 Hello friends and good people of the world and fellow musicians out there. I'm Steve from Blackstar and welcome to this evening's webcast from Blackstar HQ in Northampton, England. Tonight's webcast is really looking at recording in the studio and at home with Blackstar amplification. Now we've got a few products in front of me here to utilise this evening but I want to stress that we couldn't really get every amplifying that we do. So I'll talk about similar features on other products as we go along throughout this webcast. I'm starting off with our Blackstar Fly 3 which is a very unique small 3W mini amplifier which is battery powered as well as mains and you can get an extension speaker for it as well that you can use for your multimedia needs like a computer or MP3 line in that kind of thing. But for the purpose of today where I'm going to start with the fly, for recording I'm using my iPad and using GarageBand which is really the most simplified style of recording at home if you have an iPad that is. It's really simulating a laptop with any recording software on there. I also have here a little focus right interface as well which I'll be using for our Series 1 product using the DirectLine emulated app on there. So without further ado I'd like to start recording a track just so you can see some of the sounds and some of the features you can get on all of our amplifiers. So the Fly 3, really cool little product. I'm coming out of the emulated line out with a little mini jack cable there if you can see that and we're going into the interface with a larger quarter inch jack cable. This is how it sounds going direct. It's really quite a nice pleasant sound. So that's a nice clean tone. What I'm really looking for for this idea that I have today is more of a driving sound with a little bit of delay on there. Now it's perfect for the fly because we have a built in delay built in tape echo. So I'll just increase the level of that and see what we can find. So that's just right for me there. But I need a bit more grind on my guitar tone. So if we just engage the overdrive channel and see what kind of sound we get there. Maybe a little less gain for now. But let me show you the drum idea that I already have preloaded on GarageBand that I can jam along to for an idea. It's a basic beat. So I know roughly the idea I'm going to use for the example today. And it's basically going to be the glue of the track. It's a nice overriding melody that will sit underneath all of the chord structure. So without further ado, let's try it out. It should be fine. Let's see how it sounds. So I'm happy with that. So I've got a really nice tone very quickly going direct out of the fly 3 which is very inexpensive. It's great for travelling around with as well for your MP3 line-in needs if you're camping or in the barbecue this summer in the garden. But yeah, it's a really good product for using for recording as well direct. So that's the fly 3. OK, so now I've plugged into the Beam, the IDCore Beam which is our latest product on the market. It's a really fantastic desktop amplifier. It's this product just here. And having the stereo speakers on there and having such a good high spec of speakers in this unit really makes for a great monitoring system. So if you're on a budget and you can't quite get hold of some monitors currently for your studio at home, this will be a really good substitute for that. And it sounds really good. As well as that, it holds lots of guitar sounds for electric guitar and bass guitar and acoustic guitar as well. Please check out the YouTube link that we have for a full introduction on how to get the best out of the IDCore Beam. It has super wide stereo which is a really unique three-dimensional effect for your effects on here. There's four types of reverb, four modulations, four delays. You can have three of those simultaneous and it really gives you the sound that you're playing in a stadium. It's bouncing all around you. It's really very, very unique. The type of sound that I've chosen for this track is more of a clean guitar sound. I'm using a clean bright with a little bit of effect on there as well to give you that super wide experience hopefully over your speakers that you're listening to this at home with. But to get the real true experience you need to go into your local store, your local Blackstar dealer and check this out, it's a really, really great product. So let's go ahead and record a new track. I'm using as well to connect to the iPad. I'm using the Apple Camera Extension Kit which allows me to link direct from the IDCore Beam into my iPad. This is kind of a good experience for you to hear this in a live situation because it allows you to see the stuff I'm doing and overlaying to make the song sound like a song. So let's have a listen back to that and see how it sits in the mix. That's working for me. Sounds pretty cool. Now what I want to do is try and use one of the acoustic simulations on the IDCore Beam just to give us an acoustic style of sound which is really very cool if you've just got an electric guitar. So let's check that out. So this is my acoustic simulation that I've chosen from the IDCore Beam. I've already got a track ready to go so I can record my next sound. So let's see what happens. Let's see how it feels. Sounds pretty good. I just brought it down in the mix a little bit there because it's an acoustic guitar. It's not really the forefront of what I'm trying to get across with this particular track. So it's a background instrument so I brought it down in the mix a little bit there but it sounds pretty good to me. So next up what I wanted to show you is to move to more of a high end product which is our Series 1. So now I'm plugged into the Series 1 amplifier we have here which is the 6L6100W head. One of my personal favourites. It's an amazing four channel head with so much versatility. It's really very very cool. And what we're going to do is connect an XLR to the back of the amplifier, an XLR cable, which is your three pin microphone style cable. And then that goes direct into our focus right interface that we're using today. You can see that we're not using any cabinet at the moment like a 2x12 or a 4x12. So there's no need to have a load already plugged in. So if you're a guitarist that might be considering a larger amplifier to get really really great valve tones on stage and when you're performing and you might be thinking well I need something for recording as well. It probably wouldn't be the first thing that you think about when you look at a large valve head like this but the emulated line out on the valve heads that we have and it features on most of our valve range apart from Artisan allows you to do such that. Go direct, you can leave the amplifier off in standby and it gives you a really really lovely sound straight in. It's a nice clean tone there. What I'm aiming for here is more of a kind of rustier kind of crunch tone. So let's just go over to the crunch channel, see how that sounds. That's about what I'm looking for there. I often talk about the guitar I'm using, the music man reflex guitar but I've actually got a single core selected there so it gives me more of a three single core type sound. On the bridge. So let's see how it sits in the track. It took me a moment to get the feel there but I'm going to go for more of a strumming hard hitting chord rather than just open chords but that's the kind of feel that I want for this song. So let's record something and see how it feels. Felt quite good, let's check it out. I'm really liking that. Okay, so I want to put something down that's lead guitar related. The tone I've currently got for that rhythm track. It's kind of nice but I want a bit more sizzle there. So on my crunch channel I actually have a voice switch which I can put in which takes me to more of a super crunch type tone. So let's see how that feels. That's more like it, really nice. Direct straight into the amp, out of the emulated out into interface. It sounds really, really good. You don't need the big cabin stuff if you're recording. And this will work the same in a studio, a proper professional studio environment as well. So let's have a jam along and see if we can put down some classic gold guitar solo. Close enough for rock and roll, let's see how it sounds. Be cool so far, I'm happy with that. What I would like to do now is to actually put a bass guitar on there which we've left out so far. But luckily we have the ID called Beam here which stands for Bass, Electric, Acoustic and Music. The bass side of things is really quite cool. And also something I may have left out earlier is it's actually a great Bluetooth speaker to stream your audio to. So we'll plug in the bass and we'll get a really cool tone and then finish off the track with a nice bass line. OK, so I've got my bass guitar plugged into the ID called Beam now to finish the idea off with a bass line. So I'm going to put my chicken pick down. And I've chosen more of the first bass voice which is more of a classic bass voice if you like. Quite useful. There's a really interesting feature on the Beam which I think is great for home recording as well which is the bass voices have an addition of four types of distortion that you can use and you can actually blend in the distorted signal behind the clean signal. So you can almost get your bass guitar to sound like it's coming through a huge 8x10 stack so to speak. So let's just stick a little bit of distortion on in the background. So hopefully you can hear the main clean signal there as well as the undercurrent of overdrive so that's going to suit the sound that I want for this song. That kind of idea so let's put down the track and see how it feels. Let's listen straight back. So that's starting to sound like a demo to me. Sounds pretty good. And again just reiterating we're using probably the earliest platform of home recording on an iPad with GarageBand. Utilising the ID call Beam which will give you all of your guitar sounds, your acoustic sounds, as well as acoustic Sims bass voices, Bluetooth streaming for your audio, using the camera connection kit we can go direct into our iPad nice and easy. And remember what I said earlier about the speakers being really high spec in there. A lot of thought went into the design of the cabinet. Proper wood. Sounds great for recording at home. A lot of the features that we've used there utilising the USB output from the Beam can be used on things like our ID core amplifiers as well as our ID amplifiers as well. So our digital range across the board has USB stereo out which is a really, really great feature. When we were recording earlier with the Series 1 6L6 head here the emulated line-out will feature on all of our venue range, our very popular HT Club 40 and so on, all of that family as well as things like the HT5 which is one of our biggest selling amplifiers around the world, a small 5W valve combo. And all of those products will allow you to record direct at home at low levels. So they're really, really worth checking out and the world of home recording has just shot through the roof over the last few years and it's really great to be able to record at home. So we appreciate your watching and tuning in as always. Thank you for all your support and emails that I receive about my demonstrations and so on. We'll carry on even though the GoPro has just jumped ship. But yeah, we really appreciate your tuning in. It's live as they say, things go wrong. But we'll see you next time. Remember to follow us on all the social media avenues. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're on Instagram, we're on Facebook. Of course, blackstaramps.com and you can get in touch with any inquiries, direct to inquiries at blackstaramps.com. But we'll see you soon up in Steve. Take care and I'll see you somewhere around the world. And keep playing guitar, keep using amplifiers. Peace.