Airwindows

Drums

While I was coding plugins in 2011, I attempted something ahead of its time. Specifically, it was ahead of the time that I SHOULD have tried it. It was a set of drumkits that I’d sampled.

This was miked with Studio Projects SDCs which I’d modded, through API mic pres, into the guts of an old 20-bit ADAT which I had rewired so intensely that the API’s transformer outputs ran through 1/4″ TRS jacks, and heavy(ish) point to point wire, directly to the balanced inputs of the converter chips themselves. Considering how small this circuitry was, it was an amazing feat of hacky ingenuity to wire the ADAT this way, and it let me do multi-miked drum kit recording.

It also picked up a bit of digital noise from inside the ADAT, which is a problem I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. (I’m using an old Apogee Rosetta now, not hacking apart ADATs to try and make them tolerable…)

The kick mic was various things including an Audix D6. The drums themselves were everything from Gretsch to Ludwig Acrolite to Slingerland, typically not that fancy. Cymbals mostly Zildjian.

Date July 20, 2011
Author Chris
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BrassRider

BrassRider is by request of a friend of mine, a fellow called Slipperman. That’s not to say that it MET with his approval, mind you, but the idea for this freebie was very much his.

He said to call it ‘Andy’ and everyone would know what that meant. I’m not so sure, so I called it BrassRider in hopes I could get a bit closer to the mark.

Put it on overheads, and it will try to ride up cymbal crashes, while ignoring drum hits.

It’s a stereo plugin, on the grounds that overheads are often recorded with a stereo pair. It uses techniques from my DeEsser, and it does its level best to grab on to cymbal crashes and ride those, without being triggered by drum hits even if those are louder than the cymbals. I’m not at all sure it’s better than just grabbing the fader, but when Slippy asks, Slippy gets ;) And so do you, as it’s free for the taking, as is.

(This technique is well known in the work of Andy Sneap, hence the suggested name of ‘Andy’)

Date July 10, 2011
Author Chris
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Multiband Distortion

MultibandDistortion is just what you’d think- instead of just highpassing the signal, it splits it, and distorts each band separately, and recombines them in a strange matrix with a stability control. Separate hardness controls on each band, very flexible.

This is one of those plugins where I don’t think there’s really a correct way to use it. There are many knobs. Fool with them. It’s very much not a ‘dial in tonal purity’ plugin, it’s a ‘wreck stuff’ plugin so experiment and see what you can get out of it.

Date April 25, 2011
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Cabs

CabsDemo was a curiosity based on some experimentation. Back in the day I spent some time trying to do digital guitar amp simulation (before I realized that I enjoyed real electric amps better) and I made some plugins very early on that were convolution-based and using freely available guitar cab samples. They didn’t work that well, and I wanted to do a lot more.

Cabs resulted. The cab type gives you the convolved tone color (it likes to run at 44.1K). Color Boost lets you blend that in with the raw sound. Fizz Disrupt does something strange to the extreme highs, and you can get some really messed up glitchy edge to the sound using that. Heavy Range and Heavy Boost are fullness enhancers, and then there’s the output level.

I had in mind that you could use them along with Vox Amplugs for a real low-budget easy guitar recording thing. Indeed you can, though I was more excited about this before I set up my simple real guitar rig ;) definitely try it out, there’s always the possibility that it will help. At the time, I was very into using (cheap) real analog such as the Amplugs, and then doctoring that ITB. There’s no question that it was a heck of a lot cheaper than what I’ve got now: the cost of the real amp or a 57 is nothing compared to the cost of the pre and converter you need to get the most out of that stuff.

Cabs is $50.

Date March 27, 2011
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Chris

Drums

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Cabs

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