Reaper, you've done it again. ReaSamplOmatic5000.

As I mentioned earlier I decided to make some drum tracks to play along with for my fingerstyle arrangements, equally to improve my tempo and equally to make them more engaging to audiences. I've played with drummers many times over the years, solo fingerstyle, it makes sense. Solo fingerstyle already incorporates a bassline so don't need a bassist, it incorporates a melody so don't need a singer, it incorporates a rhythm so don't need a rhythm guitarist are out...there's some but not a lot of percussion so drummers are a good fit! I've talked about playing with drummers many times as far back as 2009 and 2010 and at an open night a decade ago not to mention a gig I did this very year at work with my mate Geoff.

I'm not a very good drummer. I own an entry level electric drum kit, a Yamaha DTX Explorer, I dabbled a bit years ago, decided drumming is best left to drummers. But I've always had a love for the drums and how they fit with guitars, and it goes right back. Let my wax nostalgically for a moment.

In the mid 80's I was a Commodore 64 nut. It's where I learnt to program - C64 basic and even hand coded 6502 assembler. Musically, there were a few programs I used on it, one was "Funky Drummer". I would make drum loops and play along with them endlessly. Sadly no recordings of that exist anymore...I do have a few cassette tapes with various stuff on it, perhaps one day I will stand up a cassette player and see if I can find any!

In the mid-late 90's a mate of mine at work introduced me to the DOS multi-track sequencer "Impulse Tracker" which was a whole new level of drum machine, with actual drum samples! I had a lot of fun with that. That eventually gave way to "Modplug Tracker", being Windows based, but I never enjoyed it quite as much. I wrote several original songs in the late 90's early 2000's during the time I was getting more into arranging fingerstyle covers. Fingerstyle had always been my first love, but I had a fun experimental "full band" period of time which ended around 2001.

Impulse Tracker

ModPlug Tracker

Yes, recordings exist from that era...I need to find the masters and remix them...one day. I've never shared any here before, I'm not sure why - possibly because they just aren't any good - but why not. Have a listen to these badly mixed songs I wrote - using Impulse Tracker, my electric guitar, bass and some vocals. Ask me if you want me to talk more about songs from my distant past :-)

Blue Metal:
Sheister Meister:

Which brings me back to the topic of the day, making drum tracks. I'm not going to revive any of that old software, but I have my DAW Reaper, and I have Kenny Gioia, The Legendary Reaperian of Lore. He showed me the FX called "ReaSamplOmatic5000", which is EXACTLY what a sample tracker in the context of Reaper should look like. Good job Repearians. It took me a while to get my head around it, but it is just what I needed. Essentially using MIDI to track samples, making it the drum machine sequencer I loved from my youth. I've already churned out a backing drum track for "Wish You Were Here". What really makes ReaSamplOmatic5000 special for me is that I can us my little AKAI MPK mini mk3 MIDI device as a drum trigger - OR - I can use my Yamaha DTX Explorer as an actual kit through my PreSonus interface to record the drum hits, when I have drummer in the house. Or even, olde school, just click away in the MIDI editor and make them all like I did when I was a kid.

So nice. I've got my WAVBVKERY vintage kit drum samples, I will need to look for others for the various songs I do - but the 70's Ludwig is a great starting point . It will take some time, but it will be good to make these drum backing tracks.

JAW's guide to using ReaSamplOmatic based on Kenny G's tutorials

References: Youtube 1 Youtube 2

Note for Windows OS: In Options->Preferences Device, if you are just using your computer soundcard, then don't use DirectSound, it is gross and laggy. You could use ASIO (either the one that came with your MIDI controller or ASIO4All) but the driver takes over windows sounds so you wan't be able to listen to youtube/music/etc. A good option however is WASAPI, which is Microsoft's answer to ASIO. If you use it in Exclusive mode it is pretty close to ASIO, but then you may as well use ASIO. In Shared mode it is quite good - not too laggy, and you can listen to Youtube at the same time. Change your Block size to be low for low latency, but high enough that you aren't hearing crunchiness.

• Make a new track called Drums. Set it to Record, set the Input to MIDI, All Channels.
• Right mouse click Input, Track Recording Setting, turn on Quantise to 16th notes.
• Right mouse click Input again, set Record MIDI to Overdub. That way each pass just adds drums.
• Make another track called "Kick". Add the FX ReaSamplOmatic5000.
• In the ReaSamplOmatic5000 drag in a Kick Drum sample. The View->MediaExplorer is a great way to browse your sample library, when you have found the one you like, drag it into the waveform window.
• Set the Note start and note end to both be the MIDI number for your target MIDI note. It's a good idea to turn on View->Virtual Keyboard so you can see what number/what is happening.
• Set Min vol to -inf if you are using a touch sensitive (velocity) MIDI trigger. If you are just using your computer keyboard, not really an issue, it's only on/off
• Make sure the Mode is set to Sample (Ignores MIDI note).
• Route your Drums track to the Kick track by dragging the routing icon from one to the other. Set Audio to Off, you only want to route MIDI.

You are now at a stage where you have a MIDI track to record your MIDI triggers, it passes the MIDI down to a drum track, the drum track listens out for the one specific MIDI note and then plays the sample when it gets it. You can add other normal FXs to it, adjust faders, panning, etc, like a normal track.

A few other tips/tricks:

• Obviously, add a track per drum type!
• You can include multiple samples per track, for instance I will have a "Hat" track, and it will include an open and close hat sample.
• In the case of an open hat which rings out, you can make it stop ringing if another hat strike is made. Add an FX "JS: MIDI Choke", set the Choke Note Range Start to the the MIDI note that you want to kill the ringing drum, set the Affected Note Range Start to the MIDI note of the ringing drum. In the ringing drum, set "Obey note-offs" to true. Now, if you trigger an open hat, then a moment later trigger a closed hat, the open hat sample will stop ringing, so more like a real drum kit.
• When in the MIDI editor, setting to "Named Notes" view is nicer, and double right click on a note to name it.
• You can change the Grid size in the MIDI editor in the drop down box at the bottom of the window.
• If you need a different time signature, for example there is a 2/4 bar, then right click on the bar in the main window, Insert Time Signature/Tempo Marker, set it to your new time signature, and then repeat the proces in the next bar to change it back to the previous timing.

What's happening December 2024

I'm mucking around with a number of musical stuff at the moment!

On the fingerstyle arrangement front, I am polishing, practising, and getting a few ready for recording over Christmas. It's been a while since I recorded an arrangement, I'm looking forward to getting some done. After around a year of mixing and learning about the DAW Reaper I have a slightly different perspective on recording, I might even start to sound a bit professional in the future - Watch this space!

In other news I have recorded a song from my teenage daughter's "girl band"...they are the quintessential power trio, Lyds is the singer/songwriter/guitarist front person, my Naomi is singer/bassist and Jess is the drummer. I'm thinking "Cream" with Clapton/Bruce/Baker, but they were well before even my time, so maybe "Nirvana" is slightly more contemporary, but I don't think Krist ever sang? Anyway.

I got them to record one of their originals to a click track. Mostly because all I *had* was a two channel mixer. Recorded stereo drums, then guitar and bass, then two vocals. It took several hours, it was like herding cats...they are 15&16 year old teenage girls. I later put together a mix, it took most of my effort just doing audio quantisation on the drums and the bass. Because the song is punchy, it needed to be super-tight and it wasn't. The vocals and the distorted electric guitar were okay - the guitar was not punchy so slightly out timing is not noticeable. The girls have been singing together for a while so they matched in nicely. And besides when vocals are leading or training a beat, well, that's "expression" :-)

Two things came out of that session. First is that recording with only two channels is not enough. In a fortuitous set of circumstance, while chatting about it to one of my mates at work who has been creating music for years, he said "Oh I have an old PreSonus with 8 channels, I'm upgrading to a Focus-Right, do you want to buy it off me?" So I have a PreSonus Studio 18|24 USB sitting in front of me that I need to get familiar with.

The other thing to come out of that session is I recorded electric drums as a stereo channel straight from my drum machine. I felt helpless mixing it. I'm now quite used to mixing an analogue kit with 7 mics on it, and I love the flexibility. In the stereo mix the snare sound was not at all what I wanted. I ended up putting a sample on top of it for all the hits of the snare, that was tedious. I know that my drum machine can act as a midi trigger, I even bought a midi cable for it a while ago, just haven't used it. The PreSonus has a midi interface, so I need to get familiar with that, I need to go back to glorious multi tracked drums.

So as if all that is not enough, I have been playing a bit more often to a metronome. I still dislike them, but as far as being a useful all round musician, you need to be able to play super tight to a click. But recently, I had switched to a drum beat instead of a metronome. It is less like being constantly hit in the brain with a stick. I've found it almost pleasant. The problem is, not every drumbeat suits every song. So I thought "why don't I use a drum machine app where I can save each beat, and the tempo, and recall it when needed?" Not to mention not having to remember a tempo I like to play each song as. While looking for something that could do this, I found that most apps that will do what I want are cut down-DAWs, rich in features, of stuff I don't want to learn. So then I figured, I'm already learning a DAW, reaper, why not just knock up a MIDI drum track for a song, export it as MP3, and then play along to each one? It ties in with my need to use my drum kit as a midi trigger anyway, so two birds with one stone there.

The fingerstyle guitar snob purist in me squawked "You can't do that, you can't have any sound other than what your fingers and guitar is doing!" I've never done backing tracks or looping, and to be honest it's forced me to be a better guitarist - forced me to think outside the box to fill out a song, forced me to develop techniques for a rich guitar only sound. Maybe playing along to a drum track is a gateway drug, but my path of being "just a solo instrumental fingerstyle guitar player" has blurred over the years, I think there would be benefits in playing along to a drum track - firstly being a tighter rhythmist, and secondly a bit of enhancement to the music I play to audiences.

Vox Pathfinder Bass 10

My mate Steve and I both have pieces of paper that say "Batchelor of Electronic Engineering", but neither of us do that for a living. We both however want to be able to say that we can actually work on electronics. For example, a while back I fixed a broken amp. So when a broken Vox Pathfinder Bass 10 fell into my hands I felt compelled to fix it.

I have however come to realise that I will only go so far. If it's not a broken wire, popped fuse or simple power supply issue, then it's going to take too long and I neither have the patience or equipment to really dig in deep. This amp was no simple fix. It had a weird distortion coming through. Steve however, he loves a challenge. And since this is just a little analogue amp, I threw it his way and he persisted until he fixed it.

During the, I'm going to guess hundreds of hours he spent debugging it, he produced an electrical schematic. It needs to be on the internet, so here is a pdf of the electrical schematic and here is a jpg.

A short discourse...it presented with some high mid/high frequency distortion on top of the expected signal. You could set the bass volume and the amp volume to reduce it, and if you played softly it wasn't too bad, but it was always there.

On first inspection Steve discovered a hole in one of the speakers which I hadn't noticed and sent it back. Seemed fair enough, that could cause noise. The speakers in there were a fairly non standard 5", I decided that some cheap 4" speakers from AliExpress would do the job. Put them in, no, distortion still there. and they were pretty rubbish. Without thinkng too hard I grabbed some slightly less cheap 6" speakers, and put them in with some slight hassle (they were a bit big, but I made them fit). Still distorting. I had concluded it wasn't the speakers and sent it back to Steve. He was not convinced and bought some not-so-cheap correctly fitting 5" speakers...still distorting.

During let's call it "the speaker phase" Steve mapped out a frequency response curve of the 4" (YH-1008) and 6" (YH-600) speakers, and for reference the sub speaker from his home theatre system. Remembering that the low E on a bass is around 40Hz you can see that the two cheapy speakers aren't great around there and don't really flatten out frequency reponse wise until over 100Hz. The sub speaker starts flattening out at 50Hz which is better, but we discovered that for bass amp design you really need to think about how you are going to get those low frequencies pumping air.

But the speakers proved to be a red herring.

Steve's equipment was struggling to show the nature of the distortion, which is kinda frustrating "I can hear it, but I can't see it". Looking at a bass guitar signal as it goes through the circuit, we could see that there seemed to be a few pixels of high frequence noise superimposed on sections of the waveform. But neither of us would declare "that was it". Steve, being persistent, then went to town replacing components.

Signal vs Opamp 1a Maybe noisy?

Signal vs Opamp 1b Inverted, looks fine!

Signal vs Opamp 2 Inverted, maybe noisy?

Signal vs power Opamp 3 Inverted, DC offset, some noise?

An interesting part of this amp design is that the power side is an opamp! That is, an Operational Amplifier, which is more of a circuit in a chip than just a transister/FET/tube valve. Opamps are great, because they have a pretty flat frequency response across the full spectrum, super high gain, super high input impedence...I didn't imagine a power opamp would be the power house behind an amp! There are some low power opamps in the circuit too, which are there to handle the overdrive circuit, the treble, mid and bass EQ signal adjustments.

Steve's experience with electronics makes him suspect capacitors every time. Because capacitors fail. He popped every single one of the board, and tested them. None were a problem.

He discovered that although the signal opamps and the power opamps were obsolete, there were equivalent replacements which he also swapped out. It was not a function of the opamp.

At this stage we were both scratching our heads. There wasn't much left to swap out. Something that he had noticed along the way is that the transformer power supply was being pulled down pretty hard, getting close to the minimum operating voltage for the power opamp. While the supply was within spec, after looking at what the opamps can handle voltage wise, he decided to buy a higher voltage transformer with a few more VAs too. The one he selected could fit in, it was right at the upper limit of the opamp capabilities, se he swapped out two resistors to ease back a little on the voltage.

Oh, and he grumbled a lot about the board. How 240VAC was intertwined with signal voltages, how there were so many links on the board and just a generally poor layout of the board, and how difficult it was to pull apart and put back together - that it, like so many things these days, is not designed to be easily serviced. Are you listening Vox?

Well Steve was right. With a new transformer kicking in a bit more juice, the distortion went away. Fixed. My take on this is that the power supply selection is build down to a price, and most of the time, when things are running to specification, it will work. But without a little bit of over-engineering in place, the moment the transformer had dropped a few VAs, some higher frequency weird opamp distortion crept in. Getting those opamps back up to plenty of voltage headspace, problem solved. Vox - spend a bit more money on parts!

Board Before

Board Modified

Good work Steve! We both learnt something! Oh, and one other very cool thing I learnt - inside the unit were two LEDs back to back. "Why are there LEDs inside the unit, that will never be seen?" After staring at the circuit for a while, working from our electronics first principles knowledge Steve and I realised that as the "drive" level is turned up, the LED foward volt drop, probably around 2V, will start to kick in, which will begin to clip the waveform. As we know, if you raise the amplitude of a signal but then start to clip the peaks, you get both an additional loudness increase, and all those extra harmonics as it clips which brings more complexity to the sound. After reading up about it on the internet, aparently LEDs have quite a sonically pleasing soft-clipping sound rather than the much harder clipping found in other diodes!

What's happening October 2024

I've continued to do a lot of mixing. It's easy to load an SD card into the deck at my local church and record all 32 tracks, and then you have 4 songs to experiment with. I have a mate from work who has been doing that sort of thing for years, and trained, so it's great to pass mixes to him for a critique. It is a universe into itself the world of mixing, I've got at least my toe in it now. The more I do, the more I practise, the better and faster I am getting at it. I'm not aiming for perfection, I'm aiming to be competant at it - so when it actually counts I might be able to mix a song with some skills.

From a fingerstyle guitar point of view, you may think "What's the point JAW?" I have noticed it is making me think more about production. What does a song need? How can I fit the bassline in? Percussive strums to make a strong beat? The melody IS SO IMPORTANT! There is no doubt that mixing a multi-instrumentalist song will improve your overall musicianship - and it helps improve your ear. So would many other musical pursuits - like learning more theory! What is the best bang for buck? I don't know. But I do know that I'm enjoying the world of mixing and I'm more likely to do something that is fun than something that may be more beneficial, but I don't currently have any interest in.

Meanwhile I need to do a stocktake on fingerstyle arrangements that I really should record. Before I forget I can play them :-)

• Don't Dream it's Over - Crowded House
• It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - Tame Impala
• Come on Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners
• White Room - Cream
• I Want to Break Free - Queen
• Horse With No Name - America
• Rain - Dragon

There's few others that I have put effort into but I'm not sure if I will continue to pursue them...

• Got What You Need - Eskimo Joe
• Live it Up - Mental as Anything
• Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
• Toccata - Bach (Sky Version)
• 19-2000 - Gorillaz
• It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Bob Dylan/Graham Bonnet
• Fly Like an Eagle - Steve Miller Band

Mmm. Fly like an Eagle.

Mmm.

<Some Time Later>

I'd forgotten how groovy that song is! I noodled further with my previous efforts from a few years back, started developing a cool bassline. I needed to refer to the chords (ultimate guitar) and a quick check of melody (musescore). I had a rough for the verse and the chorus pretty quick just from memory. I then re-listened to the song again :-) So much cool electronics in it. But I can't really emulate that. The bassline rocks, but the studio recording relies on the synth and the electronics to carry the, um, chord extensions progression? You can hear the chorus and verses moving through some chord extensions, but it's not in the bass. The bass is just hanging onto an A, popping up from a G on a beat, but it's hanging on the chord of Am. I couldn't come up with a chord progression and hang onto the A without it sounding a bit boring. But I can make the bassline emulate the chord extensions.  Maybe the first verse could be just on the A?  So much I could do!

And so groovy! I hooked up my practise electric guitar, dialed in a tiny bit of distortion and recorded a quick rough so I'd remember what I was playing with, have a listen!

Fly Like an Eagle rough thoughts:

Yamaha G65-A

Another vintage Yamaha found its way to me, I was pleased that it was not a C40. Don't get me wrong, a Yamaha C40 is an adequate classical guitar, often not bad at all. But often not good. This G65-A (serial 31109517 - 0426423 so probably 1983) is in good condition, doesn't look like it has been played much. I whipped the few remaining strings off it and checked the fret level and neck angle, all was okay. Well, neck angles always seem out once a classical guitar is 20 years old, but we make do.

I ran a block with sandpaper across the frets and it did not take very long before it was touching everywhere.  I barely needed to put my fret file on it. Note: my latest fret file is nice, the one with the wooden handle, but the profile is too deep and was barely touching the frets. I am going to have to splurge on a decent fret file.

There were no sharp fret ends!  I think it is because the manufacturers tapped in frets already cut to size with pre-finished ends...and they are slightly too narrow!  It feel like that's not great because you lose a bit of fretboard at the edge. I want every bit of my fretboard to count. I reckon it is better to put the frets in and then sand them flush to the fretboard edge.

After polishing all the frets and giving the fretboard a heavy oiling, I decided to replace the nut. The existing one was pretty awful.  I had already bought a bag of standard classical bone nuts a while back, and they are a perfect fit.  Well, other than sanding the bottom down a few millimetres to get the nut height right.

The saddle was not the worst saddle I've ever seen, but, yikes, comes close! A cheap plastic one, and so thin! I've never seen a saddle so thin, I was tempted to open up the saddle slot a bit more to fit a bone saddle in, but, nah. A little too much effort for this calibre of guitar.

Restrung it up, it sounded okay.  Marginally better than your average C40. It has the usual G string resonance nastiness when you dig in, so many classical guitars have that.  I reckon that is your first test with a classical guitar. Pluck the G string hard, does it have a tedious resonance that grinds your ears - and does it sound a bit out of balance with the other strings? Otherwise this guitar has a good bass, the mids are bolder than I was expecting, and the trebles are adequate. It is not the worst vintage Yamaha I have played.

It is a cheap model, that's for sure, marginally up from my G-55A. For starters it does actually have a solid wood (rosewood?) fretboard, and a solid bookmatched soundboard (cedar?).  The rest of the body is all veneer, so quite cheap, and no attempts to bookmatch the back or sides. Although the back is interestingly pretty though, I mean veneer is still wood, just a really thin sheet of wood, I'm guessing this is an example of rotary peeled veneer. At least the veneer is not on a backing of MDF, it looks to be on some sort of (probably) laminated cheaper wood.

As found

Fret tool not quite right sadly

New nut installed, compared with old

Interesting veneer back

So overall it came up okay, sounds okay, and it is pretty, so ready to go back to its owner.

Here is my standard test song, raw from the microphone.

Yamaha G65-A:

My Reaper Mixing Notes

This article is a work in progress and will be constantly updated, for me, as I learn new skills!

I use the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) called "Reaper" for mixing and I quite often get a multi-track recording from a Behringer X32/Midas M32 deck (they are virtually the same thing). This post is a dumping ground for all the things I have learnt from the process so that I have a coherent centralised place to keep them and maybe they will also be useful to you.

Remember some golden rules: use your ears, not your eyes, and keep it simple.

Important things to do to Reaper before you start:

• Download and install SWS Extensions, it's, umm, to enable you to, ahh... just do it. sws-extension.org
• Download and install ReaPack, for managing scripts. Reapack.com

Raw files

Acquiring

While the X32 has a USB port it will only record a deck-mixed stereo signal to it. However if you have the SD card module added, you can record all 32 channels raw. Format any SD card to FAT32 and pop it in. While the manual talks about 32GB as the limit, I have been using 128GB cards no problem which can record a 5 hour session. Class 4 SD cards are fine for bandwidth.

It records everything into a WAV file, split into 4GB chunks, not useful yet. Here is my process:

1. They are hexadecimally named which doesn't sort well, so I made this little script to rename them:Rename x32 hex to dec.cmd. Drag all these directly into a Reaper track, sequentially, and you will now have a single track containing multiple items (the wav chunks), each containing the 32 channels.
2. In Reaper, Extensions (installed from ReaPack), browse, install the package "Explode multichannel items to mono items in new tracks (without render)" by Rodilab. Run the script as an action. It will explode the WAV into separate tracks.
3. In Reaper run my "prep" script which will get rid of the unused tracks, add colour, group, pan, all based on rules. Download this script and edit it according to the rules you need. This will require some experimenting on your behalf! JAW X32 Track Rules Parser.lua

Consolidating

Now that you have multiple mono tracks with multiple items, all referencing rather large WAV files, it's a good time to consolodate into smaller MP3 files and throw away the unused tracks and quiet sections.

1. Delete any tracks that weren't active, eg, there was no electric guitar playing that day, only 3 vocalists, etc)
2. Set Reaper into "Ripple Editing All Tracks" - there is a button on the toolbar. Click to show a cursor, ctrl-A to select all tracks, S to split. Then use right mouse to drag click select, press delete and sections of the tracks will be removed. Turn off Ripple Editing
3. File->Consolidate/Export Tracks, create a new directory, give it a name, set the resample mode to the highest quality MP3, entire project all tracks, and tick all the boxes to update project with consolidated files and saving as a new project. This will create a much smaller set of files but still high quality files, with only one item per track. Much easier to deal with. Will take quite a while, all tracks will be rendered.
4. Ctrl-A, Right click on any item, Item Processing, Normalise items. Normalise to Peak, Normalise each item Separately. Depending on what the gains were like, this will get all track to the highest amplitude without any distortion. Again, to make it easier to deal with.

Rough Mix

Faders(volume)

Set all faders to an appropriate level before applying any effects to get a rough mix. You should only add effects to fix problems. With that said, if you already know a heap of problems that happen every time, and you have already solved them before, then add those effects in.

Pan

Not really an effect as such, but definitely think about where you want each track to be situated from left to right. It's a good idea to get tracks off centre, even just by 10%, to create 3D space, unless you specifically want your track to be straight down the middle.

Phase

*Usually not necessary* Maybe some of your mics have a different latency, and maybe the latency will cause phase cancellation or distortion. but if you want the tightest of the tight, then zoom right in on your master track and see how all the tracks are overlapping, specifically on punchy transients. Particularly useful on the drums, if you notice some tracks are offset to each other, you can move tracks in time slightly to line up the signals.

Effects

Delay

My favourite use is a slap back delay but with different timse in the left/right channels, with alow wet level so it is barely noticeable. This will turn a mono signal into a wide stereo signal and is great to place the track into a different 3D space to the rest of the tracks. Use "ReaDelay", set length to say time=80ms (musical=0), pan full left, then add a new tap, set to time=120ms pan full right. Adjust the wet for a good feel. Adjust the times to get the space you like.

Compression

Tame a signal where the dynamics are bigger than you want them to be, squeezes the levels together. Use on almost anything. Set the ratio higher to have less effect, but 4:1 is a good starting point. Move the threshold up - if you aren't exceeding the threshold anywhere, you aren't going into compression, there is no point having it. Set the attack fast if you need to the compressor to respond quickly, set the release slow if you want the compressor to not come off so quickly, sounds more natural. ReaComp is a good go to, don't forget to tick "Auto make-up". Chosing one of the stock presets for your application is a great starting point.

The JS 1175 is an emulated Urei 1176 fast compressor worth looking at, ReaXComp get even more fancy by having multiple frequency bands of compression.

Limiter

When compression isn't enough...use a limiter to prevent clipping on agressive transients. Great on drums and in mastering to Make It Loud without clipping.

EQ

Boost and reduce frequency ranges, surely everyone knows what EQ does. A good way to work out what frequencies you want more or less of is to make a fairly narrow band boost, drag it extremely high, then sweep across the frequency ranges listening for what you like and don't like, and set it accordingly. Some good rules of thumb:

• 20-70 : Rumble/Subbass : Only really dums and bass need this.
• 70-300 : Boomy/Warmth/Muddiness/Fullness : Sometimes there are resonances here, notch them out.
• 300-1.2k : Boxy/Nasal : often worth reducing on some tracks to create space for other tracks.
• 1.2k-5k : Honky/Harsh : can add clarity. Look to remove vocal esses (sibilance) in here.
• 5k-11k : Sparkle/Presence
• 11k+ : Air

Use ReaEQ for basic multiband. ReaFIR set to Dynamic EQ mode can be great to tame harshness in vocals or solo instruments: Set mode to Compressor, set the Compression Ratio fairly low, say 1.5:1 and then set up a profile where the compressor is starting to do stuff on the peaks of the frequency spectrum

Reverberation

Ubiquitous and overused but quite essential. Because we aren't always recording in a warm room or a cathedral, but those sounds are nice, so apply artificial versions of them. Don't overdo it! Argh! Reverb does not make up for a bad recording! A little bit of reverb underneath a vocal or a solo instrument can be quite nice, my favourite as recommended by Kenny Gioia is ReaVerb: set to file, use the "Fat Plate" impulse file from the Lexicon 480L last seen at http://www.housecallfm.com/download.php?f=BGLex480.zip somewhere around -30dB.

A simpler reverb that can be quite effective is ReaVerbate: set the room size to massive - even say 95, and use very sparingly to make a vocal ring. Use side chained or automate the wet mix or manually add it in a separate track.

Gate

If something sits on background noise most of the time and then bursts into life, then gate it - ie, it will be silent unless the gate is exceeded. It will sound unnatural solo'd, but in a mix it will be fine. Drums are good to gate, sometimes even the vocals. Use ReaGate and set the attack/hold/release to something that suites your track, and most importantly set the threshold.

Tuning

Sometimes it's okay to tune up a few vocals here or there, but you can't fix a bad recording. The best way to fix a few vocal notes is to do it manually only with ReaTune: on the Correction tab change the attack time to around 100ms, then on the Manual Correction tab tick "Manual Correction" and then draw blue lines to fix missed pitches. Put your blue line slightly after the point at which the pitch is hit, to make it sound smoother, and finish the line a bit early. Put ReaTune first in your effects chains.

Saturation

This is a quirky little effect, basically distorts the signal based on the way old analogue equipment like tape machines or tube amplifiers would distort when driven hard. Adds harmonics which are "richer, warmer" ie pleasing. I found the free plugin "GSat+" does a good job, load it up and at the top menu press the right arrow to say "Medium" or "Warm", wind the input up until it is going onto saturation for at least part of the range.

Instruments

Drums

The setup I spend a lot of time with has 7 mics. I will always make a track that is a folder (bus) for all the drum tracks and I add a limiter to that to "clean up" those times when the drummer has hit 3 drums full tilt at the same time.

• Gate all drums except the overheads. Set the gate so that only the "fundamental" drum sound comes through, so usually the fastest attack possible and only a hold/release for as long as required, hopefully not before the next hit.
• Put on a limiter rather than a compressor. Drums have a massive impulse on the initial hit which doesn't suit any compressor I've played with. Whereas the limiter, with a brickwall ceiling, can bring up the tail without losing too much initial impulse. Push the threshold until the limiter is only just coming in.
• Add some saturation where you need a drum to really punch
• EQ to the drum in question. Use an online cheatsheet. Note that the full mix will contain everything - let the overheads glue it together. Set each individual mic have an EQ that captures the essence of that drum:
• Kick drum - low frequencies important here, but some highs to get drum character.
• Tom drum2 - keep low frequencies and some mid.
• Snare drum - keep mid frequencies and some highs.
• Overheads - remove the low frequencies and most of the mids, keep only highs. The overhead mics glue the drum kit together through the middle - the low end is dealt with in their own tracks.
• On the snare drum add the free VST "snare buzz". It is fantastic to bring out that snare sound.

Electric Piano

Since it is electric it's already perfect, leave it along. The only thing you might want to do is compress it if you want to squish the dynamics, or adjust the EQ to create some space for another instrument.

Acoustic Guitar

Generally this is already coming in from a pedal, so like the piano you might not need to touch it. However I rarely find an acoustic guitar that has a frequency response I like, so I usually add EQ to remove boominess and boxiness. It's also a good idea to remove everything from around 80Hz and below, acoustic guitars can't hit those frequencies.

Vocals

Ah, the most challenging instrument of all. Compress - if there are really peaky parts, use two compressors, one to scrub the peaks, the other to smooth it out without crushing it.

EQ - varies from person to person, but 120Hz for fullness, 240 for boxiness, 5k for presence, 8k for sibilance, 10k for air. Sweep the mid to find frequencies you like/dislike

Sax

I found that the sax is dynamically unbalanced even between notes. I compress it a lot. Either go for a little bit of reverb, or add some back slap delay if you don't want to muddy it with reverb. EQ this for sure.

Violin/strings

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Electric Guitar

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Fine tuning and Mastering

Envelopes

Right click on a track header, click Envelopes and then choose say Volume or Pan. Now you can drag the fader/pan around as the song progresses. I normally do the 4 click trapezoid to bring a section up or down. You are almost re-producing the song with this - you can say drop a solo instrument right down so it isn't competing with the vocals, and then crank it up during insturmental sections.

Edit

Don't be afraid to split tracks up! You can realign missed tempo notes, or copy sections from another take or verse to punch out bad sections. Overlap all cuts so they seamlessly transition. Normally you can drag around the cross-fades, but if the fade isn't showing, right click the track, select Item Properties, and then type in new values for the fade in and fade out.

Side Chaining

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Mastering

The JS 1175 Compressor is nice to glue it all together if it feels a bit unstuck. Use the ReaXcomp multiband compressor to make it pop. Some very minor EQ to tweak up anything that presents itself in the final mix (because you were too keen EQ'ing individual insturment). Top it all off with the JS Event Horizon Limiter/Clipper, set the ceiling to 0, and wind down the threshold a little bit to make it louder but don't go too far or it will start to distort.

Rendering

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Handy Functionality

SWS

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Channels

Generally, each track will only have 2 channels shown in the mixer. Even for mono, because FX will often create stereo. If however you have ended up with say 32 (and the track is really wide) you can fix it by clicking on the Route icon, set channels 2.

Scripting

What's happening July 2024

I continued to progress "Don't Dream it's Over" and very nearly recorded a Jawmunji Talks video. I still might, it's worth a discussion.

However this month my local church had an open night, and the kids and I wrote two tunes for it. So a bit of time spent working on that. We had actually written the tunes some time ago, which came down to me putting together chord progressions and writing lyrics...yes, I do them both at the same time...as in, I don't write lyrics and then set it to music - I don't write music and then create lyrics - they are informing each other as I go. I have a vague idea of melody, but once I have a chord progression and words, I give it to my youngest daughter and she immediately comes up with a melody far better than I could do. It must be a singer thing. And she'll normally tweak the words to fit better with her word flow. Finally, once we have that together, we play it a few time for my son, give him the chord structure, and he will improvise something over it on the sax.

I decided to play the double bass for this one, plucked, bluegrass style. I love the sound of the double bass - particularly when bowed, but I'm bad at bowing it so plucked it needed to be. My youngest played keys and sung on the first song, sung and played electric guitar on the second song.

We needed to have done a bit more practise, but the gig went off without a hitch. All three of us had more anxiety than we were expecting, which was weird, we have all played to audiences many times. I think it was because we normally play covers, there must be something about originals that heightens the anxiety. An increase vulnerability perhaps.

Anyway, good fun. My youngest daughter is a born performer, having her front our little trio with a low slung telecaster belting out some lyrics is in her element. My son can wail out soulful expressions on the sax, we were using a new sax pedal which introduced some nice tones. I love the big fat sound I can get from the double bass, we had it mic'd up so it was kickin'. It is still hard to play, and I am still sporting two blisters on my right first two fingers. I did carefully knife them open, splashed with a methylated spirits to keep the bugs away. A long time ago I decided that pricking open blood/fluid blisters is much faster recovery than letting them do their own thing.

All done, back to working on my fingerstyle arrangements!

What's happening June 2024

I finished my arrangement of "It feels like we only go Backwards", I have played it through many times, several people have heard it, vaguely recognised it but couldn't tell me what it was. I count that as a win! It is a good arrangement in that it has a few challenging parts. The bass has a prominent "one and ... three and", so funk style, and I'm not used to playing a bassline like that. It took me a while to get that under my fingers - although I didn't take it too far - in the places where the melody is complex I drop the "ands".

However it is good to push out of your comfort zone with your arrangements - it helps you develop skills that you can then use elsewhere. It's pretty easy for me to play everything in my default style, which is the drum equivalent of kick-hat-snare-hat, which translates to bass note-mid note-mid chord fragment flick-mid note...adding in any melody notes on top as required. If you can get all the variations of bass rhythms locked into your brain to naturally occur then you have a pathway to great sounding arrangements. I have said it before but I'll say it again - Travis picking a song sounds great...for the first song...but not for every song! (I recognise my  hypocrisy here - I play too many songs with a chord flick on beats 2 and 4...Kel Valleau did it for years and then suddenly stopped...maybe I take a leaf out of his book?)

I've also said before that I wish I had played more bass as a kid. With apologies to my classical brothers and sisters, but the bass rhythms you find in classical music don't have the groove of the bass rhythms in rock and pop. It's only been in the last decade or so that I have come to discover the wonders of bass groove and how it glues a song together.

It's all about musical growth.

Speaking of which I turned my attention to a song I have had on my back list for arrangement for a long time, "Don't Dream it's Over" by Crowded House, which is claimed by both Australia and New Zealand as their own. It too has musically challenging parts that don't fit with my default. There are prominent chords and melody accents on "1-ah", as in "1-ee-and-ah", being the 4th sixteenth note in a bar.  This really clashes with my desire to hit the snare on beat 2, one sixteenth beat later. I've found a compromise where I can hit the prominent chord and still feel the off beat 2 and 4 groove.

There's also some great melodic choices - after digging into it I found all sorts of interesting treasures - for instance the chorus "hey now hey now" the chorus are G-A, but the melody is E-B-F#-B, so you end up with unusual chord fingering of the quite haunting chords of G6-A6sus2.

It's all about musical growth.

(I highly recommend oolimo for analysing the chords you are thinking about.)

What's happening May 2024

Earlier this month I recorded a Jawmunji Talks video. I enjoy doing them, I have a lot to talk about. Unfortunately I don't have a good setup for recording them, and I'm not great at them either. Interestingly about the same time I recorded it Rick Beato put out a video talking about his obsession with the perfect look for his talking videos. I could relate to evertything he was saying. My computer is under a staircase, it's pretty tight but I make it work. It doesn't however give me much room to create an ambience. It would be nice to have a big room with the background filled with all my musical stuff, with warm lighting, and a set of cameras and microphones set up permanently so I can just go in and record whenever I felt like talking about something. One day one of my kids might move out and I will repurpose their bedroom into a music studio...

I need to work on my talking videos, I need to articulate more, and possibly plan what I'm going to say if not script it. I like the idea of being able to just talk without scripting, but when I watched that video back I realised that I missed saying some things I wanted to say, and said some things that were unnecessary. This media we are on right now - text - so easy, I can just go back and edit anything! And I do! And sometimes, when I'm a consumer, I prefer text, but sometimes I prefer video, so it's nice to have both.

It was good to dust off OBS Studio, I hadn't used it in a while. It's such a great program for staging AV productions. I had plugged in two logitech C920s, a Zoom H1N as audio input, a knock-off Behringer USB interface, and two display captures. It handled them all live, the USB interface was slightly more laggy than the Zoom H1N, so I had to mute the Zoom when I was playing the guitar (I was using the electric). I be honest I should just play the nylon string guitar through the mic...in fact a dynamic mic for voice and a condensor for the guitar. Mmm, maybe dynamic for the guitar, but I do love a condensor for the guitar, it captures everything, if not a little too much everything. I should look into being able to capture all audio feeds and all video feeds at the same time to do post production on - so all video angles and all audio streams, but I doubt my little laptop could handle that.

Anyway, something to chip away at in the background.

Meanwhile, I've had an obsessive dive into a Tame Impala song I first mentioned I should cover back in 2013. "It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" has been in my to-do list for a while, it's a nice psychedelic rock song, and Tame Impala is from my home town of Perth Western Australia, I need to have more Perth band songs in my setlist. It won Single of the Year for our local music awards in 2013, it has a nice high melody with a very groovy bassline.

I'm at a stage when the basslines in my arrangements are starting to get a bit more complex, which I am really enjoying. My thumb is starting to know where to go, both in rhythm and note selection, rather than just sitting on the root note for the whole bar.

It does make for playing it quite complicated though. But that is a good thing, it's how you progress!

The song is in F, but I'm just tired of needing a top string A over a bottom string F in arrangements, which it would have a few. So inititally I dropped it back to E, which ends up with the main chord progression of E-B-F#m. The latter two aren't trivial chords for arrangements.

I bashed out the melody and the bassline into Musescore with very little playing the guitar. I wanted "the actual" melody and bassline to be there at the start, after that I can grab the guitar and work out what I'm prepared to tackle and what I won't. There were some great sounds but some unusual fretting, and I've worked out that if I don't keep it simple then the songs won't stay with me, so I dumbed it down ever so slightly.

I came back to it the next day and considered instead of dropping from F to E, going from F to G. This created a much easier chord progression of G-D-C, but I needed to drop the melody down an octave to fit, otherwise it's a high B over a low G, which is slightly easier than a high A over a low F, but then I may as well stick to E.

The lower melody over the higher bass is also easier to put together on your left hand, but you've now compressed the song together in the middle frquency range. It gaves a warmer feel (it's how the Artic Monkeys play their cover of it) but to me it turns it into a lullaby. So I'm wrestling with "do I make it easier to play but more frequency compressed, or harder to play and a wider range? Not to mention that G-D-C is such an overused cowboy chord sound.

I know what Naudo would do :-)

Yamaha G-231 II

This G-231 II Yamaha guitar is quite sentimental to me, my parents gave it to me when I was eleven - I was big enough to upgrade from my 3/4 guitar to a full size guitar. It was not the cheapest guitar for its time, maybe a model or two up from basic - it's got an ebony fretboard and the build quality is not bad - thanks dad.

It's the guitar that made me. The one that I honed my fingerstyle skills on. That by the time I was 15 I was thrashing with a plectrum (you can see the damage on soundboard) - luckily my mum bought me an electric guitar shortly thereafter. It sat around for 10 years mostly unused, occasionally brought out as a reference guitar when I needed to remind myself about nylon string classical guitars. It was lent out a few times - it was with my nephew for a few years while he was learning guitar. It lived at my old holiday house for 10 years, I would play it to the trees when I was there. It sat under my desk at work for years and I would play it in the lunch room for an hour on Fridays.

It actually sounds quite nice. But, it hasn't been great to play for a long time. Two main problems - the neck has slightly caved into the body under string tension, which happens to pretty much any classical guitar by the time it is ten. So it makes the action really high. There's no truss rod to tweak it back a little, but besides, it's the neck-to-body connection that goes out; the truss rod is about neck relief, so it's not reeeally the right approach.

The other issue is that higher up the neck the fret  heights are a bit out of alignment. Possibly an issue stemming from problem 1, it certainly doesn't help, but some fret positions up the neck are buzzy.

I have thought in the past about sawing through the neck from underneath (stopping at the fretboard) and then regluing - essentially creating a little triangle that pulls the neck angle back - to fix the high action. Seems savage, so I haven't done it.

But after my water soaking to get the double bass bridge back to square, I wondered if there was something I could do similar - clamp the guitar up forcing the neck backwards, splashing some water around tp ,ake things pliable...so I asked the internet...and discovered a bloke in Queensland had been doing "Steam Neck Resets". I watched his videos and read some stories of other people who had tried it with success and I was convinced.

I decided to start with the fret grind and recrown. Classical guitar necks are flat, you so only need a flat block of wood and some sandpaper to do the initial grind back. I started with 240 grit, and I drew a black line across each fret with a permanent marker, sand for a bit, see whether all the black lines have been touched, draw the line back, repeat - basically I'm aiming to have a dead flat initial surface. I was suprised to find some grooves worn into the first few frets in the usual places. Nylon rubbing through steel!? That was unexpected. There was some very minor imperfections up where the fretting seemed buzzy, I wasn't convinced.

I spent a little time filing off any sharp fret ends as well, where the neck had shrunk a bit over time leaving some sharps. The file I used was a bit rough, I need to add a fret end file to my list for next time.

I then, still drawing black lines on each fret, ran my fret crowning file across. It worked okay, it's a cheap fret crowning tool, so I wasn't really happy. I will buy a good one for next time. Once I had each fret where there was approximately a thin black line across the top - meaning the original fret grind was still intact, but the rounded crown shape was still there - I moved to the next.

The final step was to hand polish each of the new crowns. I popped on my fretboard protector and worked my way down the frets, with decreasing grades of sandpaper, 400 to 600 to 800 to 1200 to steel wool. But the time I hit the steel wool it was nice'n'shiny. I could see in a few places where I had missed some scratches in earlier sanding, but over all, a nice job.

I had nicked the fretboard in a couple of places with the crowning file and the fret end file, nothing terrible, just a little amateur. I think it makes sense that the first fret grind I ever did was on the guitar that made me the guitarist I am today :-)

After an oiling it looked great. But no time to restring and test it - straight to the steam neck reset, I was very keen to try it out!

1. Make a mark across the frets	2. Block & sand until all marks touched
3. Fret crowning	4. Just a thin line still remains once filed
5. Sand through grits to polish	6. Sit back, admire

I bought a length of aluminium square tube and clamped it hard to the neck in a few places. I was using clamps that had rubber feet so they wouldn't mark the neck. The aluminium was sitting direct on the fretboard, but the frets are nickel-steel so they won't be marked by aluminium.

I then clamped the body to a length of board, with a few towels in between to keep surfaces safe. The goal is to have everything rigid so that when you apply the final clamp at the top it will pull the neck right back at the point when it joins the body. We aren't trying to bend the neck, we are trying to claw back the distortions where it all comes together. If you look carefully, kinda everything is involved - the soundboard, the heel, the sides, the internal ribbing.

I like concept though - put force in the direction you want to go, steam it so the wood and possibly glue becomes a bit pliable again, hold it there until it has dried out, and then when you release it and restring it, it will be back to where it once was. Maybe it won't last, maybe it will go back to where it once was? So what, do it again! - it can be a 5 year maintenance schedule.

Result - I steamed it 3 times over the course of a week, and when I restrung it the action was about 0.25mm lower than before. So my verdict is yes it works, but you need to steam it more over a longer period of time, the consensus seems to be 3 weeks. And note that I really pulled a lot of force on - around 12mm deflection clamping force as measured at the saddle - and that only gave me 0.25mm resulting action decrease. So my lesson there is don't be frightened that you are going to accidentally go to zero action, you probably won't. Ahd then if you did, whip up a new higher saddle - they are easy enough to make.

Sometime I will have another crack at this, but I wanted to get this guitar back to work. After restringing there were improvements in playability, and the buzziness higher up the neck was reduced. Not gone, but more tolerable.

A worthwhile endeavour - for more info on this technique search for "John Miner Neck Steam Reset". Still not "great" to play , but better now.

Jig to hold everything in place	Initial measure at bridge 8.0mm
Fill with rags and lots of steam	This last clamp is particularly important
Cranked to 11.5mm - needed more	Finished with 2.75mm action at 12th fret

In the meantime, I will keep my eye out for an unloved/broken vintage guitar that could do with my attention and I will go through these processes again, but without any pressure of needing to get it back to work.

What's happening April 2024

A while ago I decided I needed an electric guitar. I bought an interesting one that had a UST pickup in it. I remembered pretty quickly afterplaying it for a while that electric guitar necks are too narrow - generally a nut width of about 43mm. I next had a company in China build me a custom neck - 48mm wide - but I accidentally specified Stat style heel rather than the Tele style heel that guitar actually needed so it wouldn't fit on the guitar. Not dismayed, I picked up a cheap Stat copy from my local pawn shop and fitted the neck. It was okay, but I hadn't made a good nut for it, so the intonation was bad.

Nonetheless I started using it as my practice/arrangement guitar, mostly because it is quiet and yet the neck feels like a classical neck, and the string tension is not that far off a nylon string. I've been playing it more than my actual classical... a lot more.

I thought to myself "why don't I fix up the nut so it intonates better, and do some of my normal recordings with it?" Because to set up a recording with microphones with the classical requires a bit of effort and the house to be quiet. My house is rarely quiet.

Getting the nut better is becoming an easier process for me, I have made a few saddles and nuts now. I have a feel for what you need to do, and am getting a bit quicker at it. This one was easy, the strings all just needed to be closer to the fretboard.

I remembered why I stopped adjusting it last time - you have to be able to file a very narrow groove - the width of a string - into bone. I had tried the welder nozzle cleaner files and they are okay, but not with the really fine files, it's not really possible.

I remembered a trick I had seen on the internet - modify a set of feeler gauges. The idea being that feeler gauges come in all the exact widths you'd need, and they are kinda tall so they don't flop around like a 0.4mm round file. So I grabbed my feeler gauge, measured up each string with a caliper, got the corresponding feeler gauge out, and roughed up a section with a heavy duty file. I didn't need to make it super rough, or even a very long section. I did clean up the burs on the sides by running the edges flat over some sandpaper, and rounded it ever so slightly so it wouldn't cut a completely square slot.

The end result is great. You don't need to file much, it is only slightly abrasive which is fine for a thin bone slot and you aren't going deep anyway.

I quickly had the nut slots the perfect width per string deep enough that you only had to press the string down a tiny bit before it was touching the fret. How far? Well, I figure if you fret at the first fret, and then look at how close the string is to the second fret, you want about that same distance. Leave a bit extra - nuts wear down during tuning, so have a bit of meat there so it lasts longer than the first string change.

Once I re-tuned and then fretted at the first fret the intonation was not perfect but a lot better. I still fret like an acoustic player - mashing those strings down so of course I am going to go a bit sharp anyhow - I need to develop a lighter touch for electric guitars. But I was happy enough.

The next stumbling block recording on an electric, is how to play with headphones on through whatever effects pedal you want to hear, possibly listening to a click at the same time, all while recording just the guitar.

This should not be a stumbling block of course, people have been recording through interfaces for years. I had bought a nice little Behringer mixing desk with USB output for a cheaper price than an interface, and that has come in super handy as both a mixer and for recording. Because whatever you mix can be sent straight to a computer as a 44.1kHz 16 bit USB stereo signal.

The problem now is latency. If you are sending your mix to a giant amp that you are listening to, and recording in the background, then latency is not a problem, it can be seconds, who cares! But if you pluck a string and are listening in headphones from the computer then there should be no delay (no latency). I reckon I can hear latency starting at around 10-15ms.

Out of the box the average computer hardware running Microsoft Windows will not achieve 10-15ms. The standard Microsoft audio driver is "DirectSound", and it is not made for real-time audio. You will be quite sad if you try to use it for real-time audio.

However if you switch to ASIO as your audio driver, you should be able to get your 10-15ms. Unless you have a specific ASIO driver for your USB interface, download and install "ASIO4ALL". From Reaper/Audacity/etc go to your audio setup, choose ASIO, and click on the ASIO Configuration. Things to try: test out Hardware Buffer, I found setting this with anything around 12ms-20ms worked great. Try setting the block size to 64. Keep the sample frequency at 44.1kHz/16 bit.

If you hear latency, then decrease the values. If you hear noise - like the occasional pop and click, then increase the values. I was able to find a noise free setting that had a latency that I could tolerate.

With that all done, I found with ASIO I couldn't play a click track or anything else at the same time! That is because ASIO will only run exclusively, it won't share with other audio. I found if I went back to DirectSound and recorded a click track, and then back into ASIO mode I could play the click track and overdub, so it's okay.

Otherwise, try out WASAPI. This is the Microsoft equivalent to ASIO. It's pretty good, it will run in shared mode so it is almost the same as using the default DirectSound in that respect. It has similar settings to ASIO, play around with the buffer size, and set the thread priority to Time Critical.

I found I couldn't quite get as good latency out of WASAPI as I could from ASIO. This is all on an 8 year old Dell laptop running Windows 10, so hopefully you have more joy!

So once I was ready with a guitar that would play in tune, with a recorder that could record noise and delay free while I was listening, I hit the next road block.

Well, two road blocks.

I couldn't get the tone I wanted, and my fingerpicking doesn't translate well to coil pickups. Huh?

Tone - I am using my Zoom G Four multi-effects pedal, so I can dial in any patches I want. I found an acoustic simulator with a tiny bit of reverb, running through the neck pickup only at about 50% tone was barely okay - I could live with that - but it just isn't the sound of a classical guitar.

Fingerpicking with a consistent dynamic and tone is hard on electric! I only had to pick ever so slightly different between notes, almost imperceivable, and that different dynamic leaps out. Only have to flick the strings percussively a tiny bit different to the previous and it is the difference between a kick drum and a closed high hat!

I dialed in some compression and this squeezed those inconsistent dynamics together and made them less obvious... but you know what? It squeezed the dynamics together! I _want_ the actual dynamics that I want when I'm playing!

So my years of nylon string has meant I don't have the ultra-fine control of my dynamics I need for an electric guitar.

I haven't given up, but for now, I think I will stick to practice on the electric but recording on the nylon. (Oh, and all this practice on the electric is making me rusty on nylon...)

Maton EM225C

I don't talk about this guitar much, I have a love/hate relationship with it. Which is a shame, because I've been through a lot with it.

I bought it new in 1997, a Maton EM225C, I'd never owned a steel string acoustic before. I can't even remember why I bought it, I think it was a case of "working near a music shop, play some guitars at lunchtime from time to time, fell in love with one." It's the guitar I used for my highest viewed songs on Youtube with millions of views between them. It's the guitar I had when I discovered Tommy Emmanuel, which permanently changed the course of my guitar life. It's the guitar that I hung on the wall for 10 years when I realised that I prefer pretty much everything about nylon string guitars. But it is also the guitar I play regularly, with a plectrum, in the band at my local church, because that's the sound they need.

Since it was the only guitar I played for 10 years, it had suffered a lot of fret wear and was getting buzzy on certain strings in certain frets. The good fellas down at Profret gave it a grind and a recrown which helped the playability. It had a lot of grooves in the usual places, now it doesn't.

I noticed however several weeks that when I was digging in hard with a pick an awful buzz had returned. Oh no! Where did that come from!? After a moment of thought I realised that I had put on a new set strings that were a slightly lighter gauge.

Acoustic guitars have a truss rod, which is fighting with the string tension to set the neck relief. If you go from heavier strings to lighter, the strings are pulling less, so the truss rod will now pull the neck further back - giving a lower action - but also potentially creating fret buzz, especially when you dig in, due to this reduction in neck relief.

All good - years ago I worked out that the truss rod nut in a Maton is actually a 1/4" square head, so I made an adjustment tool which had an old 1/4" drive socket welded back-to-front on a length of steel rod, and a T handle for twisting. You whip the 7/16th hex head end pin, stick the tool in there and twist. Lefty Loosey Righty Tighty, leave the strings on, retune between adjustments.

This tool is handy for getting afeel of what your fretboard is doing. If you look closely you can see the neck relief (the bow of the neck) starting from up at the nut. That's what you want, juuust enough neck relief that there isn't any buzz when you are digging in as hard as you ever go.

This multipurpose guitar measuring tool also came in super handy for checking measurements, accurate to 1/4mm. I adjusted out a half, strummed heavily, still heard a little bit of buzz. Kept adjusting and tuning until it seemed better. I can be very heavy handed with a pick, so I need the action to be quite high.

Where does the buzz come from? The string ever-so-slightly rattling on the fretwire one fret up. So imagine you've fretted a note, so the string is pressed up against the fret you are at, there is a small gap between the next fret up and the string. As you pluck, espcially when you are heavy handed, at that initial attack on the string it will just slightly contact the fret up for a short period of time, which gives that buzz.

This can also happen from the other end, with the nut. That is only when you are playing an open note though, if the nut is so worn down you are getting the same issue but on the first fret. I had this problem on my Esteve a while back

Make sure have your tuner handy. Adjust the truss nut at string tension, small amounts at a time, retune between adjustments.

I played the next gig, but I was still hearing a little bit of buzz remaining. But the truss rod was already backed out to the point that removing more tension was not doing anything! What that means is the strings aren't heavy enough to pull the neck out for enough relief, even with the truss rod offering no resistance. If that happens, the next attempt at a cure is saddle adjustment.

If you can put some more meat back onto your saddle, then the string is up a bit higher from way down at the bridge, so there is a bit more action, the buzz may go away. It's just amazing, we are talking tenths of a millimetre between the string and the fret for the difference between clean sounds and buzz. And it might only buzz on particular strings at particular frets.

There are two ways to add meat to your saddle; super glue + bicarb soda to build the level up is my favourite, or reach into your bag of bone blanks and carve another one. I've done both in the past, this time I went with make a new bone saddle, the original black plastic one had served its purpose.

Since the existing saddle is pretty close in dimensions, I traced the outline of it onto a new saddle blank with a bit extra and ground it out with my die grinder. It's pretty quick to rough it out, then smooth off the corners with sandpaper, working through the grades. Yep, I do finish on 1200 grit and then polish with a bit of metal polish or whatever you have. Bone does polish to a mirror finish, it's quite amazing.

I popped it back in and loosely restrung it. I then marked where the strings were, and filed some little grooves in the back. So the strings won't move from side to side when I wildly strum. I got out my caliper to make sure the distances between the stings were fairly constant. Looking at my old saddle, there were some deep grooves in there, I guess 10+ years of hard playing will wear down a saddle just enough that a change of string tension will introduce buzz.

Retuning and strumming hard, I couldn't get any buzz. Yah! Which meant I could wind some tension back on to the truss rod. I watched carefully with my string action gauge at the 12th fret as I put tension back on. When I got down to around 3.25mm I could hear the buzz coming back. At 3.75mm it was pretty clean, so I left it at that. Around 1.5 hours from getting started to finishing, so it's not a super lengthy job to whip up a new saddle.

At my next gig I didn't hear any buzz! Yay, problem solved! Good luck out there!

JAW