Here's another one of the good 'ol "how to" articles, this one from Keyboard Magazine. If your a Prodigy fan, then I'm sure you'll like it. It's not ground breaking, but interesting none the less.

Breaking Down the Beats

The main drum groove for "Girls" is a tough, modern take on the classic electro beat in the intro. The kick is beefy and tight, while the snare has a strong TR-808 flavor. Both are heavily compressed, with a touch of soft clipping or overdrive.

As the track progresses, there are subtle variations in both the groove and each drum’s mix placement. The snare locks down two and four, but the kick drum and hi-hats skitter around, lending an improvisational feel without distracting from the overall vibe. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though Metallica haven't released a decent album in quite a while, they still have a massive fan base (although St Anger probably reduced that somewhat), and there is no doubt Kirk Hammett has skills. Checking out his signal flow diagram from an old Guitar World magazine, I was immediately struck by how much was going on!

If you sold his stage rig, you'd be able to buy yourself a decent sized house. Lots of ESP stuff and lots of Mesa Boogie gear.

Check out some of the Kirk Hammett related gear up for auction on ebay right now.

Here's a photo of Steph Carpenter's (from the Deftones) rack. I can't make out everything there, but it definitely includes the Marshall JMP1 pre-amp (one of the best ever in my opinion), as well as two Marshall 9200 power amps.

There is also a rack mount POD Pro in there as well as a couple of Furman units. Definitely looks like a heavy collection, literally as well as sound wise!

Check out some Steph Carpenter related gear up for auction on ebay. I actually picked my JMP1 and POD XT Pro up off ebay and both are highly recommended for gear junkies!

Ok, here's a quick and easy tip for how to get a reverse vocal effect using Reason. First open up the RV7000 and patch it in to follow your sampler (NN-XT for example).

Now check out the RV7000 reverb panel, click the small arrow next to the "Remote Programmer". You should now be looking at the expanded Remote Programmer.

Now find the knob that says "Algorithm: Hall" and turn that all the way up, it should now say "reverse". And there you have it. Weird reverse vocal fx at your finger tips!

The Digitech 2120 Artist is somewhat of a classic rack unit. Housed in a trendy purple 2U rackmount case, the Digitech 2120 features a combination of two 12AX7 tubes and two SDISC II processors. These processors were/are found in a lot of Digitechs other studio processors apparently. It's a preamp, and it's a multi effects unit. It's midi programmable and can take an expression pedal.

The Digitech 2120 features a stack of factory presets, although most of them require a bit of tweaking, they are a good place to start. I picked up my Digitech 2120 used off ebay a few years ago. The thing that struck me immediately about the unit were the sick sounds that I could pull out of it without much effort at all. In general, and compared to my POD XT Pro (which I edit patches on my PC with), programming the 2120 can be tricky. The fact I didn't get a manual with it, hasn't help matters either!

The Digitech 2120 was used on some of The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails, as well as through the Fragility Tour.

The Digitech 2120 won't get you a strong authentic overdriven tube tone, but it will create some sonic mayhem for you to record so crazy direct tones with.

If you have a home recording setup (or even something a bit more 'pro') then I would strongly recommend trying to pick up one of these units second hand. You just never know when you'll find a use for it!

Pro Tools 7 has introduced many new and many improved features this time around. Below pretty much encompasses everything you will see:

• Region Looping-- An easy, new way to repeat one or more audio/MIDI regions and Region Groups.
• REX and ACID audio files can now be imported into Pro Tools 7.
• Support for dragging audio, MIDI, REX and ACID files directly from the desktop to the timeline.
• Quantize your audio regions to a grid or groove template. Sort of a simplified Beat Detective, but for audio regions.
• Compressor/Limiter Dyn III is now included with the new release of Pro Tools alowing for more control. EQIII also includes a new filter band-pass solo mode to help isolate and remove nasty noise in an audio track.
• Tool Tips feature gives descriptions of objects in Pro Tools 7 simply by rolling the mouse over the object.
• Support for dragging audio, MIDI, REX and ACID files directly from the desktop to the timeline.
• Support for dragging multiple regions onto a single track simultaneously.

Personally, I haven't taken the jump to upgrade, still weighing up whether or not it's worth it for me.

Here is an interesting track by track, blow by blow description for "How to sound like the Killers". This may have come from Computer Music site, but I can't actually remember where I found it now. All songs are from the Killers debut album, Hot Fuss.

Track 1
“Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” opens with a barrage of assorted analog noise including flanged noise radio static, a classic white noise helicopter (made by assigning a triangle-wave LFO to the filter cutoff frequency), and some pitch-bent, polyphonic portamento madness. During the verses and the instrumental break, we hear a synth melody that makes use of a detuned dual-oscillator sawtooth patch, reminiscent of the Cars’ “Moving In Stereo.”

Track 2
“Mr. Brightside” lays low on the synths until the pre-chorus when a poppy analog sound enters playing an eighth-note counterbass; its mix of sawtooth and pulse waves allows it to poke above the mix nicely. This sound uses a quick envelope and could be made using any modern virtual analog such as the Nord Lead or Alesis Ion. At 1:24 we have an analog synth solo in the classic Roland Jupiter synth vein; here Brandon makes use of unison detuned sawtooth oscillators stacked in octaves. This sound pops back in at the songs outro. Read the rest of this entry »

If you use Pro Tools, you've probably got used to some of the important keyboard shortcuts to make your job quicker and easier. Well here are a few less common short cuts that you may one day find a use for.

Mac

• Create Memory Location - Enter (on numeric keypad)
• Reset a Memory Location - Control-click on Memory Location button
• Delete Memory Location - Option-click on a Memory Location button
• Recall a Memory Location using the numeric keypad (Transport or Shuttle mode) - Period (.) + Memory Location number + Period (.)
• Set all faders to their automation null points - Option-click on either AutoMatch indicator
• Reset a control to default value - Option-click on control

Windows

• Create Memory Location - Enter (on numeric keypad)
• Reset a Memory Location - Start-click on Memory Location button
• Delete Memory Location - Alt-Left-click on a Memory Location button
• Recall a Memory Location using the numeric keypad (Transport or Shuttle mode) - Period (.) + Memory Location number + Period (.)
• Set all faders to their automation null points - Alt-click on either AutoMatch indicator

If you haven't already, pick up a set of those keyboard shortcut stickers for Pro Tools. I've found them really handy!

The Combinator lets you join two or more effects, instruments or samplers in the Reason rack. You can ‘Combine’ multiple units by selecting two or more units then hitting ‘Combine’. Once you’ve done this, you can assign any of the combined instruments’ control parameters to any of the eight controls on the Combinator interface.

Basically the Combinator is a rack within the overall Reason rack. You can link together ten Subtractor synths and have them all playing there own thing. You can also allocate the controller knobs to multiple parameters across multiple devices with the Combinator.

Once you’ve done that, you can save the whole lot as a single Combinator patch. Any changes you make to the components within the Combinator, are also saved within the Combinator patch.

How do you create your own skins for your Combinator patch?

Simple, select Backdrop… from the Edit – Controller menu.

Fall Out Boy have received quite a boost popularity of late, with the single "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" starting to bug the hell out of me. So in tribute, I decided to scan the Fall Out Boy guitar rig from an old Guitar World magazine (not sure of the issue number) and post it here. So here is guitarist Joe Trohman's rig. I've read somewhere that he now uses Washburn Idol guitars with Seymour Duncan Distortion pickups, so this rig is probably a little out of date.

As you can probably tell from looking at it, it's one of the few pro guitar into amp rigs that you'll find.