Skullcoder Vocrusher (Skullcrusher Mountain Cover with Vocorder)

You've heard me mess around with Skullcrusher Mountain in my other videos, but this time I'm singing it. I apologize. With any luck the vocorder will help hide the fact that the chorus goes completely out of my range.

The original is here: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Skullcrusher%20Mountain If you like JoCo's song and appreciate the way he has made his work available under a Creative Commons license, please consider giving him some love (and money).

Technical: I'm playing a Parker Fly Classic, with the piezo and the magnetic pickup output split using a Y cable (a TRS/TS/TS insert cable). The piezo (acoustic sound) is going into my Apogee Ensemble and into a Logic stereo doubler/reverb plug-in. The magnetic pickup is going into a Boss ME-50, which is adding distortion to create some harmonics, and then into a Digitech Talker. My mic is going into a Jensen JS-3 mic splitter, with one half going into the Ensemble and into a vocal setting ("Male Ambient Lead Vocal"), and the other half going into the Talker. The Talker PA output is going into another input on the Ensemble and another channel in Logic set up just the same.

This is my first attempt at recording with the vocorder. I have had it for years but it mostly sat in the closet because the bypass didn't work -- it came that way, but I only recently realized it wasn't working like it should (after reading the manual). When I realized that I asked a co-worker of mine who is better with a soldering iron than I am to fix it, and he did. Thanks, anonymous co-worker! It also is kind of hard to use to accompany yourself unless you have a mic splitter. So I ordered a mic splitter on eBay. The shipment got lost and had to be re-sent and so took a while, but it finally got here.

Oh, and the audio routing is damnably complicated. In order to record the audio out of Logic along with the video, the only setup I could find that worked was to use the Soundflower plug in, route Logic's mix to Soundflower, set the system audio input to Soundflower, and record using Photo Booth, which takes the system audio in. iMovie apparently can't accomplish this. Sorry the video is so dark. For the next one I will get an indirect light on me (great, more wiring!)

Also, the audio sounded really clean before YouTube's compression got hold of it. Ack.

Are you still reading? Wow, you're hardcore!
To go along with the virtual rats' nest of audio routing, my floor is a rat's nest of boxes and cables, and I can barely move without tripping over them. I ruined several takes because the cables got jammed under my foot and I couldn't toggle the bypass on the vocorder. What a mess!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Jonathan
• Coulton
• Skullcrusher
• Mountain
• Cover
• Parker
• Fly
• Digitech
• Talker
• Vocorder

[andycasy]

Hey, great recording!

Are you using a mic interface with an effects pre-amp?

I'm trying to figure out how to use photo booth to record guitar and vocal with some reverb effect... new to all this. Any advice you can give is much appreciated...

[paulrpotts]

@andycasy see the video details, I describe exactly how it was set up.

If you want to use Photo Booth, make sure the setting to reverse it is set the way you want, or you'll be left/right handed accidentally. Clap a couple of times at the start of the clip so you have something to sync the audio to. Record the audio with FX into a separate program. I then put the two together in Apple iMovie.

[paulrpotts]

@andycasy in the video comments I talk about using Soundflower to make an audio bus from Logic, make it the system audio, and record it directly with the video using Photo Booth -- I would skip that, the current version is not reliable, and it is too hard to set up. Just record the audio separately into another program and sync them afterwards.

[mastercfromhalo3]

Awesome. totally had to subscribe!

[paulrpotts]

Thanks!

[GeekQueenofDesire]

Your guitar playing is really solid; thanks for telling us about the tech side of your recording process. I think your voice is better than you'll admit. ;)

(And I love this song--Coulton rules)

[paulrpotts]

Thanks for the comments. I don't think I should give up singing, but I think I need to take some voice training.

I'll continue to play with the vocorder, too -- I am just starting to figure out what I can do with it!

[LeonardandPaul]

Nice, we subscribed!

[tallyetsmall]

Like the guitar