"Creep Echo" - or 'How To Record a Song at Home with Whatever Gear You Have'

The challenge - write a very simple song and use some everyday objects to record the rhythm track and the least amount of gear possible to process sounds..

The rhythm track here is 'hitting a microphone with a foam-rubber handle added to a box of loose change'. The bass line was done with my guitar (recorded one octave down) and the same microphone was used to record the vocals (a cheap Shure RS-25).

I used Sony Vegas Video to do the multi-track and a Boss VE-20 voice pedal to process the vocals (and to loop the rhythm as well as provide the lower octave for the guitar as bass). The only isolation of sounds occurred when the fridge wasn't humming.

Session details - started Wednesday Dec 21st, finished Thursday Dec 22nd (including video). I had to fit this is between other projects as I needed to complete a creative project after many long months of working for others.

The vocal track heard was done in one take (I wanted to keep it as real as possible) and the guitar solo was done in one take (the third attempt, but no editing, to keep it simple and real). There are four rhythm guitar tracks - two direct with the Sans Amp GT-2 and two recorded through a bass amp with a shotgun mic (it was lying around).

The video was primarily shot on the Canon Vixia HFS200 HD camcorder (a great little video camera!!).

Category:

Music

Tags:

• music
• boss ve-20 vocal processor
• sans amp gt-2
• gt2
• quirky
• neat
• video
• canon vixia hfs-200
• hfs200
• buck moore
• 1986
• fender
• stratocaster
• lake placid blue
• Music Video

[spocksmusic]

...and then again why not use everyday objects for all the part? Oh right, John Cage already did that..... and I'd bet he'd get a kick out of your drummer.

[bacontrees]

@spocksmusic - John Cage even used a cactus at one time. Every day objects are only used for stuff I can't play (like drums) and other percussion parts. How about everyday plants and animals to make the rhythm tracks???

[bacontrees]

@russomorrissey - as long as the batteries are strong, I can't see why they would sound different. I have only used the batteries so far and I have had no distorted sound (Square waveforms) in Vegas. In fact, I got very clean sounds. Maybe the distortion is because the sensitivity on the unit is set too strong. I set my for 50% with a vocal mic going in and it was clean. Hope this helps!!

[bacontrees]

@russomorrissey - Enhance, I'm not exactly sure.I haven't spent enough time with it to hear a difference.

[russomorrissey]

@bacontrees Another question: If I use batteries for the pedal, will it be sound more robotic? Ex.: sounding like it was an 16 or 8 bit recording, and not 24 bits of quality? Coz when I try more then 3 effects it's sounding MUCH robotic. I'm recording on Sony Vegas and I can see the waves of my voice like squares, do you understand? I am using alcalin bateries

[russomorrissey]

@bacontrees hi! Thank you for the answer! I have a doubt about the Dynamics: what does Enhance do, in pratice?

[rformidable]

pictures of pigs...pictures of pigs....lions and tigers and pictures of pigs......meow...

hey, send me the wav of this, i'll try to put some drums n other stuffs in it...

[bacontrees]

@russomorrissey - Hi and thanks for the comment! I used the doubler effect, some 'chromatic' pitch correction and small reverb with tempo-matched delay on the on-off switch. Later, I rolled off some treble, rolled off some bass, peaked some mid frequencies, compressed (9:1 ratio, -12dB threshold) and finally added a bit of distortion for the radio effect (I was going to use the 'radio' effect on the VE-20, but forgot, so I did it after). Cheers!

[russomorrissey]

I really enjoy the effects you used for the voice. I also have a Boss ve 20. Which effects did you use on this recording? Can you tell for me to try ?