Lessons

Lesson Info

Amp Sims and Impulse Responses

Am simms always tracking with amps him sometimes you'll like your amps him sound while you're tracking and you leave it because you love it it happens that's what happened with a loss for words when I was doing okay so this is more of a rock band if you haven't if you've never heard them this is uh this is an unmixed version of it but I'll be going through the tone that you're about to hear wait so anyway a lot of you guys may already know that song or whatever but uh okay so this is I like the way that this sounded for this band because they have I think we have slides of pictures okay they have more of a rock sound it's not super high gain stuff but we needed some clarity so in platoon was pretty cool with that you see? Okay here's an overview let's go to the slide really quick yeah. This is an overview of of all the settings if anyone at home wants to take a screen cap of this and they can analyze it later these are the actual settings for all the parts that would include now would ...

go through all this in just a second. So okay let's get it let's put this screen back to pro tools if we can cool so the signal chain starts out with a great d I obviously were we tracked this album with thing was uh some les paul's some, um or a type of a guitar like that I can't remember exactly but um we start out with, uh one of my favorite peddles in amplitude which is thie is called over scream it's based off of the tube screamer made by iben is um as you see, the driver is a very, very low because I just wanted the the cutting from the tone uh this little knob let's see if I can demonstrate this in real time so this is just the guitar track and I'm gonna mess with the tone knob theo the tone gets a little warmer as you turn it down ah, a little less game so as you turn it up you get more clarity and it'll cut through and I use this use this pedal with I use pedal in real life which I will be demonstrating later and a sim version of this way actually will be talking about a free one that's very similar to this but I use it whether it's metal or just rock and roll whatever it's a very awesome yeah. So there we go. Um let's see, that is actually this saldano which surprisingly worked well for the sound of this band play more open part like the chorus so you can hear it all come together ah, very clean move clear sounding distortion and that worked very well with this style. So these are the actual settings we used the orange cabinet setting uh mostly on the condenser mike this is modelled after you eighty seven slightly off axis with a mixture of fifty seven also off access to the other side but it's mostly that eighty seven sound that's what brings the brightness to this tone? I think and nothing else in the rack said we do it we did have a little q kind of extreme but uh I recorded this a little while ago but uh it's a little dip in the mids and uh, highs will ralph on the end because it's not a super heavy band so I'm actually going to show you guys really quick if you can put if you're at home you should put on some headphones because of this this song is a great example it starts out with just a guitar on one side if you can hear it you can you can suddenly hear the room sound in the other ear as that's playing and uh actually let's show the difference really quick without the reverb. Ah, so you can see it kind of fills out the other side so it doesn't sound like it's just in, so when you're working with amp simms you run into things like this where you're trying to bring life to it and sometimes just adding a little bit of reverb is can add some cool effects to that so this one that you heard was the orange was the orange cabinet that came with it and I liked it for that, but I usually have a lot of problem with cabinets and the way these cabinets work is something that we're going to get into a lot more tomorrow and even how to make a fake cabinet is called an impulse response, and it kind of takes a audio snapshot of the way the speaker responds to different frequencies when it's run through it. So uh it's a way to make a fake cabinet and I actually have one that I use all the time that I'm actually going to be giving away with when you purchase the full class, whether it's today or later and you're gonna get to hear that right now so um what's going to other session? Sure. Okay, so I'm opening up dead and buried by a day remember from common courtesy the session is also not mixed, so it should be interesting for you guys to hear what that sounds like. Okay, so what I'm first going to show you is a really lamp um it's listed as the angle on here, but it's actually not an angle if you can see that it says angle here, but we used an angle and accidentally just mix this up should be but it should be wagner whatever okay so this is a real amp in the song dead and buried by day remember so that is a really lamp I want to show you the same uh direct guitar going through different simpsons so let's just have this loop all right? This first one is um by ample tube it's called anger I'm going to assume that it is based off of an angle um again I have the over screen which is like the tube screamer um a lot more drive on this obviously here the settings I'm just using this bottom channel with the highly high gain lead this cabinet is off its bypassed the cabinet all the cabinets that you're going to hear on these different versions on these different simms the cabinet that I made that you'll be getting with the class so I'm going to switch hopefully you could be watching at home when I switch so you can hear the difference you want we won't really be able to hear me talk when I switch so just pay attention and uh you'll see when it switches over okay? So that's the amplitude which sounds pretty good I think uh let's go to I'm gonna go to another section in the song where it's more of a sustained sound you maybe you maybe at home you didn't hear a difference at all I don't know but you might be able to in this section okay so here's the angle or the wagner I'm sorry so if you can't tell difference aiken whenever I switched to the rial amp I can hear like a low end growl that I really like that's missing a little bit from the the uh the ample too but maybe that could be dialed in if that's all you have to work with but it's it's pretty close and one of the reasons that it's so close is because of the impulse response that amusing and it's the same exact cab that was used when we recorded and it was the same mike set up I made the impulse response with the actual set up so let's listen to some other ones are really quick thes air the so that's bypassed so again I have the the tube screamer their settings I'm only using the bottom uh section here the high gain and then the cab is bypassed now I have a little dip around uh two eighty hurts by about sixty b and then my impulse response that you guys can get it if you want okay so okay let's do it the next one is one that a lot of people are familiar with actually okay the next one no you may not be familiar with this one. The next one is called polin it's a free v s t plug in um the website is right there you can pick it up it will work if you have uh a uh a wrapper where you can make it does this come in auto unit or was a vsd okay so you can use it in logic and any other dog that uh supports fiesty er there's also a free this is the free tube screamer that I'm using is uh made by tsc audio and you can go to that website and pick it up has v s t and r unit versions as well the polling comes in three different amps that you'll pick up one is like a mesa boogie one is like an angle on the last one I don't know anyone know what that was supposed to be like it's an original designs based on anything I don't know technically what that means but it doesn't emulate anything okay but I actually chose the last one I really liked the way that one sounded the legion so this is my signal chain and settings with the impulse response that I made on the end so this is what you're going to hear this one is a little more high gain and I kind of liked the way the sound with high gain you can tell the difference pretty easily but it sounds pretty cool here we go so first is the rial amp so that one the qualities that I hear and there it doesn't it doesn't have as much of an attack during the scribbles the scrubs, the chugs whatever you wanna call him let's see what it sounds like on sustained parts okay, so oh here's the regular amp so uh and that one I can hear it has a little more mid range overall it sounds like a little bit of low end is, um it's not quite as much low end as thie amplitude bh but it has really good sustain and it was it was a very clean sounding amp and it's all free there the settings right there on the screen for you and here rio pot farm probably the most popular right now um which unfortunately means that most unoriginal at the same time if if you're going to do a demo or something that it's uh in my opinion it's great but if you're if you want an identity for your band might not be the best route to take uh so here's thie the real amp and then the pot just watches I switch so there we go there's you get from wine six uh there's asian there um these are the exact settings that I used if you have that um the again the cabinet is the one that I created uh let's go to the sustained part. Yeah, okay, so re a lamp okay, so, um that could use a little more gain uh in parts like that and I do want to point out that whatever I'm tracking songs, I will adjust the tone as I'm going through the song if it needs more sustained, I'll give it more gain and if it needs to sound a little bit tighter all back off of the game so that's actually a good example of what you're hearing in the verse chugs versus thie that sustained breakdown can I ask a quick question? Yes paradigm wants to know or says I notice you're using a lot of pro tool stock plug ins do you generally mixed with these or do you use other plug ins as well? Um I good question whatever I seek you specifically if I'm going to take away frequencies, I'll use the stock plug ins on pro tools, but if I'm going to add frequencies I'll use ah high end one like the s s l q or something like that and compression I'll normally use the ssl compressor I really loved ssl plug ins by waves, but I know that people have the the protocol's plug ins if if they're using pro tools, these are ones that that they'll have at their disposal you khun apply the same type of settings to to the better quality ones and yes, I normally do use higher quality plug ins one mixing right thank you we do have one other question d j f wants to know what sins did use if any on motionless and white creatures and is there anything else interesting you did on that guitar wise that was bad form? Um chris was wanted it a lot he like that sound of pod form um and I don't think there was anything special it was basically these settings that are on the screen now monet's thea the impulse minus my impulse it was just a different one but it was basically this maybe more game probably a lot more game actually, uh I like to hear what you think about what you've heard well, I think it's actually really interesting to hear how close you know the sims are to the rial lamp and you know, it just goes to show you how much of that is actually the impulse response you know, the the tone is made up so much of you know, the speaker and the mic, you know? And that impulse response you know, I've personally never been able to get a sound out of an amp sam that I like ever yeah, and if I was able to get sounds even remotely close to that, I'd be happy awesome so I think that, you know, just knowing that most of that is your impulse responses is kind of inspiring you want to try, you know, and go down that that that path again with the amp seems no it's huge, and if you if you ever do mike up something that you love, you'll have it right there and you can take it with you easily. So so, casey, I know you, you know, have talked before. I know you're fairly skeptical of sims you impressed with what you see for sure? Yeah, lt would buy I'm kind of old school, you know, like I I'm of a gn andthe and mike and cab kind of guy and just I've always done it that way and the only experiences I've ever really had with am sands was just experimenting with him on my own, and they could never compare to the way a re a lamp sounds or even, you know, high end modelers of processors, you know, like the acts, effects or anything like that, you know, I've been able to get a lot more realistic results out of a piece of hardware than I ever have with software, right? And I don't know if that's like a mental thing where I'm just like now, it's never gonna be as good or if it's just, you know, yeah, I just haven't found the sweet spot yet, you know? Yeah, I don't know well, these settings air here for you. We have a couple questions in the chat room so I know you have a slide on it and I'm not sure if you uh hit on it yet a ce faras eso a couple questions about how to use I r I ours with uh pot farm or other plug ins that don't specifically allows you to load them yes very good questions uh so this is a good example there's nowhere in amplitude toe load on impulse response um so what you do is you bypassed let me show you if for those of you that are not familiar with impulse responses or anything like that I'll show you what a guitar tone sounds like without a new impulse response so exactly what you heard actually played with it first so s so this is the course and I kind of wanted to go because this is just normal strumming and I know people want to hear that too because that's popular with like uh more rock rob people yeah really music so I'll just play this for example here's this is amplitude bh theo that's with the impulse response and then let's see if you can hear the difference without it so I hope I didn't blast any party at home but your speakers are not distorting that is what it sounds like out of even a real amp whenever you don't have a cabinet makes it sound like black metal yeah so uh just my impulse response that I made and I'll show you in a second takes it to that from that nasty fizzy sound that you just heard which impresses even me I don't I don't get it but um so this right here is made by waves it's called the I r l and you can load custom whatever impulse response you have youjust who would go to import impulse response from file and um you just learned it but first before you do that you have to make sure that you turn off the cabinet see here um I can't I can't bring up the line six thing for you but you khun turn off all the hot yeah that's true so actually I'm absolutely not going to play this but I am going to just load it up because it would be a tone on tone okay, so all you gotta do is turn these off or delete him the cabinet that was a combo amp so it was actually a terrible example because until he's f and the cabinet but you get the point you can't believe any of this so wherever your cabinet is you just delete it or bypass it up like a load up a tube screamer and whatever had just so they see what it should look like a love this set up uh that's a noise gate um okay, so there's the old screamer um so let's just get rid of this let's say this is what you know like so you have your screamer your amp your foot you got your flip top uh in your cabinet so what you would do is you just bypass it or deleted and then that's all you do in there so what this sounds like doesn't matter you just I mean when you turn it off it sounds very bad, but that doesn't matter. So you have that turned off and then you you load uh the I r l or free? Where is that thing? Come out there is, uh, if you could switch to the slide, you get the free poland er cabinets a mule loaded into that you see that there's a close up of it what it looks like loaded in I wanted to show what the strumming sounds like because that's a different kind of a thing. So all right, so for this song we used the blood atone blue. Oh, tone however, you say that and these air going to sound very different. I chose teo switch ants for the chorus because I liked how it sounded. It was like a full body tone if what I've noticed and really heavy music is for the chugs, people will crank up the bass in the guitar, so so you get a lot of full chugs and it just kind of matched up with the kick drum and it sounds really cool, but then when you get to any part where it's strumming, you have a really weird thin tone because there's no lo and going to because you're just playing courts so this this is what it sounds like just what the amp that we chose for the song, so but do a little loop section okay, it's going to look this for you guys, okay, so that was the real amp this is the amplitude bh wait, so if you know it's the difference between the real lamp and amplitude of these settings, if I was actually going to mix this song with amplitude, I would change the tone as it gets to the chorus, so khun sound bigger the guitars in amplitude sound in my pain a little bit thin because they don't have that nice little the low end mid range to help fill out those cords because they're not super low like the chugs or anything that and that's that's important to think about when you're getting tones. Just getting one flat tone for the whole song isn't a great idea and I have a hard time even trying to do that, so that is good how would you go about changing the amp? Same tone you know as it goes throughout the track to automate that or no I wouldn't automate that uh because some plug ins don't I don't know how it isn't in your program but in pro tools sometimes some planes are weird about automation and sometimes there will be a latent see and it won't change at the right time so I always make sure that I just have a new track with the guitar you would just double it and then change the tone on just that specific part on a separate track exactly yeah that to me that's the most accurate way to have it changed tones okay, so this next one you must switch between the real thing and the look polin so that one's really apparent you can hear the the fullness drop out as I go to the loo poland so I would've just the tone for that also let's see how the pot farm does okay, so actually that did the same thing is all of them and I also wouldn't normally change the tone a little bit not crazy just enoughto add the quality that I like now um this guy is going to be your best friend when you're switching to parts you want to sound thicker I would turn this down so your chords sound a little bit bigger when you have appear they kind of sound I don't know not explain it, huh? Kind of yeah uneasily tinny sort of but which is cool for other styles of playing so when you have a band that goes between different styles like a day to remember it's it's nice to know these things and it's nice to know for bands that just two completely different genres altogether you might I never want to go to the setting for a bandit might sound terrible so you you adjust accordingly. All right fluff wants to know if you have any plans to check out a kemper profiling amp it's kind of in between a re a lamp and a plug in as it's capturing the live tone instead of modelling it yes we're actually going to be talking about that nice and the difference between that and uh and other alternatives ok so yeah I have thought about it to answer the question okay cool feel good about that key takeaways simms yeah when I listen to these simms I could be picking because I have a bunch of equipment and maybe you guys can't be that picky at home but I have a bunch of equipment so whenever I you's a real amp like the bogner it has that nasty growly low in that I absolutely love andi khun dial that in by the way these guitars they're not cute at all they're not compressed they're not acute there's nothing on these guitars um except the sims have stuff on them but um whenever you get a real guitar tone there's something lively about it there's something I don't know what it is but but that's the eiken be picky about that but for you guys you can get really close just by using these settings that I've uh grabbing that uh, impulse response that I made and um and dialing in these settings and also not just the settings let's think back on the tone pie um it also has to do with these dies uh the right editing the right player right pick so someone at home is using the same settings that you shared in here and not getting the same results as what they heard what should they do where's the problems because you gave him you lied to them about the settings. No, these settings I swear these settings are absolutely riel if you try um it's because if you if I took this unedited guitar which I unfortunately don't have for you and I just played this exact same tone on it you would not believe me that was the same tone it has to do with the way it's been edited and played and although we painstakingly went through picks we went through players we went through strings, we went through guitars, we made all those choices first all this stuff that is boring, which I enjoy some people enjoy that stuff and finding just the right thing you can't just pick up any old whatever and throw a tone on it and expected to sound like this you have to go you have to bake the whole pie and put all the ingredients in so oh, another very important thing all these simms have like one's more mid rangy when one cuts through a little bit better one might have more base, etcetera, etcetera there are going to be natural if you want to say natural about a sim, they're going to be national characteristics just like an amp where no matter how you fiddle with something, you're not going to be able to get rid of a certain characteristic it's just how the thing is you might put morgaine in but you're losing clarity or you might turn it down but you still don't have clarity for instance yeah yeah on amp will do the same thing and when you run into that it could be the plain yes could it be the guitar? Yes going to be the pick? Yes. Could it be the amp? Yes. Could it be the sim? Yes. And these are all things you have to think about so try out all these for yourself and see which one works for you and your music also impulse responses is huge by this class and you can use mine I am so picky about the way these, uh, fake cabinet sound. So I had to make my own. And I love it. And I'm I'm gonna have the opportunity to do this class and be able to share this with you guys and have you experience it. And hopefully you can enjoy it as much as I did.