# Lo-fi



## Agata0023 (Mar 15, 2007)

Hey everyone, This week and the coming weeks (maybe months) I'm recording, editing, arranging and mastering my own solo cd. Now, I want a Lo-Fi kinda of sound, but I'm not sure its plausible with the type of music I'm doing and the way the guitar tracks are to be arranged. The songs (all 38 of them) have multiple guitar tracks, and when I say multiple, I mean upwards of 14 tracks. Some are just weird noises and effects, but the majority of them are the actual tunes. Anyways, I want a grainy old cassette left in the sun kind of sound for some songs. But It's a bit more complicated than that. I want the 
"crappy" sound to fade in and out with super overkill fuzz and bass, then fade in to waay too much treble, but at the same time I want parts of it to just click in with nice crisp "proper" sounding recording. For a good example of what I mean download "Queen" by the Melvins, the one off their singles cd, not off Stoner Witch. Not that extreme, but that kind of feeling in some songs, you know what I mean? Thanks


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2007)

I've used iZotope's Vinyl plugin on a few track intros to get that dirty record needle sound. Easy to use. Light on the processor. Sounded authentic enough. They kind of specialize in making plugins that tear your sound apart. Check them out. They have a plugin called Trash that's supposed to do exactly that.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

hi
i think the you could get close to what the melvins did there by simply applying effects to the desired tracks of your songs- i think phasers, flangers and eq changes. i dont know what programs your using, but most will have what you need- to get a fading in and out, you might be able to apply the effects to seperate tracks one at a time, and varying the level and length of effect to each track.
what i would do is run two recording programs- one to play the track while i ride the effects sliders, another to record the results.
love the melvins.


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## Agata0023 (Mar 15, 2007)

Well, all the effects are being done with pedals. I know the super fuzzy bass and and over the top treble sounds and stuff has to be done in post (and on the mixer board for a few of the guitar tracks), I'm using Pro Tools at the studio as well as Sound Forge 9 at the studio and at home. Each guitar track is its own track, so I can mess with them individually.


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## SkunkWorks (Apr 12, 2007)

fraser said:


> hi
> what i would do is run two recording programs- one to play the track while i ride the effects sliders, another to record the results.


Hmmm. Why not just use automation and record your movements (read, write, latch)... why do you have to "record the results to another program"? Just about any DAW has this capability in its multitrack.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

SkunkWorks said:


> Hmmm. Why not just use automation and record your movements (read, write, latch)... why do you have to "record the results to another program"? Just about any DAW has this capability in its multitrack.


lol- this is an old one dragged back from the depths-

to answer your question skunkworks- your method is far to complicated for me
i dont know anything about automation(read, write, latch) 
and besides its much more flexible to ride the sliders in real time, more like working with a real recording desk- and i imagine itd provide more realistic results. if i was to go your way, and assuming the original poster is at my level, then by the time i figured out how to do it id have grown out of the music i started with. believe me - i been there.


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2007)

fraser said:


> lol- this is an old one dragged back from the depths-
> 
> to answer your question skunkworks- your method is far to complicated for me
> i dont know anything about automation(read, write, latch)
> and besides its much more flexible to ride the sliders in real time, more like working with a real recording desk- and i imagine itd provide more realistic results. if i was to go your way, and assuming the original poster is at my level, then by the time i figured out how to do it id have grown out of the music i started with. believe me - i been there.


What DAW are you using? In Cubase it's really easy. You click a button to enable 'recording of events' on the track, hit play and then ride your sliders. When you're done disable recording events on the track, rewind, hit play and your sliders will move just like you had been moving them before. You can do multiple tracks at once, or one at a time. And you can go in and fine tune your automation after the fact.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

ahh ok- thanks iaresee, i had heard of this function, but never looked into how it is used- i really try to keep it all simple- now i see it put as you just did, ill be looking into it-
im converting right now from cooledit to reaper- so i can work it into the learning curve. it seems that everytime i start the learning process, all my creativity goes out the window, like all of it- so you see why i never really learn the more obscure tools within my daw- just the basics-
for instance, i found cubase a bit difficult, gave it a few tries, and then went back to cooledit, simply because i could actually get things done with it.
thanks for that info- ill be able to use it in the future


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2007)

Yea, that's really why I've stuck with Cubase SX 3 for so many years now. I don't even care about Cubase 4. I know SX 3. I work fast and efficiently in it. It runs stable on my aging machine. And it does everything I need it to do. I few years ago I invested in Cubase SX 3 Power and it really helped me get comfortable and efficient in Cubase.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

yah thats why im still using cooledit lol- i actually had it before i had a pc- so by the time i found out it was really out of date and there were far better things out there, i was already used to it, at least to the point of bieng able to use it efficiently. remember i only packed my 4 track cassette unit away a year ago :smile:
cubase sx3 is the one i have- maybe ill start looking into it again- if i actually take the time to learn things i can do it, but i never had any time to mess around before- i had 2 hrs of guitar time per night and didnt want to spend it all on learning stuff-now i have 24 hrs of guitar time a day(if i take the right coloured pills) so ill be less conservative with my time.


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## SkunkWorks (Apr 12, 2007)

fraser said:


> lol- this is an old one dragged back from the depths-
> 
> to answer your question skunkworks- your method is far to complicated for me
> i dont know anything about automation(read, write, latch)
> and besides its much more flexible to ride the sliders in real time, more like working with a real recording desk- and i imagine itd provide more realistic results. if i was to go your way, and assuming the original poster is at my level, then by the time i figured out how to do it id have grown out of the music i started with. believe me - i been there.


Ok, just thought I'd ask. Automation IS working the faders and FX knobs in real time... it just records what you are doing (by turning "write" on, on a track). When you're done, you turn "write" _off_ and turn on "read" mode and watch everything move when you hit playback. You can even tweak and redo parts of it if you messed up something. The nicest thing is you can do it a track at a time if you've multitracked... it really just is 2 clicks... even a simpleton like me figured it out without even looking in the manual (wink). I think I'd have a harder time trying to output the audio from one DAW to the input of another to re-record it. So I was just curious why someone would do that.

It's all good 

[EDIT]
Oops. I see this was all just mentioned


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## SkunkWorks (Apr 12, 2007)

fraser said:


> ahh ok- thanks iaresee, i had heard of this function, but never looked into how it is used- i really try to keep it all simple- now i see it put as you just did, ill be looking into it-
> im converting right now from cooledit to reaper- so i can work it into the learning curve. it seems that everytime i start the learning process, all my creativity goes out the window, like all of it- so you see why i never really learn the more obscure tools within my daw- just the basics-
> for instance, i found cubase a bit difficult, gave it a few tries, and then went back to cooledit, simply because i could actually get things done with it.
> thanks for that info- ill be able to use it in the future


CoolEdit Pro is now Adobe Audition which is now in version 3. That's why I still use it, I learned it inside out when it was Cooledit Pro so it's very familiar and like an old friend... with way cool added functionality now. Worth the few hundred or whatever it was. I find it alot more user friendly and intuitive than just about anything thing else out there. Relatively quick to figure out for someone just starting out but also has the functionality to do full blown professional multitrack production. Cubase was a necessary evil when I needed to do certain things... believe me, it's manual was ALWAYS open. I'm so glad I don't need to use it anymore... Adobe now does the things I needed Cubase for.

[EDIT]
Some of the essentials it now has that were missing when it was Syntrillium's product are support for VST and VSTi/DXi (VST and DX Instruments) and midi. The wav editor is still one of the best in the business for some of the "out of the box" stuff it can do (even more cool things now).


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

hey skunkworks, thanks for the infos- so adobe audition can use vsts and midi- the only reason i started using reaper was because i got ezdrummer, and it didnt work with cooledit- 
i started using cooledit before i knew i could have email addresses, or that there were forums for stuff like this- so it is pretty familiar- and it is the easiest program for me to use, all the others tend to frustrate me and good work goes out the window with all the screwing around.
im going to look into adobe, 
thanks


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## SkunkWorks (Apr 12, 2007)

fraser said:


> hey skunkworks, thanks for the infos- so adobe audition can use vsts and midi- the only reason i started using reaper was because i got ezdrummer, and it didnt work with cooledit-
> i started using cooledit before i knew i could have email addresses, or that there were forums for stuff like this- so it is pretty familiar- and it is the easiest program for me to use, all the others tend to frustrate me and good work goes out the window with all the screwing around.
> im going to look into adobe,
> thanks


Ya EZ Drummer is the thing I was refering to that I always had to go into Cubase for... export out the individual wav files and then take them into Adobe where I prefer to work. Should be able to use EZ right inside Adobe now... haven't tried it yet but will be soon.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

yup exactly- i was building the drum tracks with ezdrummer in reaper, then taking that track to cooledit- reaper isnt bad, but if adobe can do it all with the familiarity i need then im in. 
looking at the web page, it seems like the general interface is similar to cooledit-
the more i look at the webpage the more im interested-


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## SkunkWorks (Apr 12, 2007)

Ya I like tearing off the mixer tab in Audition and sliding it over to my second monitor... wave tracks on one monitor and mixer on the other. There's some really cool features in the actual wave editor like spectral editing... you can export out your wav as a frequency based bitmap, which you can then take into photoshop and do things to... create fades using gradients and all kinds of stuff... a whole new way of "looking" at audio so to speak. Probably not that useful for the beginner, but for someone like me who needs to zero in on dirty audio (clicks, pops, noise etc.) it's a godsend. you can "heal" a defect in your audio the same way you'd use the healing brush in Photoshop to remove a blemish from someone's skin... it will cut out the offending area (which can be a frequency based moment in time... such as a click that's only in the mids and last only a few miliseconds) and the area will be replaced with audio from the surrounding area (both in time and frequency) and smoothly blended in. Voila!... click gone. It's the exact same thing I do in Photoshop to remove dust and scratches from a scanned photograph... except it's audio... too cool. That might be information overload, but I'm so giddy about it I had to talk about it


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## Guest (Dec 2, 2007)

SkunkWorks said:


> you can export out your wav as a frequency based bitmap, which you can then take into photoshop and do things to... create fades using gradients and all kinds of stuff... a whole new way of "looking" at audio so to speak.


That, I have to admit, is temptingly cool.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

yup that definately sounds cool lol-


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