Doug Lauber's Blog (72)

My album, 'One' by Fusion Galaxy, now goes to mastering. This is an exciting time for me. I've never produced an album before. It has taken over three years to complete. I have hired session musicians to help realize my musical vision. The first session guy I found was CF's own Christopher Alpiar. The moment I heard his saxophone solos, I knew he would be great to work with. Seth Burkhart on drums was also an early discovery. He plays with his jazz group all over…

I've re-worked this composition, arrangement, recording, mix, etc. This features Chris Alpiar on sax and Adrian Peek on drums.

http://www.youtube.com/show/pensadosplace

Pensado is a mixing engineer who has worked with Beyonce, Elton John, Kelly Clarkson, etc. His Youtubes contain a wealth of information. Also, on Facebook, you can join a group called Pensado's Students.

check this out, a new product:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ISATwo/

This is all about my Alesis D4 drum module. It's dying. It has a particular kick drum sample that I use in most of my recordings. I often replace the actual kick drum of the player's drum kit, with this particular sample. It has a nice low tone that hits you at a gut level.

The problem is that the D4 is dying. Its LCD menu screen is becoming unreadable. Note parameters are mysteriously changing to unchosen samples, mono to stereo, added reverb, etc.

So, I need to salvage this…

http://www.farmelorecording.com/in-the-press/sonic-varnish/

http://youtu.be/8G1kawKA_Jo

Just a few thoughts on the mixing subject. I'm no expert, but after many hours of experimentation, I've come to the conclusion that it's helpful to establish sub-mixes:

drum tracks (without kick drum)

electric bass guitar

kick drum

submix of the remaining instrument tracks

optional vocal track

The creations of these submixes greatly simplifies the mixing process. It makes it much easier to produce a final stereo mix.

I often create many…

Hi all. What's new? two new effects pedals for my guitar and bass:

BBE Sonic Stomp

BBE Opto Stomp

I will report back to you, after I do some recording with these gizmos that I must point out: manufactured in the USA. They were $100 each. I read online reviews and acquired them to possibly improve the sound/recordings of my Fender Jazz Bass. Also curious to see how they might improve my electric guitar tone.

On the recording front,…

I just completed a 3rd version of the Road Trip mix. I created it because I wanted the vocals to be louder and the bass guitar to be a little quieter. I also added a little compression to the lead guitar tracks. All it needs now is pro mastering...

BTW, soon I'll remove the earlier mix versions, and get back to work on a Bossa-inspired composition. 

With a little luck, today should be the day that I finish version 2 of the mix...

On a separate note, I have rediscovered an old composition from 10 years ago and somehow I was able to open it in Sonar X1, my DAW. The tune has a lot of potential- the lead guitar track sounds good! It'll probably be an instrumental, but maybe I can design a melody for a lead vocal.

A difficult mixing task is the problem of separating the frequencies of a kick drum from the frequency range of the electric bass. I've been placing the kick drum lower than the elec bass in the frequency spectrum. Using drum replacement software (in Sonar) has allowed me to transfer the audio kick track, to a MIDI track, which I then use to trigger a sample. I've been using  a kick drum sample in my D4 sound module. It has very strong low frequencies, around 43 hz.…

'July Tides':

add vibraphone samples

add additional guitar tracks

add bell accents 

yesterday I added some vibes to the opening section, along with some oboe samples from my Roland M-OC1 external module. -sounds good!

'Road…

In the near future I'll be testing my new sample library from Acousticsamples.

http://www.acousticsamples.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=13

Looking forward to using these vibraphone samples in my recent recordings that are in the works...

I've got the day ahead of me. I'll use the time to get into a new Bossa Nova composition. I'm building basic sections by recording elec guitar parts, with a MIDI drum accompaniment. At this point I'm focusing on the basic structure, while trying various ideas as I improvise and then refine details- riffs, phrases, etc. Sometimes a motif can appear out of nowhere and I'm sure this happens for most composers.…

I just finished recording an excellent vocalist- Darl Chryst

see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPCexbxMrV8

She's a true professional with a great expressive voice. The session only required a little over an hour.…