass response. Another option is M-Audio’s IE series in-ear monitors (see Figure 1.8). These pint-sized personal monitors are perfect for on-thego types, as they offer superior sonic delivery without compromise. Microphones When on a session with producer Neil Dorfsman of Sting and Dire Straits fame, I asked him who or what was responsible for that unforgettable guitar tone on Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing.” I was waiting to hear about some sort of amp mod Pete Cornish may have done or a version of a fuzz pedal only Neil and Hendrix owned. To my surprise, his answer focused mainly on mic placement! To some engineers, all you need to record great-sounding guitar tracks is a good room and the right

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Figure 1.8 The IE-30 in-ear monitors deliver a wide frequency response curve and plenty of headroom in a light and compact enclosure.

microphone placed in just the right spot. In the world of digital audio, this still holds true; when combined with a great-sounding interface, all you have to focus on is the most important aspect of any guitar recording scenario: your playing. Chapter 4 goes into mic placement so you can get the best possible–sounding tracks right from the start. Figures 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12 show four M-Audio condenser mics you should keep in mind when starting to amass your arsenal of microphones.

Figure 1.9 Nova is a great-sounding large-capsule cardioid condenser mic with a low price. It’s great for the entry-level recording guitarist.

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Figure 1.10 Luna is also a large-capsule cardioid condenser mic. It features vintage styling coupled with modern electronics.

Figure 1.11 Solaris is a large-capsule multi-pattern condenser mic that delivers exceptional sensitivity.

Figure 1.12 Sputnik is M-Audio’s affordable answer to a vacuum tube microphone’s normally high price. This large-capsule condenser mic features multiple polar patterns and an evaporated gold Mylar diaphragm and comes with its own power supply.

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MIDI Controllers MIDI is not just a name for a method to navigate a switching system for complex amplifier and/or effects setups. It’s a computer protocol language and powerful tool for music creation and automation that enables guitarists to produce completed works on their own. No modern studio is complete without at least one MIDI controller close by to control software synthesizer programs, enter MIDI commands for MIDI sequencing, and much more. In Chapter 10 you will dive into MIDI sequencing with the Oxygen 8 v2, pictured in Figure 1.13.

Figure 1.13 The Oxygen 8 v2 is a simple yet feature-packed MIDI controller, perfect for the MIDI newbie.

Loop Libraries As you learn more about recording and editing digital audio, you will quickly find the need for loops. Loops are pre-recorded audio or selections of audio, usually in short durations such as two-, four-, or eightbar lengths, that are designed to be played repeatedly. They can be used for such purposes as quickly arranging a sequence of drum loops for recording song ideas on the fly all the way to full-blown compositions consisting of multiple loops of any kind.

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One of the keys to effectively using loops is to have a lot of them! Well, you’re in luck. M-Audio produces a wide range of Loop Library collections (see Figure 1.14) for you to choose from. Loop files come in a variety of formats (covered in Chapter 9, “Working with Loops”), and you should familiarize yourself with all of them.

Figure 1.14 The Pro Sessions Loop Libraries offer loops in myriad settings in a variety of file formats.

Hard Drives About as glamorous as the USB iLok security device that comes standard with Pro Tools M-Powered, a secondary hard drive is a highly recommended addition to your emerging rig. Digidesign recommends running any of the three versions of Pro Tools on one hard drive, like the one where your operating system (OS) resides, and recording your tracks to a second hard drive dedicated for recording and storing audio

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only. Besides taxing your computer’s resources to the max when recording and mixing complex sessions, another reason you should seriously consider a second hard drive is raw audio (uncompressed) eats a lot of hard drive space and fast. When looking into a hard drive, or if you have any other questions about system requirements, be sure to check the Digidesign Web site (http://www.digidesign.com/compato).

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The Audio Interface Explained

I

t’s hard to say one piece of gear is more important than another or that one singular component is the most important in your guitarproduction rig, but when it comes to your audio interface, it is at the very least of the utmost importance you have one! First and foremost, without a qualified M-Audio Pro Tools M-Powered–compatible audio interface, you cannot open Pro Tools M-Powered. Now don’t think for one second an audio interface is some arbitrary piece of gear used for unlocking a software application like the iLok. The interface is where all your audio and MIDI passes through at various times, and it’s important you understand how an interface works and what all its features can do for you. With this knowledge you can best decide what interface will suit your needs and afford you the best possible recording experience so you can get down to making your music. In this chapter you will explore the workings of an audio interface from signal path to its main components and I/O. If you feel like some of the sections are getting a little dense, it’s okay—they are. Read them anyway. Then, as you progress with your production studies, go back and read them again and again until you fully understand the concepts. Also, don’t be afraid to experiment with these concepts on your own—that’s the best way for them to really sink in. Even if you have some basic knowledge of what an interface does, you will find some deeper information here that will surely be useful.

Forever the Student I find that reading different points of view on a subject broadens my understanding of the subject at hand. For a deeper understanding of, say, sampling rate, bit depth, or any

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other topics pertaining to digital audio and recording, be proactive and read everything you can get your hands on. Knowledge is definitely power when dealing with audio.

Signal Path Your interface acts as the central pathway for all the audio sent to and from your computer. If you’re a little confused, that’s understandable. We guitarists have always dealt with audio, specifically the guitar’s signal path, in one direction (unidirectional)—like a one-way street, as shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1 Most guitarists deal with signal path in unidirectional configurations much like the common guitar-pedal-amp scenario pictured here.

Signal path that involves a computer and an interface, however, is a two-way street (bi-directional), with audio traveling from your guitar to the interface (either by way of a miked amplifier or directly—more on both approaches in Chapter 4, “The Joys of Recording” and Chapter 5, “The Black Box Revealed,” respectively) into the computer on one lane, and then the recorded audio being sent out of the computer on another lane back to the interface, out to your studio monitors for playback (see Figure 2.2). Another new concept is that the lanes to which I refer actually exist within one cable. Audio interfaces connect to your computer either by a USB or by a FireWire cable, both of which are designed to transfer data to and from your computer bi-directionally.

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Figure 2.2 As it relates to audio recording with a computer and an interface, signal path will now be in bi-directional configurations such as the setup shown here.

Internal Affairs Throughout the book, we will deal with external interfaces connecting by either USB or FireWire. But did you know audio interfaces actually started out as internal components? Prolevel audio interfaces of all types evolved from the simplistic designs of soundcards that come standard with any new computer. M-Audio produces several high-quality internal audio interfaces like the Delta, Audiophile, and Revolution series peripheral component interconnect (PCI) cards. PCI cards are physically affixed to your computer tower and connect directly into its motherboard.

The Big Three That brings us to the heart of the matter: data—digital data, that is. It is in your interface that your precious analog tone is converted to digital audio in the form of a computer language called binary (0s and 1s— more on that in the “Bit Depth” section later in this chapter) and converted back to analog for playback through whatever method of monitoring you employ. Many factors play a part in this conversion process, but none are more important than what I like to call the “big three”: converters, sampling rate, and bit depth. Let’s take a moment to you get you up to speed with these essentials. The better you understand them, the better your decision-making will

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be in choosing an interface—not to mention the fact that you’ll also be more productive and receptive when communicating with other artists about sessions in general. Keep in mind that these explanations are meant to educate you on these subjects in a brief yet informative manner. There are many more in-depth books and online resources available on these topics; I encourage you to seek them out to best understand these core principles. Converters At the heart of any interface are the converters. These are the circuits that actually perform the conversion of the audio from analog to digital (ADC, A/D, A to D) for recording and back from digital to analog (DAC, D/A, D to A) for playback. The essence of the conversion process is this: Incoming streams of voltages (i.e., analog audio) are read, measured, and captured as a series of data (a.k.a. a sample) at fixed time intervals (that is, the sampling rate). Because the time from one episode of sampling to another is fixed, the main factor that separates one converter from another is its ability to keep time during that process. An internal clock designed for this purpose does this task. The quality of that clock can be an important factor in the interface’s price point. If there are any frequency (sample timing) drifts in the clocking process, then data errors occur—in effect ruining the data (i.e., your music!). Sampling Rate Expressed in hertz (Hz), the sampling rate is the number of times an analog signal (i.e., your guitar signal) is captured and measured per second by the aforementioned converter. This partly contributes to the quality of the most important of the two conversion processes: analog to digital. Basically, the more times your guitar signal is looked at and sampled by the converter, the better picture the converter sends to be recorded digitally. The better your recorded audio is, the more accurate the playback of what it is you recorded will be. The standard sampling rate is 44.1kHz, which means the incoming audio is sampled 44,100 times a second! Although sampling rates can vary and be as high as 192kHz (used in recording audio for DVDs), the 44.1kHz standard is what consumer-level CD players can play back at. It’s also the rate at which all session files in this book will be presented.

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Bit Depth I said the sampling rate was partly responsible for the quality of the conversion from analog to digital. The other side of the story is the bit depth. After the data has been measured and captured by the converter at whatever the interface’s sampling-rate capability is (or is set to by the DAW, if you have options), that data is then converted into a numerical language your computer understands called binary. Binary is a series of number streams comprised only of 0s and 1s, and each of those digits is called a bit. Those number streams, often called digital or data words, are made up of groups of eight bits (called bytes). Going back to the subject of conversion, the more bits available, the more accurately the information can be conveyed, and in this case, the more depth the digital representation of the analog audio possesses. Interfaces currently feature bit depths of 16- or 24-bits.

Don’t Byte Off More than You Can Chew! Although high sampling rates and bit depths help to improve the quality of your recordings, they also produce larger files sizes, consuming more hard-drive space and putting a higher load on your CPU—taking up much needed processing power. As your projects grow, so will the need for larger hard-drive space and a more powerful computer.

I/O Defined I/O stands for input and output. It’s the series of connections on the interface that receives (inputs) and distributes (outputs) all incoming and outgoing audio and MIDI to and from the computer. (It’s the two-way street thing, remember?) The two main factors in any I/O scheme are as follows: n

The total number of inputs and outputs

n

The types of connections

When choosing an interface, you’ll want to make sure the interface has connections (sockets and/or ports) that are compatible with the hardware (mics, MIDI controllers, your guitar, etc.) you wish to connect to it.

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The amount of I/O is often expressed in an abbreviated fashion reminiscent of how a Home Depot guy would describe a stud. For instance, the FireWire 410’s I/O would be described as 4  10. The number on the left refers to the input, and the number on the right refers to the output. In terms of the left (input) number, it’s important to know that it refers to the total simultaneous inputs and not the total physical ports available on the interface (this is discussed in more detail in the “FireWire 410” section later in this chapter). In order to determine the best I/O situation for you, you have to know what all the connections mean! USB and FireWire Connections Universal serial bus (USB) and FireWire (officially known as IEEE 1394 and also seen as Sony’s version, i.Link) are two types of ports that are used to transfer data between a computer and a peripheral hardware device that is communicating with it. This is usually the most apparent specification of any external audio interface; in fact, it sometimes appears in the name, like in M-Audio’s Fast Track USB or FireWire 410. The icons shown in Figures 2.3 and 2.4 represent each type of connection and are always displayed somewhere on the packaging.

Figure 2.3 Look for this icon when searching for hardware with USB connectivity.

Figure 2.4 Look for this icon when searching for hardware with FireWire connectivity.

Is one better than the other? Considering USB 2.0 (second generation to the original and slower USB 1.1) and FireWire run at an almost even pace (480Mbps for USB 2.0 and 400Mbps for FireWire), it’s more about what kind of connections your computer has. If you have both USB and FireWire, then it’s a matter of what connections the

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other pieces of hardware in your rig have. For instance, a typical setup on an Apple MacBook Pro laptop is one USB port on both the left and right sides and a lone FireWire port on the right side. If you’re using an external FireWire hard drive, and considering that the iLok is a USB connection, your only choice without using a hub is a USB interface.

FireWire Types There are three types of FireWire ports: 4-pin, 6-pin (both referred to as FireWire 400), and 9-pin (referred to as FireWire 800). The 6-pin configuration is the most common type because it allows the interface to be bus powered (see the next section), while the less-common 4-pin version does not provide power through the cable. To remedy the 4-pin power scenario, all M-Audio FireWire interfaces come with a power supply (wall wart) and a 6-pin (from the interface) to 4-pin (to the computer) FireWire cable. As for the 9-pin standard, it hasn’t been integrated into any audio interface designs as of yet because the FireWire 400 transfer rate (400 Mbps) is currently sufficient for these types of multi-channel applications.

Bus Power

In signal routing, the term bus refers to a path on which a signal travels. In Pro Tools, this term is used to describe the virtual patch bay that exists to connect channel strips. (You’ll learn about channel strips in Chapter 8, “An Introduction to Mixing and Mastering.”) In this case, the signal being transferred, or bussed, is power, and the recipient is the interface. Some interfaces can run on power that the computer to which it’s connected provides through the connecting USB or FireWire cable. This is an important feature to look for if you plan to build a mobile recording rig or just want the option of taking your rig on the road if the occasion should arise. 1/4-Inch Input and Output The plug on the end of your guitar cable is 1/4-inch (6.35 mm) in diameter—hence the 1/4-inch cable moniker. When a socket is denoted as such, it’s referring to a female 1/4-inch socket or jack that is used to connect cables with male 1/4-inch plugs for input and/or output

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purposes. If you want to plug your guitar directly into an audio interface to record, the interface has to be equipped with a 1/4-inch input as seen in Figure 2.5. Don’t worry—most M-Powered–compatible interfaces feature 1/4-inch in and outs. In fact, they are used for myriad applications like main outs to your monitors, inserts for connecting external hardware effects, or an output for headphones (see Figure 2.6). When dealing with 1/4-inch anything, there are three letters that you will see over and over again: TRS.

1/4-Inch Output for Headphones

1/4-Inch Input for Your Guitar

Figure 2.5 The M-Audio Black Box features a 1/4-inch instrument input for your guitar and a 1/4-inch output for headphones.

Figure 2.6 This is a tip ring sleeve (TRS)–style plug used for balanced connections, routing stereo signals, and bi-directional inserts.

Instrument to Line Level Inputs The 1/4-inch inputs on any audio interface into which your guitar is meant to be plugged are known as instrument or instrument level inputs, which are specifically designed for this purpose. With that said, it’s important to note those same inputs may double as line or line level inputs for line level gear like keyboards or drum machines. In this case, there will be a button or switch labeled accordingly that enables you to toggle between the two modes. If a 1/4-inch input is not set up to accept

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instrument level signals, the audio from your guitar will be low and sound very thin. If this seems a little cloudy, don’t worry; this concept is covered more clearly in the “Line Level Input and Output” section later in this chapter.

TRS: Balanced Connection, Inserts, and Stereo Outputs

Let’s start with TRS, which stands for tip ring sleeve. Often misunderstood, this is a type of 1/4-inch socket that can be used for both input and output purposes. A TRS socket and plug (see Figure 2.6) work on a three-conductor configuration. This is in contrast to the TS (tip sleeve) configuration, which is a two-conductor setup (see Figure 2.7). Although you can’t tell a TRS socket from a TS without it being labeled, you can easily tell the difference in the plugs. Looking at the TRS plug in Figure 2.6, you can see there’s a second insulating ring partitioning the cylindrical portion of the plug to make the ring.

Figure 2.7 This is a tip sleeve (TS)–style plug used for routing mono signals and unbalanced connections.

TRS connections have several useful applications. With regards to an audio interface, TRS connections are primarily used to provide a balanced connection. The two active conductors—tip and ring—are both used to transfer a mono signal, but the ring’s polarity is reversed and not heard. By inverting the polarity on the ring (also known as negative or cold), you cancel out unwanted noise on the signal passing through the tip (also known as positive or hot) that may be caused by using long cables and/or when cables are exposed to noisy electrical fields. A TS connection, in contrast, provides an unbalanced connection, which simply means that with the absence of the ring (not to be confused with the black insulating ring that separates the tip from the sleeve), only one signal is transferred with no precautions for potential noise. Table 2.1 provides another view.

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Table 2.1 1/4-inch Jack Plug Signal Distribution Configuration Section

Balanced

Unbalanced

Tip

Normal polarity (hot or positive)

Signal

Ring

Inverted polarity (cold or negative)

N/A

Sleeve

Ground

Ground

Back to the two-way street analogy, TRS connectors can be wired to distribute two separate signals in two different directions to facilitate an effects loop that uses a single 1/4-inch socket, usually called an insert (as shown on the Fast Track Pro in Figure 2.8). This is done with a specific cable called a Y cable (see Figure 2.9). Just like an effects loop

Figure 2.8 These two 1/4-sockets, labeled as inserts, on the rear panel of a Fast Track Pro are wired so that two separate signals (send and return) can be sent to and from the interface, creating an effects loop with just one port. This would require a Y cable, which is made up of a single TRS plug on one end (plugged into the single insert port of the interface) and two TS plugs on the other end (plugged into the input and output of the device being connected to the interface).

Figure 2.9 1/4-inch TRS sockets can also be used to output stereo signals for headphone monitoring.

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on a guitar amp, there’s a send (tip) and return (ring), but this time it’s handled by one TRS plug that is inserted into the hardware that has the loop. The other end of the cable is split into two separate cables, completing the Y shape with TS-style plugs for inserting into another device’s input (send/tip) and output (return/ring). TRS connections can also be used to deliver two different signals in the same direction—stereo left and right—to one socket on one cable when inserted into a stereo connection. The tip carries the left channel, the ring carries the right channel, and the sleeve is the ground. That said, if you were to insert a stereo signal into a balanced input, you would cancel out both signals and hear nothing. TRS connections used in this manner are mainly employed for monitoring your overall stereo mix through a headphone output like the 1/4inch stereo output socket seen on the rear panel of the FireWire 410 in Figure 2.9. A smaller 1/8-inch (3.5 mm) plug is a common substitute for the larger 1/4-inch plugs in instances where the interface is a more compact design. It carries the same signals and sounds exactly the same. If you see at least one 1/8-inch socket anywhere on an interface, you can almost guarantee it will be a headphone output. That said, it’s not uncommon to run into instances where the interface has 1/8-inch sockets and you have 1/4-inch plugs or vice versa. So it’s a good idea to always have the appropriate adapters in relatively close proximity (see Figure 2.10)!

Figure 2.10 1/4-inch to 1/8-inch and 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch adapters—don’t leave home without ’em!

XLR Input Recording an electric guitar through a miked 412 cabinet or miking a dreadnought acoustic guitar are fundamental approaches to recording

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Ground

Ring: Inverted Polarity or “Cold” in Balanced

Tip: Normal Polarity or “Hot” in Balanced Signals

Figure 2.11 This balanced female XLR socket accepts the male end of an XLR cable for recording analog audio through a mic.

guitar tracks. XLR inputs and cables are used for connecting a microphone to your interface. The female socket (as shown in Figure 2.11 on the rear panel of the Black Box) on any audio interface accepts input signals from the male end of an XLR cable. At the other end of that cable is a female end that connects to the male socket on the bottom of the microphone. Unlike 1/4-inch sockets, which are sometimes balanced, XLR-to-XLR connections are always balanced. With regard to the position of the hot, cold, and ground signals in balanced lines and their locations on the 1/4-inch plug, the clearly numbered holes in the female socket that correspond with the male plug’s pins are outlined in Table 2.2.

Table 2.2 XLR Signal Distribution Configuration Pin

Function

1/4-Inch Equivalent

1

Ground

Sleeve

2

Normal polarity (hot or positive)

Tip

3

Inverted polarity (cold or negative)

Ring

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Many mobile interfaces feature a balanced XLR and 1/4-inch combo socket, like the one seen in Figure 2.12.

Figure 2.12 This XLR and 1/4-inch combo socket provides a balanced connection for both input types.

Phantom Power

If at any time you are using a condenser mic, you will likely need to provide it with power. That power is usually delivered through the XLR cable connecting the mic to whatever insert it’s sending audio to (similar to a bus powering an interface through a USB or FireWire cable). The hardware housing the insert will provide 48 volts (V) of what is labeled as “PH Power,” short for phantom power. You’ll need to look for the phantom power switch (seen in Figure 2.13 from the rear panel of the Fast Track Pro) on your interface and make sure it’s turned on or else any condenser mic requiring this power source will not function.

Figure 2.13 This phantom power switch as seen on the Fast Track Pro provides 48V of power to condenser mics that require a power source.

MIDI In/Out Guitarists may recognize or associate these four letters with a method of controlling complex amplifier and effects switching systems, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. MIDI, short for Musical Instrument

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Digital Interface, is a computer language that delivers simple command data in the form of binary—similar to the language the interface uses to convert analog audio to digital. Although MIDI is used to deliver utility commands similar to switching a device on or off in your audio production rig, it also delivers musical performance events data, like volume and pitch bend, which is sent to and from and in between hardware devices and/or software applications. Each MIDI port (as shown from the rear panel of a FireWire 410 in Figure 2.14) is a one-way street, and although there are three types of MIDI ports, most M-Audio interfaces feature only two—MIDI In and Out, but not MIDI Thru. Whatever scenario—hardware or software—newly generated MIDI commands are sent out (MIDI Out) while MIDI information to be implemented or recorded is taken in (MIDI In).

Figure 2.14 These two 5-DIN MIDI ports transfer MIDI in, out, and thru the interface to various destinations like your computer or a sound module.

Where’s the MIDI Thru? The MIDI Thru function takes incoming MIDI information that is simultaneously sent through to the device or application being sent the MIDI information and through to another device or application for simultaneous command of multiple hardware and/or software. Because the MIDI Out port can also work as a software MIDI Thru, to save space and keep costs down, M-Audio interfaces do not have a MIDI Thru.

Line Level Input and Output If you have no experience recording, setting up a PA system, or even patching an effects processor in an effects loop, then you probably never had to think about signal strength. There are two levels of signal strength to be aware of:

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Line level, measured at þ4dBu

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Instrument level, measured at 10dBV

Both levels describe the strength of an audio signal being passed between two components by a form of decibel (dB) measurements. That strength is rated at þ4dBu (line level) and is considered the standard signal amount for optimal reproductions and superior to the signal rated at 10dBV (consumer level). Although 10dB is sufficient for many applications, it’s important not to “cross signals,” so to speak. If you were to insert a 10dB signal into a þ4dB line level input, the overall signal level would be weak. So why have both, or have 10dB I/O at all? Cost. In order to offer a wide range of interfaces at various prices, concessions must be made to make some designs more cost effective, and this is one way to cut corners on lower-priced models. Although it seems obvious to assume that þ4 compared to 10 is a difference of 14dB, that’s not exactly the case. Notice the different letters at the end of the dB marking: u and V. These signify two different decibel measuring formats—u stands for units and V stands for volts. This doesn’t change the fact that line level is a stronger signal strength and is preferred in pro audio applications, however. With regard to an audio interface, line level sockets come in several forms: n

1/4-inch input sockets for recording line level instrument devices like keyboards and hardware drum machines or inserting outboard effects units to be routed into Pro Tools (as seen from the rear panel of a FireWire 410, shown in Figure 2.15)

Figure 2.15 Rear-mounted 1/4-inch line level I/O setup as seen on the FireWire 410.

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1/4-inch output sockets for sending stereo signals out to studio monitors for playback (also shown in Figure 2.15)

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1/4-inch or 1/8-inch output sockets for headphones

RCA Input and Output If an interface offers only one line level output, it’s usually your main output, which is more than likely in the form of stereo RCA sockets as seen in Figure 2.16 on the bottom of the MicroTrack II. For most guitarists, that white or red donut-shaped socket can bring a bit of frustration because the RCA plug style is not used anywhere in connecting guitar-related gear. So why should a guitarist be constantly burdened with this connection? Because RCA connections are involved in many other instances in audio production for which you will likely develop a need, including the following: n

Mixers

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Turntables

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Samplers

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Hardware synths

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Studio monitors

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Effects processors

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High-end preamps

Figure 2.16 RCA line-level outs as seen on the bottom of the MicroTrack II.

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RCA plugs come in two conductor configurations only, and therefore cannot be used for balanced connections. They are, however, used for S/PDIF digital transfers. S/PDIF Input and Output S/PDIF, an acronym often pronounced like it’s spelled, stands for Sony/ Philips Digital Interface Format. Using coaxial cable equipped with the same RCA plugs found on line level I/O configurations, these sockets are used to transfer digital audio (only) through your interface to digital storage mediums like MiniDisc, DAT, or hardware that utilizes CompactFlash or Microdrive cards like the M-Audio MicroTrack II. You can also use S/PDIF to link interfaces for more simultaneous inputs. You can tell the difference between S/PDIF sockets and other RCAstyle sockets by the uniquely associated orange and/or black rings (see Figure 2.17). S/PDIF sockets can also come in the form of optical fiber or Toslink sockets (also shown in Figure 2.17) that require Toslink cables. There is no difference in quality between S/PDIF and Toslink connections. It’s just a matter of what connections the hardware you are transferring to or from has. S/PDIF I/O

Toslink I/O Figure 2.17 S/PDIF connections are used for transferring digital audio and can be made through RCA (top) or Toslink sockets (bottom).

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AES/EBU

What þ4dBu is to 10dBV, so is AES/EBU to S/PDIF and Toslink connections. AES/EBU (short for American Engineers Society/European Broadcast Union) is another protocol used for the transfer of digital audio, except this time it uses XLR-style connections and is considered to be of higher quality.

Audio Quality Control Many factors play a role in an interface’s ability to translate the best possible reproduction of the input audio as well as the output. Following are three common specifications that can give you an idea of what the quality of your recordings as well as the your monitoring experience will be. Signal-to-Noise Ratio Whether you like it or not, all audio hardware produces a certain amount of low-level noise when functioning, such as the hiss heard when a guitar amp is turned on. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR or S/N) states the lowest level (nominal) of audio the interface can produce before the unit’s operating noise (noise floor) becomes audible. Expressed in dBs, you should expect a pro audio level interface to perform in the 103dB or more range as compared to a consumer-level soundcard coming in around the 90dB range. Dynamic Range Dynamic range states the ratio from the lowest level of audio the interface can produce before the noise floor becomes audible (signal-tonoise) to the highest level audio before distortion or clipping occurs (headroom). Put simply, it’s the range of softest to loudest signals the interface can produce clearly. As for the numbers, look for the ranges stated in the “Signal-to-Noise Ratio” section, but this time in whole numbers. Total Harmonic Distortion To understand the logic behind total harmonic distortion (THD), you’ll need to understand a little basic theory of sound. All analog audio is composed of sound waves, and those sound waves are

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composed of a foundational wave called a fundamental. If you were to hear a single fundamental wave on its own, it would sound basic and uninteresting. What makes a sound have what we refer to as tone is the result of many compounding secondary frequencies called overtones or harmonics. When an input signal is passing through an audio interface, content is added at the harmonics of the original frequencies. That distortion changes the input signal’s original tone. THD states how much distortion is being introduced and is expressed in percentages. If you go to the M-Audio Web site and scan through the full details of any interface, you will see the THD notated as THDþN. The “N” stands for noise. This the most common way to measure THD between two devices, which is exactly what you’re concerned with. As numbers go, the lower the better, and anything less than 1.0 percent is considered inaudible. All things considered, though, it’s important to realize that with so many potential causes for noise and/or distortion, the THD rating should not be considered a deal breaker.

Two for the Road Before you look at some guitar-friendly interfaces, there are two more subjects pertaining to an audio interface that might be new to some or not fully understood by others. Understanding these two subjects can save a lot of head scratching when trying to figure out either why you can hear audio or why your interface is not functioning properly. The Mix Knob Many of you might be familiar with the type of mix knob found on effects processors, which adjusts the level of your dry (unprocessed) to wet (processed) signals. Many interfaces have an easily accessible knob labeled “Mix” that’s used in a similar fashion. Here, however, the Mix knob adjusts the output balance of what it is you are monitoring. The two choices are Input and Playback, like you see on the face of the Black Box in Figure 2.18. Think of Input as what it is you are recording or inputting to the interface and Playback as what has already been recorded or is being played back. This knob will play a key role adjusting for latency, which is covered in Chapter 4. Basically, if you want to

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Figure 2.18 The Mix knob plays a key role in adjusting for latency by allowing you to dial in how much of the signal going into the interface or the signal coming back from Pro Tools you want to monitor.

hear the full signal strength of the input signal—say, while recording an unaccompanied guitar track—you’ll need to turn the Mix knob fully counterclockwise to Input. If you want to hear only the audio coming back from Pro Tools—the setup used during mixing—you’ll turn the Mix knob fully clockwise to Playback. If you’re overdubbing a take over some pre-recorded material, you should start with the Mix knob at 12:00 and adjust the Input to Playback ratio to suit. Drivers Considering the vast numbers of choices out there for peripheral devices (interfaces included) that can be connected to your computer, it’s impossible for any computer to know how to control them all. A device driver is a software application that allows your computer to communicate with the audio interface by translating commands from your computer’s OS, called function calls, into specific commands the interface can understand. It’s like an interface to interface your interface! Both the Mac and Windows computer platforms come with generic drivers built into their respective operating systems allowing for what is known as plug-and-play compatibility. (If you’ve ever run into the more technical term, class compliant, this is the same thing.) Although many of M-Audio’s interfaces are class compliant with a Macintosh computer (meaning the operating system requires no other drivers to functionally communicate with the interface), you will most likely need custom drivers provided by the device’s manufacturer to have an interface function with a Windows-based computer.

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A good overall rule of thumb is this: Always install the drivers. What starts out as initial plug-and-play euphoria can end in a non-functionality reality. In some instances, if you don’t first install the drivers and let your operating system (OS) install generic drivers like the native Windows WDM drivers, you might run into some problems even after you’ve installed the drivers that came with the interface. While on the subject of good things to do: It’s important to keep your drivers updated. As your DAW develops, so do the demands and tasks the drivers have to carry out. Therefore, you must make it a habit to check to see whether new drivers have been released. M-Audio makes it easy to navigate to its drivers’ (and other software) update section of its Web site by providing a Drivers link right on the main page, as shown in Figure 2.19. Drivers Link

Figure 2.19 Just click on the Drivers link on the M-Audio home page to shoot right over to the software update section.

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Some Interfaces for the Guitarist Now that you have some of the lingo under your belt, let’s take a look at a few interfaces besides the Black Box (which will get major air time in Chapter 5) that a guitarist would find useful. All the interfaces presented here are external, bus powered, and connect to your computer via either USB or FireWire. The following descriptions mention many common features, like types of 1/4-inch inputs or digital I/O connections. Bear in mind: This is a good thing. The more you see these features mentioned, the more you will start to understand them. This is especially useful for those of you getting ready to make your next (or initial) investment. FireWire 410 As the name implies, the FireWire 410 (see Figure 2.20) is a FireWirecompatible audio/MIDI interface that derives the other half of its name from its I/O scheme. With conversion specs of 24-bit/96kHz, the 4  10 or 4-in/10-out input configuration consists of front panel–loaded dual mic/instrument inputs by way of XLR/1/4-inch combo sockets that offer unbalanced TS connection and rear-loaded S/PDIF I/O with both RCA (coaxial cable) and Toslink (optical cable) sockets. Although there are also two 1/4-inch line level sockets on the rear panel marked “Line Inputs,” it’s the ability of the front panel combo sockets to be used simultaneously with one of the rear panel S/PDIF stereo input connection types that makes up the four-input count described in the name (as mentioned earlier in the “I/O Defined” section of this chapter).

Figure 2.20 The FireWire 410.

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These two rear panel inputs actually share the same signal path as the front panel, which is controlled by the two Mic/Line pushbuttons on the front panel, therefore making only two analog inputs. There’s also global phantom power for condenser mics, 1  1 MIDI In/Out I/O, eight unbalanced 1/4-inch outs for complex signal routing and hardware monitoring, and two balanced 1/4-inch TRS headphone outs with individual level control. The included software allows for alternative methods in mixing, routing, level control, and low-latency monitoring. The second FireWire port offers you more connectivity options by allowing you to chain an external FireWire hard drive, for example. Compatible driver formats are ASIO 2, MME, DirectX, GSIF 2, and Mac’s own OS 09 Sound Manager, OMS, OS X CoreAudio, and Core MIDI. FireWire Solo The second of the two FireWire interfaces, the FireWire Solo (see Figure 2.21) offers a scaled-down 4  4 I/O configuration (though there’re six physical inputs). Also featuring 24-bit/96kHz conversion numbers, the Solo’s most notable difference is the separate XLR and 1/4-inch inputs with the mic input supplying phantom power and the guitar input an unbalanced TS input. Finishing off the front panel is a 1/4-inch balanced TRS stereo headphone output. Turning the unit around reveals more I/O, with two 1/4-inch unbalanced TS line-level

Figure 2.21 The FireWire Solo separates the XLR and 1/4-inch combo socket found on the FireWire 410 for a scaled down bus-powered FireWire interface.

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ins for inserting effects and other audio hardware that is assigned by a front panel selector that toggles between front and rear inputs, as well as two line level outs for monitoring that are controlled by the output level knob assigned to the headphone output and S/PDIF I/O. Like the 410, the Solo offers dual FireWire ports for enhanced connectivity and software-based signal mixing, routing, and low-latency monitoring; in addition, it’s compatible with ASIO 2, MME, GSIF 2, and OS X CoreAudio. Fast Track Pro Switching over to a USB connection, let’s take a look at a less guitar oriented interface in the Fast Track Pro (see Figure 2.22), which clocks a maximum 24-bit/96kHz conversion rate. Of interest here is the notable I/O scheme, which enables you to exercise your newfound interface analyzing skills. Starting with the front panel, you’ll see two combo sockets for both XLR and 1/4-inch inputs, allowing for both mic and guitar (or any other 1/4-inch connecting audio instrument) connections. Notice there are two output level knobs—one dedicated to the 1/4-inch balanced TRS headphone output that’s accompanied by a DJ-style A/B source switch for cueing, and the other a master output level control for the dual pair of rear panel unbalanced RCA outputs. Onto the back panel, starting with the power button and optional wall-wart (power adaptor)

Figure 2.22 The Fast Track Pro features a vast array of I/O, enabling a wide variety of connectivity.

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on the left, you’ll see a USB port, a 1  1 MIDI In/Out, and a 48V phantom power switch on top of a S/PDIF I/O. Next up is the aforementioned quartet of RCA outputs followed by two 1/4-inch balanced TRS sockets that sit atop two 1/4-inch stereo TRS insert sockets for inputting external hardware effects processors via a Y cable. The Fast Track Pro also comes with software enabling alternative methods in mixing and low-latency monitoring. Fast Track Ultra Where the Fast Track Pro leaves off, the Fast Track Ultra blazes on with enhanced features (see Figure 2.23). First up, the Ultra sports high-speed USB 2.0 technology, putting it in the same data-transfer rate range as FireWire interfaces. Six channels of hardware analog inputs are available, including four XLR inputs (two of which are in a combo jack configuration with a shared 1/4-inch socket) sporting M-Audio’s award-winning low-noise, high-gain Octane preamps, and two rear-panel analog inserts dedicated to the first two channels for inputting hardware processors that can be used to process incoming audio before A/D conversion! Add the S/PDIF and MIDI I/O and you have a total of eight ins that can be used to record simultaneously at 24-bit/96kHz plus six more rear-panel 1/4-inch balanced line inputs. As for outputs, there are six rear-panel 1/4-inch balanced analog outputs and two independent headphone outputs for independent monitoring. Perhaps the stand-out feature is the on-board effects supplied by the MX Core DSP mixer, which lets you monitor with reverb or

Figure 2.23 With USB 2.0 and versatile internal effects processing and routing, the Fast Track Ultra is a powerful portable bus-powered unit.

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delay with separate effects sends for every channel. The DSP also provides near-zero latency and complex channel-routing options such as a separate mixer for each pair of outputs. Of course, the usual attributes are all accounted for as well, such as bus powered þ48V phantom power for condenser mics, signal/peak LEDs, and a unique pull-out gain knob that activates a 20dB pad. It’s also fully compatible with ASIO 2.0, WDM, MME, and CoreAudio drivers. Fast Track USB Another interface whose method of connecting to the computer is revealed in its name, the Fast Track USB (see Figure 2.24) records at 24-bit/48kHz and is one of M-Audio’s most compact interfaces that features separate 1/4-inch and XLR inputs. The front panel hosts the mic input, mix, and output level knobs to adjust their respective properties along with an 1/8-inch stereo headphone output. Turning the interface around reveals the balanced XLR and unbalanced 1/4-inch input sockets. With the absence of phantom power, only a dynamic or ribbon mic can be used. Also in the back are the USB port and stereo RCA-style line outs, marked and color coded appropriately as 1/L in

Figure 2.24 The Fast Track USB packs XLR and 1/4-inch inputs into one compact, buspowered interface.

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Figure 2.25 The JamLab’s portability and ease of use make it perfect for on-the-go production.

Figure 2.26 The 1/8-inch line level output is on the left, and the 1/4-inch “guitar” input is on the right.

white for the left channel and 2/R in red for the right channel. Because the Fast Track sports a fairly simple I/O, it doesn’t require custom drivers like the other interfaces; it can rely on the generic drivers for true plug-and-play bliss. JamLab This bare-bones 24-bit/44.1 or 48kHz interface is one of M-Audio’s smallest (along with the Transit), featuring a single 1/4-inch unbalanced TS input for your guitar and an 1/8-inch mini-plug headphone output that’s also a line-level output for monitoring. The JamLab (shown in Figures 2.25 and 2.26) functions properly through ASIO 2,

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CoreAudio, and WDM drivers. Considering the size of the JamLab, that it’s bus powered, and that it has a USB cable hardwired, it’s a very convenient tool when all you have to do is some quick editing or a mix on the go. If you want to track on the fly, the JamLab comes with the GT Player Express software and a set of Pro Sessions drum loops, enabling you to dial in guitar tones with the built-in amp simulator and virtual effects (EQ, chorus, reverb, etc.) while sequencing drum loops right in the GT application.

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ow that you’re up to speed on the who, what, where, and why of the audio interface, it’s time to undergo the arduous— not to mention tedious—task of installing your software (drivers, Pro Tool M-Powered, plug-ins, etc.) and setting up your hardware (interface, studio monitors, MIDI controller, etc.). At this point you might be asking, “So what does this have to do with recording my brand new Tele Deluxe through this sweet Matchless Chieftain I got on eBay?” In short, the answer is everything. If your computer is not set up to take the punishment recording audio dishes out, or if your drivers are not correctly installed, or if you have a loose 1/4-inch cable somewhere in the inevitable spaghetti-like collection of wiring that’s about to be born, you’ll be recording nothing, nada, niente—okay? Don’t worry! You’ll live. Plus, I’ll be dropping valuable forget-me-nots and things-to-watch-out-for throughout this chapter—i.e., problems and pitfalls that I suffered through so you don’t have to. So put on your happy face and let’s get your M-Powered setup, well, set up and running smoothly. Before this chapter closes, you will also be introduced to yet another important setup procedure: mic placement. Here I lay the ground-level knowledge of what mics actually do, what types you’ll commonly work with, and other related preliminary information. Then, I’ll go over some of the standard placement procedures to get you on track to recording your treasured tone you worked so hard to create. To wrap things up, I will leave you with some player-to-player wisdom/ advice pertaining to the actual guitar with regard to how to make it sound the best it can when recording. Once you’ve gone through all the information in this chapter, you’ll be fully ready to start recording!

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Optimizing Your Hardware It’s important to take the necessary steps to ensure a proper and successful setup. This not only goes for your computer but your secondary hard drive as well. The order in which you do things is paramount, so be sure to follow this chapter’s sequence of events closely. Before you plug anything in or even install the software, let’s check out some important items to adjust in your Mac or PC for the best performance when running Pro Tools and look into prepping a secondary hard drive (one in addition to the hard drive where your OS and Pro Tools are installed) for handling audio exclusively. Setting Up a Mac Following are some of the more crucial system adjustments to make on a Macintosh computer. All the recommended adjustments will be made in System Preferences, as will many other adjustments throughout your daily workflow—so much so that it’s a good idea to drag the System Preferences application icon from the Applications folder into your Dock for easy access. Trust me, you’ll be constantly going for it. n

Apple often upgrades its operating system and makes it available to Mac owners by way of the company’s support page (www.apple. com/support) or, more commonly, through the Software Update application in OS X. Most Mac users have their Software Update set to receive and install these updates automatically. As convenient as that sounds, it could be a temporary death sentence to your Pro Tools system. When an operating system is upgraded, it’s changed from the state it was in when the software version you’re running was designed and installed. Although not all changes have adverse affects on your Pro Tools system, it’s best to turn this feature off by going into System Preferences > Software Update (located in the fourth pane down marked “System”) and deselecting the Check for Updates options. And every Pro Tools user who’s worth his or her salt knows to never, ever install an OS upgrade until you’ve confirmed it was okay on Digidesign’s Web site.

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If your Mac is allowed to go to sleep—or even initiates a screen saver—while Pro Tools is open, it may crash. To avoid this, you

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simply go into System Preferences > Energy Saver (located in the second pane down marked “Hardware”) and click Sleep. From there, set the computer and display sleep settings to Never and deselect the Put the Hard Disk to Sleep When Possible option. Even if Pro Tools doesn’t crash, it’s no fun losing sight of what you’re watching during long playback or recording scenarios. Setting Up a PC If you perform any adjustments on your PC, be sure to restart your machine. (Indeed, this is a good habit to get into regardless of what computer platform you are using.) As for where you’re making these adjustments: The Control Panel is to Windows what System Preferences is to a Mac. You’ll be visiting it often, so it’s a good idea to create a shortcut to it on the desktop. Similar to the Energy Saver adjustment on the Mac, you’ll need to set the Windows System Standby power scheme to Always On. As with the Energy Saver adjustment in the Mac OS, this helps prevent crashing and/or the interruption of long record and playback instances due to Windows powering down various resources. To set this accordingly, go to the Windows Control Panel, double-click Power Options, and then click the Power Schemes tab. Select Always On from the drop-down list and then click OK. This automatically changes the System Standby, System Hibernate, and Turn Off Hard Disks settings to Never. Setting Up a Hard Drive If you don’t already have a secondary hard drive, make a conscious effort to obtain one. It’s recommended (more like strongly recommended) by Digidesign to always record, edit, mix, and master your audio on a hard drive that’s separate from your primary drive (i.e., the one on which your OS resides). This becomes a big issue with host-based systems like Pro Tools M-Powered and LE, where Pro Tools is installed on the same drive as your OS. If you use that same drive to record and edit on, you will almost definitely experience varying amounts of deficient track counts as well as limited plug-in count and functionality—and that’s the best-case scenario. Simply said, you’re asking too much of one hard drive if you pile on the rigors of hosting the OS, running Pro Tools, and handling the audio. At first, try to get an

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external FireWire hard drive (USB is not recommended) with as much disk space as your budget will permit, spinning at 7,200 RPM, and boasting the fastest data transfer rate seek time you can find. A SCSI drive would be the bomb, but it’s also a nuclear blast to your wallet, so shoot for FireWire for now. Some to-do’s to prep and maintain your newly acquired audio drive for optimum performance are as follows: n

Expect to format the drive to either NTFS (PC), FAT32 (PC), or OS Extended Journaled (Mac).

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Get in the habit of good disk maintenance by regularly defragmenting (PC) or repairing permissions (Mac).

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When you’re not using the drive, turn it off. Don’t let it needlessly spin for hours, days, or even weeks when it doesn’t have to.

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This can never be said or stressed enough: Back up your work to another drive separate from your audio drive and system or host drive. Fellow Berklee Professor Stephen Webber, a prominent faculty member in the MP&E department, once told me, “A session doesn’t exist unless it’s saved on at least three hard drives.” Words to live by. The Full Monty For a full list and precise step-by-step instructions on optimizing your hardware on both platforms, refer to Pro Tools’ Getting Started Guide, found in the box where your Pro Tools M-Powered install discs are located.

Authorizing Your iLok However you acquire Pro Tools M-Powered—be it a standalone software purchase, with a software bundle, or part of a software/hardware bundle like Guitar Box—there will be a red USB PACE iLok Smart Key inside (for a look-see, refer to Figure 1.3 in Chapter 1, “The Essential Gear”). The sole purpose of the iLok is to hold the software licenses that allow you full user privileges for whatever application requires one. While the Pro Tools M-Powered license is pre-installed on the iLok that comes with it, you will eventually need to transfer additional licenses to your iLok. If you’re a Guitar Box or Guitar Box Pro owner,

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you need to do it now in order to be allowed to use the plug-ins in the G-Rack and G-Rack Producer bundles. Simply go to the iLok Web site (http://www.iLok.com) and create a free account; then download the iLok client software to get set up. After installing the iLok Client and rebooting (the installation process does it automatically), you’ll need to synchronize your iLok with your account by simply plugging the iLok into an available USB port and clicking the Synchronize button found on the Manage page. At this point, you have no licenses in your account to transfer, so you’ll need to register the Guitar Box or Guitar Box Pro and its contents with Digidesign to obtain them. To do this, you’ll need to create a free Digidesign account as well. This may seem like some extra hurdles to jump, but I assure you, you will use the iLok and Digi accounts often for upgrades, tech support, and when you purchase new hardware and/or software. After registering your plug-ins, Digidesign deposits the required licenses for all the plug-ins into your iLok account for you to download onto your iLok. After you’ve completed this process, you are fully authorized to use all the software in whatever package you’ve purchased, and you’ll be able to access those apps on other systems that have them installed, too!

Installing Your Software It would be impossible to outline every installation process in an entire book, let alone in a single chapter. Installation procedures vary from system to system and from interface to interface due to several factors, such as: n

The overwhelming variables that exist in system configurations. Consider the chances of two people having the same exact computers with the same exact specifications running the same exact software in the background.

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The fact that Digidesign and M-Audio are constantly tweaking and upgrading their software for optimal performance and, more importantly, to keep up with ever-changing operating systems. It’s not uncommon to purchase a product that contains outdated software (especially driver software) inside—and it’s absolutely not the retailer’s or the manufacturer’s fault. Really. Before you raise your fist in protest, realize that the latest software is always available on M-Audio and Digidesign’s Web site.

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Don’t let this discourage you or get you nervous! Installing Pro Tools M-Powered, third-party plug-ins, and drivers on either a Mac or a PC is as easy as following the prompts. Here are a few things to keep in mind that are critical to setting up your Pro Tools M-Powered software: n

If you’re going to use a FireWire interface such as the FireWire 410 or the NRV10, it is imperative you install the drivers before you connect your interface to your computer. This is especially true for Windows-based systems, because they typically initiate native drivers that may not have the capability to allow you full access to the interface’s features, such as complete I/O functions. Also, when those drivers are in place, it’s very difficult to remove them or to properly install the manufacturer’s correct driver software. Even if the interface boasts class compliancy (also known as plug-andplay), it’s a good idea to install the drivers anyway.

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If you’re planning to use multiple USB interfaces, keep in mind that it’s a good idea to have only one set of USB drivers installed on your computer (especially true for Windows-based computers). So if you have, say, a Black Box and a Fast Track Pro in your studio and you know you’re going to be using one or the other exclusively for a long period of time, it’s a good idea to uninstall whatever driver is currently installed and then install the drivers for the interface you plan on using. The only way to uninstall drivers is to run the Uninstall application found in the same folder in which the driver’s installation file is located. It sounds cumbersome, but what’s worse? A few minutes performing a little setup maintenance or hours trying to troubleshoot an I/O problem or wondering why Pro Tools won’t recognize your interface?

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As for prepping your system drive (remember, M-Powered is a host-based system, which means Pro Tools and all its relevant software will be installed on the same drive as your operating system, as well as all the other software you probably use every day), don’t hesitate to run a disk cleanup–type utility to give your system drive a fresh start. And of course, shut down any open applications before starting the process.

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If you experience a problem in which your interface is not recognized by Pro Tools or you’re unable to call up a plug-in—re-install it. Sometimes an installation process doesn’t take, and you need to do it twice. Also, before you start a second installation, check to see if you have the latest version of whatever it is you’re installing. If you completed what seems to be a successful install but the program is acting strangely, check for a version update before doing anything else, as the solution to the problem might be there waiting for you in the upgrade.

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Perhaps the most important tip of all: Always read the corresponding documentation before you start any installation process. That means if you see a READ ME file, read it! M-Powered and all M-Audio interfaces come with abridged versions of the full user manual in the box in hard-copy form. (Paper! Remember that?) For M-Powered, you’ll find a small booklet titled Getting Started, and for any M-Audio hardware you’ll find a Quick Start Guide waiting for you in the box. These documents, at the very least, contain important installation instructions that need to be followed.

Honestly, I feel I got to know my computer a little better and got a different view of my system through the installation process that I wouldn’t have been introduced to otherwise. Think of this as your first date with the partner you’re going to spend many, many beautiful (and tough) sessions with. Wouldn’t it be great to get off on the right foot first? The Order of Things The order in which you’re instructed to perform the steps required for driver installation should be followed to the letter. For example, the multichannel FireWire-based NRV10 mixer/audio interface Quick Start Guide repeatedly warns you not to connect the interface to your computer before installing the latest drivers. Then, you are to shut down your computer, connect the NRV10 to a power source, and then connect it to your computer via FireWire. Only after those explicit steps can you finally power up the NRV10 and then start up your computer. If you fail to follow

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these steps, you may experience several problems working with the interface/mixer and Pro Tools, including limited I/O—like going from 10 ins to four!

Making Connections After you have optimized your computer for the Olympic-style processing required to handle audio and you have successfully installed the necessary drivers (first!) and Pro Tools M-Powered software, it’s time to make the connections. (This is not to say you haven’t plugged in your audio interface yet as that could’ve been a step in the install process.) As much as the variables seem vast with regard to what computer is connecting with such-and-such interface, that’s miniscule compared to the myriad options when you throw the rest of the basic components into the mix—i.e., monitors, MIDI controllers, audio drives, external effects processors, etc. So although it’s, again, impossible to cover them all, here a few things to think about ahead of time that will come in handy in any hardware configuration. Adapters You will most likely need to have several adapters handy when assembling your studio. Some examples are 1/8- to 1/4-inch and 1/4- to 1/8inch adapters for different headphone connection schemes or, in the case of interfaces like the JamLab or Transit (see Figure 3.1), a 1/8-inch stereo male phono plug to two mono female 1/4-inch sockets (see Figure 3.2) for connecting studio monitors to their respective 1/8-inch outputs. If M-Audio doesn’t offer the adapter you need, you can usually find what you’re looking for by visiting the Hosa Web site (http:// www.hosatech.com). I’ve yet to come up short, even when looking for the most esoteric adapter thanks to Hosa! Hubs Whether you have a tower or a laptop, you may find yourself running out of connection ports (FireWire and/or USB) to connect various necessary components to your computer. The solution to this problem comes in two forms: Either obtain add-on card slots (known as PCI

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Figure 3.1 Just because the output socket on the Transit (marked “Line”) is 1/8-inch doesn’t mean you can’t connect it to a pair of studio monitors that have 1/4-inch input sockets. Just use the appropriate adapter, like the one shown in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2 This 1/8-inch male to two 1/4-inch female adapter will come in handy when connecting the outputs of an interface that has only 1/8-inch outputs.

cards) that have the type of extra input you require or obtain an external hub. While the PCI cards will perform just fine on the tower, a hub will be the more attractive option for most people. This can be attributed to the fact that hubs do not require any hardware installation; you can usually just plug them in and go. Another reason is that although there are add-on cards designed for laptops (PCMCIA for PC and PCI Express Port for Mac), they do not distribute adequate power for the peripherals that require bus powering (a way of powering a USB or FireWire device through the connected cable instead of using a battery or wall outlet). If you’re going to use a hub, make sure it’s an externally powered hub, which means it gets its power from a wall outlet and not through the computer. Also, never connect your audio interface or audio drive in the hub, as Digidesign doesn’t support this. You may experience poor data transfer, dropouts, and power issues. What can you plug into a hub? Your iLok, MIDI controllers, or a Pro Tools “hot-keys” keyboard (as shown in Figure 3.3) for starters. That said,

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Figure 3.3 This Pro Tools “hot-keys” keyboard made by Logickeyboard features prepainted keys that display various keyboard commands in Pro Tools, making the program easier to learn and navigate. (Photo courtesy of Logickeyboard.)

get used to the fact that within all this wonderful technology, nothing is absolute. The connectivity of various peripherals to a hub (namely a MIDI controller) may vary due to factors that can be attributed to the hub itself or even the USB port it’s plugged into. Power Protection Nothing is more terrifying than losing your audio data—for example, by erasing a session folder by mistake or having a hard drive fail. In addition to backing up your work to another, separate hard drive other than your audio and system drives, you can take an easy—yet very smart (and much cheaper)—precautionary measure by obtaining a high-quality surge protector to plug all of your gear into. A good surge protector will safeguard your precious hardware from severe power fluctuations caused by AC surges in the grid or catastrophic lightning strikes. As an added bonus, these units can also feature safeguards against power-line noise contamination generated by neighboring devices in the same line. A company like Belkin (http://www.belkin .com) makes a plethora of surge protectors that cover a wide range of applications, not to mention hubs!

Getting Up and Running At this point, your M-Powered studio should be complete and ready for action—computer optimized, software installed, physical connections made. Assuming that’s all been done, let’s open up Pro Tools and learn how to create a new session. The next sections of this chapter, including this one, will be presented as if you’re using the Black Box as your audio interface. All of the procedures can be applied to whatever interface you are using, but some of the drop-down menu items might vary from interface to interface.

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Startup Pro Tools M-Powered by default installs a program icon in your Dock (Mac users) so you won’t have to go far to load up the program. Just double-click the M-Powered icon or alias (as seen in Figure 3.4) and watch the ball bounce (Mac only)—that is, if you have the Animate Opening Applications option selected in the Dock section of System Preferences. If you’re on a PC, launch the program by clicking Start > Digidesign > Pro Tools 7.x.

Figure 3.4 You will see the Pro Tools M-Powered program icon in your Dock by default after successful installation. Double-click this to launch the program.

When Pro Tools starts up for the first time, it may take longer than what you’re used to with other programs—say, Microsoft Word—so be patient. After Pro Tools has opened up, don’t be alarmed when you still see your desktop (see Figure 3.5); that’s normal. Unless you open a

Figure 3.5 When Pro Tools launches, you will still see your desktop. Not a problem— you just have to create a new session or open a pre-existing one.

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Pro Tools session from a session file icon or the Open Session File menu command, this is how Pro Tools will look after startup.

There’s a Problem in the Engine Room, Captain! If you experience any trouble launching Pro Tools, check to see if there are any loose connections. At this point, all that needs to be hooked up is your interface and the iLok. If either one of those two components is not properly plugged in to your computer, Pro Tools will not start. If those connections are intact, then you can try a couple of things like hot-swapping (taking out and plugging back in) the interface connection (only recommended for USB interfaces, not FireWire), reinstalling the drivers, checking to see if your OS is compatible with your version of Pro Tools, or just simply restarting the computer. If all else fails, call M-Audio, and one of the company’s outstanding and courteous staff members will be happy to assist you.

Hey, Follow Me! I Know a Shortcut! I’ll be not only giving you the drop-down menu procedures to carry out Pro Tools commands, but also the keyboard shortcuts. Be sure to learn them, as they will make your workflow much faster. Many of these shortcut key combinations are displayed to the right of the commands with which they are associated in the applicable drop-down menu. If at any time you want to view the full list of keyboard shortcuts on either platform, open the Help menu in the Pro Tools menu bar and choose Keyboard Shortcuts. In fact, it would be a good idea to print this particular PDF file out as you will want to know as many shortcuts as possible. Trust me!

Playing a Session Before you go on to creating a session, miking amps and guitars, and recording audio (that’s covered in Chapter 4, “The Joys of Recording”), let’s just see what a full-blown session looks and sounds like. To begin, go to the Course Technology PTR Web site, navigate to the download page for this book, and download the Chapter 3 ZIP file to your desktop. After unzipping the contents to your desktop, open the

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Power 3 folder and double-click the Pro Tools session file named Power 3.ptf (it will have the same Pro Tools icon as your program icon) or use the keyboard shortcut (CmdþO for Mac or CtrlþO for PC) to navigate to the session file and open it that way. Here you’ll see (and soon hear) a session with several events you’ll learn how to create as the book progresses. Don’t worry if you have no idea what you’re looking at! You will soon enough. Let’s just have some fun and listen to some music! There are several ways to go about playing a session: n

To simply start playback, just press the Return (Mac) or Enter (PC) key (this ensures that playback will start at the beginning of the song by putting the timeline insertion at the beginning of the timeline), then press the spacebar. This is the most common way to start and stop playback of a Pro Tools session.

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You can also play the tracks by using the transport controls located at the top of the Edit window (see Figure 3.6). You’ll notice the controls resemble those found on most computer-centric media players, so you should feel right at home with them.

Figure 3.6 The transport controls can be accessed from the top of the Edit window or from the floating Transport window, accessible via the Window menu in the menu bar.

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You can control playback functions with an identical set of transport controls found on a floating window called, well, Transport. Just open the Window menu in the Pro Tools menu bar and choose Transport, and the window you see in Figure 3.7 will appear. You can drag this window wherever you like, or you can quickly toggle between views by using the keyboard shortcut Cmdþnumeric keypad 1 (Mac) or Ctrlþnumeric keypad 1 (PC).

Figure 3.7 The Transport window can be dragged anywhere on the screen and offers many other functions in addition to playback controls, like setting pre- and post-roll times. You can expand it to view even more control options by choosing View > Transport > Counters and MIDI Controls.

Creating Your First Session Now it’s your turn. It’s time to start taking the steps to create your own music. The first step is to learn how to create a session. To do so, follow these steps: 1.

Click File in the Pro Tools menu bar. The File menu appears.

2.

Click New Session or press CmdþN (Mac) or CtrlþN (PC), as shown in Figure 3.8.

3.

The New Session dialog box opens. Here you choose the basic session attributes such as its name, where it will be saved, file type, recording quality, and I/O setting. Type a name for the session in the Save As text box.

4.

Click the Where buttons and choose where you want to place and save your session. If you have a dedicated audio drive, place the session there.

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2.

Figure 3.8 Choose New Session from the Pro Tools File menu or use the platformappropriate keyboard shortcut to open up the New Session window.

5.

Click the Audio File Type spin buttons and choose the file type you want your session to be. BWF (Broadcast Wave File) files are the default file format for both Mac and PC-based Pro Tools systems, so this is a safe choice for exchanging sessions between both platforms. AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) files are used primarily on Mac systems, but Windows versions of Pro Tools support it without any need for file conversion when importing. SD II (Sound Designer II) files are strictly for Mac systems that were designed by Digidesign before a Windows version of Pro Tools was conceived.

6.

Click the Sample Rate button and select a sample rate. You will see a drop-down list of sample rates supported by your audio interface. If you’re using the Black Box, however, you will only see 44.1 kHz, as this is the only sample rate at which it can record.

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7.

Click either the 16 Bit or the 24 Bit option button under Bit Depth. It’s always recommended you record at the highest bit depth your interface will allow.

8.

Click the I/O Settings button. You will see a drop-down list of I/O settings; choose Stereo Mix for now.

9.

Once you’ve set up your session (see Figure 3.9), you’re ready to go! Click Save.

6.

3.

4.

5.

8.

7.

Figure 3.9 Set up your main session attributes such as name, location, and recording parameters.

Brain Refresh If some details in session creation are a little hazy, go back to Chapter 2, “The Audio Interface Explained,” to refresh your memory on subjects like sample rate, bit depth, and I/O.

Congratulations, you’ve created your first session! You should be looking at the Edit window, displayed in Figure 3.10. This is one of the two main windows (the other is called the Mix window) in all versions of Pro Tools, and it’s the window you will be viewing the

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Figure 3.10 The Edit window.

most throughout tracking, editing, and mixing. Right now, no tracks have been created, but that’s about to change. Before you do that, however, you’re going to do something that will make your workflow a lot easier and a lot faster in the long run.

Edit and Mix Window Viewing The two main windows in all versions of Pro Tools are the Edit and Mix windows. Upon creating your first session, Pro Tools, by default, opens to the Edit window. To take a look at the Mix window (shown in Figure 3.11), open the Window menu in the Pro Tools menu bar and choose Mix Window. Again, don’t be alarmed when you see, well, nothing but a gray screen; it’s just that you still haven’t created any tracks. As for quicker navigation to the Mix window, try the keyboard shortcut: Cmdþ= (Mac) or Ctrlþ= (PC). If there’s one shortcut you should know, this is it, as you will constantly toggle between the two.

Setting Up and Saving Your I/O I/O is the (I)n and (O)ut matrix of your audio’s signal flow (for a quick review, go back to Chapter 2). To get a better handle on setting up and

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Figure 3.11 The Mix window.

monitoring how your signal is coming and/or going, open the I/O Setup window and name your inputs and outputs so when you start creating tracks in your session, you will have them labeled in a way that will be quick to recognize. As an added bonus, you’re going to save this I/O setup for future use so you don’t have to do this over and over again. Though the following tasks are outlined assuming you’re working with a Black Box as your audio interface, the entire process can be applied to any interface. To open up the I/O Setup window, do the following (see Figure 3.12): 1.

Click Setup in the Pro Tools menu bar. The Setup menu appears.

2.

Click I/O.

Now let’s name the input and output paths by completing the following steps. The names you assign here will show up in each individual track’s Input and Output Path selectors. Don’t worry if you don’t know what those are yet—you will soon. Also, if the names I suggest

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1.

2.

Figure 3.12 Here’s how you open the I/O Setup window.

you use in this next section seem strange, they will make sense when you read through Chapter 5, “The Black Box Revealed.” 1.

Click the Input tab. This reveals the Input section of the I/O Setup window (see Figure 3.13).

2.

Click the down arrows next to In 1–2 and In 3–4. The two sets of mono paths appear below their respective stereo input headings.

3.

Double-click the In 1–2 heading and rename it EFX. This will automatically name the mono paths EFX.L and EFX.R.

4.

Double-click the In 3–4 heading and rename it Dry, but this time rename the mono input paths as follows: Dry Guitar.L for In 3 and Dry Mic.R for In 4.

5.

Click the Output tab. This displays the Output section of the I/O Setup window (see in Figure 3.14).

6.

Click the down arrow next to Output 1–2. The two mono paths appear below the stereo output headings.

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3.

1.

2.

4.

Figure 3.13 After you click the Input tab, you can view, create, rename, or delete your input paths.

6.

7. 5.

Figure 3.14 Click the Output tab to view, create, rename, or delete your output paths.

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Double-click the Out 1–2 heading and rename it Monitor. Like in the input path section, this automatically names the mono paths Monitor.L and Monitor.R, respectively. Naming Fun When you get a better handle on I/O and start to experiment with different routing configurations, don’t be afraid to name your I/O schemes however you like. Face it: It is you who has to look at this stuff (a lot), and you might as well enjoy it. You want to name your main outputs Nuclear or Sonic Boom? Go ahead—have fun!

If necessary, you can take the same steps to rename the Inserts and Bus paths. Regardless, to save your settings, perform the following steps: 1.

Click the Export Settings button to open the Export Settings dialog box (see Figure 3.15).

2.

4.

5.

1.

3.

Figure 3.15 Saving your I/O settings allows you to save your own collection of custom I/O configurations, making session creation that much easier and faster.

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2.

Type a name for the I/O setting you just created—Black Box (or the name of the interface you’re using) will be good for now.

3.

Leave the file location set to IO Settings. This is where Pro Tools will look by default when you click the Import Settings button to find the I/O settings you’re looking to load up.

4.

Click Save to save your settings.

5.

Click OK to close the I/O Setup window.

Now whenever you create a new session and you want to use the I/O settings you just saved, repeat step 8 in the section “Creating Your First Session” earlier in this chapter and choose your custom I/O settings from there. If you ever need to delete an I/O settings file, simply navigate to where your Pro Tools program folder—marked Digidesign—was installed and open it up. There you will find a folder called IO Settings; that’s where these files are stored.

I/O versus IO You might have noticed throughout this section that sometimes I/O is written with a slash, and other times not. When the I/O is referred to as IO in this book, it’s referring to how the I/O folder is named and seen in Pro Tools. It’s named that way because both the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems do not allow the slash (/) character to be used in file or folder naming.

Creating Session Templates To make your workflow more efficient, you learned how to save your custom I/O settings for faster session creation. Now you’re going to learn how to create a session template for even faster session startups. Save (press CmdþS on a Mac or CtrlþS on a PC) and close the session you already created and for which you defined a custom I/O, and then follow these steps: 1.

Navigate to where you saved your first session so you can access the session file (see Figure 3.16).

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2.

3.

1.

Figure 3.16 A simple Ctrl-click (Mac) or right-click (PC) opens the file’s contextual menu. There you can choose from among many options such as making the file a template for future use.

2.

Ctrl-click (Mac) or right-click (PC) the file to open its contextual menu.

3.

Click Get Info (Mac) or Properties (PC), as shown in Figure 3.16.

4.

Click the Stationery Pad (Mac, as seen in Figure 3.17) or Read Only (PC) checkbox to select it.

5.

Click the Locked checkbox to select it (Mac only).

6.

Close the Get Info (Mac) or Properties window (PC).

That’s it—simple. Now anytime you want to create a session and not have to waste precious time setting up the same preferences and details, you can just open a session template file like this one and be working in no time! In Chapter 5, you will work with a session template especially designed for use with the Black Box and for specific sections of that chapter. There you will learn how to open and save a session template.

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6.

4. 5.

Figure 3.17 Saving your session file as a template is as easy as choosing Stationery Pad and Locked (Mac) or Read Only (PC).

Microphones: General Guidelines and Setup The final step in the setup process, mic placement, is the beginning of the actual recording process. Indeed, it may just be one of the most important physical procedures in recording, next to playing an instrument. After all, it’s not just where you place the mic, but also what mic you use and what room you’re in. There’s no such thing as one source of information that could prepare you for every situation, as every player, guitar, amp, and/or room will sound different and present its own unique factors to consider. Those differences will play an important role in where you place the mic, not to mention what mic to use, how many mics you use, what polar pattern you choose, etc. That said, this section explores the so-called “standard” protocol for introductory mic placement and covers some basic microphone principles so you can get started on the right foot. From there, it will be up to you to spend time (a lot of time)

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experimenting and finding that sweet spot to get the best possible reproduction of your glorious tone. First, let’s define what a microphone is: It’s a physical device that transduces acoustic sound into an electric signal. In other words, a mic hears, or captures, your acoustic or electric guitar’s output and transforms that signal (sound waves) into voltages that are then sent to a series of hardware devices for amplifying and/or recording. These voltages are analogous to the actual sound waves that produced them, hence the term analog signal. (With respect to the audio interface, it is these analog signals that are then transformed once again, but this time to a digital state in the form of binary code. Go back to Chapter 2 for a more in-depth explanation of this process.) The voltages are eventually transduced back into acoustic energy, or sound waves, to be heard through a speaker configuration (studio monitors, headphones, etc.). Types of Microphones For now, there are three types of microphones of which you need to be aware that are commonly used to record guitar tones: dynamic, ribbon, and condenser. The main difference between them is the way in which the mic transduces a sound wave (your guitar signal) into an electrical signal. One thing they all have in common is what they use to transform the waves: a diaphragm, which is a thin, slightly rigid membrane. These methods all have their effect on how that sound source is reproduced and heard. So before you place a mic anywhere, you have to know which one to choose. Here’s a brief, yet concise description of each one. Dynamic

Arguably the Swiss Army knife of mics, especially when it comes to recording guitars, the dynamic mic (check out the M-Audio SoundCheck in Figure 3.18) can be seen anywhere and everywhere in audio production of all levels. The transduction works by way of magnetism, much like another important transducer in your rig—your pickups! A small movable induction coil that is attached to a diaphragm is placed in a permanent magnet’s magnetic field. Sound waves cause the diaphragm to move, thus causing the coil to move

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Figure 3.18 The M-Audio SoundCheck is a rugged dynamic mic with a unidirectional polar pattern for cutting out unwanted background noise.

within the magnetic field, producing varying currents or voltages. This particular setup can withstand massive decibel levels, making dynamic mics the go-to mic for those blistering, tear-your-head-off-withvolume sessions. Ribbon

A ribbon microphone has a thin metal ribbon (hence the name) suspended in a magnetic field. When sound waves cause the ribbon to move, an electrical signal is produced, similar to the dynamic mic. Although ribbon mics are revered for their high-quality reproduction of the sound they’re capturing, they are very susceptible to damage because of the fragility and positioning of the ribbon itself. High sound-pressure levels (SPLs), which are basically loud sound waves carrying a lot of weight, can easily damage the ribbon, so if you think you’re going to be recording your Engl Powerball on 10, don’t use a ribbon mic! Ribbon mics tend to handle high frequencies better than the other two types listed, making them a good choice for tones that are more on the trebly side. Condenser

Another popular mic for recording guitars, especially acoustics, is a condenser mic (check out the M-Audio Pulsar II in Figure 3.19).

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Figure 3.19 The M-Audio Pulsar II is an affordable cardioid condenser mic that boasts a six-micron Mylar evaporated gold diaphragm with Class-A FET electronics.

Also known as a capacitor mic, a condenser mic’s diaphram is made up of two plates that hold a fixed charge between them. This charge is provided by phantom power delivered through the XLR cable, by a power supply specifically for the mic (i.e. the M-Audio Sputnik tube condenser mic), or by an internal battery. The sound waves traveling through the air cause the plates to move, changing the voltage between them. It is these changes that make up what it is the mic is hearing and what you are recording. Condenser mics that have a constant charge between the plates and require no phantom power are called electret microphones. An example of this type of condenser mic comes with the M-Audio MicroTrack II mobile digital recorder (see Figure 3.20). Some of the most sought-after condenser mics are designed with an internal vacuum tube for added warmth and clarity, such as the MAudio Sputnik (see Figure 3.21). Although condenser mics are not as susceptible to damage due to high SPLs, they can’t take the same punishment as dynamic mics. For this reason, most condenser mics come equipped with a pad (see the next section) rated at either 10 or 20db to soften the blow so as not overload the mic.

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Figure 3.20 This stereo electret mic that comes with the MicroTrack II is a condenser microphone that holds a constant charge between the two plates in the capsules. This enables the mic to function without the need for phantom power or an internal battery.

Figure 3.21 Sputnik is the answer for all those who dream of owning a tube-based condenser microphone but could never afford one.

Some Common Tech Terms to Know In addition to understanding the three types of mics, there’re a few terms that you will surely need to be aware of, like the following: n

Capsule. The top portion of the mic that houses the diaphragm. This is commonly covered by a mostly metal grill–like surface to allow the sound waves to enter without exposing the delicate inner elements of the microphone.

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Pad. A device built into some mics that allows you to attenuate incoming signals that are too hot (loud) for the mic to handle. They usually come in the form of 10 or 20db.

n

Phase cancellation. A common occurrence in audio recording, phase cancellation comes into play when you are using more than one mic to record a single acoustical source. If you have two mics set up to record, say, a 1  12 cabinet, and the distance between those mics and the cab (the source) are different, you will hear the effects of phase cancellation when you raise your faders to listen to what the mics are producing. The resulting sound could be in the form of amplitude (volume) loss, frequency attenuation (subtraction), or even complete signal cancellation, where you hear nothing at all! To counteract this, you can either adjust the placement of the mic, making sure all the capsules are the same distance from the source (in this case the grill) and have them facing in a straight line or (if your hardware has this feature) shift the phase of the incoming mic signal.

n

Polar pattern. This is the mic’s directionality. It indicates where, in relation to the capsule, the mic has the ability to pick up signal. Some common polar patterns are omni-directional (see Figure 3.22),

Figure 3.22 Omni-directional polar patterns can be used to capture sounds produced throughout the room or to capture a specific source with additional room ambience.

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Figure 3.23 Cardioid polar patterns can be used to capture a specific sound source with minimal room noise, or bleed. This is great for when other sources (instruments, speaker cabinets) are in the same room during live recordings!

Figure 3.24 Figure-eight polar patterns are great for recording two sources side by side, like a duo performance by two acoustic guitarists.

cardioid (see Figure 3.23), and bi-directional or figure eight (see Figure 3.24). These three patterns will prove to be most valuable in recording guitar. As you can see from the figures, an omni pattern picks up everything around the capsule, cardioid focuses on what’s

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in front of the mic, and figure eight focuses exclusively on what’s on the mic’s sides. n

Proximity effect. If you move a mic closer to a sound source (your guitar) and notice a change in frequency response (especially in the low range), you are experiencing the proximity effect.

Miking Electric Guitars: Speakers If you’re working with an electric guitar setup, you’re primarily considering where to place your microphone with respect to the amplifier’s speaker, not the actual guitar. This is not to say that miking an actual solid body electric is out of the question—remember, experimentation and an open mind are key when it comes to mic placement and audio production in general! For the most part, the placement of the mic is measured by where your mic is in relation to either the cone (see Figure 3.25) or the cabinet that houses the speakers.

Figure 3.25 It’s important to know where the speaker cone is as this is an important location from which to base your mic placement.

Placement

When it comes to miking speakers, one of the most important factors in terms of placement is what mic you choose to use. If you use a ribbon mic, you can start out by miking dead center at the cone. While this part of the speaker is where you will find the most high frequencies, a ribbon is a great choice because it cuts highs considerably,

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Figure 3.26 Check out Luna in action, placed off center to the speaker cone for a closemic configuration on my 1964 Fender Deluxe (non-reverb) 112 combo. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

delivering a more mellow tone. If you use a dynamic or a condenser mic, you should start out placing the mic off-center in relation to the cone (see Figure 3.26, which shows the M-Audio Luna large capsule condenser mic) because these mics will deliver a harsh, more brittle response if placed dead center. Both of these practices are known as close-miking techniques. Whichever mic you choose, use a cardioid polar pattern (Figure 3.27 shows an M-Audio Solaris large capsule condenser mic) because this will focus the mic’s sensitivity on the speaker and help cut out unwanted room or background noise. In any instance, you may need to (and should) incrementally move the mic around to find the spot that best captures your tone. Don’t be surprised if you spend hours doing this; you’re not crazy, you’re merely joining an elite, yet tortured, group of people known as recording guitarists!

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Figure 3.27 Higher-end mics like the Solaris have options for different polar patterns. For this particular close-mic scenario, you can see cardioid, the common choice, is engaged. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

If you’re looking for more low end, try placing a second mic behind the amp or cabinet (as shown in Figure 3.28, with the added M-Audio Nova cardioid condenser mic). You can achieve more depth in your recorded tone this way. One important thing to remember: If you use this configuration, the phase of one of the mics has to be shifted because you’re placing them 180˚ out of phase (refer to the section “Some Common Tech Terms to Know” earlier in this chapter for more information).

Where’s the Cone? If you have trouble locating the cone because the amp’s grill is too dark or too thick to see through it in normal light, try using a flashlight and point it into the grill to better expose the speaker.

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Figure 3.28 Placing a mic, like the Nova pictured here, at the rear of an open-backed speaker enclosure can help deliver more low end. You may need to reverse the polarity on one of the mics to avoid phase cancellation. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

I Need More Room! If you want to add more depth or air into what you’re recording, try placing a mic a few feet (start out with five or six feet) away from the amp and set the polar pattern to omnidirectional. This allows the mic to pick up the sound waves as they bounce off the walls from every direction, adding some character to the recorded guitar that would otherwise be cut out in a close-miking scenario—especially if the mic is set to a cardioid pattern.

Multi-Speaker Enclosures

Let’s say you have a two-speaker configuration of some kind that sports two 12-inch speakers (this could be a standalone cabinet or a combo amp). One of the first things you should do is closely listen to each speaker and decide which one sounds the best. This could be done

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by miking each one separately and recording a short passage to compare on playback in Pro Tools or, if you have someone to play for you or you are recording another guitar player, get next to the speakers (at reasonable volume levels of course) and listen for yourself. Once you decide, it’s a good idea to place the mic on the side of the cone (for dynamic or condenser mics) that is farthest from the non-miked speaker as shown in Figure 3.29. By doing so, you get less bleed from the opposite speaker and less noise all around. All rules apply to any speaker enclosure with more than two speakers, such as the everpopular 4  12 cabinet. The one thing to keep in mind, though, is to try to mic the top row of speakers to avoid picking up sound waves bouncing off the floor and to counter any possible phasing problems.

Figure 3.29 After choosing which speaker sounds best in a multi-speaker configuration, be sure to place the mic on the side of the cone farthest from the other speaker for the least amount of bleed and unwanted noise in your recordings. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

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Combat Phase When setting up a multi-mic scheme for whatever application, be sure to keep the mics at the same distance from the speaker and facing straight ahead. If you set two mics up facing each other, remember to flip the phase of one the mics at the console.

Isolation

As you start to coordinate your microphone setups with all the miking variables discussed thus far, add this to the mix: You’ll need to isolate your amp/mic configuration. By isolate I mean place the miked amp out of audible range or employ some kind of sound-dampening (baffling) method. Either approach serves many essential purposes for recording effectively. Here are some to think about. n

Most importantly, isolating a miked amplifier negates the possibility of your mic picking up any signal coming from your studio monitors when you’re recording. This allows you to record without being forced to wear headphones, which for many players, including myself, is cumbersome.

n

Conversely, keeping a cranked amplifier out of your ear’s audible range or baffled enough that you don’t hear it that much allows you to listen to your session through your studio monitors without any competition from the amp’s output.

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If you are in fact using headphones to monitor input while recording and/or listening to session playback, you’ll be able to do so at moderate decibel levels. This, of course, is a very good thing for your hearing.

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No matter how great your guitar tracks are, your neighbors probably don’t think as highly of them. The more you can control your volume while still being able to fully open up your amp’s output controls into overdriven nirvana, the better.

Isolating could be as simple as placing your amp/mic setup in the basement while the rest of your rig is set up on the second floor. If you’re in an apartment, you could place it in the closet and wrap heavy blankets around the amp and mic. A more professional approach is to construct

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acoustic isolation panels known as gobos that can be placed all around (and above) your amp/mic setup. All these methods will achieve the same basic results in different degrees, but will help nonetheless. With all this in mind, make sure you invest in some extra long cables, ranging from 30–50 feet.

Rooms When considering where to place your amp/mic setup for isolation purposes, be prepared for the room to play a part in how your guitar tone sounds, too. Most of you reading this book will probably be recording in your homes. Although houses are not always the best recording spaces because of their boxy rooms with parallel walls, you can sometimes find interesting sonic spaces in your house that will also act as potential isolation rooms. Tiled bathrooms, home offices contained within sub walls in a basement, packed storage closets—they all will have their own sound. Try placing your amp in all the rooms that are potential isolation environments and see how they sound; then go with the room that best serves both purposes.

Miking Acoustic Guitars Miking acoustic guitars is a very different procedure because you’re miking an actual instrument as opposed to a speaker. As such, it involves different considerations. Although there are many types of acoustic guitars (steel string, nylon string, 12-string, etc.), these general guidelines will serve as worthy starting points for all of them. As stated before, expect to manipulate, tweak, and experiment (and whatever other behavior most other people would deem obsessive) with the placement, the type of mic(s) used, the polar patterns, and anything else up for grabs to achieve recorded tonal nirvana.

A Little Help from My Friends As you go through the book, keep an eye out for additional tips (and more) from some of my friends— who, by the way, just happen to be some today’s hottest guitarists! Starting with this chapter’s section on mic placement for acoustic

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guitars, you will see the amazing Bumblefoot (solo artist, Guns N Roses) posing for the camera to help demonstrate common mic placement techniques. For a sheer guitar heart attack, go to Bumblefoot’s Web site (http://www.bumblefoot.com) and prepare to be dazzled.

Placement

The standard practice for any acoustic guitar is to start out with a condenser mic about six inches from the neck, pointing somewhere between the 12th and 14th frets (as seen in Figure 3.30). Instead of facing the mic dead-on straight toward the neck, try pointing it toward the neck at a 45˚ angle, aiming at the soundhole (as seen in Figure 3.31). If you want to get more bass and hear more boom in the tone, add a mic in front of

Figure 3.30 A good place to start out miking acoustics is to place the mic about six inches from the neck between the 12th and 14th frets. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

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Figure 3.31 Another useful adjustment starting out is placing the mic on a 45˚ angle pointing toward the soundhole. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

the soundhole and adjust to taste (as seen in Figure 3.32). How far or how close you place the mic will determine how much of that boominess you hear. The actual size of the capsule comes into play here as well. When considering what mic to use (or purchase, for that matter), remember that a small capsule will deliver more attack and a more focused representation of the tone, while a mic with a larger capsule will pick up more of the room and make for a more broad, airy sound.

Cool Trick! With all the great miking techniques out there, one that often gets overlooked is placing a mic from an angle that resembles how the player is hearing himself or herself play. So try this: In

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addition to a mic placed pointing at the 12th fret (or so), try setting up a second mic, in a cardioid pattern, in back of the guitarist, somewhere around the area of the player’s ears (see Figure 3.33). The mic should be over the player’s shoulder, making the top of the capsule parallel to the front of the guitar (as shown in Figure 3.34). This will enable you to record the guitar’s output from the player’s perspective! This makes for a clever stereo miking configuration and will deliver truly stellar results that are full bodied and articulate. To take the technique to the next level, try panning each mic hard right and left in the mix!

Figure 3.32 To get more low-end boom, try placing a second mic in front of the soundhole. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

Pro Tips As stated, starting in the next chapter you will see various notes from iconic guitarists (some of whom are fellow M-Audio-supported artists) called Pro Tips. These notes may be the most valuable snippets of

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Figure 3.33 Placing a second mic in a cardioid pattern near a guitarist’s ear will capture the guitar’s projection as the player hears it—an often overlooked perspective. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

information in this entire book because they contain knowledge obtained from real-world experience. In my years in the recording trenches, I’ve acquired some of my own knowledge that I think you’ll find very useful. So before I let my comrades steal the show, here are some of my own pro tips! n

A good setup. Great guitar tracks start (or end) with a great guitar. Period. What makes a great guitar? A great setup, for one. Indeed, the right setup can transform a yard-sale prize into a Stradivarius, making a Squier Strat feel like a Gibson Historic. Besides the obligatory set of new strings, a setup should consist of adjustments made to the truss rod for neck alignment and the bridge assembly for intonation at the very least. Upon finding a guitar repairman who possesses a deep love for the craft, the setup will also include attention to the frets and the nut, a good cleaning of the tactile

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Figure 3.34 Notice how the mic is placed over the shoulder of the guitarist, making the capsule parallel to the guitar’s top. Photo by Jay Alders (jayalders.com).

parts as well as the internal components, tightening up of all fasteners, and even adjustments to things like pickup height and vacuuming your guitar case. And don’t forget about your guitar amp— it requires routine maintenance as well. Be it worn tubes, failing caps and/or resistors, or moisture-damaged speaker cones, your amp will only serve you better when it’s in tip-top form. With all that said, when you find the right guitar and amp repairman, treat him/her well. n

The importance of new strings. As stated, new strings are the absolute basics of a setup, but that’s not to say you have to always bring your guitar in to have it done. Most guitars are fairly easy to change the strings on, and this should be done prior to recording for various reasons, including consistent tone (because your strings will have that “new string snap,” which also helps you cut through the mix more easily because of the brightness); better intonation

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(because old strings develop dents at the point where the string meets the fret, thus making your string press farther down, resulting in sharped notes); and the prevention of any residual dirt from an old set of strings getting onto your fretboard and under your frets. All this equals a better-sounding and healthier guitar—and that means better guitar tracks. n

Cables. If there’s one piece of gear in your signal chain that gets no respect, it’s the cable. And not just guitar cables; all cables. Think about it: Your signal passes through cables constantly. From guitarto-amp configurations to spider web–like entanglements when pedals and multi-amp setups are present—it’s all connected with cables. My ultimate suggestion is this: Use George L. cables (http:// www.georgelsstore.com). These cables sound superior to most any other cable on the market without tapping too far into your finances—and they can be purchased in custom lengths to boot! Although the actual spindles of cable might seem a bit thin—and they are—you’re in the studio, so you’re probably not jumping around like a jackrabbit while recording. If you are, or you plan to, integrating George L.’s into your live rig, you’ll need a more robust cable from guitar to amp or pedals. I use Mogami Platinum guitar cables, but I have used Monster cables in the past with great results. Also, keep in mind that cheap cables in the 20-foot or more range will suffer from high-end loss. This comes into play when considering mic cables. Often your mic cables will need to be 30, 40, even 50 feet long to help with isolating your sound source from your monitors when recording. Try to get the best cables for your buck because what you think is a deal is actually money out the window if you’re not happy with the results.

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MacGyver-style fix-its. In the heat of recording, no matter how much time you’ve put into making sure your axe is in tip-top shape, some alien sound will be sure to present itself during some critical playback. It could be a sitar-like response every time the open high E string is played or a mysterious ring coming from who knows where. If you don’t have any setup chops, in these instances you have to be resourceful so as not to lose the vibe and flow of recording. Suppose you have a sudden case of string buzz. Taking a

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small shard of paper, folding it into a rectangle, and carefully placing it under the offending string will usually do the trick long enough to make it through the session. Getting some sympathetic ringing from the tremolo springs? Take some of that soft, gray foam commonly used in aftermarket pickup packaging and place it between the springs and the body wood of the guitar to impede their vibrating. The best spot is right in the middle, making it less likely to have the foam get caught when depressing the whammy bar and as a result, preventing the bridge from zeroing out.

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S

o all systems are go—computer optimized, iLok authorized, Pro Tools M-Powered installed, hardware hooked up, session file ready (with a template to boot), and mics set up. Good job! Now it’s time to experience the joys of recording audio into Pro Tools M-Powered and then bouncing it to disk for immediate distribution so you can get your music heard. That’s what this chapter is about. In addition, you will learn how to properly save your sessions so you never, ever have to experience the wrenching nightmare called “Dude, what the … my session … it’s … it’s gone! … I know I … but I thought … no … no … nooooooooo!!” Although this chapter will get you on the fast track to making your music come to life, be aware: There’s much more to the overall process than what is laid out here. Most importantly, unlike most other textbooks about audio production, it intentionally skips over what may be the two most significant attributes to any DAW, especially Pro Tools: the art of editing and the art of mixing. Both of these processes are covered in depth in Chapter 7, “Editing 101 and Some M-Powered Empowerment,” and Chapter 8, “An Introduction to Mixing and Mastering.” Another key process saved for later is importing audio— the second of the two primary ways to get audio into Pro Tools; that will be covered in great detail in Chapter 9, “Working with Loops.” This chapter is simply meant to enlighten you on recording digitally with your respective Pro Tools M-Powered rig and make you realize you can do this! So tune up that guitar, get your groove on, and let’s do it to it. Along the way, you will find a little help from my friends—some of whom are fellow M-Audio artists—in the form of special notes called 91

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“Pro Tips.” In this chapter Sheryl Crow’s guitarist and 65amps cofounder Peter Stroud gives you a clever mic placement tip while Toto guitarist and legendary session ace Steve Lukather drops a guitar track layering trick on you.

Continuing to Create Your First Session In the last chapter, you learned how to create your first session, set up the I/O, and save it as a template file. Hopefully you have that empty session opened with the Edit view still in focus and ready for action. If not, just create another one. If you need help doing so, flip back a few pages and follow the steps laid out for you in the section titled “Creating Your First Session” in Chapter 3, “Setting Up Your M-Powered Empire.” Also keep in mind the miking guidelines from the previous chapter, particularly on the subject of isolation and room choice. The upcoming sections on recording audio assume you are considering those suggestions on your own, and therefore they will not be mentioned again as it’s impossible to address the endless number of variables. But be sure to check out the mic placement Pro Tip from long-time Sheryl Crow guitarist Peter Stroud! For this entire chapter I’ll be using an M-Audio FireWire 410 audio interface and the M-Audio Sputnik tube condenser microphone, but don’t worry if you don’t have this precise setup. The procedures outlined in the ensuing sections are exactly the same for any interface. Of course, one thing that will surely be different is the naming conventions used in all of the track’s Audio Input and Output Path selectors. These are of my own devising and were set up in the I/O window (available from the Window menu) as discussed in the section “Setting Up and Saving Your I/O” in Chapter 3.

Hmm, What About the Session Template? If you’re thinking about using the session template you learned how to create in the last chapter, put that aside for now. There’s more to it than you might think. Don’t fret, though; that process will be laid out for you in Chapter 5, “The Black Box Revealed.”

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Creating Tracks The first order of business is to create some tracks. Follow these steps to see how to create a pair of mono audio tracks and a stereo master fader track. Note that it’s okay if you don’t know how many tracks your session will need; you can always add (or subtract) more tracks at any time by following the same exact procedures outlined here. 1.

Click the Track menu in the Pro Tools menu bar (see Figure 4.1).

2.

Click New. Tip: To make your workflow more efficient, you can alternatively use the keyboard shortcut (ShiftþCmdþN for Mac, ShiftþCtrlþN for PC) to skip steps 1 and 2.

3.

The New Tracks dialog box appears (see Figure 4.2). Type 2 in the top Create text box; this indicates how many tracks you want to create.

4.

Click the arrow button to the right of the Create text box. The drop-down list that appears enables you to choose whether the track(s) will be mono or stereo. Choose Mono.

1.

2.

Figure 4.1 Creating new tracks starts with clicking the Track menu in the Pro Tools menu bar and selecting New.

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3.

4.

8.

5.

6.

7.

9.

Figure 4.2 The New Tracks dialog box is your one-stop source for creating all five track types Pro Tools offers in addition to their basic properties such as imaging (mono versus stereo) and Track Time Base (samples versus ticks).

5.

Click the next arrow button. The drop-down list that appears enables you to choose what type of track you want to create: Audio, Aux (Auxiliary Input), Master Fader, MIDI, or Instrument. For now (and to record audio in any scenario), choose Audio Track.

6.

Click the next arrow button. The drop-down list that appears enables you to choose the track’s timebase: Samples or Ticks. Don’t worry if you don’t know what this is or what to choose; you can change this at any time after the track is created with the Timebase selector in the Edit window’s Track view. For now, choose Samples.

7.

Click the plus button. This expands the New Track dialog box, adding a second set of controls to enable you to create another track in whatever configuration you want. Notice that there’s now a minus sign in each of the two rows preceding the plus sign; this simply allows you to back up and delete rows.

8.

Repeat steps 3–6 to create a stereo Master Fader track in Samples timebase.

9.

Click Create. Shortcut Alert Eventually you will create sessions that require higher tracks counts, which will most likely include many different types.

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Here are some very simple shortcuts that can make this process a breeze. Indeed, they keep you from ever having to grab the mouse. n

Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (PC)þright/left arrow buttons toggle the mono/stereo drop-down list.

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Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (PC)þup/down arrow buttons toggle the track type drop-down list.

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CmdþOpt (Mac) or CtrlþAlt (PC)þup/down arrow buttons toggle the Samples/Ticks drop-down list.

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CmdþShift (Mac) or CtrlþShift (PC)þup/down arrow buttons toggle the plus/minus sign buttons.

These shortcuts—as with any others—will surely speed up your workflow. As your projects become more involved, you’ll come to know how much that counts!

Exactly What Did I Just Create?

There are five track types in Pro Tools: Audio, Auxiliary Input (sometimes referred to as Aux or Aux In), Master Fader, MIDI, and Instruments tracks. You just created a pair of audio tracks and a sole Master Fader track. Now let’s see what they are: n

Audio tracks. Audio tracks are used for recording and/or importing audio waveforms that can later be edited on that track. They may be in either mono or stereo configurations. The waveforms are organized into regions, which are graphic blocks that refer to a whole-audio file on your hard drive or a portion thereof (regions will be discussed in more detail throughout the book). These audio files are specifically located in your Audio Files folder found in the main session folder. Your M-Powered system—as well as LE systems—can create up to 32 voiceable (a channel of audio that can go to and from your hard drive) tracks in a single session!

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Master Fader tracks. This type of track first and foremost holds no audio or MIDI. Rather, it is meant to control the overall level of all tracks routed to it. You can make a Master Fader track control the

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session’s main output path, thus controlling the entire session’s volume levels, or create several Master Fader tracks to control various groups of tracks you assign to it. In the end, think of it as your session’s ultimate volume knob. Master Faders come in handy not only in controlling global volume levels, but also for applying effects such as compression and dithering to the entire mix in the mastering process. The remaining tracks—Auxiliary Input, MIDI, and Instruments tracks— are discussed in later chapters, but here’s a sneak peek at what their basic functions are. Don’t worry if these brief explanations are a little over your head at this point; they’re just to get you acquainted with what these tracks are intended for. n

Auxiliary Input tracks. These tracks contain no audio. Instead, as the name implies, they are an alternative input destination for a wide variety of applications such as hosting software-based instruments (soft-synths, MIDI sound modules, drum sequencers), sending multiple audio tracks to be processed by one central effect (plug-in or hardware insert), or as a bounce destination to submix a group of tracks, to name a few. Aux tracks are covered throughout Chapter 8.

n

MIDI tracks. Like Aux tracks, MIDI tracks contain no audio because MIDI itself is a communications protocol language designed to facilitate communication between devices so they can talk to each other. MIDI tracks contain performance data, not sound, that is sequenced in any order you choose, therefore making a MIDI track in Pro Tools a software sequencer. The concept of MIDI (including MIDI tracks of course) is covered in detail in Chapter 10, “Working with MIDI.”

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Instrument tracks. This track type combines the attributes of both the Auxiliary and MIDI tracks into one track. Instrument tracks can host virtual instruments and/or patch in external MIDI devices (previously something only an Auxiliary track could do), while at the same time allow you to record and edit MIDI performances (previously something only a MIDI track can do). These are also featured in detail in Chapter 10.

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What’s Behind Door #1?

Now that you have created some tracks and are about to record audio onto them, there are some hidden areas—two in the Edit window and one in the Mix window—that need to be revealed. Although all three views will be covered in more detail in Chapter 6, “Face to (Inter)Face With Pro Tools M-Powered,” the first two are introduced in this chapter. The left column in the Edit window is split into two sections—the Track List and the Edit Groups List. The Edit window’s right column is called the Region List; you’ll explore it after you record some audio. You open both these Edit window views by clicking the double-arrow buttons in the lower corners of the window (see Figure 4.3); likewise, you access the Mix window view by clicking the double-arrow button in the lower-left corner.

Figure 4.3 Clicking the double-arrow buttons, or chevrons, on either side of the Edit window exposes two hidden columns. The one on the left contains the Track List and Edit Groups List, and the one the right opens the Region List.

In the Track List, you’ll see the names of the three tracks just created in the order they appear in the main body of the Edit window (called the Track display area). The names (preceded by the signature track icons and, if enabled, the track color column) are highlighted in orange. This indicates that the tracks are in focus (seen) in the Track display area. Clicking one or more of the tracks deselects and hides the track from view in the Track display area. You can also drag tracks around to

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rearrange their order. These options come in handy when track counts are high and you want to work on a specific group of tracks. Before you start laying down some guitar tracks, there is one very important detail that needs to be addressed—something that takes no time at all and can save you all the time in the world: naming your tracks. Naming Tracks It’s of the utmost importance that you get in the habit of naming your tracks immediately after you create them. Let me explain: Pro Tools gives every track a default name using a simplistic naming convention, as is the case in the three tracks you just created. You’ll notice in Figure 4.4 that your audio tracks are sequentially named Audio 1 and Audio 2, with only the ending numbers individualizing them, while your Master Fader track is named simply Master 1. When you record audio into a track (or a group of tracks simultaneously), an audio file is created and automatically given a name based on the track name and which take (individual episodes of recording) it was. For example, if you were to record some audio into track 1, now named Audio 1, a file (in whatever format you choose in the original creation of the session) will be created and

Figure 4.4 Pro Tools automatically names newly created tracks with nondescriptive default names relative to the track type, like Audio 1 and Audio 2 for audio tracks. It is very important to name your tracks immediately after creating them to best identify corresponding audio files later.

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deposited in the Audio files folder called Audio 1_01, located in your session folder. If you record another take, it will be called Audio 1_02, and so on. If you record audio on Audio 2, the first take will be named Audio 2_01. While this system might work for a very small, simple session, it won’t do at all for a larger, more complicated one. Imagine a session filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of audio files of varying sizes, all named Audio x_xx. See what I’m getting at here? It would be nearly impossible to locate a specific audio file in the inevitable sea of files that will come into existence as your session progresses. Again, it’s of the utmost importance you get in the habit of naming your tracks immediately after you create them. Here’s how: 1.

Double-click the Track Name bar in the first track where it says Audio 1. A dialog box appears (see Figure 4.5). 1.

2.

3.

4.

Figure 4.5 Track naming can be easily done in this window. Using the keyboard shortcuts instead of using the Previous, Next, and OK buttons makes this vital process even faster.

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2.

In the Name the Track text box, type a name for the track. Because we’re going to record two guitar tracks, go with Rhythm Guitar.

3.

If you have more than one track (as is the case here), you can click the Next button to name the track below the one you have in focus. Conversely, you can click the Previous button to name the track above the one you have in focus. Using this method, name the next two tracks Lead Guitar and Stereo BX5a, respectively.

4.

Click OK.

Not only are your track’s new names displayed in the Track view, but they are also in the aforementioned Track List window.

Shortcut Alert II Just as with the procedure for creating tracks, there’s a simple shortcut that can make this process a little faster. To toggle from one track to another without having to grab the mouse and click the Previous and Next buttons, just press Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (PC)þright/left arrow; additionally, you can press Return (Mac) or Enter (PC) instead of clicking OK to close the window.

The I/O Column The area of the audio track in which you just learned to name a track is called the Track Control area. It does not include the area to the right of the vertical level meters (refer to Figure 4.4). That area is called the I/O column, and it’s part of a collection of additional displays called the Edit window columns that you can select or deselect whenever you find you need one of them. In this chapter, and in most any recording scenario, you will need to have this column displayed. The I/O column is where you find the track’s Input and Output Path selectors, an Audio Volume indicator, Left Pan and Right Pan fields, and an Output Window button. Access to these controls is required for setting up to record as well as for monitoring what’s going in and out of Pro Tools. If, after

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creating the tracks as outlined in the “Creating Tracks” section of this chapter, you do not see the I/O column, do the following: 1.

Click the View menu in the Pro Tools menu bar.

2.

Select Edit Window.

3.

Choose I/O from the submenu that appears.

This selects the I/O and places it between the Track Control area and the track’s playlist. Don’t be alarmed if all this seems a little advanced; it will all be addressed in Chapter 6. It’s just that without this view, you cannot proceed with the task at hand: recording!

The Click Track and the Countoff Okay, you’re almost ready to make some noise, but before you do, you need to do just one more task (the last one, I promise!). Rest assured, it’s an important one, as it will keep your timing in check—and that should be taken very seriously. It’s time to create a click track. Think of a click track as your virtual metronome—it produces a tone with a short duration that rings in time to a consistent user-defined pulse or beat. The track itself is actually an Auxiliary track that will host the DigiRack Click plug-in (host-dependent software application) in the Inserts column (see the following note). A click track not only enables a timing source to be present to help lock in all the instruments on the session, it also helps ensure that all the audio recorded will lock up to a grid (a graphical map of time divisions that allows for more precise editing in many facets of digital audio). To create a click track, follow these steps: 1.

Click the Track menu in the Pro Tools menu bar.

2.

Click Create Click Track (see Figure 4.6).

3.

An Auxiliary Input track named Click containing the DigiRack Click plug-in appears in the track area; press the spacebar to start the Click plug-in.

Next thing to do is set up the Click plug-in so it gives you a countoff when you initiate recording, much like a drummer or conductor might

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1.

2.

3. Figure 4.6 Creating a click track is as easy as opening the Track menu in the main toolbar and choosing the Create Click Track command. From there, an Auxiliary Input track (set to a mini Track Height view) containing the Click plug-in is created.

count off a song. This enables you to have enough time (determined by you) to get your hands back on your guitar after you make the necessary keystrokes on your computer and/or recording gear to start recording, not to mention get you locked into the tempo of whatever it is you’re about to record. You set up a countoff from the Click/ Countoff Options dialog box as follows: 1.

Click the Setup menu in the Pro Tools menu bar.

2.

Click Click (see Figure 4.7).

3.

The Click/Countoff Options dialog box opens. Click the During Play and Record option button to select it; this instructs the Click plug-in to play the click in both instances (see Figure 4.8).

4.

Make sure the Output drop-down list displays None. (Unless you have a MIDI sound module in your rig, this is the default setting.)

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2.

Figure 4.7 One way to open the Click/Countoff Options dialog box is from the Setup window in the main toolbar.

4.

3.

6.

5.

7.

Figure 4.8 The Click/Countoff Options dialog box lets you adjust various click parameters, including enabling a countoff and setting its length in bars.

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5.

Under Countoff, type the number of bars you want to have the Click plug-in play before recording starts. I suggest 1 for slow tempos, 2 for medium to fast tempos (recommended here), and possibly 4 for blistering high tempos.

6.

Make sure the Only During Record checkbox is selected.

7.

Click OK.

With these click parameters in check, you now have a two-bar countoff to get you in the correct tempo of what you’re recording and to allow you ample time to get your hands in place to actually play the guitar!

Where Did That Come From? When looking at Figures 4.6 and 4.7, you may be wondering what that other Edit window column is between the Track Control area and the I/O column. Titled Inserts, this column displays whatever plug-in applications are inserted in that particular track. They can be effects, virtual instruments, or utility-type apps. In this case, it’s the DigiRack Click plug-in, which is a bare-bones digital metronome. Clicking the small square with the letter C in it opens the Click plug-in window, enabling you to adjust the parameters of the Click plug-in. You can display or hide the Inserts view by clicking View > Edit Window > Inserts.

Recording Audio Okay, it’s time. Time to make some noise and record it. But first, let’s explore the two ways to get audio into Pro Tools. n

Recording audio. Recording audio entails capturing an event in the analog world as it happens. This requires either a microphone plugged into your audio interface whose job is to pick up and transduce sound waves from your amp or acoustic guitar, which are then transmitted into your computer via the interface it’s plugged into, or simply an available input on your interface to directly plug in the source (your guitar). Either method will in turn generate an audio file, which, in the digital world, is a data stream of 0s and 1s (binary code); indeed, the primary purpose for an

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audio interface is to convert incoming signals into a language the computer can work with. n

Importing audio. This is the process of placing pre-existing digital audio files into Pro Tools either via the Import Audio command found in the File menu or by simply dragging the file from the Workspace Browser window and dropping it in the Region List and/or the Edit window Track display area.

Both methods result in an audio file being deposited in the Audio Files folder and a region or set of regions being deposited in the Region List. The Audio Files folder is located in a Pro Tools session folder (the same type of folder where you were instructed to open the Power 3 session file in this last chapter); as mentioned earlier, the Region List is the hidden pane on the right side of the Edit window, accessed by clicking the double-arrow button in the lower-right corner of the Edit window. Let’s employ the first method—recording audio—using a microphone placed in front of an amplifier whose signal is then fed into an audio interface. The process outlined here will be exactly the same for any mic/interface combination, so whatever setup you have will work just fine. (The second method of getting audio into M-Powered—that is, importing—will be covered in depth in Chapter 9.) Assigning Inputs In order to record anything into Pro Tools M-Powered, you have to tell the program where the material you’re recording is coming from. Each track has an Audio Input Path selector that, when clicked, lets you choose an input source, be it your interface, a bus (internal signal routing matrix, to be covered later in Chapter 8), or a plug-in. For our purposes, we’re concerned with the interface option. Here’s how the input is assigned: 1.

Click the Audio Input Path selector for the track named Rhythm Guitar (see Figure 4.9).

2.

Click Interface. A list of the available inputs on your interface appears. (See Figure 4.10.)

3.

Click the input your microphone’s XLR cable is plugged into.

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1.

Figure 4.9 The Audio Input Path selector lets you choose where the signal coming into your track for recording will be coming from.

2.

3.

Figure 4.10 After clicking the Audio Input Path selector and clicking Interface, you should see all the available inputs on your respective interface. From there, you will choose which input your mic is plugged into via the XLR cable.

Getting Signal Now it’s just a matter of setting up the Rhythm Guitar track to be record enabled to get signal flowing into M-Powered. To do so, follow these steps: 1.

Click the R button in the Track Control area of the Rhythm Guitar track (see Figure 4.11). It will flash red, indicating that the track is armed and ready to record.

2.

Well, what are you waiting for? Play something!

3.

Watch the Rhythm Guitar track’s Volume level meter as well as the Master Fader’s (mine is named BX5a, after the speaker monitors I’m using). You should see a green bar spiking upward every time you play.

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1.

3.

Figure 4.11 After you record-enable a track, inputting signal in any way into your interface (thereby into Pro Tools M-Powered) will cause the track’s level meters to display a rising green bar; this indicates that signal is coming in.

Condenser Mic Reminder Condenser mics require up to 48 volts of power to function; without it, they won’t work at all. If you’re using a condenser mic such as M-Audio’s Luna, Solaris, or Pulsar II, remember to turn on the Phantom Power switch on your interface. Located on the front or rear panel, this is usually a push button marked accordingly and accompanied by a status LED to indicate whether the function is turned on or off. If you need a refresher on the basic properties of condenser mics, refer to Chapter 3.

Going Into the Red: Clipping

At this point, you’re biggest concern is not letting the green bar go into the red (see Figure 4.12)! If it does, then Pro Tools is telling you that your guitar’s input signal is coming in too hot (strong or loud) for your interface to process properly, causing distortion (the bad kind) or, in audio-production terms, clipping. This is a sure-fire (as well as irreversible) way to destroy a great take. It’s very important to understand that the only way to remedy this is to make adjustments before the signal hits the converters. Lowering the track’s fader will not solve

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Figure 4.12 If you see your track’s Volume level meter go into the top portion—the red, as seen here—that’s bad! This is Pro Tools telling you the signal is too hot. The result is distortion, or clipping.

the problem! A track’s fader is strictly for monitoring purposes and has absolutely no bearing on incoming signals. Here are some suggestions: n

Adjust the levels of the input signal source. Simply lower the volume on your source (i.e., the amplifier) to reduce the offending decibel levels your mic is transmitting to the interface.

n

Adjust the levels of the interface signal/input gain knob. Maybe you’re recording a miked acoustic guitar where there’s no volume knob available to turn down. That’s when you use the gain knob on the interface to attenuate (lower) the signal going into the interface.

n

Use the Pad function on your interface. It’s no secret that great tone sometimes comes to us only at loud volumes. If you’re really into a tone you’re getting at a volume level your system is not accepting, your interface may provide a pad to soften the blow, so to speak. Many interfaces feature a 10 to 20 dB pad that’s activated by a push button or switch, usually located in the same section as the mic input socket and status LED.

n

Use the Pad function on your microphone. In some cases, the input signal will be overdriving the mic before it even gets to the interface. Try to counteract this via the switch on the mic’s onboard pad, if it has one. It’s usually a small selector switch that flips to the right, activating a 10 dB pad.

Pro Tip from Peter Stroud: Mic Placement Crank your guitar amp until it makes loads of hiss without the guitar plugged in, and turn up your studio monitors until you hear the hiss loud and clear. Now place your ears in front of the guitar amp’s speaker and move your head

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around until you hear the “sweet” spot—balanced lows and highs— and place the mic at that location. Then go back and listen to the hiss through your monitors. Move the mic around until you have matched the sound you heard directly from the speaker. Once you have a match, nine times out of ten, you can achieve tone to “tape” recordings. Warning: Don’t forget to bring your levels back down! —Peter Stroud (Sheryl Crow, 65amps)

Hitting the Red Button With your guitar in hand and the track record enable button (R) in the Track Control area of the Rhythm Guitar track blinking red, it’s time to make the final keystroke to engage recording: 1.

Click the Record Enable button in the Edit window’s transport section. Similar to the R button in the Track Control area, it will start flashing red, indicating that Pro Tools is armed and ready to record (see Figure 4.13). 3.

1.

2.

Figure 4.13 In order to initiate recording, tracks that are to be recorded on must be armed. Then the Edit window’s transport section’s Record Enable button must be clicked. Finally, the transport section’s Play button must be clicked.

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2.

Click the Play button in the Edit window’s transport section. The two-bar countoff starts. On the downbeat of the third bar, recording begins. As the recording progresses, Pro Tools displays the incoming signal as a waveform in a graphic box called a region.

3.

Click the Stop button in the Edit window’s transport section when you’re finished recording. Big Time Shortcut Alert Second only to the keyboard shortcut for toggling between the Edit and Mix windows with regard to frequency of use are the following shortcuts for recording audio or MIDI performances: Cmdþspacebar, F12, or Numeric 3 (Mac), and Ctrlþspacebar, F12, or Numeric 3 (PC). Use any one of these keyboard shortcuts after you have record enabled the track to which you wish to record.

To listen back to what you just recorded, click the R button on the Rhythm Guitar track to unarm the track for recording, and then press Return (Mac) or Enter (PC) to start and stop playback. If you forget to unarm any tracks, they will not be heard in the main output mix because arming a track for recording sets it up to monitor only the input (i.e., your incoming guitar signal from the interface).

Addressing Red Button Anxiety Playing music in the confines of a studio can be a daunting task, especially if you’re used to jamming with friends, doing gigs all the time, or just not playing with headphones on. For some people, all the things that go along with recording can pile up to be one big nervous breakdown waiting to happen. Just remember one thing: This is fun. This is something you want to be doing. This is your passion. So relax, take a deep breath, and just play.

Exactly What Just Happened?

As stated before, audio files are created as a result of whatever you just recorded and are placed in the Audio Files folder documenting that

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particular performance event. These whole-audio files are displayed as regions (graphic blocks) that point to the whole-audio file on your hard drive (like the one just created named Rhythm Guitar_01) or a portion thereof. The regions are dispersed and displayed throughout the track’s edit playlist (the light-shaded horizontal area to the right of the gray Track Control and Edit view sections), indicating which whole-audio file or portion of a whole-audio file is to be read by Pro Tools for playback or bouncing to disk and when in time that will happen. Those regions can be edited in many different ways such as moving, trimming, splitting, cutting, copying, and pasting (this is covered in depth in Chapter 7). Each time you record, a new region is created in the playlist of whatever track(s) are armed and enabled for recording. This process can be done as many times as you’d like, with the only limitation being that Pro Tools M-Powered can play back only 32 voiceable tracks (called dynamic voices) of simultaneous audio. That’s not to say you cannot record audio onto more tracks, and it absolutely does not imply there’s a limit as to how many audio files can be generated in a single track. What’s Behind Door #2?

Every time you input audio into Pro Tools, whether by recording or by importing, a region is created (the same goes for MIDI performance data, which is covered in Chapter 10). Not only is it displayed in the track’s edit playlist, but also in the Region List—the second of the two hidden columns in the Edit window. Located on the right side of the Edit window, it’s accessed via the double arrow, or chevron, button in the lower-right corner of the screen (see Figure 4.14). In it, you’ll now see the lone region in your session, named the same way it is in the playlist: Rhythm Guitar_01. The Region List stores all the regions created throughout the session (even if it’s not being displayed in the playlist), no matter how they came into existence. Regions can be dragged from the Region List into a track at any time.

The Reality of My Surroundings What you see around you—your surroundings—can, and will, affect how you play. While inspiration can take on many forms, it’s safe to say your environment can

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influence a great deal of it. It could be as simple as the color of your walls or the type of lighting (or lack thereof). It could be as personal as G.I. Joe figures set up in battle formation on your computer desk. Whatever makes you “you” should be present and accounted for in your studio. If you’re a big Stevie Ray Vaughn fan, then invest in a life-size poster of the blues master and hang it in plain view from where you will be recording. Maybe you need a portable DVD player so you can watch Braveheart with the volume down to put you in the right headspace for playing that death metal riff at 400 BPMs. Whether it’s skull heads or petunias, if it sets the tone for you to play your best, then by all means surround yourself with it.

Figure 4.14 The Region List is a column located on the right side of the Edit window that stores all your session’s audio and MIDI regions.

How to Deal with Latency After recording your first track, you will surely want to add more to your project. But before you can, you have to address one of the notso-joyous facets of hard disk recording: latency. Latency, also known

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as monitoring latency, can be thought of as the time lag experienced from the moment you play a note to the moment you actually hear it through your monitoring device (studio monitors or headphones). You computer-savvy types might be thinking, “Not my computer, man! It screams!” Although that may be true, processing audio is an extremely taxing procedure for even the fastest computers with tons of RAM. This is directly related to all the number crunching going on within the devices in the signal chain—i.e., your audio interface A/D converter, the computer hosting Pro Tools, as well as the interface D/A converter. It’s a normal by-product of any host-based DAW—not just Pro Tools. Indeed, depending on your setup, you may have already perceived a bit of latency as you performed the steps in the “Getting Signal” section of this chapter. Latency also is a product of poorly conceived drivers (although you can count that out of any M-Audio equation, as its drivers are consistent, reliable, and above all, constantly upgraded to ensure optimal performance). I’m mentioning all this now because as you pile on the tracks, the more likely it is you will start to detect latency. Luckily there are ways around this frustrating element of digital audio, as you’ll soon see. M-Powered Adjustments M-Powered—actually, all versions of Pro Tools—features a H/W Buffer Size (where H/W stands for hardware) setting, available in the Playback Engine dialog box (see Figure 4.15). This setting holds back a user-determined amount of data (counted in samples), allowing the processor to get some breathing room when processing audio. Buffering helps Pro Tools handle the more taxing sessions, such as ones with high track counts and/or large plug-ins instances. With that said, the higher the buffer size, the better your system will perform—with one caveat: higher latency. Reducing the H/W Buffer Size value will improve latency, but may limit the number of simultaneous audio tracks you can record and/or play back before Pro Tools throws up an error message. In the end, it’s a back and forth game between you and your rig trying to find a happy medium between low latency and sufficient processor performance. Even the smallest buffer settings have some amount of latency, but sometimes it’s so small you either can’t perceive it or it’s not enough to hamper your playing. To adjust

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Figure 4.15 The Playback Engine dialog box contains many vital settings—most notably the H/W Buffer Size, which aids in dealing with latency issues.

this setting, launch the Playback Engine dialog box (click the Setup menu in the Pro Tools menu bar and choose Playback Engine), display the H/W Buffer Size drop-down list, and choose the lowest buffer size your system will allow during recording. I find that 256 samples works best on my 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro equipped with 1 GB of RAM, but I’ll take 128 samples any time my computer can deal with it! Hardware Monitoring The only way to achieve true zero latency is to use an interface that has direct hardware-monitoring capabilities, which route the signal from the input of the interface directly back to the outputs going to your studio monitors or headphones combined with whatever playback mix you’ve created in Pro Tools. There are several options to do battle with latency in this way, and every method has its own idiosyncratic demands to make it work. As long as your interface was designed in

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such a way that hardware monitoring is a viable alternative, you can achieve a zero-latency recording experience. Note that hardware monitoring usually negates any options for recording with effects in the mix—at least ones generated by or patched into Pro Tools—although that’s not to say you can’t record your effected or wet signal created by your own hardware pedals or rack units. While there’s much debate about recording wet guitar tracks as opposed to dry ones, it’s a valid option, and one that I use almost exclusively (just wait until you hear my Rhythm Guitar track, as well as others, in the upcoming “Gotta Bounce” section, on bouncing your session to disk). Your sound is your sound; if you always play with it, you should always record with it. That said, direct hardware monitoring is an effective latency-free option for recording! The Mix Knob

Some interfaces, like the compact M-Audio Fast Track USB and Fast Track Pro, feature a Mix knob that allows you to hear your guitar’s direct input signal (marked Input) mixed with the playback signal coming out from the Pro Tools Main Mix bus (marked Playback). This affords you the option to mute the track by clicking the M button in the Track Control area, resulting in only monitoring your guitar’s input signal before it gets the latency-prone-number-crunching-grind applied to it. The trick is to keep a steady balance between the two sides so you can hear enough of both the input and playback signals to effectively record when layering tracks. The Secret of Internal DSP

An added bonus is that some of those Mix knob–enhanced interfaces have internal DSP effects. Take the venerable M-Audio Black Box, which boasts internal processing of effects in the form of amp modeling and other guitar-related effects that you can enjoy without ever putting that processing burden on your computer. (The guitar-centric Black Box interface—with this feature included—is covered in depth in the next chapter.) This means you can record with all the comforts of hearing quality guitar-related effects and tones like distortion and chorusing while recording with no perceivable latency.

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Figure 4.16 The mighty FireWire-based NRV-10 acts both as a formidable live analog mixer and digital audio interface, offering a plethora of unique signal-routing capabilities, including internal effects processing. These effects can be applied to discrete monitor mixes, taking the processing burden away from the computer if you have to record some dry guitar tracks but still want to add some reverb.

Interfaces like the USB 2.0–driven Fast Track Ultra and ingenious FireWire family NRV-10 (pictured in Figure 4.16) also have internal timebased effects that may be routed to a discrete monitor mix going to your headphone outputs for separate, individual mixes with effects and little to no perceivable latency. This comes in handy when you have to record your guitar tracks dry for whatever reason, but you still desire some spatial processing (delay and/or reverb) to get you in the right groove. Interface Digital Mixer Adjustments

Some interfaces, while they don’t have an onboard Mix knob or actual physical controls to route input signals directly out to whatever outputs you’re monitoring, do still offer direct hardware monitoring for achieving zero monitoring latency. The way to access this feature is through each interface’s Control Panel, which is automatically installed in the driver-installation process. Take the interface I’m using throughout this chapter—the M-Audio FireWire 410. You can

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access its Control Panel by clicking the Setup menu, choosing Hardware, and clicking the Launch Setup App button in the dialog box that appears (see Figure 4.17).

Figure 4.17 From the Hardware Setup dialog box (Setup > Hardware), you can access an interface’s Control Panel where, if applicable, direct hardware monitoring configurations can be created.

Clicking the Mixer tab in the FireWire Control Panel (see Figure 4.18) exposes several channel strips, including the gray Analog In strip. This is where I can route my incoming analog signal (guitar) from my connected mic of choice—in this case the tube-driven Sputnik condenser microphone (or direct connection via a 1/4-inch cable from your guitar straight into one of the 410’s analog mic/line inputs)—right out to outputs 1/2, which is where my studio monitors are plugged in. This inhibits my incoming guitar signal from passing through any number-crunched zones (converters or the computer) for absolute zero latency! Ironically, the 410 happens to offer an option to patch in external effects processors that are equipped with S/PDIF ports so the direct signal can be in fact monitored with effects. (This is not the norm; in fact, it’s a standout feature for the 410. Also, those effects will not be recorded.) With all these options at your disposal, you are sure to find a way around almost any latency issues you might encounter. Adjust your setup with whatever one of the aforementioned methods applies to

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Figure 4.18 In the applicable interface Control Panel app, you can route your incoming guitar signal to be sent straight to the main outputs for direct hardware monitoring with zero latency.

you and then proceed to record something onto the Lead Guitar track. To do so, just follow the same steps previously outlined and you’ll be good to go. If you haven’t already, unarm the Rhythm Guitar track for recording unless you want to record to both tracks simultaneously. Otherwise, whatever you record onto the Lead Guitar track will also be recorded to the Rhythm Guitar track. Don’t worry; if you make this mistake you can always undo the operation (CmdþZ for Mac, CtrlþZ for PC) or just drag and drop the audio recorded previously out of the Region List to whatever track was erroneously recorded over—one of the many beauties of digital audio production.

Pro Tip from Steve Lukather: Multi-Mic Placement Plus A cool trick is to close mic a cranked Marshall and have a room mic set up far away. Pan the close mic to one side and the room mic to the other. Compress the close-mic track with a more old school–sounding plug-in like a Fairchild 660 or 670. At the same time, heavily compress

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the room mic with your favorite compressor plug-in or insert your favorite hardware comp and assign the input to an auxiliary input track. Along with the compressor, patch in an EQ plug-in or hardware piece (I love the onboard EQs in my 64-channel Neve board) and cut at 1k while boosting at 10k and (maybe a little at) 100Hz. This gives you that Jimmy Page “close-far” vibe or the Voodoo Child Jimi sound. You can also turn your stack and face it toward the glass of the control room and not mic the cab, but put a mic behind the closed cabinet and further experiment with compression and EQ. Always keep in mind that the size of the room matters, so be ready to try different setups and see what works for you. Remember, there is no wrong way to do anything. If it sounds good, it is good. —Steve Lukather (Toto, Legendary Grammy award–winning session guitarist, solo artist)

When you’re finished, move on to the next section to learn how to bounce your session to a format everyone else can work with so you don’t have to drag around a rig minimally consisting of a computer tower, keyboard, and monitor; external hard drive; your interface; studio monitors; and cables (don’t forget the iLok) just to let everyone hear what you’re working on. Just in case, for whatever reason, you need a session to use for the forthcoming bouncing to disk section, go to the Chapter 4 ZIP file. Inside you will find a session folder titled Chopper Genesis. This is a quick fourtrack session I developed as I wrote this chapter, and it’s what you’ll see in the screenshots for the remainder of the chapter. Place the folder wherever you are keeping your audio projects (preferably a dedicated audio drive) and open it up so you can access the session by double-clicking the Chopper Genesis.ptf file. When the session is loaded, press the spacebar and take a listen; then go on to the next section to learn how to ready a Pro Tools session for listening “outside the box.”

Hey, Something’s Screwy Around Here! Okay, you caught me—I did a little bit of editing and mixing, as well as added some tracks

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to Chopper Genesis. I couldn’t help myself! First, I was hearing a harmony line to go with my Lead Guitar track that utilized a counterpoint approach, so I went for it. To do so, I created another audio track, dialed up the same tone settings as my Lead Guitar track, and got a good take. Next, I came to the conclusion that my original fourbar session felt a bit short for the “Gotta Bounce” section, but I really liked it and I didn’t want to tamper with the mojo it already had by needlessly adding new audio to the tracks. So I simply duplicated the regions to extend the time. I also automated a fade in and fade out in the Master Fader track and added an Aux track to host the DigiRack 1-band EQ III compressor to knock out some piercing highs in my Lead and Harmony tracks. All in all, the entire process took about 45 minutes, which included mic setup, dialing in the tones, recording, editing, and mixing. Trust me, you will learn how to perform these simple tasks and much, much more as the book progresses. By the time you’re through, my six-string brethren, you’ll be doing some simple edits and a quick mix to even the smallest scratch sessions and making them sound great in no time at all.

Gotta Bounce In order to get your music heard now—even if it’s still a work in progress—you need to explore how you get your session outside the Pro Tools environment. (I refer to the tracks you recorded thus far as a “work in progress” because this chapter skips over the editing, mixing, and mastering processes; those are covered in Chapters 7 and 8.) In order to have anyone listen to the session outside the Pro Tools environment, you have to bounce the session out of Pro Tools to a format that can be played by nonusers (or by you) on, say, a CD player or iPod. Of course, you can send the entire session folder to other Pro Tools users, but that’s not going to work for most situations. The process you’re about to engage in is called bouncing to disk. As the name implies, you are mixing down (bouncing) your multitrack session, in real time, to a single audio file (format of your choice) within which your entire session will exist to a location on your hard drive outside of the Pro Tools software environment. This will allow you to share your music with the outside world in any form you need to. What you have in store for the file will influence what parameters

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you set in the bounce-to-disk process. Let’s explore what to do if you want to mix down a session to one stereo file for burning to a CD. In this procedure, you will do things like convert your session from 24-bit to the CD player standard 16-bit specification. Chapter 8 explores the bounce-to-disk procedure in more detail. For now, follow these steps to get a feel for it: 1.

Click File in the Pro Tools menu bar. The File menu appears.

2.

Click Bounce To. A submenu appears.

3.

Click Disk (see Figure 4.19).

4.

The Bounce dialog box appears (see Figure 4.20). Click the Bounce Source arrow button and choose whatever you are using to listen to the overall mix of your session from the list that appears. In my case, it’s the BX5a studio monitors, as listed in my Master Fader track.

5.

Click the File Type arrow button and choose WAV.

6.

Click the Format arrow button and choose Stereo Interleaved.

7.

Click the Resolution arrow button and choose 16.

8.

Click the Sample Rate arrow button and choose 44100.

1.

2.

3.

Figure 4.19 The Bounce to Disk command is found in the File menu.

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. Figure 4.20 In the Bounce dialog box, you have many vital options to choose from, such as file type, bit resolution, and sampling rate. All these determine how and what you can do with the bounced file once it’s ready.

9. 10.

Click the Convert After Bounce option button. Click Bounce.

One More Shortcut You can skips steps 1–3 and get right to the Bounce dialog box with this keyboard shortcut: OptþCmdþB (Mac) or AltþCtrlþB (PC).

11.

The Save: Pro Tools M-Powered dialog box opens. You use this to tell M-Powered where to bounce and save the session to. To begin, type a name for your session in the Save As text box (see Figure 4.21).

12.

Click the arrow button and choose where you want to save the file. For consistency’s sake, choose your desktop as I did.

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12. 11.

13. Figure 4.21 Although it’s important to name your file, it’s even more important to be aware of where you tell M-Powered to save the bounced file.

13.

Click Save. A status window appears (see Figure 4.22) as Pro Tools bounces the file in real time to the destination you indicated in step 11. It displays a countdown indicating how much time is left in the process. In addition, because you chose the Convert After Bounce option in the Bounce dialog box, one more, smaller window appears with a progress bar documenting the conversion (see Figure 4.23).

Figure 4.22 This window appears after you click the Save button, displaying a countdown indicating how much time is left in the real-time bounce process.

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Figure 4.23 After bouncing the file to disk, this last window appears as the file is converted to whatever specs were chosen in the Bounce dialog box.

Some Words About Bouncing Although you will surely see a song idea through to a more developed or even completed stage before letting others hear it, there will be plenty of times when you will have to bounce the session in its early stages. Some examples are as follows: n

Large, complex sessions with gobs of plug-in processing and intricate automation could max out even the most tricked-out production rigs. Bouncing one or more tracks and importing them back into Pro Tools is a good way to free up much-needed CPU resources, especially if you have a not-so-powerful computer to start with.

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You might be trying to pique someone’s interest to record on your session or maybe to show the rest of your band a song idea that’s in progress for feedback. Instead of dragging everyone to wherever your rig is located (which, in a lot of cases, may not be an option anyway), you can simply transport the bounced stereo file onto a CD or your iPod or even e-mail it as an MP3.

On the other side of the coin, maybe this is all you need to do. Not every session will be a grand collage of multiple tracks and production. Maybe you’re a guitar teacher who often needs to throw down a short soloing example for an improvising lesson to send a student home that only requires two tracks—rhythm and lead guitar. Whatever the scenario may be, know this: Bouncing by no means indicates the session is finished. You can (and probably will) go back to it to further it along and/or see it through to completion.

Save! Save! Save! This book is filled with essential information as to how to become familiar—and hopefully really good at—producing great tracks, but there’s one fundamental item that is monumentally crucial to

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recording in the digital realm: saving and backing up your work. Hard drives fail, computers crash, files get corrupt, items get deleted by mistake—things happen. Nothing is more heart wrenching or potentially dangerous to your budding production career than losing your own or someone else’s work. The only way to safeguard yourself against such catastrophic events is to implement good saving and archiving habits now. Although this may not be as joyous as tailoring your mic placement to perfection or sitting back listening to your session as it develops, believe me, this will pay off ten-fold when the first system disaster happens—and it will. Here are your options, which are all accessed through the File menu in the menu bar: n

Save. As seen on most any software application, the bare bones Save command instructs M-Powered to overwrite the current state of the session file under the same filename to the state it’s in at the moment you engage the command. The items that are saved are those contained in the session file itself, including edits, settings, and MIDI performances. This is your first line of defense against a system crash (be prepared, they happen) as your latest save will be the state your session is in when the file is recovered. Be sure to learn the keyboard shortcut (CmdþS for Mac, CtrlþS for PC); that will make it that much easier to use it often. Remember this: You can never save too much.

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Save As. This command saves a copy of the session file under a new name; from there, that’s the session file your work continues in (and is saved in). As a result, the Save As file and original file will share the contents of the main session folder (remember, a session file contains no audio, as it only points to what its contained in the many subfolders of the main session folder that are generated by your actions as your session develops). This is useful for when you want to try some deep experimentation with something that may have multiple steps, but you want to keep your options open by keeping the original session file intact in case you want to go back to it. While this makes Save As a great way to gather and set aside a collection of different versions of the session as it develops, it’s not a good choice for backup purposes.

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Figure 4.24 The Save Copy In command is a comprehensive saving procedure that not only saves and backs up the session file itself, but all the ever-so-important subfolders (and their contents) of the main session folder. n

Save Copy In. This process takes account of everything involved in your session by making a copy of the session file and the entire session folder without leaving the current session or changing its name (as opposed to Save As). Save Copy In has its own dialog box (see Figure 4.24), allowing you to change the current bit depth and/or sample rate, the file type, as well as save your session to be compatible with older versions of Pro Tools; this makes it the most comprehensive way to save and archive your sessions. In the Items to Copy section, it even lets you decide what contents of the session folder you want to back up. With all things considered, Save Copy In is the way to go for not only taking a snapshot of your session in progress, but more importantly, it’s the sure-fire way to archive your sessions in locations other than where your original session folder resides. Every copy you make will help to ensure your session’s existence, and that’s a very, very good thing indeed.

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Auto Backup. A visit to the Preferences window (found in the Setup menu in the Pro Tools menu bar) will enable you to create yet another way to ensure your work’s existence in case of disaster. In the Operation tab of the Preferences window (see Figure 4.25),

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Figure 4.25 Going to the Operation section of the Pro Tools M-Powered Preferences window allows you to set and adjust many of Pro Tools’ functions such as automatically saving a copy of the session you’re working on. Selecting the Enable Session File Auto Backup checkbox instructs M-Powered to place the copy in the Session File Backups folder located in your main session folder.

you’ll find the Auto Backup section in the lower-left corner; there you can set how many times you want Pro Tools to automatically save a session. This process creates a backup file that’s stored in a subfolder called Session File Backups in the main session folder. You choose how frequently you want the session saved and how many files should be saved before Pro Tools discards the oldest one. The files created are numbered sequentially and are appended with .bak for good measure. When you open a session from one of these backup files, Pro Tools will append the word RECOVERED to the session name to remind you this is not the original file. Of all the backup options, this one is truly a no-brainer as it requires a onetime visit to the Preferences window to set it up—so do it!

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With some analog recording under your belt, it’s time to introduce the exciting new world of digital modeling and direct recording through the M-Audio Black Box—the only Pro Tools–compatible interface to feature onboard effects that can be recorded into your M-Powered session, and all with zero latency!

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The Black Box Revealed

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hapter 2, “The Audio Interface Explained,” revealed the theory and inner-workings of the external audio interface. Covering many important (not to mention misunderstood and/or often overlooked) topics like conversion, I/O, and soundquality features, you should have gained a firm(er) grip on the who, what, where, and why of this essential pro audio device. Between Chapters 3, “Setting Up Your M-Powered Empire,” and 4, “The Joys of Recording,” among many useful tasks, you set up your Pro Tools rig, created and saved some guitar-friendly session templates, dabbled with various condenser mics and mic-placement techniques, and laid down some guitar tracks. All in all, you’re gaining some valuable experience working in the world of digital recording—great! This chapter sets you totally in the digital world by showcasing the M-Audio Black Box (see Figure 5.1). The Black Box is both a USB audio interface and a stand-alone hardware DSP device split into three parts that seamlessly interact with one another. n

It’s a hardware modeling device featuring 40 amp models ranging from classic amp tones such as a Fender Twin or a Vox AC30 all the way to modern boutique amp tones like a Soldano SLO 100 to a Diezel VH4.

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It’s an effects processor specializing in beat-synced effects that match up perfectly to its own tempo or to the tempo set by the MIDI beat clock in your DAW (in this case Pro Tools M-Powered). This makes various modulation effects (or motion-propelled effects, as I like to call them; more on that later in this chapter) like panning, tremolo, envelope filtering, and others perform in time—all the

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Figure 5.1 The Black Box is a 24-bit/44.1kHz audio interface and a high-quality amp modeling unit featuring beat-synced effects, pre-programmed drum patterns, and much more.

time! The tempo of the effects can be controlled either by manual entry or in real-time by tap tempo. n

It’s a drum machine with fixed drum patterns whose tempo can also be controlled by manual entry or in real time by tap tempo. These loops can be rerouted internally and processed by the amp models and effects in the Black Box.

This is the first and only pro audio interface designed specifically for the guitarist using Pro Tools that is equally a stand-alone performance tool. While much of the information presented in the previous chapters will carry over to this chapter, you will learn in great detail about features the Black Box possesses that no other audio interface compatible with any version of Pro Tools has. Setting aside the analog world and all its idiosyncrasies for a while, let’s explore the advantages of digital modeling technology, programming and saving presets files to be stored and recalled, and much more.

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A Black Box READ ME Before you connect the Black Box to your computer with a USB cable, be sure to install the drivers either from the CD that came with the unit or, better yet, from the M-Audio Web site (direct your browser to http://www.m-audio.com and look for the Drivers link on the main page) to ensure that you install the latest versions. This allows the Black Box to properly function within your operating system, guaranteeing that the unit will be recognized in Pro Tools and installing the much-needed Black Box Control Panel. If you need any assistance installing the drivers, refer to the Black Box manual located on the CD that came with the unit; alternatively, download it from the M-Audio Web site.

Quick Start Because this is the most guitar-oriented piece of gear showcased so far, let’s do like we always do for a moment—plug in and rip! While getting you right into making some noise with the Black Box, I’m going to hip you to making the correct connections and making some necessary adjustments that could pertain to many other interfaces. Don’t take for granted that you already know how to properly plug in all the gear outlined here. Some of you may never have worked with powered monitors or may never have dealt with an audio interface in your signal chain—remember, the Black Box is half an interface, and those controls are always active even when you’re using the Black Box as a performance tool. If you overlook a required adjustment or make one wrong connection, you may find yourself wondering why you’re either hearing nothing or hearing nothing but feedback (the bad kind). So before you pass this section over, read the step-by-step process below carefully and in order. You might just uncover some small details that give you big returns! 1.

Connect the included 9V AC power adaptor’s barrelhead-style (think Boss pedals) plug into the power adaptor input found on the rear panel marked 9V AC 1000 mA (see Figure 5.2), and then plug the transformer into an electrical outlet. You should see the blue LCD display light up for about 10 seconds while the unit’s firmware boots up. Look for the words “M-Audio

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The Left/Mono Socket

The Power-Adapter Input

Figure 5.2 The Black Box from the back.

Black Box V2–3—1” to scroll across the display. This will assure you the unit is powered on and has booted up successfully. Where’s the Switch? The Black Box does not have an on/off switch, so don’t look for one. As long as the power adaptor is connected to the rear panel port, the Black Box is considered on.

2.

Connect a 1/4-inch cable (unbalanced TS will work, but if you’re planning on running long cable lengths or will be near some other gear that can cause interference, then go for the balanced TRS cable) from the Left/Mono socket in the rear panel’s Main Outputs section (also shown in Figure 5.2) to the input of your guitar amplifier. If you’re connecting to a pair of powered studio monitors like the Studiophile BX5a, you’ll need two cables to run in stereo from the left and right outs to each monitor.

3.

Connect one end of a 1/4-inch cable (regular TS cable will suffice because this is an unbalanced connection) to your guitar and the other to the Black Box by inserting the 1/4-inch plug into the Guitar Input socket on the front panel (see Figure 5.3).

4.

Before you power up your amp or studio monitors, play some chords with a normal, consistent attack and watch the green signal indicator (marked “sig”) found on the top panel (see Figure 5.4) to make sure it lights up. This indicates that the Black Box is receiving input signal.

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The Guitar Input Socket Figure 5.3 The Black Box from the front.

The Presets Buttons

The Clip Indicator

The Output Level Knob

The Sig Indicator

The Mix Knob

The Guitar Input Knob

Figure 5.4 The Black Box from above.

5.

Adjust the guitar input rotary control knob so the red clip indicator is barely lighting up when you hit the strings with a little extra force (also shown in Figure 5.4).

6.

Turn the output level and mix rotary control knobs (also shown in Figure 5.4) all the way down (counterclockwise).

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Setting the Mix Control Although setting the output control all the way down is a safety precaution, turning the mix control fully counterclockwise to input will let the full strength of the input signal (your guitar) pass through. Put simply, when the mix knob is set to input, you are hearing the input signal only. If the knob is turned fully clockwise to playback, you will hear nothing because this setting is used for the Black Box to receive output from the Pro Tools MPowered for monitoring purposes. For a review of the function of the mix control on an audio interface, refer to Chapter 2.

7.

Power up your amplifying source (amp or powered monitors) or plug in your headphones.

8.

Carefully adjust the output level control of the Black Box and the output volume of your amplifying source (if it has one) to your liking. For the best overall dynamics and safety, it’s a good idea to play around with both controls and find a balance between the two outputs so one device is not set too loud or too hot compared to the other.

9.

Now have fun and play! Scroll through the presets by pressing the presets up and down soft buttons (also shown in Figure 5.4) to get an idea of what the Black Box can do.

It’s always a good idea to plug the power adaptor into the unit you are trying to power before you plug the transformer into the wall socket to avoid any possibility of sparks, giving yourself a shock, or damaging the unit with a surge. Plus, always use the adaptor that came with the unit! There’s more involved in a 9-volt adapter than just 9-volts, you know. While we’re on the subject of responsible connections, it’s also always a good idea to plug in all your cabled gear before you power up anything in the chain like power amps, guitar amps, or studio monitors. This helps avoid any loud spikes that may occur if you have components turned on that have signal-boosting capabilities (amp stages) and you go to plug in a cable opposite of the engaged gear. For example, because the tip of a 1/4-inch TS or TRS cable is positive, it will always

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make that loud and annoying sound when any contact is made, especially against metal surfaces like the ones found on most 1/4-inch sockets. If you’re constantly switching gear in and out of the chain, then be sure to unplug the cable at both ends from a source where a buzz can originate, starting with the amplifying devices first. Then plug the passive/cold gear in first followed by connecting the active/hot piece second. Better yet, turn down or power down the amplifying devices before you do anything and don’t turn them back up or on until you have made all the new connections. These unwanted sounds could be very damaging to speakers, especially ones found in sensitive and expensive studio monitors—not to mention your most valuable piece of gear: your ears!

Background Check Now that you have made some noise and gotten a feel for the Black Box, it’s time to start learning what it can do. To fully understand what the Black Box has to offer and why it exists in the first place, you’ll need a little background information.

Before You Start… After you read this section, go back to the download section of the Course Technology PTR Web site and transfer the Chapter 5 ZIP file to your desktop. It contains various items like Black Box presets files and a Pro Tools M-Powered session template that will be referenced throughout the chapter. In addition, there’s a set of Black Box presets from legendary guitarists and fellow M-Audio artists Vernon Reid and Rusty Cooley! Finally, be sure to install the drivers before connecting the Black Box to a computer with a USB cable.

Guitar Tone and the Computer So far you’ve recorded digitally by first capturing an analog signal (a loud one at that) by way of a transducer (mic) and then converting it into a digital format that can be sent off to the computer. As innovative as this process is, it has its drawbacks. In order to record various forms of audio, there are many steps that need to be taken.

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Take the miked amp scenario covered in Chapters 3 and 4. This process requires a lot of setup time and a fair amount of experimentation (i.e. more time), which could sometimes lead nowhere and at some point may produce noise-disturbance issues with neighbors (i.e. even more time talking them down or moving to a new location). Then there’s the impossibility of re-creating tones the next day due to climate changes, string wear, and/or a host of other realworld issues. Perhaps the most dangerous (dangerously fun, that is) drawback is the inevitable desire for new sounds—new sounds more often than not meaning more gear! Tracking down, trying out, and acquiring a collection of amps, pedals, and guitars takes a lot of time, patience, and big money. So am I saying that buying that sweet silverburst Les Paul, investing in a vintage tweed ’59 Bassman, or spending three hours on a creative mic setup is a waste of your time and resources? Not a chance—it’s all part of the process, not to mention the lifestyle we guitar players live for, and I for one love it. But I also love options, especially when I need them. For instance, how about an option allowing us guitarists to plug directly into an audio interface, skipping all the hangups of recording an analog signal and recording our guitar right into the computer (into Pro Tools of course)? Well, ask and ye shall receive. A guitarist can record directly into a computer in one of two ways: with or without tone. When I say tone I mean pristine amp tones, rich and creamy tube-distorted tones (the good kind), gorgeous ambient tones by way of delays or reverbs, phat-sounding modulated tones produced by chorus and flangers, and, well, you get the picture. As convenient as it is to be able to plug directly into an interface and digitize your analog guitar signal with, say, a simpler interface like the M-Audio Fast Track USB or the JamLab, the signal coming into the computer is as dry (unprocessed) as can be. This would be the “without tone” way. Even if an interface boasts a dedicated 1/4-inch input and features M-Audio’s proven converters and has preamps boosting the inherently weak instrument level signal (10dB to 20dB) an electric guitar outputs, it’s still coming in bone dry. Now you might ask: Isn’t that what your clean signal is supposed to be when you plug straight into a guitar amp? Yes, but remember, a guitar amp has a

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completely different architecture in terms of handling your guitar input signal with features like an EQ section (bass, middle, treble, and usually presence), a power amp section, tubes, speakers, and cabinet resonation to name a few. All these components play a part in shaping a guitar tone, and they all contribute to the tone you hear, making your amplifier as important as we all regard it to be. What you hear through your studio monitors after plugging directly into an interface, then into Pro Tools (for example), is a snapshot (sample) of your guitar’s output voltages coming from your pickups translated into binary code—not to mention with possible latency in some instances. Enter modeling technology: the capturing of the physical signalprocessing characteristics of real-life audio gear (tube amps, pedals, speakers, microphones, etc.) and transforming them into software that emulates every nuance so it can be faithfully re-created digitally. Simply put, it’s a way for you to have everything from a Bogner Ecstasy head to a vintage Ibanez 808 Tube Screamer to a Thomas Organ Crybaby wah all the way to an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man at your disposal, either in software form or enclosed in a hardware multi-processor. While this has been achieved within the software realm in such applications as IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube series applications, the monitoring latency that these setups inherently produce becomes a huge factor to consider—and you still need a separate interface to work with those types of programs. In terms of hardware, you’re probably most familiar with this technology through the Line 6 POD series, but it isn’t recognized by any version of Pro Tools as a compatible interface. So with all this in mind, you can see the value in a unit that can not only convert and transfer your guitar signal digitally to the computer into Pro Tools, but also provide you with great-sounding DSP internally so you can do it with real guitar tones making it feel right and have no latency issues. In a nutshell, that’s what the Black Box does and more.

Black Box Trivia The Black Box was developed through a collaboration between M-Audio and Roger Linn, legendary designer of electronic music products and driving force behind Roger Linn Design.

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Linn’s past innovations have helped change the way music is made in modern times with such groundbreaking machines as the LM-1 Drum Machine, the Linn Drum, the Akai MPC series, and AdrenaLinn I and II. The AdrenaLinn units are the templates from which the Black Box was created. For more information on Roger Linn and his amazing designs, go to http://www.rogerlinndesign.com.

Hardware In the “Quick Start” section, you got a glimpse of some of the I/O and controls of the Black Box. Now it’s time to take a closer look and fill in the gaps. While this section and all that will follow will thoroughly cover the Black Box in all its glory, it’s not meant as a substitute for the user manual that comes with the unit in the form of a PDF file found on the included CD. M-Audio does a great job writing its manuals, and you should still read the one for the Black Box for a complete overview of the device or for anything that’s not addressed in this chapter. For example, the manual lists background information about all 40-amp models in the unit. What does make this chapter valuable and unique is the user (me) information gathered on how to get the most from the Black Box—not to mention the awesome pro level presets! Take note: The big blue LCD screen is not specifically pointed out because, well, there’s not much more to say about it on its own. It will be referenced in many of the descriptions and tasks that lie ahead, though. I/O You already know where to plug in your guitar and what kind of 1/4inch cable to use, and you saw the 1/4-inch stereo headphone out in Figure 5.3, so that covers the front panel. As for the rear panel, you’ve already located the power adaptor in (which, by the way, is the only way to power the Black Box as it doesn’t have the option for batteries, nor does it function via bus power through the USB cable) and the balanced main outputs (at least in mono using the left/mono out if you only connected the Black Box to a guitar amp). Of course, if you have a pair of powered monitors, you’ll want to utilize the stereo

Chapter 5

XLR Input

S/PDIF Out

Pedal Inputs

The Black Box Revealed

USB Port

Figure 5.5 The Black Box rear panel features connections to a computer, digital recording or storage media, and external controllers.

option and connect both left and right outputs to their respective monitor inputs. That leaves us with the items displayed in Figure 5.5. n

USB port. The USB port connects the Black Box to your computer both to interface with Pro Tools M-Powered (as well as other DAWs) and to upload and download presets. This will come in handy for archiving and even trading preset files with other Black Box users. You will be able to make important adjustments in the Black Box Control Panel. As an added bonus, it enables the Black Box to be controlled by a third-party software editor/librarian called Black Box SE, which can provide dynamic control options, advanced archiving, and MIDI control! (You’ll learn more about Black Box SE in a moment.) While we’re on the subject of connecting to the computer: Don’t forget to install the drivers before connecting the Black Box to a computer with a USB cable.

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Pedal inputs. The three 1/4-inch sockets marked Pedal Inputs are for connecting several peripheral devices to control the Black Box externally. This enables you to use the Black Box like a guitareffects pedal or floor-style multi-effects processor. Compatible hardware includes the M-Audio Black Box pedal board for overall control, the EX-P expression pedal for real-time tweaking of effects parameters, and the M-Audio SP-1 sustain pedal for switching between presets through momentary switching. (All of these components and their functions will be discussed in detail later in this chapter.)

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S/PDIF out. The S/PDIF out gives you the option of recording straight to another digital device that has a S/PDIF input at 24-bit/ 44.1kHz. You can record with the amp models, effects, and drums patterns directly out through the RCA socket with no signal loss by using a 75-ohm coaxial S/PDIF cable. (More on that later.)

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XLR input. The XLR input lets you connect a dynamic microphone for recording vocals or miking anything you might want to record and process with all the effects in the Black Box. The possibilities here can get very interesting, folks. (Note that because there is no option to provide phantom power, condenser mics cannot be used with the Black Box unless you add a separate phantom power supply.

The Black Box Sound Editor (see Figure 5.6) is a software-editing and archiving programming tool designed by SoundTower that controls the Black Box through a USB connection to a computer. Like the Black Box Control Panel, it allows you to exchange multiple presets

Figure 5.6 SoundTower’s Black Box SE gives you complete control of the Black Box from your computer and enables advanced MIDI control.

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between the Black Box and the computer, but then takes the process a step further by enabling you to create extensive libraries for archiving and advanced copy tasks of your presets. You can also easily tweak preset and global parameters and create user-definable templates. Perhaps the most important additive function the editor offers is it provides MIDI mapping and full implementation via an external MIDI controller. The Black Box SE is compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows XP and can be purchased at http://www.soundtower.com. Controls The Black Box control knobs and soft key buttons are located on the top panel (see Figure 5.7) of the unit. In the “Quick Start” section of this chapter, you read explanations for most of the control knobs on the right side of the top panel (refer to Figure 5.3), starting with the guitar input level rotary control knob and its green signal (marked “sig”) and the red clip indicator lights. The mix rotary control knob (also described in a general context in Chapter 2) and output level Menu Buttons

Mic Input Control Knob and Indicator Lights

Drumbeat Buttons

Presets Buttons

Tap Tempo Button

Start/Stop Button

Rotary Control Knobs

Figure 5.7 The top panel of the Black Box gives you complete control of the unit with a collection of knobs, soft key buttons, and rotary knobs.

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rotary control knob were also covered. That leaves the mic (microphone) input control and its green and red indicator lights, all the soft key-buttons on the left side of the LCD screen, and the four rotary control knobs on the bottom of the LCD to introduce. n

Mic Input control knob and indicator lights. The Mic Input control knob adjusts the level of incoming signal from a dynamic mic (with no phantom power, a condenser mic is not an option unless you provide a separate phantom power source). Use the green signal indicator light (marked “sig”) to verify there is signal coming in and then adjust the level until the red signal indicator (marked “clip”) is barely lighting up at louder than normal input to ensure a strong, consistent signal level with no clipping or distortion (the bad kind).

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Presets buttons. The Presets buttons let you travel from one preset to another. You can do this incrementally, going up or down one by one with the corresponding button (marked accordingly with up and down arrow symbols), or by quickly scrolling through presets by holding down one of the keys, depending on what direction you want to go. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what a preset is yet; presets are covered in depth in the next section of this chapter.)

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Drumbeat buttons. These buttons act exactly the same way as the Presets buttons except, of course, the choices are different. On any given preset you can incrementally or quickly scroll through the 100 fixed drum patterns/loops.

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Start/Stop button. Pressing this button starts and stops whatever drum pattern is set to play at that time.

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Tap Tempo button. This button provides a way for you to set the tempo of not only a drum pattern but also the beat-synced effects. The red tempo indicator light flashes in quarter notes against whatever tempo the internal (not external) clock source is set to. Even if you set the tempo without the drums playing or a beatsynced effect engaged, both instances would follow the tempo you have set when turned on and will always be linked to each other.

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Menu buttons. There are four soft key buttons under the Menu heading: Amp, FX (effects), Delay, and Utility. When pressed, each

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button puts the Black Box into the corresponding menu for editing of the parameters found within that category. If you hold down the Amp, FX, or Delay button for .5 seconds, those effects will be toggled on or off. n

Rotary control knobs. These knobs adjust whatever parameters are displayed above them at the time, which depends on what Menu button you’ve pressed. Each menu has a set of four parameters that are unique to that menu. These control knobs also control the parameters found in the shift parameters, which are covered later in this chapter.

If you look again at the soft keys in Figure 5.7, you’ll notice four groups of two vertical buttons, with each group of buttons featuring a function label between them. You access these functions by simultaneously pressing both buttons that flank the function name. The functions are as follows: 1.

View. This is for viewing the drum pattern name and its program number. Whatever preset you’re on, there is always going to be a drum pattern linked to it whether you have it playing or not. By default, the drum pattern name and pattern number will not be displayed on the LCD screen unless you press the up and down drumbeat buttons simultaneously to view it. Pressing either drum pattern button, as seen in Figure 5.7, can also perform this action.

2.

Compare. This is for comparing different states of a stored preset. When you fiddle with a preset, you’ll see the word Edit pop up next to PRESET in the LCD screen. This means the Black Box is onto you and knows you have altered something in that preset. If at any time during your exploration of tone tweaking you want to hear or see anything in the preset’s original state, just press the Amp and FX buttons simultaneously and you’ll be bounced back to the original state of that preset. Press the combo key action again and you’re back to your tweaked state. If you like what you’ve created, be sure to save the new version before you switch to a new preset or

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unplug (turn off) the Black Box; otherwise, you will lose that hard-earned stroke of genius. (You’ll learn how to save in a moment.) 3.

Store. Say you want to save that newfound sound after tweaking a factory preset. Just hit the Preset up and down buttons simultaneously to start the save process. Saving and archiving a preset is covered in more detail in the next section of this chapter.

4.

Tuner. You’d think with all the technological advances today there would be a way to keep guitar strings in tune forever. Well, until then, press the Delay and Utility buttons simultaneously for a chromatic tuner. As a matter of fact, do it right now. You’re probably out of tune!

That’s it for the I/O and control options. Now let’s get to work. Make sure your Black Box is connected via USB to your computer and you have downloaded the Chapter 5 folder from the Web site onto your desktop. Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to install the Black Box drivers from either the CD that comes included with your interface or the M-Audio Web site before doing anything else!

Working with Presets The Black Box organizes and stores each individual sound as a file called a preset. Presets are named by a two-digit number along with a six-character title, both of which are seen in the blue LCD screen. These presets consist of a combination of parameter settings and are as follows: n

Amp models and their controls (drive, bass, mid, treble)

n

Drum patterns

n

Beat-synced effects and their controls (type, speed, frequency, depth, wet/dry levels)

n

Delay and its controls (time, repeats, volume, drums to delay)

n

Reverb and its controls (time, highs, volume)

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n

Compression level

n

Noise gate types

n

Tempo

n

Volume levels

n

Expression pedal assignment

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Internal signal routing

The Black Box Revealed

In addition to these parameter settings, any one of the 100 fixed drum loops can be linked to each individual preset. There are 200 preset memory locations available in the Black Box. The first set of 100 (numbered 0–99) are factory presets that came installed with the Black Box and cannot be saved over as a user preset or overwritten when copying presets from your computer. The next set of 100 (numbered 0–99) are a set of user preset locations for you to save your own presets, which at first mirror the settings of the factory presets at the same preset location. You can distinguish user presets from factory presets by the word “user” displayed in the upper left hand corner of the blue LCD screen. To get started working with the Black Box, this section will guide you through copying and saving presets. To make it easy (and more fun), I’ve programmed some presets for you to work with that you should have downloaded from the Web site and placed on your desktop. After unzipping the Chapter 5 ZIP file, navigate to the Black Box Presets folder; inside it you will see a group of files with a .bbp extension. These are Black Box preset files. In order to use them, you must transfer or copy them into the Black Box, as they cannot be opened or used in any way outside the unit. Assuming you have installed the latest drivers (you can’t say I didn’t remind you), it’s time to connect the Black Box to an available USB port on your computer with the included USB cable. Copying Presets to and from the Black Box Copying presets to and from your computer enables you to back up the sounds you labored over to create and, at the same time, gives you the

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option to create as many presets as your hard drive can fit (that would be in the thousands upon thousands) and not rely on just the unit’s limited preset user locations to store them. To get at any presets you download into the Black Box, you’ll first need to set up where you want the Black Box to store them. In our case, we’ll use the Preset soft key buttons, navigate to the User preset location 01 and copy the AMPTPL.bbp preset file there (remember, you cannot copy over a factory preset). To copy a preset to the Black Box, you must first open the Black Box Control Panel on your computer. To open it on a Mac, do the following (see Figure 5.8): 1.

Click the Apple menu.

2.

Click System Preferences.

3.

In the bottom pane, marked Other, click M-Audio Black Box.

1.

2.

3. Figure 5.8 Opening the Black Box Control Panel on a Mac.

Chapter 5

2.

The Black Box Revealed

1.

Figure 5.9 Opening the Black Box Control Panel on a PC.

To open the Black Box Control Panel on a PC, do the following (see Figure 5.9): 1.

Right-click the red and white M-Audio icon in your system tray.

2.

Click M-Audio Black Box Control Panel.

To copy a preset, do the following (see Figures 5.10 and 5.11). 1.

Click the Presets & Firmware button in the Black Box Control Panel.

1.

2.

Figure 5.10 The Black Box Control Panel lets you adjust several important behaviors in the Black Box, such as the effects input source, where files are copied to and from the Black Box, and when firmware is updated.

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4.

3.

5.

Figure 5.11 Choose a preset file to be copied to the Black Box here.

2.

Click Copy to Device.

3.

A dialog box opens. Navigate to the area on your computer where the BBP files are located (for example, your desktop, as suggested).

4.

Click the AMPTPL.bbp file to select it.

5.

Click Open.

If you see AMPTPL displayed next to 01 on the blue LCD screen, then you did it! This process automatically saves the preset to that location. Because you can only copy one preset at a time, you’ll need to repeat the process for each individual preset. To reverse the process and copy a preset from the Black Box to your computer, you must first dial in the preset you want to copy from the unit to be displayed on the blue LCD screen. To illustrate, let’s copy the factory preset 72-ATOWA1 to your desktop. This preset was designed to give you a phat-sounding automatic envelope filter (commonly referred to as an auto wah) through a Fender Bassman amp

Chapter 5

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3.

2.

4.

Figure 5.12 In this dialog box, you can rename a preset file and choose where to save it.

model with a touch of delay and reverb. Using the preset menu soft key buttons, navigate to the factory preset location 72, then do the following (see Figure 5.12): 1.

Click the Presets & Firmware button in the Black Box Control Panel (refer to Figure 5.10).

2.

Click Copy from Device.

3.

In the dialog box that appears, you can choose to save the ATOWA1.bbp file with the same name or to rename it, as well as choose where on your computer’s hard drive you want to save the file. Navigate to your system’s desktop.

4.

Click Save.

The file is copied to your desktop. You will notice that the BBP file icon is either blank (Mac) or contains a graphic that indicates your operating system can’t identify an application to open it (Windows). That’s OK. It simply means your operating system either knows it

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can’t open it or doesn’t know what program to use to open. Remember: BBP preset files are proprietary to the Black Box and cannot be opened or used in any way outside of the unit—only copied to and from. So both operating systems will always display those icons for the Black Box BBP preset files.

What’s in a Name? The option to rename a BBP file will come in handy for PC users because the Black Box may sometimes use symbols when naming files that Windows does not allow to be used. With that in mind, the name that appears in the Black Box LCD will remain the same when you copy the preset back to the unit even if you save it to your computer’s hard drive with a different name.

Saving Presets As with anything in the digital world, saving (and naming) your work is of the utmost importance, especially in the case of the Black Box. While computers offer rollback options and most software programs (including Pro Tools) feature an autosave function to bail you out of reckless non-saving habits, the Black Box offers no such amenity. There’s nothing that will help you in any scenario if you don’t get in the habit of saving and naming your files. So before you explore the sonic possibilities of the Black Box and create some custom presets, it’s a good idea to go over the file-naming and saving process. The Black Box is designed so that the naming and saving processes are performed in one operation. To practice, go to user preset location 01, where you copied the AMPTPL preset; then do the following to give it your own name and then save it: 1.

Simultaneously press the two up and down Presets buttons (marked in the middle as “Store”). The preset number and the first three characters will start to blink.

2.

If you want to save the preset to another numbered location in the user preset section, use the appropriate Presets button to scroll to the desired location. In this example, let’s store this

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one as user preset 06. To do so, press the Presets button with the up arrow to move from 01 to 06. 3.

Think of a name that consists of four to six characters.

Why Four to Six? The name can consist anywhere from one to six characters, but I want to make sure you know how to enter at least four because the Black Box only lets you enter a set of three characters at a time; there’s a specific knob action you have to perform to get to the next set of three.

4.

Twist the first three rotary control knobs to enter the first three characters of the filename. The available characters starting from the beginning and turning clockwise are a blank space (no character), single digit numbers (0–9), a hyphen or dash, alphabetical letters (A–Z), and other various symbols such as an asterisk, an underscore, and a quasi-question mark.

What’s with the Bracket? Try not to be confused by the last two characters; they are left and right brackets, and the left bracket is the same as the letter C when displayed on the Black Box LCD screen. Knowing this will save you some head scratching if you run into the left bracket symbol, thinking it’s the letter C, and wonder why the respective surrounding characters are not the letters B and D!

5.

Twist the fourth knob one increment clockwise (to the right). The first three rotary knobs adjust the second set of three; enter the rest of your preset name. If you need to go back to the first set of three, twist the fourth knob one increment counterclockwise (to the left).

6.

Simultaneously press the up and down Presets buttons. The word “Saved” appears momentarily, confirming your save was successful.

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A Preset Save Caution If at any time in the save process you accidentally hit a soft key button other than the Preset increment buttons (which will change the preset number location), the save process will abort and you will be returned to the main preset view. So if you just finished twisting a semi-labor intensive six-character name, be sure to hit the correct button combination to complete the save or its gone forever—or at least until you begrudgingly do it again. Also, pay attention when you perform that final double-button action to finalize the save process. You might think you successfully hit it, take your eyes off the LCD, and navigate to another a preset only to later find out you in fact you did not, therefore losing the preset you thought you had saved. Not a good feeling, trust me.

Sharing Presets Because a saved preset file is only 4KB, it should be no problem attaching a BBP file in an e-mail message and sending it to another Black Box user even if there’s a dial-up connection in the mix. Besides being a great way to trade and build a library of great tones, this is especially useful when collaborating on a shared M-Powered session that requires a specific preset.

Presets from the Pros In the Chapter 5 folder you downloaded from the Web site you will find another folder marked “Presets from the Pros.” Inside it is a collection of presets made especially for this book for you to have fun with courtesy of my good friends and fellow M-Audio artists Vernon Reid and Rusty Cooley. While Rusty programmed a pair of furiously heavy tones you’d expect to hear from this shred master, Vernon’s collection of presets remained consistent with his ever-perplexing creativity, some utilizing an expression pedal (explained in detail later in this chapter). Using the Black Box preset procedures discussed so far, you can quickly get these great-sounding tones into your unit and share them with other Black Box users.

Chapter 5

The Black Box Revealed

Editing Presets It’s time to learn how to create your own presets. The only way to actually create or program a preset in the Black Box is to edit a preexisting preset—factory or user. There are no blank memory locations to start from, nor is there an option to erase an existing preset, leaving an empty preset location for you to create one from scratch. A preset created and saved by you is known as a “user preset” and can only be saved in the Black Box among the 100 user-preset locations, even if you create it by editing a factory preset. Preset editing is done within the four menus accessed by the soft key buttons directly to the left of the blue LCD screen (refer to Figure 5.7). When you push any of these four preset menu buttons you’ll notice that the four segmented sections or windows on the bottom of the blue LCD screen display different control parameters that pertain to the menu you chose. Each parameter is adjusted by the corresponding rotary control knob (1, 2, 3, or 4) located directly below it. After you push a menu soft key button, the control parameter on the far left will blink, signifying that it can be tweaked with its rotary knob. To tweak any of the other parameters, just start turning its corresponding knob. If you only want to view a parameter without adjusting its settings, simply turn the corresponding rotary knob one click in either direction. To exit any of the four parameter menus, returning to the main view of the preset you’re on, just hit either one of the Presets buttons once. (Don’t worry; this action will only display the current preset name and number location. It won’t move you to the next preset. You would have to hit the respective button again or hold it down to scroll to start navigating to other presets.) To enable you to fit even more tweakable features without requiring you to add more hardware controls, the Black Box is designed with shift parameters. These are nested functions housed inside the Amp, Delay, and Utility menus. You access them by initiating a specific control parameter and then double-tapping the corresponding menu button to enter into the shift parameter. To initiate the control parameter without adjusting it, simply turn the corresponding rotary control knob once in either direction. Each shift parameter is discussed within

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Table 5.1 Shift Parameters and Their Locations Menu

Parameter 1

Parameter 2

Parameter 3

Parameter 4

Amp

None

Compression

Amp mid

None

Delay

Reverb time

Reverb high frequencies

Reverb volume

None

Utility

Noise gate

Link drumbeat

None

Tempo source

its respective menu explanation; see Table 5.1 for a complete list of the shift parameters.

Note: Unlike most guitar amps, pedals, or just about any other piece of guitar-related gear, the Black Box parameters are adjusted in increments ranging from 0–99 instead of 1–10 (or 1–11 if you’re Nigel Tufnel of Spin€al Tap). There are even some parameters that go into negative values, such as some FX depth ranges found in the FX menu. Play around with adjusting parameters to get a feel for where the tweaking will be according to the number displayed on the LCD.

Amp Models Some zealot tonemeisters will tell you all you need is your hands, the right guitar, and a great-sounding amp to build a great tone. This thinking could stem from the fact that before the first guitar effect pedals started to emerge in the early to mid 1960s, guitar players only had their amplifiers for tone shaping. Luckily for us, modeling technology has given us a great gift: digital replications of classic and modern amplifiers called amp models. The Black Box features 40 amp models for you to sink your fingers into. Good thing, too, because it would be impossible for most of us to obtain and maintain all the amps modeled in the Black Box without going bankrupt, let alone have somewhere to store them!

Chapter 5

The Black Box Revealed

It’s a good idea to develop a library of raw amp tones first. Go to preset 01, where you copied the AMPTPL (short for amp template) preset. This preset enables you to start your tweaking from a clean slate since it was created for you to scroll through and hear just the amp models without any effects—beat-synced, delay, reverb, or compression. The EQ controls are all set to 50 (including the shift parameter mid control); the delay and effects (FX) have been set to off; and the reverb and compression levels are at 0. To allow for the most honest dynamic performance of the model, the noise gate has been set to the lowest setting (1). This gate setting will expose any noise issues in the higher gain amps and will expose any noise resulting from the addition of any compression. Starting with the BASMAN (Fender Bassman) amp model already loaded, go through the 40 models by hitting the Amp Menu button and twisting the first rotary knob, under the amp control parameter, to scroll through the choices. Spend some time with each model and tweak all the control parameters and shift control parameters (compression and mid frequency) until you’ve created a tone you like. When you dial up a tone you really like, make sure you save it (refer to the section “Saving Presets” if you need help). In the saving process, besides entering your own unique name for the preset, assign it to a different user preset location. This will return preset location 01 to its original state (i.e., the state it was in after you copied the AMPTPL preset to the Black Box—similar to performing Save As on your computer) so you can start from scratch again. If you start to fill up the available user preset slots, you can always copy those presets to your computer and free up space in the Black Box (not to mention create a backup!). The amp model choices are broken down in the following list. For a full list of amp models, refer to page 10 of the Black Box manual. n

Amp models 1–23 are models of actual amplifiers, both vintage and modern, ranging from a Fender Twin Reverb (see Figure 5.13) to a Bogner Ecstasy (see Figure 5.14). To get the best results, it helps to know a little something about the amp that was modeled. Be sure to read the descriptions for each model starting on page 11 of

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Figure 5.13 The Fender Twin Reverb is a timeless classic 2  12 combo without which no collection would be complete.

Figure 5.14 The Bogner Ecstasy is one the most highly coveted modern multichannel high-gain heads out today.

the Black Box manual. If that isn’t enough, get online and search the amp by manufacturer and model; you should quickly come up with plenty of useful information clueing you into what the specific model is shooting for. This is information that will carry over into many facets of tone creation and recording. n

Amp models 24–32 are custom tones created by the M-Audio team with specific tonal scenarios in mind like high-gain aggression, 60sstyle twang, and models to complement certain pickups.

Chapter 5

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The Black Box Revealed

Amp models 33–37 are models of classic bass amps like the Ampeg SVT (Figure 5.15) or the SWR SM500. Not only is this useful for recording bass tracks, but some of the fullest guitar tones ever to be created were through bass guitar amps. Check them out!

Figure 5.15 The Ampeg SVT (Super Vacuum Tube) series is a powerhouse bass amp designed to deliver 300 watts in 1969! What? Did you say something? What’s that ringing in my ear?

n

Amp models 38–39 are designed to provide full-sounding fuzz tones, with model 38-FUZZ giving tones modeled after a thick Dallas/ Arbiter Fuzz Face (see Figure 5.16) and model 39-OCTAVE delivering a Roger Mayer Octavia octave fuzz tone (see Figure 5.17).

n

Amp model 40-MICPRE is meant to give you that clean yet warm direct-to-the-console sound. Be mindful of the drive settings, though—you should roll back the drive level (first control parameter in the amp menu). Start at 0 and don’t go far above it! A Word to the Wise When you’re checking out the amps, keep in mind that your guitar body type and pickups play a huge role in how the amp will respond to your playing dynamics and have a big part in what the overall tone will be. What may not work for a humbucker-equipped Ibanez Universe seven-string might sound amazing with a standard Tele set to the neck pickup. While the

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possibilities seem endless (and they are), that doesn’t mean every single one is right for you. Try not to get discouraged if a model just doesn’t work even after hours of tweaking. At the same time, don’t pass up a model if the tone is not there right from the start. Give it some time and you might be surprised at what you hear. I’ve seen engineers dial in tones that most players would mortgage their house for with a mere twist of the basic EQ section knobs.

Figure 5.16 The Dallas/Arbiter Fuzz Face, now distributed by Dunlop, was one of Jimi’s earliest sonic toys and can still be found in the pedal boards of guitar legends like Er