Hello - I’m looking for any tips/tricks to record an energetic cymbal for verse, and for chorus, something like on this track: - YouTube
at these times:
All out for chorus: 28:48
More subtle for verses: 00:31, and 33:15 .
In particular, I’m looking for the following two cymbal sounds:
having it sound by rhythmically swinging it back and forth (the cymbal makes the sound when the direction changes).
A more complicated one, where the first three beats are like above, but the 4th one is accompanied by the thud of hitting the cymbal’s drum-like diaphragm (sorry, I don’t know the real name) with the palm of other hand.
Unless I buy and learn new software to do this (which I don’t want to do, if such software even exists), I’m going to have to record this analog (Cubase 6.5) which I am OK with.
My mic is an AT4033 tucked inside a reflexion filter, and I’m in a large somewhat irregularly shaped room with 12 ft ceilings, with a duvet behind me.
Some questions I might have are:
What kind of tambourine should I buy to get that 60s sound … the round kind that is “closed” by what looks like leather or plastic acting as a drum head for the palm? Would the newer crescent shaped kind that are “open” be better? Is the type of “jangle” on the tambourine a variable I need to consider as well (sorry, I don’t know the word for the little noise-making metal things)?
Recording and production techniques … not even sure what questions to ask here - distance, eq, compression, etc. … but if anyone has experience doing this, I’d love to hear any words of wisdom.
(Oh, and I’m not exactly looking forward to cutting and pasting to get them on the beat … maybe it’s time to learn Cubase’s new audio quantize feature … but one has to do what one has to do!).
Thanks for any thoughts!
[Edit: OH! I just thought of something, maybe one of those sample libraries would have acceptable results (very demo quality, my work) and be easier to use … does anyone have experience with any sample libraries with strong emphasis on this 60s-style tambourine sound?]
Am I right in understanding I can’t just buy the product and play within Cubase … I also need to buy some kind of “player”? Is Kontact a sampler in the same way Halion SSE is, but with different formats … people who make libraries have to choose which group of customers to leave out when they choose a format for the sample libraries they build?
Thanks - I’m afraid the only thing I have any idea about at all is Cubase, and some would say it’s debatable how much of that knowledge I have anyway - so any help would be appreciated and would definitely NOT be too basic…
Some general advice please … how does one evaluate and compare libraries such as these? To my inexperienced self, it seems quite a bit like buying something sight-unseen, except for the pretty pictures and slick marketing descriptions, and examples on-line that are of course not going to be the worst sounding ones in the library.
Sometimes there is a review floating around on some of them, but beyond that, everything from quality of sound to ease of use seems a bit of a crapshoot. How do you guys do it?
Yep my preference too!
But cos of arthritis these days i’m not always able to set up a mic stand, so another way of blagging it is to load two or three tambourine hits that sound reasonably similar into GAO, you may have to mess with the pitch/envelope settings a little so they sound like various hits from the same tambourine and use a fairly deep phaser on an insert for that channel. The phaser just adds a little ‘randomness’ to the sound which can sound HIGHLY convincing in the mix. obviously you’ll need to EQ/sort your ambience to taste… pretty old trick really…
Bought a tambourine. Those suckers aren’t as easy to play as the girls in the band make it look!
Re: Beatles - they didn’t use Sampletank to be sure, but I wouldn’t bet a lot they wouldn’t have jumped at the chance. They were early adopters in as many ways as they could be. For example, George didn’t practice lots for the guitar intro to Bungalow Bill -it was a Melltron!
Not to mention that ADT (automatic double track) and phlanging were invented because John couldn’t be bothered to sing it live again.
