Fun with Echo

[Slacker G]

What happened to all the forums? Everything is in slow mo these days. That should give someone a blues idea. I got in front of my DAW for the first time in months... or even maybe a year. Anyway I ended up with a tune called "Only When it Rains" I'm sure it would work great slow, but I went for a more pre rock sound. But if you like bouncy echo, this might be your bag.

I was sitting around last Sat messing with an idea for a song. It was made up of practice riffs I use to keep my fingers limber from Arthritis since I have about 7 kinds of it. I was going to make an instrumental out of them, but a pattern kept bugging me for lyrics, so I wrote them. I laid down the track and it pretty much sucked. Then I made a clone of the lead track and chopped it up into sections. I added echo to one part, and reverb to the other on the cloned track. No overdubs as it was recorded straight through, which accounts for the bad notes... or "Jazz licks”.

At least it got me in front of my DAW for a change. I needed that. Since I was inspired I sat down at my DAW the next day. When I hit the first notes of another song fingernails flew across the room like popcorn so much for that.

"Only When it Rains" http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12785053

[NEONMOONY]

Yeah, talkin' about slow forum in the Way Off Topic section. Good to get recording, helps the juices flow think.

[LesFromChicago]

Nice slick sound there, Slacker G.

I have one question, what is a DAW?

[Slacker G]

Les,

Digital Audio Workstation. A rough definition for a computer that has been specialized for audio recording and mixing. Usually done by getting rid of all the crap out of it and more or less dedicating its use for recording purposes only.

I used an old P4 3.0 with win XP for the OS. The soundcard was an el-cheapo Soundbblaster live (The old 16 bit PCI card. ) A bit noisy but I was too lazy to pack up all my gear and move to a high dollar system since this was right along side my workbench when inspiration hit me. I used Sonar 4 . But after I deleted the roaring TV picked up by the mike in between the vocals it sounded good enough to keep. (I use only the finest recording techniques)

This was going to be an instrumental, but It kept informing me that it was Memphis Blues, so I added lyrics and vocals to it.

The guitar is a one shot pass while I was singing so there are a few glitches in my picking. For the echo I cloned that guitar track and dragged the clone back to sync it to the original. I then dragged another copy to another track and added reverb to it for the solo. Then I deleted portions of the two FX tracks so that the vocal backing has echo and the instrumental ride has reverb. Probably far more than you wished to know. I was trying for that old Memphis "rockabilly" Sun studio sound behind the vocal portion. They did it with two tape decks, starting one deck behind the other and recording both. So I did it the same way using a single track and cloning it.

Sorry that I didn't get an answer to you sooner but I didn't think anyone was around.

[Slacker G]

NEONMOONY,

I have been coming here occasionally to check what was going on, but like a great many of the forums traffic has really slowed down. It makes me wonder if all the posters were posting at work previously, and now that the government is in "Kill all the jobs mode" they don't post. Perhaps not but it sure seems that way.