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Hey! EddieRay here...
This is my page full of music stuff. I've played professionally in several small-time rock bands. I haven't been doing much actual "gigging" for quite a while now... life is just too busy for me these days! Of course, I still need to be able to jam, but now it's mostly happening in the comfort of my own computer/studio room, instead of sleazy, stale-beer-smelling dives (a.k.a "bars"). ;-) Back in April of 1999, I tracked down and bought a guitar preamp and amp simulator called The POD (by Line6). It is, quite frankly, the best money I've ever spent on anything for guitar, or music in general for that matter. And recently, I acquired a PODxt - and it's just more and more of a good thing! I recorded all of the guitar sounds and music on this page with the POD, my Fender Strat (80s Japanese version, black, with ebony fretboard and white pick guard) with DiMarzio Fast Tracks pickups, and my computer sound card. I use GHS Boomers medium guitar strings (11 thru 50)... I like the way they sound for blues and rock. Here are some pictures of the tools/toys I use. (Note to self: update these with new studio/computer room pix... geeez, it's been over 2 years now... get on it Ed!)
Most of the MP3 files here were encoded with the Blade Encoder, which is freely available on the 'net and works on Windows and Unix. Lately, I've been using the Ogg/Vorbis format. It tends to produce better results... to my ears at least, and it's free of software patents and royalties and all that mumbo-jumbo, blah-blah-blah I'm not listening to you lad-di-dah kinda stuff. It turns out to be pretty easy to record the POD with a computer and a decent sound card. My good old SoundBlaster 32 wasn't really up to the job - too noisy! - so I hocked an old guitar and bought a SoundBlaster Live! Value sound card, a MIDI keyboard controller, a MIDI adapter to connect the keyboard and/or the POD to the SBLive! and some MIDI cables. It all plugs together nicely and after a bit of tie-wrapping, cord management, desk cleanup, etc. More recently, I installed a SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit sound card, which does 5.1 sound, and can record at higher rates than 16-bit 44kHz. The only reason I switched sound cards is because my wife and daughter gave me some Logitech X-530 5.1 speakers for Father's Day... they sound great in my small studio room.
The recording software I currently use is Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 XL I purchased the upgrade: Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio 4 and just haven't had a chance to install it and start working with it yet. I've used Pro Audio 9 and Home Studio 9 in the past, and they're pretty nice too. The Home Studio line has more features than the old "Pro" version used to have, so I'm been sticking with that line since it's significantly less expensive, and I don't need the extra features anyway. I've played around with some of the MAGIX products as well, and they're pretty easy and "neat", but they have a screwy license agreement (i.e. fine print) that prohibits doing anything "commercial" with most (all?) of their products, so beware.
Recently I received a Behringer FCB1010 for my B-Day... great MIDI foot-switch and pedal unit for controlling the PODxt! It's ultra-flexible... and you can make it do just about anything you want (except play the guitar for you or make toast). It's much more versatile and significantly less expensive than some of the comparable Line6 "floorboard" units, which is why I held out for so long, waiting for a footboard that could do what I want (for a reasonable price). I'll post a SysEx file for it when I get it all programmed the way I want for my PODxt.
I'd eventually like to put up some pages with details about my setup - how I hook things together, pictures, screenshots of Cakewalk, tutorials, etc. In the meantime, just hunt for snippets of information throughout this page. I moved back in July 2004, and I acquired a new "studio/computer" room in the basement, which is working out very nicely for music and computer stuff. I bought an 8-channel Alesis mixer that has built-in effects... great for setting up a little jam session with some mics, the POD, and maybe a synth. I also use it to get all my connections under control in my studio/computer room setup. I've been taking this puppy with me to jam in my drummer's studio room and we use it as a mixer with FX for practice (a couple mics, the PODxt, and the bass all running through it into the drummer's sound system). Works great!
I have a Yamaha PSR-275 and stand that I received a while back. I LOVE it! I have it hooked up to my system and even though I'm not a "keyboard player", I do enjoy learning with it. It has a nice array of sounds, which I'm still "discovering" as I try out new ones. I can sit for hours playing it without even realizing that the time has flown by. It has touch-senstivity, which is very important, but doesn't have a mod-wheel or pitch-bend wheel (which can be good for playing synth/techno stuff). It has a permanent place in my studio now... ;-)
If you'd like to chat about guitar, the POD/PODxt, Cakewalk, recording stuff, etc., or if you're looking for someone to collaborate with, exchange musical ideas with, write songs with, etc., feel free to drop me an email!
Howdy! I've been busy with Holiday "stuff" lately. I got a
Behringer FCB1010
for my birthday, so I've been having some fun with it. Since I've been jammin'
pretty regularly with some friends (live!), it will make things a lot easier
being able to control the PODxt with foot-switches. Also, I never had the
opportunity to try out the PODxt's Wah features - there are something like
8 different Wah pedals to choose from in the (free) PODxt Version 3 Upgrade
.
If you haven't upgraded your PODxt yet, go get it!
My studio is in a whirl at the moment... I need to get things arranged
so I can get the PODxt in and out of my setup more easily, since I need to
use it both in my studio and "on the road" (so to speak).
9/10/2006:
Hey! I've actually been getting together to jam somewhat regularly with some friends. Hopefully we can get our act together and play some private parties and cushy/fun laid-back gigs. Fun stuff! Been busy with the same list o' things that gobble up my time but it feels good to get some extra, real-life, turnin' up the amps, real-drummer-drumming type jamming in! :-) Haven't been doing much in the way of recording tho'... and still haven't tried the new Sonar Home Studio yet. Ugh... I need about 32 hours in my "day".
6/27/2006:
Hey there! Sheesh... has it been 1.5 years since I last posted here? Been busy with family stuff, typical day-job ho-hum stuff, writing software for a small game company, jammin' when possible, etc. I bought the upgrade to Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio 4 XL a while back but haven't installed it yet... looks cool tho'. When they include the feature to "freeze" virtual intrument tracks, I'll be in heaven. Currently you have to spend the big bucks on the full-blown Sonar to get that one little feature (along with a bunch of other features - but I don't really need those features...).
Installed a 5.1 sound card (SBLive! 24-bit) in my main computer and got some Logitech X530 speakers... sounds great! Got an Alesis USB8 mixer from Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center - great little mixing board! Hopefully I'll find some time to do some recording sometime this year. ;-)
Got a Yamaha PSR-275... sweet keyboard... for a guitar player at least... ;-)
Click here to read all but the most recent informative news and prose...
RGC Audio I use the way-cool and free sfz plugin - it's an "instrument plugin" that lets you use soundfont files as virtual instruments in Cakewalk, etc. This eliminates the step in the mixing process where you would normally have to convert your MIDI tracks into audio tracks (by playing them one by one, recording the output of your MIDI sythesizer into a new audio track for each MIDI track - then you have to remix your whole song again!). Since "instrument" plugins output audio directly, you can use other audio plugins to process them. Basically, you get the convenience of using MIDI tracks and soundfont in your song mix (I like to use MIDI for bass and drums) without the normal hassles of using a combination of MIDI and audio.
Maxim Digital Audio - some nice free effects and special-purpose plugins! I use the multi-band compressor/limiter plugin, and occasionally the "stereo" and "leslie" plugins. Great stuff! They also have some weird synth/electronica type plugins for you propeller-head types out there... but I don't know much 'bout dat stuff...
Spin Audio - they have several effects plugins, and a decent, free VST wrapper plugin that I used to use before I bought the Cakewalk VST Adapter.
FreeVerb - a great, free reverb plugin. Google for it!
BackInSaddleMix2.mp3 (2MB)
This is a POD-tone experiment (who can actually sing this song besides ST anyway?!?). I spent a couple hours trying different POD cabinets and amp models and ended up with something that sounds pretty decent IMO. Let me know what you think! Enjoy! Sorry about the poor mixing - I tend to push the limiter too hard when rushed, so I get the little `squashing' noises in the recording. But hey, it's all good fun right? ;-)
AreYouGonna2.mp3 (3.4MB)
A quick-n-dirty cover of Lenny Kravitz's rocker, Are You Gonna Go My Way. No vocals yet. This is one of the more "distorted" POD sounds I've used. It can be hard to lock in a decent tone. Lenny's tones are just incredible in this song. It's almost like he's using some kind of Octave pedal on the main rhythm guitar. UPDATE: I actually have the next version, which includes vocals, recorded... just need to get it uploaded.
Barracuda4.mp3 (3.9MB)
A quick-n-dirty cover of the awesome rock song Barracuda by Heart. No vocals yet... but really, can anyone besides Ann and Nancy actually do this song justice? Send me an MP3 of your vocals and I'll track it in... :-) I need to go buy the CD so I can hear what the actual song really sounds like... I did this off the top of my head (and it shows) and I can't remember how all the parts go... ;-P Can you guess what POD model is being used for the guitar tones?
Weather1.mp3 (1.1MB)
Here's a cover (work in progress) of SRV's Couldn't Stand the Weather I'm working on. So far it's just part of the main intro. I used the POD Deluxe model for the main guitar riff, and I think I used (it was a while ago) the JCM800 for the lead section (I really gotta start writing these things down...). The Leslie sound on the guitar is the mda Leslie plug-in (since it's a Cubase VST plug-in, I had to use the VST-DX Wrapper Lite from www.spinaudio.com to make it work with DX and Cakewalk PA9). I have to admit, the POD's Rotary Speaker simulation is pretty unusable for recording because it's just _way_ too "dramatic" even at the lowest possible setting... none of the unprocessed guitar sound gets through either. Bummer. The mda Leslie plug-in sounds pretty darn sweet tho'!
SRVThangMix2.mp3 (2.8MB)
Here's an original tune that threw together... let me know what you think! It doesn't really sound like any SRV song, but it's got some swing to it, and pretty cool POD guitar tones happenin' (hopefully). The rhythm guitar is the POD's JCM800, as well as the first two lead sections, then I whipped out the POD's Dumble Overdrive channel for the 3rd lead (with some POD Chorus 1) and the final two solos are POD Fuzz (with some light Chorus 1 too, I think). Enjoy!
EmptyArms5E.mp3 (3.4MB)
Hey... you found it! Is this getting out of hand or what? Anyway, here it is... the "holy grail" mix (hahahaha). I paid a lot of attention to balance in this mix. I used 5 plug-ins (geezzz Ed what is UP with THAT?) to tweak and maximize the mix. It just helps out so much to have the MDA Dynamics plug-in to reign in the peaks so you can get a nice, fat, loud mix. The Dynamics plug-in is really a one-stop-shop. You can use one instance in compressor-mode for each track (I don't use it on the guitar tracks tho') and then use an instance in limiter-mode on the output of the whole mix. I'll tell you... it's got to be the most useful free plug-in I've found.
The second "feature" plug-in for this mix is the MDA Multiband compressor. I wanted to get the snare to sound thinner like Chris Layton's, so I set up a the frequencies to separate the drum sounds into 3 bands: kick + low snare, high snare + cymbal tap, and high cymbal. Then I compressed and backed off the low band, emphasized and moderately compressed the middle band and left the high band alone. The result is a lot crispier drum track! I used the Multiband _instead_ of the Dynamics plug-in for the drum track.
The third "feature" plug-in for this mix is the MDA Stereo. I put it on the whole mix, right before the final limiter, to just give the whole thing a nice stereo image.
I set up the SBLive reverb for a nice "big room" reverb and then tweaked it to reduce the strength of the initial echoes and just give a nice lasting glassy reverb effect. I think it sound pretty nice... what do you think? The reverb effect is the most useful effect available on the SBLive, although it does have some other weird ones, and a nice sounding Chorus, and Flanger too. The SBLive's "Environmental Audio" features are predominently this highly configurable, quality reverb effect.
But... you'll probably want to just listen to the mix and ENJOY!
EmptyArms4x.mp3 (3.4MB)
Extended dance mix... no... just kidding. This is the same exact music as as EmptyArms4.mp3 but with a different reverb applied to the whole mix. I've had some "fun" getting this one together, mainly because I was trying to use the SBLive reverb (which I think sounds SO good for this song). I'll log the details here when I get a chance... it should make for some interesting reading. For now... just Enjoy!
EmptyArms4.mp3 (3.4MB)
Here it is... I'll fill in the details later. Enjoy! Some have said that the guitar is too loud... I'm taking that into consideration for the remix. It is really an "in your face" SRV guitar song, so it's probably a matter of taste. ;-)
EmptyArms1.mp3 (3.3MB)
Here's a quick and dirty mix of the rockin' Stevie Ray Vaughan tune Empty Arms. I know... there's a LOT of reverb... I was playing around with the SBLive reverb (which I like a lot) and it came out a little too strong. I also tried a different recording technique. Since the SBLive has effects, I wanted to try the SBLive reverb on the guitar. If you set it up so the LINE IN has reverb enabled, then record the LINE IN, you get a dry track - the effects are on the playback side. Then you can enable the reverb on WAVE OUT to get it back again. This is handy for a "full band" kind of reverb sound which a good many SRV songs have. The SRV version of the song has a nice glassy reverb that lasts and lasts but is never too "thick" or "punchy", like immediately after a snare hit, etc. I played with the SBLive reverb for about 10 minutes and came up with something that's pretty close (at least is kinda glassy)... but it needs more tweaking of 30 parameters you can set in the SBLive's reverb. I just wanted quick and dirty... too much snow to shovel. ;-) The guitar part was done with the POD Bassman model, full A.I.R., the '59 Bassman 4x10 cabinet simulation, no POD reverb, slight delay for imaging. The vocals were done with my Shure Beta 58 mic and my ER Vocal 2 preset on the POD (tube preamp model) with no post-EQ this time. I'll try to get the POD patches for these sounds uploaded in the next few days. The MIDI drums and bass are the same set I've been using: Real Acoustic Drums 3 and Stones Bass. Drop me an email and tell me what you think!
Struttin4.mp3 (4MB)
Okay... here it is... the final-final cut! I reworked the drum parts so they're all using the Real Acoustic Drums 3 soundfont. I changed the organ in various places and changed it to use the Perc B3 Fast patch in the 8rock11e soundfont. I re-rendered the MIDI parts to audio, and then remixed the audio. I used the MDA Dynamics plug-in in serveral places: on the vocal track I used it as just a compressor, on the drums/bass mix I used it as a compressor and limiter, and on the entire mix I used it as as mainly a limiter with some slight compression. Also, I added some SBLive reverb to the MIDI tracks... the tracks were complete dry before which was accidental. ;-) The resulting mix came out a lot hotter and fuller than any previous version! There are a few artifacts that you may here as a result of the compressing and limiting, but hey they're free plug-ins right? Can't expect it to be squeaky clean without shelling out the $$$. Anyway, it's a definite improvement... and even though the vocals stink ;-p I'm pretty happy with the overall results. Take a listen and compare it to the previous incantations... and please let me know what you think!
Struttin3.mp3 (3.9MB)
Complete with vocals! Crank it up! Okay... I know... the vocals really... well, let's just say, you can develop an appreciation for our buddy Chris Robinson, who can seriously belt out the vocals - that's why he gets paid the big bucks!
I'm still using all the same soundfonts for this cut: Real Acoustic Drums 3, 8rock11e, modified Stones Bass from LiveWare 3.0 CD. The drum and bass parts have been cleaned up little, and I recorded the rest of the drum and bass parts for the end of the song. I added an organ part. No organ solo though... I'm no keyboardist! ;-)
Anyone want to lay down some MIDI for the organ solo (or the entire organ part if you like) and email it to me? :-)
The guitar parts (using my Strat) in this version are custom tuning: E-G-D-G-B-D. Basically, open-G tuning with E on the bottom. This makes both guitar parts easier to keep in tune with each other with less fiddling... the capo is a pain even though it makes the left guitar part work better on the fretboard in the sense that "the easiest way is probably the way it was recorded on the album". I realized that I don't like to do these kind of guitar tracks where you need to switch tunings, put the capo on, retune, loosen the capo, retune, etc.
I did some more work with the POD guitar tones as you will hopefully notice. ;-)
I just had to tell myself "I can do this!" a few times, and tried not to waste
a lot of time.
I'm still using the Matchless Chieftan for
all the guitar parts, but I realized that I've been using the POD 4x12 cabinet
for all the Chieftan recording of this track so far. Oooopse...
It really brings out the Chieftan character. Then I use my
graphic EQ to severely cut (-12 dB) the freqs between 600-4K.
The left and guitar have
a little different shaping in the 1.6K-4K area (added some back in) and the
right guitar has a little more 250-650 added back in.
Low end is flat, high end is flat.
Ughhh... now I need a digital camera to take pictures!
It's amazing how much of a pleasing effect all this tweaking
this has on the character of the Chieftan sound and it really helps to get
closer to the massively scooped guitar sound from the original song.
I read somewhere that Rich uses a Matchless Clubman through Marshall 4x12
cabs when he plays live lately.
Haven't heard him play live :-( but his recorded guitar sounds
certainly seem to line up with the Chieftan pretty well, and also the Plexi
works well.
Effects: just some light reverb on the guitars. There are 2 lead guitar parts near the end of the song - right after the guitar break but before the ending solo. They are playing at the same time. One has a flanger, and the other has a chorus... okay... so I was too lazy to break out the wah pedal last night. :-b I haven't had much success with the POD wah effect yet and that's another time-drain can-of-worms... I'm trying to keep this moving along just a tad quicker than the actual Black Crowes release schedule! ;-) The last thing I need right now is another couple of knobs to tweak! The lead solo at the end of the song has some moderate POD delay (echo) effect.
Other details: I used the free "MDA Limiter" VST plug-in on the "mains" of the this mix. I set it up to just keep a reign on the mix (no clipping!). I played around with the free "MDA Dynamics" and "MDA Multiband" but couldn't get anything really happening that made serious improvement... so the limiter was the only plug-in for the mixdown. You can check out these free VST plug-ins from Maxim Digital Audio. To use the VST plug-ins with DirectX (Home Studio 9 only supports DirectX plug-ins), you'll need the free VST-DX Wrapper-Lite from Spin Audio.
Struttin2.mp3 (3.1MB)
Same soundfonts as Struttin1. The 2 guitars are POD Chieftan with Marshall 4x12 70's cabinet, and post-POD pre-SBLive EQ (I have a 16-band stereo EQ in between the POD and my SBLive now. It helps dial in the tones quicker, although it failed to help much on this tune so far. The left guitar is Open-G tuning with a capo on the second fret (the song is in the key of A). The right guitar is regular tuning, no capo. The original song is track 9 off of the Shake Your Money Maker CD. Listen to the guitars on the real thing and see if you can come up with some POD tones that are closer to the real ones. Geeez I spent about 4 hours on this (POD tone-ifying + recording the tracks) and thought I had it kinda close but when I listened to it the next day I realized that Rich's guitar tones are even more scooped and on the edge of out of control than mine. I don't know... I find this "matching the tone" adventuresome, but tedious and I may endeavor to skip the tedium for future recording sessions. I'm gonna have to draw the line between POD-twiddling and recording because what happens is one or the other ends up suffering if you try to do both at the same time (or maybe I'll just get better at it and keep trying). It does take some of the fun out of it for me. Do I want to lay down some guitar tracks or twiddle with the POD forever? I guess one main problem is I haven't found a good "StudioWare" panel for Home Studio 9 that can change the POD speaker cabinet emulation and other MIDI-only parameters so every time I want to change something serious, I have to exit HS9, run SoundDiver, twiddle, save, exit SoundDiver, and then start up HS9 again. Hassle, hassle, hassle!!!
Struttin1.mp3 (1.2MB)
There are 2 parts guitars here. Both are POD Plexi with Distortion boost and Drive boost enable - it makes it more crunchy for my Strat. Pretty basic. Open-G tuning on both guitars. Soundfonts are a combination of Real Acoustic Drums 3 (kick, snare) and 8rock11e for drums, and the Bass is my customized "Stones Bass" soundfont from the LiveWare 3.0 CD. I really like the sound of this track with the Plexi tones, even as first cut.
Note to self: Need to use several tracks for the drum parts.
I've started doing this - one track for kick and snare, one for cymbals, one for percussion, etc. That way I can take advantage of the capability to use more than one soundfont for the drums. The SBLive has two "MIDI devices" so you can have MIDI channel 10 on "SBLive A" use Real Acoustic Drums 3 (which doesn't have a lot of aux percussion instruments compared to 8rock11e) and then channel 10 on "SBLive B" can use 8rock11e (which has a lot of aux percussion instruments). Also, having more than one track for the drums allows you to keep the velocities of each drum/cymbal seperate - if you have 2 or more notes being played at the same time in the same drum track, then it's harder to edit the velocities and other controller information for, say, just the cymbals, leaving the kick and snare velocities alone. Although, this may be easy to do with Home Studio 9... I just haven't read that far in the manual and it's not obvious how to do it.
IThankYou.mp3 (3.3MB)
A complete song! It's a somewhat quick and dirty cover of ZZTop's cover of Issac Hayes' I Thank You. This song was done completely with Cakewalk Home Studio 9 in about 6 hours (including my learning time for HS9, but not including the 4+ hours I've spent so far reading half of the manual!). It's a pretty straighforward mix. All guitar work is done with my Strat. The rhythm and lead guitar parts are done a couple of POD presets I made with the Bassman amp model. The short lead in the intro. is neck pickup and add Drive. The rhythm is neck pickup. The main solo is neck pickup and the end solo is middle pickup. The bass is my customized Stones Bass from one of the sound fonts on the Live!Ware 3.0 CD. The drums are the sound font: Real Acoustic Drums 3 from UpMetal Studios. That's me bellowing out the vocal too with my Shure Beta 58 through the POD with a special preset I made called ER Vocal that is based on the POD Fender Twin amp model without a cabinet sim. Ah... the days when we used to actually run the mic through a Twin while playing guitar through it too... oh no what am I saying? That sounded crappy! Well, the POD makes it sound good! Anyway... check it out. Crank it up into some good headphones or a good stereo - it's sounds really cool cranked! Let me know what you think! Some of my buddies here at work thought the overall bass in the recording was too low, until they listened to it on a semi-real stereo - they said it was better then. I thought it had plenty of bass on my cheapo headphones at home (but they are probably a little bass-y).
By the way... I haven't figured out how to use Cakewalk's mixer automation yet, so the ending solo just plays, plays, plays, and then stops abruptly - hehehehe - it's supposed to fade out. As a result of my lack of knowledge, I had to do the final mix down by hand in real-time rather than just tweaking things and letting Cakewalk run the mixer automatically.
By request, here are the Cakewalk files and a standard MIDI type 1 file for this song. BEWARE: the .bun file is a complete HS9 file WITH audio and is 47MB in size! Also, you'll have to fix up the patches for the MIDI tracks... I used custom soundfounts (RealAcousticDrums3.sf2 and edbass2.sf2). Just set it up to use channel 10, patch 0 on tracks 1 and 2 and use channel 2 and a "bass guitar" patch on track 3.
| ThankYou2.mid | Just the MIDI tracks in standard MIDI "Type 1" format. You should be able to load this into just about any MIDI-capable software. |
| ThankYou2.wrk | Just the MIDI tracks in Cakewalk format. You'll need HS9 to use this. |
| ThankYou.bun | The whole 47MB deal complete with audio tracks! You'll need HS9 to use this. |
Here's a recording I did of some guitar, bass, and drums to Lenny Kravitz' The Difference Is Why off of the Mama Said CD. It's a killer "my women left me and I don't know why, but I'm pretty busted all up about it in the coronary region" kind of song. I used my Strat, of course. The rhythm guitar part neck pickup with the POD JCM 800 + Matchless 2x12 cabinet and tremolo effect. I post-processed the rhythm with some stereo delay because, unfortunately, the POD doesn't have a stereo delay. It really needs some nice spacey kind of reverb too, but I haven't got around to that yet. The solo guitar part is bridge pickup with the POD JCM 800 + Marshall 4x12 V70s cabinet, with autoswell, delay and reverb. The drum and bass parts are produced by my SB Live! synth using the 8rock11e sound font that I found on the net - this sound font is one of the best I've found so far. It has really nice sounding drum kits and better bass sounds than the stock SB Live! sound fonts. This one is still a work-in-progress, but it's kinda neat so far. I'd like to record this whole song eventually - include vocals. You gotta hand it to Lenny on this song... it's such a simple song... but there is so much sound and airy detail in there that I doubt I'll ever do it justice.
train.mp3
Size: 1.5MB
 |
Ok.... what would happen if EddieRay paid tribute to Rickey
"Rattlesnake" Medlocke? Here it is - Train, Train! We've got
2 guitar parts here (my Strat), the rhythm is the POD Plexi, and the slide
solo is the POD JCM800. Man, it's nice to have 3 or 4 (POD) Marshalls
at my disposal after 18+ years of playing through Peaveys! The drums
and bass are syntesized by my SBLive! Value card, using some more of the
8rock11e
sound font instruments. There is a wierd effect in the MP3 file regarding
the snare drum... it's sounds almost electronic after I did the MP3 compression.
It sounds more like a normal snare drum in the WAV file, but in the interest
of download time, just download the MP3 file and ignore the yuckieness.
And a special treat, there are some vocals on this one! So the track
layout is: rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums, and 2 vocal tracks.
The song progresses from the beginning through 2 verses and a slide solo.
The original song then follows with a harmonic solo, another verse, another
slide solo - end. The are minimal effects on this one: a little POD
reverb on the guitars, some PowerTracks Delay on the slide solo to give
it a stereo "image". 1/18/2000 note: The vocal part was made with my Shure Beta 58 mic plugged into the POD, which was set up with the "tube preamp" model. As I listen to this after the fact, I'm not exactly sure how I got such a nice flat non-mooooey sound... but I need to find it again! I think I used the compressor on about the first setting, and twiddle the tone knobs and... arggggggh... how did I do this?!? 3/19/2001 note: I'm gonna re-record this song... the complete song... it needs some real "justice" done to it. I can't just throw out a tidbit of a "lost classic" song like this and not finish up with the complete track... SHAME ON ME! ;-) 11/8/2004: I worked up a decent tone for this song on the PODxt... it's amazing how elusive it is (for a guy with a Strat at least). Time to search for the old tracks and start re-recording this! |
Check out the history of Blackfoot, band members, and albums on the AMG All Music Guide! Mr. Medlocke is also on the list of artists using the POD and other Line6 products... but of course, even Line6 doesn't know how to spell Lynyrd Skynyrd, or do they?
Man... you gotta love that POD JCM800. Let's here it for the Creative Rhythmania Accompaniment Players (C.R.A.P.) on the backing instruments! Hey... they're not that bad! Sound font is the basic SBLive! 8MB GM (or possibly the 8rock11e... I forgot to check).
Here's a nice smooth neck pickup and a POD Black Panel Deluxe with a little compressor and light spring reverb. Accompaniment by C.R.A.P. Sound font is the SBLive! 8MB GM, I think.... uh.... I just realized I need to start keeping track of this a little better.
An impression of The Cult's Love Removal Machine. This one has a couple of POD JTM-45 rhythm guitar parts ("ER Cult" patch in EddieRay1.LIB) and a JCM 800 with lots of reverb for the solo. The drums are the 8rock11e sound font (I gotta get that new drum sound font set up!). I'll probably play around some more with this song... I just can't help but get nostalgic just hearing it! Ahhh, the good ole gig days with fellow rockers Blake Thompson and Curt Bennington, not a care in the world... we used to completely jam this song at the live gigs! I miss it!
Note to self: MUST... PUT... more... songs... herrrrrre... ughhhhhhh... THUMP
UPDATE: The Line6 Edit tool for editing presets for the POD and PODxt (and others) works very well and is simple to use. You can use it upload your tones to the Line6 Tone Transfer site, and you can download thousands of tones others have created. Very cool! Grab it at the Line6 web site in the Support->Downloads area. Hopefully, as I start getting in the groove with the PODxt, I'll get some more presets uploaded into the Line6 Tone Transfer site, and post them here as well. I've uploaded a couple so far - search for EddieRay.
A collection of 19 POD presets for your enjoyment. Unzip the file EddieRay1.zip and you'll get a file called EddieRay1.LIB. Open the file in SoundDiverLine6 and try out the presets with your POD. All of these were set up for my Strat as far as EQ goes. A lot of them were made for the bridge pickup, but some sound really nice with the neck pickup. The cleaner sounds, of course, are pretty useable with any Strat pickup setting. Please let me know how these sound on your guitar and/or your live setup (ed@udel.edu). I found that at least for the AX2, the sounds I make with headphones tend to end up a little too punchy when played through the AX2's speakers in a gig situation, so you made need to tone down the mids for that purpose.
NOTE: If you're looking for Presets from some of my more recent recordings, check the associated text or drop me an email. I have a lot of POD presets that I've just been stuffing into a .LIB file, unorganized, and not very well documented, but eventually I hope to get it organized and documented. Ugh... ;-)
Here's a listing of the presets included in EddieRay1.LIB:
| ER Train Train | Just a big stadium JCM 800 sound |
| ER SRV cranked | Think "Let the Good Times Roll" or "Voodoo Chile". Strat, neck pickup. |
| ER SRV cranked2 | Just about out of control. ;-) Strat, neck pickup or middle pickup. |
| ER 38 Special | The best "Hold On Loosely" or "Rockin' Into The Night" I could cop so far. As an added bonus, this works well for some ZZ rhythm work like "Tush". |
| ER Plexi CrunchB | A good moderate crunch with a bright EQ, kick in the distortion creamy lead |
| ER ACDC Crunch | Amazingly enough, this is based on the Chieftan model. It rocks! Play your "Problem Child" with this one. |
| ER Echo Swell | A slight variation on one of the POD built-in clean sounds with echo, reverb and volume-swell. |
| ER Clean SlapTrm | A nice bluesy clean with some dirt and slapback reverb. The tremolo is available. |
| ER Love Removal | A JTM-45 crunch that I used in removal1 above. Pretty basic but very nice bridge pickup rhythm tone. |
| ER 52 Deluxe Rot | A variation on the POD built-in Deluxe preset. The rotary is available. |
| ER Tweed Blues | A slight variation on the POD Tweed Blues preset. |
| ER Bayou | Kick in the tremolo and think CCR - "Born on the Bayou"... kick in the distortion for the lead part. |
| ER Plexi CrunchM | Medium toned Plexi crunch, not quite as punchy as ER Plexi CrunchB |
| ER AC15 Zep | The first good Vox sound I have come up with. I think of "The Ocean", "How Many More Times", and some of the lighter distortion Zep. Kick in the distortion for some nice creamy break-up lead tone. |
| ER Vocal | A POD preset to sing through. It has a nice spring reverb set up, and a tiny bit of slapback delay. The flanger is also available. |
| ER Bassman | A nice bluesy bassman sound used for rhythm in I Thank You. |
| ER BassmanL | A bassman lead tone used in I Thank You. |
| ER Fat Crunch | A crunchy JTM-45, not too much drive |
| ER Fat Crunch2 | A variation on ER Fat Crunch. Hopefully, crunchier! ;-) |
I finally incorporated my Empty Arms and a new JCM patch into my POD library. I' decided to just release the whole thing here as "Version 2"... you'll notice that it includes all of the presets from EddieRay1.zip, essentially unchanged, a few added vocal presets (the POD is my studio ;-), and two new rockin' guitar presets which are detailed below:
| ER Empty Arms | Man, you just can't go wrong with a good Bassman tone! This is the set up I used exclusively for the guitar in all the Empty Arms cuts. No post processing or anything... it's all here. | ER Versa-JCM | The JCM800 gots to be one of the most versatile guitar amps known to man. Check out this preset, twiddle with it, play some of your favorite rock songs, and then send me an email saying "JCM Rocks!". ;-) Look for another page full of sound clips and POD tweaking info. for this preset below. |
I have gathered my POD presets over the last year or so into this library for your enjoyment. Many are the same as in EddieRay2.zip. Sorry for the lack of documentation about each preset, but the names might be enough to get an idea of what they were meant to be like. Also, note that these presets were edited in SoundDiver 2.0.10r1 on my original POD that has upgraded to the version 2.1 firmware (that came with the POD 2.0 Upgrade Kit), and also upgraded to the version 2.2 firmware that I received a in May 2001. 6/07/2001: I'll be updating this file soon and putting a date here so you can be sure to get the latest version. I going to try putting comments in the POD library file, and then use a program to extract the names and comment to put here as I update the library. Also, I got the latest version of SoundDiverLine6 from Emagic's web site... I check what version it is and post it here in case there are issues with reading POD library files into different versions of SoundDiverLine6.
01/21/2003: It's been a while since I released my updated library of POD sounds. Here's the latest version. There are lots of sounds in here with same name with a number added to the end like "ER Barracuda1", "ER Barracuda2", etc. These are sounds that I made during recording of some of the tracks you can download from this page. Each of these has subtle differences, maybe a different cabinet or amp model, but geared towards making the same sound for a particular song. You might find it interesting to try them in succession and see which one you thinks works the best for you. Any other cool tones I've come across in my POD twiddling are also included. These were made with using the POD 2.3 and SoundDiverLine6 (same version as with EddieRay3). So, what are you waiting for... grab the new library, grab the guitar, and get jammin'! :-)
Enjoy!
Eddie's ER Versa-JCM rant: I was making the POD preset and I said, what the heck, I'll record some guitar twiddling and make some notes about how you can just tweak and tweak this thing for almost any kind of music. Click here to view the first rant!
So, I grab a copy of one of AC/DC's most infamous albums and popped it in - hmmm... Track 5: Beating Around the Bush... what's that? Continued...
Note to self: the Chieftan model is amazing... we need a rant... :=)
Note to self: the HiWatt model is great... we need a rant... :=)
Note to self: the new PODxt Marshalls are sweet... we need a rant... :=)