Blues sample

[Anonymous]

Thank goodness Johnny had the heart for teaching his acquired Pro Sax skills! Where would we be now if not for this website? Just because the site is called ‘how to play saxophone’ does not mean that it is dedicated solely for teaching the sax. It must include the whole sphere of producing music with the sax, including playing, music theory, recording, production etc. Where else are we going to discuss these audio skills? This site is also a place where professional players can share their experience and contribute tips. It doesn’t have to solely be about acquiring personal knowledge, sharing what we have learnt and giving back to others is important too. The least time we spend hassling with problems, the more time we have to play the Sax. If you lose interest in this site you may have lost interest in playing your Sax! I’ve learnt a great deal here from Pro’s and beginners like myself – Cheers Guys!

[Anonymous]

Sorry Guys – my disruption is mainly boredom, i need to find more challenging stuff to do on the sax, which is unfair to expect from this site – which is a great site for people wanting to learn the sax, share their views and uploads.

[William Cingolani]

sxpoet, putting that compression in made it sound great.

[Anonymous]

Thanks William – for listening to my 3 uploads and commenting on them (1st – unedited, 2nd – equaliser, 3rd – compression).
I agree the compression smoothes out the recording – i still don’t really know what a lot of the controls in the
equaliser & compressions are for, just playing it by ear and adjusting each one to hear what its doing to the mix.
But i’ve recorded them with 2 mic’s one to the left of the music stand, and the other to the right of the music stand,
by moving slightly sideways when playing sax/guitar it gives it a more 3 dimensional sound – you can hear the sound
moving between the left & right headphones more effective than recording with one mic which gives equal amounts of sound coming from both speakers.

[Kevin]

James, I wasn’t sure which way to interpret your reply, since these blog conversations are more apt to mis-interpretation and parties likely not “on the same page” with their thoughts and responses. Hence I err on the side of the spectrum of people that chose to say less. So assuming my not-commenting on your upload meant something about my opinion of it is a mis-characterization. (In hindsight I had also mi-characterized your comment about those recording their sax- cheating to make themselves sound better- taking it as directed to those who have uploaded to this site).
I had made a comment on your first bell mic upload, and when compared to Jeff’s comment about it sounding like it was under a pillow I knew that what I was hearing from listening from my android phones external speaker was likely in question. (My good pair of Bose headphones died on me a few weeks back), so your other uploads with the stand mic, I did a listen to and appreciated reading your comments about using 2 mics, the settings with compression, etc. but I didn’t want to make comments from what I was hearing without it first coming through a better sound source than my phone.
Just taking a brief minute here and there to read the forum comments is really all the available time I have, so making time to write these responses as well is a stretch- perhaps taking away from time to practice my sax…
I liked hearing your guitar for your backing track. It will really start to shine when you get that drum track going to sync it all together. You have begun a craft that you will likely get hours of enjoyment from as I know I have. Do keep sharing your learning process.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the feed back on the uploads Kevin.
I agree with adding drum tracks, haven’t worked out how to do it in logic pro.
If it’s too complex i might just have to leave it till a later date.
The settings for logic pro aren’t perfectly quite there yet, but i feel it’s good enough,
from the feedback i’ve had, that i can now get back to practicing, and
not have to trial & error the settings both physical and software related.
I stick with the last settings done in the compression – so lucky for you
i won’t need to bore you with lots of test runs & waste JF’s bandwith – thanks for your patience.

[William Cingolani]

sxpoet, I have that compression thing on garage and I don’t know what it is. Johnny told me to keep the EQ flat blow natural, no echo or reverb, just natural.

[William Cingolani]

I once had logic pro but I trashed it and later bought a yamaha studio recorder which turned out to be like logic pro too complicated. So I settled for garage band.

[Anonymous]

William – from what i understand, if i’ve got my facts right, compression is the final thing to do in the mix. What it does is it smoothes out the whole recording, so if you play the odd note too loud it should adjust everything to even it out. If you look at graphs of the 3 recordings,
you can see the peaks and trough more exaggerated in the 1st recording where my sax has got to close to the mic, by the time you get to the last graph in the 3rd recording it looks more like a sausage shape than the original shape with lots of chunks bitten out of it .

well thats what i think the compression is doing – could be wrong.

the equalizing bit, is where i listen to the guitar sound and adjust it so it sounds pleasing to my ears and i then i adjust the sax sound to harmonize with the guitar sound that sounds pleasing to my ears. wrongly adjusted and the sax sound could clash with the guitar sound. Also it depends on how i want both instruments to sound – harsher, brighter, softer, fuzzier etc..

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