Vetch's Musical Thread.

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A bit of Rory

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And The Groundhogs

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Two groups who didn`t get the recognition, and didn`t sell out
I saw,and shook hands,with Rory at th Rank Swansea.It was sold out.
 
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Saw these at the Brangwyn Hall.....brilliant

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Sorry Patti Pavillion
 
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And these at the Brangwyn Hall.....

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Again apologies....Patti Pavillion.

Olde age counts :emoticon-0118-yawn:
 
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Don't know what's going on in that video but they keep showing the singer - we want to see the drummer :grin:

That's good. Are you still involved?
Not any more. We were doing ok, mixing with the right people and playing some good gigs, but the singers ego kinda became a problem and that brought an end to it. Shame really, we played to 15,000 people in Coopers Field Cardiff with Snow Patrol, did a gig in London with Brett Anderson from Suede, played Reading Uni with The Magic Numbers and Zane Lowe and a few other great shows.
We still have stuff on Spotify and iTunes - have a listen if you have time :
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There's some phone stuff on youtube as well I think.
 
Not any more. We were doing ok, mixing with the right people and playing some good gigs, but the singers ego kinda became a problem and that brought an end to it. Shame really, we played to 15,000 people in Coopers Field Cardiff with Snow Patrol, did a gig in London with Brett Anderson from Suede, played Reading Uni with The Magic Numbers and Zane Lowe and a few other great shows.

From what I've heard of your music you could have easily been commercially successful. Fine margins I guess. Thanks for posting. Are still playing with anyone else?

Hope you don't mind me asking but I think you posted previously you work professionally in audio? I need someone to explain compression to me <laugh> I just can't get my head around it. I'm currently remixing an album I did years ago (just for fun, no delusions of grandeur!). EQing is blatantly obvious. Sidechain compression (kick/bass) I get, I can hear it but general compression is befuddling me! I've watched a ton of Youtube video but it's not helping. My DAW is Mixbus, by the way.
 
From what I've heard of your music you could have easily been commercially successful. Fine margins I guess. Thanks for posting. Are still playing with anyone else?

Hope you don't mind me asking but I think you posted previously you work professionally in audio? I need someone to explain compression to me <laugh> I just can't get my head around it. I'm currently remixing an album I did years ago (just for fun, no delusions of grandeur!). EQing is blatantly obvious. Sidechain compression (kick/bass) I get, I can hear it but general compression is befuddling me! I've watched a ton of Youtube video but it's not helping. My DAW is Mixbus, by the way.
I do a mean tambourine if it helps
 
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From what I've heard of your music you could have easily been commercially successful. Fine margins I guess. Thanks for posting. Are still playing with anyone else?

Hope you don't mind me asking but I think you posted previously you work professionally in audio? I need someone to explain compression to me <laugh> I just can't get my head around it. I'm currently remixing an album I did years ago (just for fun, no delusions of grandeur!). EQing is blatantly obvious. Sidechain compression (kick/bass) I get, I can hear it but general compression is befuddling me! I've watched a ton of Youtube video but it's not helping. My DAW is Mixbus, by the way.
Compression is primarily used to even out the peaks so to speak. You set a threshold, and any signal above that level is 'squashed' down. The amount it's squashed down by is set by the ratio control. You can use it to get more energy to a mix or stop distortion of the signal.

Anything over 0dB is theoretically distortion although it may not be evident, so if you have a spiky guitar part for example where the loudest part is going +3dB but the rest of the part is say -9dB , without a compressor you could reduce the input gain by -3dB to avoid the loud part going above 0dB. However the knock on effect is that the quiet part has now also dropped by 3dB down to -12dB, which may end up making the part sound weak and lacklustre.
The difference in levels between the loud part(+3dB) and the quieter part(-9dB) is 12dB.

If instead you put a compressor across it, with the threshold set at -6dB and a ratio of maybe 3:1, every time the signal goes above that threshold (-6dB) the signal above will be divided by 3. (the ratio).
So the loud part was +3dB - which is 9dB more than the threshold chosen (-6db). So the 9dB divided by the ratio (3:1) is 3dB.
That 3dB is added to the level of the threshold - the threshold was -6dB, but after compression the level of the signal will be -3dB.
So now the guitar part at it's loudest actually should be -3dB. The quieter part should not trigger the compressor as it's level (-9dB) is below the threshold.
The difference in levels between the loud part(-3dB) and the quieter part(-9dB) is now 6dB - half of what the uncompressed signals were.

It's not just a level thing, compression doesn't just reduce the volume like pulling a fader down, it manages to keep the energy in the signal.

I'm not familiar with Mixbus sorry, but most compressors have a very graphic user interface these days so you can easily see what each control is doing (threshold, ratio, attack, knee, release).
Just have a play with the settings and listen with your ears not the numbers on the screen. If it sounds good to you then it is.

Hope I haven't bored you with the theory, especially as I never use the maths anymore - I just look at the meters and adjust until I like what I'm hearing.

If you have any more questions - feel free to ask - I'm happy to help if I can.
 
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Compression is primarily used to even out the peaks so to speak...[snip]

Excellent <cheers> That makes sense, now I have a reference point to play with.

I'm not familiar with Mixbus sorry, but most compressors have a very graphic user interface these days so you can easily see what each control is doing (threshold, ratio, attack, knee, release).
Just have a play with the settings and listen with your ears not the numbers on the screen. If it sounds good to you then it is.

Mixbus is a proprietry fork of the open source Ardour. It's from Harrison Consoles and has their DSP built in (they contribute back upstream and support Ardour, so I like that). Out of the box every track has their EQ, leveler/compressor/limiter built in. You can of course add any other plugin you want (and I do) but I find I can to do a quick mix with all the built in stuff and get something sounding good fairly quickly (especially as I'm currently exporting all my old stuff from Cubase3 inside a WinXP Virtualbox container - it's a tricky process!)

There's also their "Tape Saturation Drive" built into the dedicated buses and the master strip, which I believe adds some kind of compression (if you use it).

I tried Reaper and Bitwig but couldn't get along with them. I don't have the patience I once had so Mixbus is nice from my perspective. I'm on Linux, so something like ProTools isn't an option anyway.

Hope I haven't bored you with the theory, especially as I never use the maths anymore - I just look at the meters and adjust until I like what I'm hearing.

If you have any more questions - feel free to ask - I'm happy to help if I can.

Certainly haven't bored me (maybe some others reading <laugh>), I love this stuff, fascinating. Thanks very much, that's been a great help.

I totally agree with you about not getting obsessed with the GUI and use your ears. My hearing isn't perfect by any means but it's fun trying.
 
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