A Journey into Stereophonic Sound

Many of you will be reading this as a follow on to
THIS POST
on the Witchwood Strawbs discussion group. I felt a detailed explanation of my recording process was needed, so here goes....

That title subject, "A Journey into Stereophonic Sound", is a line from an old Vinyl Stereo test record that my Uncle Jack played me as a kid. I have now found the actual recording, you can hear it in this player -



I was fascinated...firstly, because he had a superb STEREO record player way before my folks could afford one, and secondly because of the sheer wonder of the sound....a Steam Train thundering across the room, fantastic! So, from that moment on, I was hooked......Jack also had a superb Triumph Spitfire two-seater open top Sports car that he'd just rebuilt, and took me for a blast in that...he has a lot to answer for :)

Fast forward to around 1969, and after much pestering, my Dad came home with...a guitar !! By today's standards, it was horrendous...to start with, it was left handed, but had been restrung as right, so all the nut slots were wrong. The action was stunningly bad, but a great way to improve strength in your fingers :) . I enrolled in Guitar classes at school...attended the first lesson, and they tried to make me read music...in true Mancunian style, "stuff this", I thought...and went home to teach myself. The guitar actually came with the Legendary "Play In A Day" book by Bert Weedon, so I set about playing the somewhat dreadful songs contained in it until I could change chords quite fast.....and then after many months learning, that "Eureka" moment when you realise "hey, I can play!!"

Fast forward again to April 1974, and a surprise birthday treat from my cousin Pete....two tickets to see The Strawbs at Manchester Opera House. What a revelation...from the opening crashing notes of "New World", with swirling smoke and cascading red and blue stage lights, through to the finale and that juggernaut of a riff, "The River / Down By The Sea" played by Dave Lambert (with cigarette smouldering away, stuck in his guitar strings above the nut...to this then-16 year old, HOW cool ??!!) , I was mesmerized, and inspired..... I dashed home and sat up into the early hours until I could play that riff note perfect...the real start of my guitar adventure.... thanks, Dave.

I shortly afterwards joined a local band in Manchester with my mate Paul "Nachtsmeer", who also played me the then brand new "Hero and Heroine" Strawbs album.....another defining moment ! Its still my benchmark in production values, a fantastic sounding album from start to finish, and the "atmosphere" of produced sound that I aspire to now.

1990's.... I was very fortunate to be asked to help a local band with some guitar overdubs in a full 24 Track studio in Manchester in 1992. I learned a lot from that, and ended up spending the next two years playing Live shows with them, an interesting experience and learning curve in itself. I put my own first "Studio" together around 1995, consisting of a simple Fostex X15 4 track cassette multitrack , and a drum machine. I also had one of the first Amp Modellers shortly after, a JD10, which sounded great. These devices work by taking a normal Electric guitar input, and then processing it to sound like its playing through a particular guitar amp, whilst allowing the sound to be input directly via a normal jack plug into a mixer / computer USB interface/ recorder, allowing Recording and/or listening via headphones. No more disturbing the family or neighbours with huge volume. This was all a good grounding in recording, and led to my present setup.

2008...I record all Electric guitars, Vocals and Bass via a Line 6 Toneport...a wonderful box, that gives the best sounding emulations of classic Analog gear I have heard. The Toneport transmits the audio from normal Jackplug input cable, via USB directly into my Computer, where it enters the multitrack program, Reaper. This is a great piece of software that does all (and more) of what the other hugely expensive products do, for a cost of around 25 uk pounds. I control the software faders onscreen using real faders on a Tascam FW1082 Firewire interface, although Reaper works perfectly ok without this , using your PC Mouse instead. I just like the feel of real faders. Drums are programmed using the amazing Jamstix VST Plugin. ..and any "Strings" are played Live by me on an M-Audio MIDI Keyboard, triggering samples usually in Reason Software. Having done a full mix, in real time as I prefer to do, I then run the Master Stereo two tracks through the PSP Vintage Warmer VST Plugin. I find this gives an amazing Live feel to the overall sound, and a real "old tape" vibe. An example of all this in action is the song "Just Have Some Fun" in the Player below

My Acoustic / Electro acoustic guitars are recorded either via a Zoom A2 Acoustic Modeller (or sometimes direct via this DI box), and at the same time the guitar is Mic'ed up using a cheap Behringer SM58 copy dynamic mic. Both these inputs can be fed into my Behringer 1604 analog mixing desk (12 channel, but you only actually need two) , and carefully blended at mixdown to give a balance between Direct sound and Mic'ed sound. A good example of the sound I achieve using the DI/Mic route is "Shoreline", you can play it in this player



I'm particularly pleased with Shoreline, as it was recorded originally on a little Zoom MR4 4 Track digital recorder, bouncing tracks down as I progressed, and finally mixing down to Stereo two track on a Sony MiniDisc. "Bass" is actually me playing single notes on a little Sampler, and drums are a single Loop repeated on the Zoom drum machine, synced to the recorder via MIDI.

My current projects include several collaborations with my good friend and fellow Strawbs fan, Bjorn, aka "Strawbjorn". He sends me a basic guitar/voice track that he's written and recorded, and I add Bass/Guitars/Drums and Procuce/Mix it. For an example of my latest "acoustic" guitar sounds, have a listen to the lovely "Song to Alex"...my Lead Acoustic guitar sound was recorded from the built in Piezo pickup on my Westfield electro acoustic, running through a Yamaha Magicstomp acoustic modeller (the Zoom A2 would sound very similar), and processed using a vst plugin called "Oilcan Echo" by Nomad Factory software. I think it gives a very relaxed Acoustic sound...and a huge thanks for acoustic inspiration to the Master, Brian Willoughby

I'm happy to answer any questions on all of this, and you can check out my songs at Rocles MySpace

and my collaborations with Bjorn are at StrawBjorn's Myspace

I also now have a page of Strawbs Cover Versions on the band's own Website

I can also highly recommend the Zoom 2090 Forums

Another essential is the HomeMadeHitShow , Tony has very kindly played several of my songs on there, and there's GREAT tips and discussion, plus tutorial Videos on all aspects of Home Recording. A must-see !