DrScythe - working, no blog today

In case you follow this blog: there won't be a post today (except this excuse). I am just too busy working on the two tracks that I will release next friday. Which will be the "half-a-year" mark so that I want to sum up the first six months and what I took away from the project so far.

DrScythe Recording Blog - Part IV: My mixing philosophy

I wanted to do a blog about EQing and then noticed that I didn’t explain my approach to mixing so far. And that would leave you with my tips for using EQs without knowing why I do use them in this way. So my mixing philosophy boils down to this:

Keep it as natural as possible but do whatever necessary to make it sound good to your ears.

This leads to several consequences.

1. My mixes will never sound as modern as most of the others.

This is pretty obvious. Modern mixes sound everything but natural and are pushed to the max in terms of usage of limiters especially the releases of mainstream artists or the big players of some genres. Of course this doesn’t apply to every major release…but the ‘plastic sound’ as I tend to call it is a standard at the moment. A standard I chose to avoid for matters of taste. I know that some of my songs would profit from an overly processed sound (Calling The X for example) but I prefer to keep learning how to achieve a fat but also warm sound that keeps the character of the originally recorded tracks. It seems that gluing the tracks together is a little bit more complicated this way but I will keep on learning and improving.

2. My mixes will never have a constant volume.

If there is a more quiet part in a song I won’t use the tricks of modern loudness to eliminate the overall dynamic of it. What you might have noticed is that I am very cautious when it comes to compression so far and that’s something I am working on. Controlling the dynamics on track level so that I don’t need much compression on the sum. I think it’s becoming better. Compression works a little counterintuitive so that I think most of the people will struggle a little with that when beginning to mix music.

3. Very few effects.

Well…I had a POD XT Pro, POD X3 Live, POD HD and a Vetta II Combo for years and used all the effects extremely rarely. I like effects when just fiddling around but not really in a finished song. A little chorus on an arpeggio here and there and the almighty duo of reverb and delay. But that’s it. Bit crusher, phaser, flanger, ring modulators…nice to play with but nothing more to me so far. We’ll see…I am not against them by default (although ‘natural’ seems to suggest no effects) but it’s basically just not my style.

4. I don’t care about competitive loudness.

Seriously. I just don’t care. I don’t think it’ll ever have to compete on airplay so I can just keep it at a normal level.

5. You wouldn’t normally…too bad.

You wouldn’t pan the drums from the drummer’s point of view – I do because it sounds and feels right to me. One of the most important things I took away from reading and watching interviews with well-known mixing engineers: they really don’t care about things like ‘normal’ or ‘regularly’. They are called if someone wants their style of mixing applied. Try out their tricks and tips, try out the standards but be honest with yourself and ‘mix it your way’ if that’s what you want the music to sound like.

6. But your mixes sound really cheap so far.

What a surprise I am still a beginner. I am not even able to achieve the things I want to but that’s part of the whole learning process. And instead of ruining other people’s hard work I am practicing with my own and will be able to easily remix everything later on.

Well this was a shorter one as I am busy getting two tracks out to you this month. And I am pretty sure that only few will like both songs. And owls won't like either of them.

Guaranteed displeasure if you're an owl

So long,

DrScythe

DrScythe Reviews III - Kuassa Cerberus

Intro

You could ask yourself: why even bother with bass amp modeling? Often enough the bass is recorded and mixed as a DI track. Even live some bass player don’t use an amp. So why spend time on creating a versatile piece of software for basses? Then on the other hand there are still a lot of bass amps out there so there are also a lot of people who’d like an amplified bass sound. Like me. And I am so happy that the team of Kuassa decided to create this. I know that giving away the final verdict at the beginning is kind of pointless but I would like to make something clear at the beginning: I bought this and I am just so satisfied with it that I wanted the world to know about it. So here we go…

I decided to do this review with the help of the screenshot so can easily see what I am writing about.

Functionalities

1. I’d call this the ‘management panel’. Input, Input level, Presets, Gate, Quality-Switch – you can see them so I won’t list everything in detail here. I love the option to compare presets and the master CAB-switch. While it works I’d say that the preset window is somewhat clumsy in terms of handling but I don’t know any better examples (or at least none with other flaws) so I’ll let it pass. Personally I tried the Dry-Wet-option once but to be honest: it only makes sense if you really change the sound via Cerberus.

2. Now it’s time for what you could control on the real thing (if it were the pictured rack device). VALVE gives you an extremely rich and fat tone and if you crank up gain it will slowly begin to become something on the border between heavy saturation and overdrive. It will keep an extremely low punch if you don’t cut out the bass via EQ or Cabs what is really great. FET behaves a lot more, well, behaved. It’s clean to hell and back. It can feel a little sterile at times but you have to force that. It’s a lot more flexible if you’re willing to use all the other controls (including those on your bass). DRIVE is self-explanatory. It features a slightly generic sound but it’s usable. Personally I would put TSE B.O.D. in front of VALVE or FET and call it a day. COMPRESS does is job subtlety but effective. You can use it as a nice support up to noon and from there it acts more and more like a ‘drunk bassist’s best friend’. I don’t use CONTOUR myself a lot. It feels like a scoop at the mids which cleans up a little but I prefer shaping my tone with the EQs.

3. What more of an EQ-section do you need? LO effectively controls the bass its working point was chosen very well. The Boost really adds a lot of punch. I wouldn’t use it unless your bass sounds really thin or you want to have fun. But for recording tasks it just blows up the whole bass too much. Maybe if you’re using a pick and a pickup close to the bridge. LO MID and HI MID will help you massively adjusting Cerberus to your liking or manipulating the sound to quite extreme settings, especially when using the FET mode. HI and its boost option can be used for slightly dull basses and I really like to use those when playing with my Epiphone T-Bird Pro. Especially while recording because I can remove too bright sounds quite easily but not recover them from a rendered but dull signal. Excellent work here!

4. To answer the introductory question of No 3: A graphic EQ! I am not particularly fond of those but after I tried a Mesa Mark V I know that they can be really helpful. In this case I have to say: I don’t need it. It works fine but I am happy with what the regular EQ does and so I never switch it on but for reviewing purposes. If you want to know something specific about it you might want to check it out yourself as you can download Cerberus from kuassa.com

5. CAB and MIC selection and a MIX bar. I like most of the included cabs and mics although I mainly use the 8x10 one (which most probably is a SVT-cab-simulation). This section is quite unspectacular but functional so…that’s it. Better to hear some stuff later on.

6. The mics can be positioned freely although one can hear the changes quite intensely. So I think it would’ve been better to just offer 3 or 4 distances and the two angles. Maybe a choice between cone and cap but that’s all you need. But it feels and looks nice. So no complaints here ;)

7. If you don’t like the included cabs you can load yours here. There’s also a Limiter and a Master Output Level. They all work perfectly fine. There’s not much to say about here because I don’t know which IRs you would want to use and I only checked the function once.

Sound

So now over to some samples. I used my father’s 1974 Framus S-380 (Jazz Bass) and my own C-tuned Epiphone T-Bird Pro. Settings were as shown.

First the pure DIs

Preset01



Preset02

Preset03

Preset04

Preset05

Preset06

Preset07

Preset08

Link: http://www.kuassa.com/products/cerberus-bass-amplifikation/

Conclusion

I love it. Do I need to say more? It’s really fantastic. VALVE, slight compression, Contour off, EQ adjusted to T-Bird or Framus, 8x10, done. Pure fat and warm growl.

Overview

Pro	Neutral	Con
Sounds (!!!)	Preset management	Nothing
Ease of use	Drive a little boring
Lots of options Looks Available as Standalone Price and value

PS: I used it on every DrScythe-song since 'Destiny':