Sunday, January 19, 2014

"For Shan Chard" - Updated Version of Tune Posted

"For Shan Chard" is a tune I recorded on Friday during the celebration for Shan Chard aka Lacey Lohner at Lacey's Place.  The version I uploaded yesterday was bone dry as I hadn't tweaked it in any way before uploading it.  I decided it needed a little better treatment than that so it's now got some compression, reverb, etc to 'sweeten' the sound of it.  The content of it is not changed as nothing was edited in or out of the tune.  (Ride the Dragon podcast:  "For Shan Chard")

I'm getting a lot more satisfied with the sound of the guitar and I'm sure it would thrill you to the Moon to tell you about what I tweaked to get it that way.  Still, I've been going on about what's in other people's kits so maybe a bit on that would be interesting to you.

The guitar goes into a Boss GT-100 effects box and then goes into a small Yamaha mixer.  The bass goes into a Boss GT-10B effects box and then it goes into the same mixer.  The keyboard goes into an echo box and then into the mixer.

The output from the mixer goes into a Boss RC-50 looper and that in turn goes on to the Peavey mixer which is the primary.  The RC-50 is connected via MIDI to a Boss DR-880 drum machine and the output from that goes to the primary mixer.

There are no effects on the vocal mike and it goes directly to the primary mixer.  The absence of effects is a problem and that will get solved in time.

The output from the mixer goes to a pair of powered speakers which keep things good and loud here in the Fort Worth Rockhouse.  There is also a USB connector which is what I use to send the output to the computer and in turn out on the audio stream to the Internet.

The signal path might seem needlessly complex but the small Yamaha mixer is crucial.  This is what permits easily changing the volume and, to some extent, the tone of the instruments going through it and consequently into the Boss RC-50.  The ability of the RC-50 to loop sounds is quite good but it's not good at mixing them and it's very easy to overdrive it.  The Yamaha gives the flexibility needed to feed it better and get a better loop as a result.

The only device that could be eliminated is the echo box the keyboard uses but that one is just for the fun of it and removing it wouldn't change anything about the overall sound.

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