Happy Monday -
It looks like I am swinging towards techie for the next few weeks.
But here's a thing to listen to, just to get the day going.
https://youtu.be/S3EKEwMXmXY?
Fishmans
From Japan, Fishmans started out playing dub (reggae). Early stuff is fairly typical and predictable, but there's something about it. But they swerved, and later stuff is what you're hearing. Dreamy, textural, genre unspecific improvisations with a dub rhythmic sense and bizarre, hermaphroditic vocals courtesy of frontman Shinji Sato. Sato died in 1999. The band has carried on, not what it used to be, but still interesting.
This song, 'Long Season', is also the entirety of the album Long Seasons. Wonderfully melodic, strange stuff.
Tape
30 years ago I produced and engineered a great band from Long Island. They had a deal in-pocket and it all blew up. A pity. They had everything going for them, from writing to chops to a look.
The guitarist found the original 24 track 2" masters reels of Ampex 456. He had them baked to re-stick the magnetic coating to the backings, and had everything transferred to digital. So, now I have all these songs as multitracks and I'm remixing them and having a ball in general.
(Side note: did you know if your masking tape is tearing funny it's because the glue on the edges has hardened. If you microwave it for 10 or 20 seconds, it softens the glue and makes the tape usable. This is roughly the same thing that happens to reel-to-reel tape.)
One thing that struck me immediately is how different things sound recorded to tape compared to recording into a DAW. A huge difference. Let's get a bit in the geek weeds about tape.
How it works as fast as I can explain it
Last week I wrote a bit about transformers. Analog tape is basically a transformer split across time. Current flows through the tape deck heads—which actually look a bit like transformers—and induce a magnetic current, called flux, in the tape. Tape is actually made up of millions of little magnetic particles suspended in glue. The flux moves them around, because the glue isn't that solid, and they arrange themselves into a shape that matches (analogous to) the signal that was fed into the heads. To play it back, the tape slithers past the heads, the flux on the tape induces a current in the head that matches the pattern of the particles on the tape and voilá: you have a tape recording.
See how it's kind of like a transformer split in half and across time?
(Side note: if you think about what is going on to make a tape recorder work, it is so unbelievably complex that it's a miracle anyone ever thought of the idea. Had digital recording been developed first, no one would have bothered with analog recording.)
Tape recording has many of the same issues as a transformer. Tape recording has inertia problems.
Tape has Inertia
The magnetic particles on the tape don't really want to move. They're very comfortable sitting there, wrapped in glue (called "binder"). It takes a lot of power to get them to move, and this power comes from a bias signal, which is a very strong signal that overcomes the inertia of the particles such that the actual audio signal can move them. Think of bias, in this case, as a muscled-out goon that threatens the particles with bodily harm unless they do exactly what the boss (the audio signal) tells them to do.
So, the particles get hit with bias and audio, and move into place to match the audio waveform, but they're a little bit slow about it—they're reluctant. There's inertia both coming and going: they don't want to start and once started, they don't want to stop.
Think about this: you have a fast transient coming in, and the particles are slow to react to it. What will happen to that transient?
It gets clipped, right? Very subtly, in many cases inaudibly, but if the tape can't respond to the transient quickly enough, the transient isn't accurately recorded. The transient gets rounded off a little bit.
Once the current stops, the tape keeps moving for a bit. That doesn't seem to be an accurate representation of the waveform, does it? It isn't.
Tape is a limiter with an instantaneous attack and an almost instantaneous release.
A tape recording is a really good, but inherently slightly inaccurate, picture of the waveform. This inaccuracy is partly responsible for what people describe as "tape warmth" or smoothness. Things definitely sound smoother when you roll off transients—and remember that most of the high-frequency information on a recording is in the transients. The inertia of the tape distorts the entire waveform, not just the transient. It's always a little slow reacting to the ups and downs
But unlike using a clipper or a very fast limiter to nip off transients, and setting a threshold so that it only happens to loud transients, tape has no threshold. It is doing this "inertia clipping" all the time.
Think of tape as a limiter with an instantaneous attack and an infinitely low threshold. Everyone gets part of their head sanded off, even the children and the pets.
Now, what happens as you increase the gain and slam even more signal into the tape?
Tape compression and saturation
Well, at some point, all the particles on the tape are moved and there are no more to move, and no place to move to, so they basically can't align themselves to the incoming waveform. Now things REALLY start to clip. And when things really start to clip, a lot of harmonic distortion is generated.
This is tape compression/saturation. Remember, compression, saturation and distortion are all degrees of the same thing: non-linear reproduction of the wave form. At first it is subtle: the transients get rounded off. As you shove more signal into the tape, the particles saturate (they can't move anymore) and things distort and start to sound fuzzy.
Drums on Tape
Recording drums on tape was tricky, principally because decks used VU meters for metering and VU meters are slow to respond to peaks. I did a ton of experimenting, having a drummer play and then pushing the signal into the tape at various levels, and found that I had to run things about 10dB down on the meter to get the peaks recorded sounding uncompressed to on tape.
In other words, for drums, -10db on the VU meter was at about 0VU if the meter was fast enough.
Increasing the power would crush things up a little bit. If I wanted a fatter snare, I could push that harder into tape. But if I pushed the overheads into tape, instead of the cymbals having a "tish" sort of sound, they'd have a "pfweish" because the tape would roll off the transient a lot. It would also add a bunch of high-end harmonic distortion.
Your Homework
Here's a thing to do: go to our website and grab an Echoleffe Tape Delay demo.
Get a digital recording of a snare—from Easy Drummer or Slate Drums or whatever. Put it on its own channel and bounce it so it's an audio track.
Now, put the Echoleffe Tape Delay on the insert of that channel.
Click the Tape Saturation Mode button on the front panel. This turns off the delay functions and now you have an excellent tape simulator.
Click the Korneff Audio nameplate to get around to the back. Turn up that gain knob until that snare is squashed a bit. You'll hit a point where it really sounds great—huge, fat and seemingly stretched out across time. Bounce that too, so now you can compare the original with the tape compressed.
Here's what it looks like when I did this. This is with Logic; it renders ugly waveforms. At a glance, it is easy to see the compression. And also that the clipping is asymmetrical. That's a whole other story.
But if you zoom in:
Look at where the cursor is. Do you notice the peaks don't line up, that the waveforms don't line up, and that the "tape" version that went through the ETD is happening a tiny bit later across time.
Yes, tape inertia actually lags the waveform enough that it is visible.
Tape changes the groove??!! How insane is that?
Play with the Echoleffe just as a tape compressor and saturator this week. What does it do to vocals? Piano? Can you get it to respond emotionally? By this I mean I was always trying to set vocals levels such that when the singer got loud, the tape crunched a little, which gave the loud bit a little extra umph, grit and pain.
More homework next week!
Warm regards,
Luke
PS - if you like getting lessons, let me know. If you hate getting lessons let me know. If you have questions, ask them.
Happy Monday -
Korneff Audio started on a Black Friday five years ago, with one plug-in, the original Pawn Shop Comp. Five years later, we’ve got nine, and a bunch more waiting to see daylight. So, I guess happy birthday to us?
For this episode (producer/engineer John Agnello calls each of these an episode... sounds like an eventual podcast...), I thought I’d be extra useful by giving some info on our plug-ins, specifically going into how Dan and I use them in the studio, some design background, some usage hints.
There’s so much though, that I am splitting this into two emails, one today and one tomorrow. SO... keep an eye out for New Tuesday!
Factoids and Uses and Whatnot on All Our Plugins, going by age
Pawn Shop Comp/Pawn Shop Comp 2.0
It’s misnamed. It’s really a vintage channel strip consisting of a tube preamp coupled to a FET-style compressor. It works on everything, including the mix bus, but it’s el supremo on vocals and bass. Tons of saturation options because of the preamp, and the ability to switch in different tubes and transformers. The way we use the PSC is to put it on a channel, flip around to the backside, fiddle with the preamp and the tubes and transformer, and THEN adjust the compressor. Think of it as selecting the console you want to use before engaging the channel EQ.
Fun Factoid: The Operating Level control is a circuit Dan nicked off a cassette tape duplicator his Uncle Bob had given him when Dan was a wee teen. He liked how it sounded, so it wound up in the Pawn Shop Comp.
Usage Secret: I’ve mentioned this before... two of them, one right after the other, set one to respond quickly and the other a bit more slowly (play with attack and release). Swap the order in the inserts ’til you get something smooth.
Talkback Limiter
This beast is another FET-style limiter, based on a circuit found in SSL consoles designed to keep studio talkback mics from destroying speakers and ears. Hugh Padgham and Peter Gabriel invented gated drum sounds with this circuit.
Yes, it is amazing on drums. It makes anything snap and click and punch. It lives on our snares, kicks, room mics, etc. It’s probably the best overall drum compressor out there.
But, and I suppose it’s part of the FET transistor modeling, and the artifacts produced by an FET, the TBL adds a thickness to things. It’s hard to describe but I can hear it in my head. It has a similar sound to Neve Diode compressors. It makes me clench my jaw and want to bite something. If you know Neve compressors, you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, the TBL is really great on things like vocals and acoustic instruments provided you back the DRY WET BLEND way way down towards DRY. Like, barely crack it open. It adds a little beef and evenness. We typically follow it with another compressor.
Fun Factoid: for distortion effects, click around to the back and mess with the trimpots. AND for a real adventure, on the front panel, click on the power lights at the top and see what happens...
Amplified Instrument Processor
I wrote about this thing's monstrously good sounding EQ a few episodes ago. Further, I wrote a whole course on how to use it. If you want to be enrolled in the course, reply to this email and I’ll sign you into it.
Usage Idea: Put an AIP on each of your submix buses. Switch on the Proprietary Signal Processing button on the front, and then play around with the three different settings on the back - one is tube-ish, one is tape-ish, and one is California 1970s’ solid state-ish. Again, do this BEFORE you do anything else with the plug-ins. It’s like picking out different sounding channels for each grouping of instruments.
Micro Digital Reverberator
You know who likes reverb units with almost no controls? Me. I love messing around with compressors, and EQs, and delays but when I get to reverbs I just want presets that sound good. I don’t even like adjusting simple things, like the decay time. Maybe it’s from screwing around for hours on 480Ls and always going back to the presets. Who knows.
Do This: Even though the original hardware units this puppy is modeling were basically designed to go on an insert or across a whole mix, put the MDR on its own channel and feed it via a send. Why?
1) You want to be able to EQ your reverbs. This is a HUGE trick. This guy explains it better than I can, so go read this.
2) You want to be able to feed the output of one reverb unit into the next, and so on.
What?? Cascade the reverbs?? YES!!!! It’s total insanity and fun!
In fact, do this: Put THREE MDRs on three separate channels. One is a short small room, one is a plate, and the last is a huge concert hall. Use the small room to widen and add a touch of ambiance. Use the plate for vocals, but just a smidge, and then use the concert hall for pads, etc. NOW... feed a bit of that small room INTO the concert hall, but just a touch, to have some movement and depth way way back there in the speakers. For special moments, like the end of a solo, or a chunk of vocal line when the singer screams out his ex-wife’s name in anguish, or when someone has decided a certain single snare hit is incredibly important, feed the small room into the plate and the plate into the concert hall. Obviously automate this stuff.
Fun Factoid: Everyone overlooks this, but the MDR has stereo widening/narrowing on the back....
The Echoleffe Tape Delay
This is one intimidating monster. I’ve seen grown mix engineers fling themselves into oncoming traffic when they discover there are individual EQs, bias, and pan settings for each of the three delay lines. I have stood over their mangled bodies, finally at peace, and I’ve whispered, “Did you know you also have complete control over wow, flutter, tape age, head bump, as well as tape formulation, and you can switch off the Echoleffe’s delay function and just use it as a tape saturation simulator?"
This thing is the opposite of the MDR. It’s bristling with controls like a pissed-off German porcupine. It’s a pity, because once you get the logic of the controls, the ETD is quick to use and impossibly versatile. It can do easy things, like adding slapback on a vocal (it’s overkill for that, honestly), but it excels at making sounds you’ve never heard before.
The ETD can turn a single note into a keyboard pad that modulates and moves. It can twist delays into reverbs and musically sync the whole thing to the tempo of the track.
Usage Ideas: Set the delay times to below 11ms - set all three of them differently. Pan them everywhere. Play the track, and adjust the feedback for each delay line on the front panel, then go to the Tape Maintenance Panel and futz around with wow and flutter — this will add modulation to the delay times and suddenly you’ve got flanging happening that is out of this world and panned all over the stereo image. Gradually increase one of the delay times to get pitch-shifting effects. Automate the changes of the delay times. Play with the REVERB DENSITY switch on the front panel to basically DOUBLE the number of echo returns.
Even if you never buy this thing, download the demo and spend a week writing songs with it.
Licensing
Our original five plug-ins are iLOK-based for security purposes. Yes, we are phasing that out and soon our original five will use our own proprietary licensing system developed by Dan, the damn genius. When will this happen? We are hoping very very soon, but no promises. But know that we’ve heard your requests to get the heck off iLOK and we are working towards that.
I don’t have a new record this week. I’m still listening to Kim Deal every day. It gets better and more creative and insightful with each listen. But here’s a great interview with her on the Broken Record podcast. She talks about everything, including the new album. And she’s really really funny! And so so smart. She talks a lot about Steve Albini, and sadly, she occasionally refers to him in the present tense, as though he was still alive.
Warm regards,
Luke
Happy Monday!
We started our Black Friday Sale today. And we added plug-in bundles, which people have been asking for. SO... 40% off plug-ins and up to 60% off on bundles!
Kim Deal
A few weeks ago I wrote about albums by older guys. I was in some sort of search for meaning, I suppose.
On November 22nd, former Pixie and Breeder Kim Deal, at age 63, released her first "real" solo album, 'Nobody Loves You More'. It's simply wonderful. Might be the best album of the year.
Kim had released a few things on her own in the past decade, things she recorded on eight-track tape — she's an analog kinda gal, but finally hunkered down in Florida, learned Pro-Tools (by bugging her friend, engineer/producer Steve Albini for lessons over the phone) and got to it.
Most of 'Nobody Loves You More' was recorded by Steve Albini, with Kim producing, along with a crackerjack bunch of players ranging from rock musicians to jazzers, to string players, and more. The record is lush, quirky, and ever-interesting. Songs evolve from sparse, punky Americana into a cha cha, or there's a pedal steel, or strings. It's all over the map, but it's held together by melody and Ms Deal's fascinating voice. It takes a bit to get used to — she sounds like an animated cartoon character played by a chain-smoking alcoholic, but it's the perfect voice to deliver the pain and magic of this album.
The record is full of pain. She lost her mom to Alzheimer's, and then, following in quick succession, her dad, her aunt, and her uncle — within one year. And then she lost Steve Albini — he died after 'A Good Time Pushed', the last thing he ever recorded.
But while it's a painful record, it's not sad. There's something gorgeous and content about it, triumphant and wise. And Ms. Deal has a great sense of humor, which comes out in the lyrics and the scatological arrangements. It's such a good record, and so worth a listen. In a fair and decent world, it would sweep the Grammy's.
But it won't. Because it's not something built to fit an algorithm and tweaked to within an inch of its life — there's not even autotune on it. It doesn't have guest rappers, songs written by fourteen people, or Max Martin anywhere near it. Kim has about 7,000 subscribers on YouTube. This music wasn't written with data science and AI pitching in on the lyrics. It's not statistically constructed to increase engagement. It ain't fucking "content."
It's a record by someone doubling down on the one thing all of us can double down on: being one's self. Unapologetically screwed up, vulnerable, perhaps a bit pissed-off, but playing your own damn game.
'Nobody Loves You More'
Some things on YouTube:
A short one this week. Have a lovely time - the holidays are upon us. Love love love.
Warm regards,
Luke
