The Mustang III--I love it for straightup blues and rock
Worked tonight on overdubs for “Blue Future” songs including “Mercy Me,” a 12-bar minor blues, and “Disconnected Blues,” a big strutting blues with a harp running through an envelope filter driving the tune. I’m liking a horn section of 2 harps, at least one pitch shifted down an octave or two, and an envelope filter and/or rotating speaker sound for rhythm work.
I’m generally using the Digitech RP500 sounds I used on “The Lucky One,” plus the Mustang III sounds I developed for that amp when I need something very traditionally amped-up (which I do on most of the tunes). Recording both the Mustang III and Digitech RP500 via XLR outs to a Fostex Scarlett audio interface. Loving the sounds. These sounds are traditional for blues, but not when they’re produced by a harmonica.
GASP! What does that T-shirt say?
Fun. As much fun as the CHUD T-shirt shown in the (21016) photo. CHUD! If you don’t remember this high-water mark of late 20th century Western culture, look it up.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Two days left to contribute to Richard Hunter’s “Blue Future” on Indiegogo! For $10 you can order a digital copy of “Blue Future”; for $20 you get that plus a signed copy of “The Lucky One” CD; and for bigger contributions, well, check it out below…
Anyway, help us get this record out of the studio and onto the street! I have a special gift in mind for contributors that johnny-come-latelies won’t get, so order your copy now by clicking on the link to Indiegogo below!
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
The Mustang III--I love it for straightup blues and rock
I had the opportunity last weekend to use my Fender Mustang III amp in the studio for the “Blue Future” sessions. In a word, it was perfect for recording a wide range of amped and clean tones. (I wouldn’t mind if it weighed ten pounds less, so I guess that’s not perfect, but the sound and ease of use sure were.)
I discovered something interesting about this amp while we were recording. The Master Volume control on the front panel only controls the output from the speaker. The Master Volume control has no effect on the signal from the XLR outs. That means you can put as much or as little sound into the room via the speaker as you want while maintaining a clear signal from the line-outs. That’s perfect when you want to be in the room with the musicians, but you don’t want a whole lot of spill from the amp into other peoples’ microphones. When we put the amp into the room with the musicians, we turned the Master Volume down to zero and listened on headphones while recording. When we put the amp into its isolation booth, we turned it up so I could get the feel of the air moving. Perfect.
Listening to the rough takes from that session in my home studio, the amp-modeled tracks are, well, perfect. Of the seven tracks I recorded last weekend, four were recorded with the Mustang. Three of those tracks used a slightly modified version of the “Bassman Mono DL” patch from my patchset for the Fender Mustang. I made all the changes in the tone–add a little treble, reduce the gain, take the delay off–with the front panel controls, just as I would with a “real” amp. I saved the changes so that I can recall the exact same tones for overdubs later, which is one of the BIG advantages of working with a modeling device recorded direct to the board: no matter where or when you record, you can get the exact same sound any time you need it. I used amped-up Bassman modeled tones with the Shure SM58 mic for the tough blues numbers, and I used the Audix Fireball V coupled with a Mustang patch based on the Studio Preamp (i.e. squeaky clean) model for clean tones on my instrumental “Big 17.” That piece includes a lot of 4- and 5-note chords that just don’t work with a lot of distortion laid on. Distortion on big close-voiced harmonica chords turns everything into a big loud blur–not really effective if you want that chord to mean something harmonically. Which in this case I do.
Different mics make different sounds, and they all sound good (on the right song…)
I brought five mics to the session, tried three of them (Fireball V, SM58, and Shaker Dynamic), and ended up using two: the SM58 and the Fireball V. I recorded one piece standing in front of a high-end large diaphragm condenser mic supplied by Pete Rydberg, the engineer. (And of course the harmonica tones on that piece are big, lush, detailed, and beautiful.) We had a Blue Bottle mic (Blue is the manufacturer, Bottle is the name of the mic) in the iso booth, and some of the tracks were recorded simultaneously from that mic and the Mustang so we can put a little more clean into the tone later if we like.
The effects in my Digitech RP500 are more numerous and varied (and often better) than the Mustang’s, and when I needed to record a waka-waka filter sound for my song “Disconnected Blues,” I used the RP. (Nothing beats the FX25 envelope filter model in the RP500 for waka-waka.) But for straight-up amped and clean tones, with and without reverb and delay, in traditional styles, this Mustang is da bomb.
I’m really glad I added the Mustang III to my trick bag, and I anticipate using it a lot more in future. Stay tuned for clips of the harp sounds from “Blue Future.”
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
I’m leaving for Philadelphia on Friday night, April 13 2018. Saturday morning we–me plus Mike Brenner, Mark Schreiber, John Cunningham, and engineer Pete Rydberg–begin recording the tracks for “Blue Future.”
I’ve been working, working, working on these sessions. Practicing harmonica, thinking about the instruments for various tracks; putting together some heads for Little Walter-ish blues instrumentals; running through the sounds for every track; practicing the vocals too, even though we’re not planning on recording keeper vocals from these sessions.
If all goes well, we walk out of the sessions Monday with half a dozen originals and a few covers in hand, ready to lay down keeper vocals and backup harp tracks.
Wow! Lotta fun. Stay tuned for the news from Philly, and buy yourself a copy of the record in advance by contributing to my Indiegogo project to fund “Blue Future.”
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Tell me if you feel like it: do you think I should release “Blue Future” in digital and physical (like a CD) form, or just digital? I notice that a lot of new cars don’t have CD players in them. Do you listen with a CD player, or an iPhone or iPod or whatever, or what? (My car has a CD player. The next one may not.)
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
The campaign to fund my next record, “Blue Future,” has concluded at Indiegogo.com. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project–we raised about $750, which will be used to help pay for mixing and mastering the record. Every penny helps!
Different mics make different sounds, and they'll all sound good when you do (but not necessarily on a particular song...)
One thing that my work on the Fender Mustang patchset reinforced in me is that the microphone that’s used with an amp has a very big effect on the overall sound. So if you want a sound that’s in the ballpark of “authentic” for a particular genre, you need a mic that’s all about the sound of that genre.
My next record, “Blue Future”, to be recorded in April with the same crew of Philly killers as“The Lucky One,” is a lot more about blues than my first. So I want a sound that’s blue. At the moment, I’m getting that sound with a Shure SM58 mic. I plan to leave my Audix Fireball V in the case and play the harmonica parts with that SM58. Mostly. If I decide to put some of the more dense and complex sounds into the songs, I’ll need a mic that doesn’t grunge them up. I may also take the opportunity to get a Bulletini; my Bottle o’ Blues broke, and I don’t have another loud bullet-y mic ready to go. (Or I might have Greg Heumann turn one of my Shures into an Ultimate 545 or 58, or try Randy Landry’s new mic; and I just pulled my Astatic JT30 from the closet…) None of the other mics in the picture below are really distinctive enough compared to the SM58 to make it worth taking them. (On the other hand, some of those cheap tape recorder mics I have in the closet…)
Mics and harps. Shure SM58 next to harmonica case.
I plan also to bring my Zoom G3, my Digitch RP500, and my Fender Mustang III. I’ll do most of the work in the studio with that amp, which has a lot of great sounds for amped blues. (Not surprising, since that was the design spec for this set of sounds.) I’ve also put Fender’s “diatonic pitch shifter” (i.e. a key-and-mode specific harmonizer) to use, and I’m amazed at how much I like it. The effect is present on the Digitechs too, but I never got around to setting one up. I got an intensely blue sound by playing a G dorian harp (G dorian minor in 2nd position) over a pitch shifter with the interval set to a 6th down, and a G mixolydian scale. When the two scales collide, it’s startling, amazingly dense and blue.
Mustang III (on left) is going to PhillyDigitech RP500 on right, Zoom G3 on left, in studio for “The Lucky One” and soon “Blue Future”
It’s not easy to haul so much stuff to a session, but it’s better to have and not need than to need and not have. Stay tuned for more news about and from the sessions.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Digitech RP500 on right, Zoom G3 on left, in studio for "The Lucky One" and soon "Blue Future"
Happy Holidays everybody! (And no, that is NOT a political statement.)
I’m still working on the sounds to go with the songs for the upcoming recording sessions for my next record, “Blue Future.” My favorite tool for making orchestral sketches (“orchestral” used here in a very broad sense) is the looper. I put the loop linked below together with two Digitech RP500 patches, a Digitech Jamman Solo XT looper, a Lucky 13 D harp re-tuned (by me) to a Country tuning (draw 5 reed sharped by 1/2 step), and an Audix Fireball mic, with a Peavey KB2 keyboard amp at the end of the signal chain. I recorded the loop playing with a Zoom H4 recorder placed on a stand directly in front of the KB2’s speaker. I normalized the audio file (in Audacity, of course, a really nice tool for quick jobs like that) and edited for length. Otherwise the original recording is unaltered.
The setup in the studio for “The Lucky One” and (soon) for “Blue Future.”
Fat, Fat, Fat
The first RP500 patch is one I put together using the Digitech Blackbass amp model with a Bassman cabinet model and a pitch shifter set to move the pitch up by a minor third, and 100% wet. With the pitch shifter inactive, this patch sounds like a very big Chicago-style blues harp; with the shifter on, it sounds like a slide guitar. I laid down two layers on the loop with this sound, one with a full-throated tone for the foreground, one with a scratchy chug at much lower volume behind it. Whenever you double a harp part, especially when you play the harmonica at two different volume levels, you get minor variations in pitch that produce a really fat sound. And THIS sound is fat, fat, fat, one of the closest approximations of a heavily amped guitar that I’ve ever produced.
The second RP500 patch is a simple bass sound, created with the pitch shifter set to drop the pitch by an octave, again 100% wet. Usually I’d set it to drop the pitch by 2 octaves, but the Lucky 13 already has a low end that’s an octave lower than a standard harp. (It just occurred to me that if I set the pitch shifter to two octaves down, I could play the part in the second octave of the Lucky 13 and get a lot more flexibility and power on the bends. Hmmm.)
Put those two sounds together, and you have a very punchy ensemble sound with a lot of depth. I’m going to use this setup for my new song “Paint This Town,” an ode to not worrying, at the sessions for “Blue Future.”
Here’s the clip, short but powerful. Dig.
RP500 Patchset Licensees Delight!
As of this morning (18 December 2017), I’ve sent every one of my RP500 patchset licensees a bulk load file containing all of the RP500 patches I used to record “The Lucky One.” Thanks to my licensees for your support, and Merry Christmas! (ALSO not a political statement.) One caveat: we won’t have access to the gear required to make a Mac version of this set until after Christmas. In the meantime, if you’re an RP500 patchset licensee and you use a Mac, or you haven’t received our email (I’m looking at you, klassick) because your email addy has changed, let us know.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Digitech RP500 on right, Zoom G3 on left, in studio for "The Lucky One" and soon "Blue Future"
As regular visitors to this site know, I’ve been planning to follow up my record “The Lucky One” with a new set of songs called “Blue Future.” The recording sessions were scheduled for October, but I had some family medical issues on the very weekend I was scheduled to record in Philadelphia, so the sessions were cancelled. It looks like we’re going to record now in January-February 2018.
The setup in the studio for “The Lucky One” and (soon) for “Blue Future.”
I’m disappointed that I have to wait another few months to lay these songs down, but I’m also glad to have another couple of months to work on the material. (As the saying goes: a work of art is never finished, only released.) I’m also glad to have another month or so to put an IndieGoGo campaign together to fund the recording.
In the meantime, I’ve been getting some great feedback from Taxi, the independent A&R guys, on various songs from “The Lucky One.” (“50 Grand” has been forwarded by Taxi to several listings, and it might come to a TV show near you before long.) One of the things they told me was that a remix of my favorite song from the record, “Why Should I Make History,” has a lotta potential if the choruses get bigger. So I’ve asked Mike Brenner to lay some more guitar on those choruses, after which we’ll mix again and see what happens.
