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Post subject: Plugin torture
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 10:05 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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I guess I'm still old school. I really can't stand this new recording world where everyone seems to be just fine with recording everything with plugins. It sucks. I'm all for technology moving forward to a point, but leave it up to the humans to over use something to death until it takes all of the magic away.

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to do the guitars on one of his songs. It's at a studio, with a decent producer. Very nice guy. But I just couldn't get comfortable in the sessions. I was ready to bring a couple amps, a few guitars, my pedal board.

"No need, we're using plugins"

Those dreaded words. The mood killer of all recordings. The creator of chasing after something that may or not be there. We'll find out later after you record everything clean and dry. How much more complicated can you make things for yourself than to record songs this way?

"Do a solo, really get into it!!"

Ok, first off, to do a proper overdriven or distorted solo, it helps to actually be able to hear the distortion ( and a little delay for my taste) so no dry recording for this part ok. Then you'll get this answer, "I've got every distortion you can possibly think of right here." The computer screen pops up a list of oh.. A couple hundred distortions. And of course each one is capable of being tweaked every which way possible. And of course, as soon as you choose one, sure enough it sounds like utter crap unless you do tweak the heck out of it. After going through a few, you settle for one just to get things moving.

"Delay you say? You're in luck, every delay you can possibly think of is all right here." A list of a couple hundred more. Uuuugh.. A new experimental process continues for a while longer until once again you settle for one to keep things moving. Because it really doesn't matter right? They're plugins!! You can change every sound and parameter at any time after. Cool beans. Let's go.

You run through tracks of dry rhythms, dry solos, distorted and delayed stuff. More bells and whistles added and subtracted, cleaned up dirtied up, eq'd, compressed, washed, dried, and folded into 10 tracks that now need to be edited, selected, chopped, looped, moved, elongated, shortened, quantized, filtered, tubed and bit crushed.

After hours of enduring these these processes..." Ok, let's hear it again."

CRASH!!!

"What happened?"

Well, there were so many plugins running at once, it crashed protools..

Really? So what happens now?

I can go back to where we saved it last.

Where's that?

Oh you know. Before we edited, selected, chopped, looped, moved, elongated, shortened, quantized, filtered, tubed and bit crushed. But we'll remember all that we did right?

The plugin world is an evil time wasting process. Never will I trust that nonsense again. I'll bring my guitars, amps, and pedals, if you don't like it, hire someone else. It's a torturous Hell that I absolutely despise. I'm used to doing my own tweaking of my own sounds before showing up. I use good guitars, amps, and pedals. And I know how to use them in a studio. Mic it up and get me in and out.

The plugin business is a nightmare people in Hell have.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 10:48 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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Great post, JS. I wish I was competant enough on guitar to have your problems, but, I think I get it.
There was a news story, here in Phoenix, about a house fire. In the video, the family was standing outside, trying to comprehend the loss and damage. But one daughter was staring into her smart fone, with that sideways smirk one gets when expecting a response from some tech device. She was a few steps away from engagement.

I have a flip phone. Hang in there, man.


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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 11:40 pm
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+1 to everything you said, JS...

My drummer/producer, after requesting a thousand times, eventually realized that my best performances were playing through my rig while he played drums live...if I used my guitar(s), my pedalboard and my amp, we got the guitar parts recorded quicker and better.

The logistical nightmare of playing a mic'd amp beside mic'd drums in our tiny home studio led me to agree to playing through a POD directly into the preamps. We take the time to find the best modeling for the song (which usually ends up being one of four particular models/setting) and going from there...usually a ten-minute decision at most.

Yes, he has 5000 overdrives, fuzzes and modulation effects at his fingertips...but I have the best one of each if those effect (at least for me and my style) at my toes, mounted on a Furman SPB-8 Stereo Pedalboard.

I trust him to add something if it's needed--I rarely record with reverb or delay so it gives him opportunity to add more if it's needed (whether it's in the individual guitar track or on the entire song) without having to work around that effect already being in the way...but he trusts me to put the "right" overdrive, fuzz, wah or phase shifter on the original take...very seldom do I give him a take that he can't work with to finish the song (production-wise).

We compromise here and there, but it works for us and we're happy with the results of our ramshackle and ridiculously cheap setup.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 11:53 pm
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Jah Soldier wrote:
I guess I'm still old school. I really can't stand this new recording world where everyone seems to be just fine with recording everything with plugins. It sucks. I'm all for technology moving forward to a point, but leave it up to the humans to over use something to death until it takes all of the magic away.

[...]

The plugin business is a nightmare people in Hell have.


Clap. Clap. Clap.
Real hands clapping too.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one allergic to Antares either.


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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 12:02 am
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The last band I was in, our first album used some plugins, but very little. I did those guitar tracks with 6 guitars 3 amps (4 if you count the Marlboro box), and a few pedals. Banged out the tracks, done in 2 sessions for 12 songs.

Our second album was plugin Hell. Most of the songs were recorded direct, plugins crashing protools over and over. A producer promising to edit things through plugins that never happened. Just an overall agonizing process of BS. Plugins breed laziness, procrastination, and eventually, when over used, a wrecking ball to protools. The amount of tweaking and editing involved is extremely time consuming. And if a producer starts getting tired of it, guess what? Your tracks are cut and pasted unfinished pieces of garbage.

It's like this:

You're showing up with a color to paint your part in a painting. You have the color of Pea Green to paint it with.

Someone then tells you, you don't need to bring your color here. Just bring yellow. I have everything I need to make it into Pea Green.

You show up with Yellow at his request, he plugs you into his system and adds a blue that makes it Green. Then he filters the Blue to make it a Sea Foam green, then adds a little color to both and it inadvertently turns it to Hunter Green. Then he decides to soften your yellow and you end up with Blue Green, then he distorts the Blue and you now have Puke Green and decides its close enough. Let's roll with it, then later on he'll mess with it in his spare time to make it Pea Green but really never gets around to it.

That's what it's like my friend.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 7:32 am
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Find another studio or engineer. That's BS!

Check out tapeop.com (also free subscription to printed version) and you'll find plenty of studios using Pro Tools that have a great selection of amps. You'll also have an option to use your own.

Some of them will take your guitar signal into dual sources so that you hear your tone the way you want it and they get another version with no modulation effects to try and work with and then compare the two with you.

www.tapeop.com

Good luck.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:36 am
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At the end of the day, not only do you play the instrument, but you also play the amp and the effects. If you can't monitor what that sounds like in real time then it's a pointless exercise.


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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:48 am
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Great Topic. I don't really need surgical techno laden to the ninth degree recordings to listen to. Seems like the bass gets buried in those anyway. It's like they spend the most time on guitar trying to make it sound perfect. Like a competition. I like raw amp sound. The best music ever was done the old amp way. There's too many add ons and plug ins and techno max stuff anyway. Too much concentration on guitar hero stuff when it's all supposed to be about the music and the song. Right?


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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 9:03 am
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Snowjoe wrote:
At the end of the day, not only do you play the instrument, but you also play the amp and the effects. If you can't monitor what that sounds like in real time then it's a pointless exercise.

The guitar is just one part of the complete instrument. You play guitar with effect pedals and amp - that is the instrument.

I know how my fuzz pedal reacts when I pick a little louder. I know how it reacts to harmonics. I know exactly how it breaks on near-unisons. I use all that - it's part of the instrument I play.
Can I play without it? Sure. But it won't sound the same.


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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 12:16 pm
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I very much agree, plugins are NOT the way to record guitar sounds. You need to hear and feel the amp reacting to pick dynamics and harmonics. If you don't want to put delay "to tape" (as we used to say) then stand in the control room with a long lead or a wireless transmitter and just put a delay on the monitors.

And for those youngsters who have never recorded on a well set up tape machine using two-inch tape ... you guys missed out. Sorry but there it is.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:38 pm
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I love all the new stuff, it has its place but it is over used. I am sure there will be push back. With all the digital manipulation things end up too perfect, and the music loses its soul. I don't want perfect, I want real.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:52 pm
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I agree, engineers can over do it. Need to find a new one.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 5:50 pm
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Well, this last run isn't my project. It's someone else's.

They wanted me to come back and do more, but according to the way I was directed, they should have more than enough to work with. I'll just let them do their plugin magic and manipulate it however they want. I don't care at this point. I gave them about 5 different rhythms, and 4 tracks of solos. It's one song, what more could they really want from it? Work the plugins. I'm not subjecting myself to a nightmare I didn't create. I already endured a year of it in my last band.

The tracks they have are solid, but the more plugins that get added, the more it crashes protools over and over again, and you just end up waiting for everything to be rebooted again for the next half hour. It's the biggest buzzkill ever.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 5:54 pm
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I love plugins! I am so happy there are so many great amp and distortion modeling programs out there.

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Post subject: Re: Plugin torture
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:55 pm
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It's possible to record with the guitar through a DI box into the desk then out into an amp so you get totally dry guitar on "tape" to process through whatever plugin. Seems like a waste of time to me though, it's so much easier to just dial in a good sound on the amp, throw a mic in front of it and EQ it a little in the mix.

Digital effects, modellers and plugins promise the world and never deliver. We've had tube amps for over a century now, they may technically be obsolete but there's a reason people keep making them and there's a reason guitarists keep buying them. That reason is the sound. Nothing else sounds or reacts like a tube amp.

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