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Jam - 2011-12-17

Jamming w/ Schmeffy...

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Friend of the Devil

I figured I'd share my very first mixed song.

Equipment Used:

Vocal Microphone
  • MXL v67g - run into Tascam-US1800 XLR line 1. Shock mounted w/ wind cover and pop filter.
  • Cubase Compressor:
    Cubase Compressor
Acoustic Guitar
  • Ovation - run directly into Tascam-US1800 guitar line-in.
  • Cubase Track 1:
    • Cubase Compressor
    • Cubase Mono Delay
  • Cubase Track 2:
    • Cubase Compressor
    • Cubase Mono Delay

Yeah! New music blog!

In 2011, after 35 years of playing mostly acoustic guitar, I have finally arrived in the digital age.  I've always been a geek, and I've always been a musician, but somehow the two never intersected.  My geekdom has been towards enterprise data not very much towards media.  My musicianship has tended to be acoustic - guitars, banjo, hand drums, recorders, etcerta.  I just never had the drive to plug in - but all that is changing.  New toys are letting me make some noise and capture it digitally...

Let's face it, I'm a hippy at heart!  I've always owned an electric guitar, but they have all been pretty junky, so i have mostly played my Ovation and rarely made use of the onboard electronics.  Not too long ago I picked up a fairly cheap Epiphone Les Paul copy, which of course I had to plug in.  I plugged it into my old 30th aniversary Marshall (my electric guitars may have been junky, but the amp never was!) hoping that it didn't need new tubes, and it roared!  I wanted to rock.  I had the need to make noise.

Another aspect to my digital revelation is recording.  So long as I have been playing music I have never had a decent recording solution.  My singing/guitar playing has gotten decent, so I really wanted to hear what I sounded like to the rest of the world.  I did some research and wound up with a few MXL mics and nice Tascam US-1800 USB digital interface.  I'll do a whole blog post on these, but suffice it to say, I am very happy with the results - particularly working in Cubase.

So why another f'ing blog?  I freely admit that I am a total newb when it comes to digital music production, and frankly I'm not a great musician.  I definitely don't profess to be giving good advice.  The reason I'm choosing to blog is preserve my own experience.  I want to share it with people, and hope it's of some use to someone somewhere.  I hope people will leave comments and point out what an idiot I am, but of course encouragement is always welcome.  Maybe in a few years I will learn some new things and this will be a useful resource.

If you've read this far, welcome to Digital Cheddar and thanks for stopping by.  There will be more content soon...