Home Studio Tips

Editors Keys makes some really cool and innovative products. They recently contacted me to do a review of the Portable Vocal Booth Home Version. What a treat, this product is so cool, I was very excited to give it a try.

First of all it is very sturdy and easy to setup. I had it put together and on my mic stand in less than five minutes. Basically what it does is surrounds your mic with soundproof foam. This is a great way to create clean vocals without reverb as well as keeping out computer noise, barking dogs, crying babies and screaming wives.

The specially moulded foam has been shaped and processed in a way which not only helps to create dry vocals, but to also prevent exterior noise such as traffic noise or air conditioning entering into your mic.

I did a few tests with and without the vocal booth, and yes it was quite a bit clearer with the portable vocal booth than without. I record in a concrete basement, so there are tons of sound reflections as well as noises that bleed onto vocals, the portable vocal booth did reduce the outside noise quite a bit. I was extremely happy with the way my vocals sounded with the portable vocal booth. My next test is to try it out with my 12 string acoustic, I'm sure it will work wonders there as well.

The Editors Keys Portable Vocal Booth Home Edition goes for $144 and comes with 110% money back guarantee. Go to Editors Keys to get more information.

I would recommend the Editors Keys Portable Vocal Booth Home Edition to anyone who's looking to improve their vocal sounds without creating a real booth. This is an excellent and inexpensive solution to all of your home recording vocal issues. Check it out!

http://www.editorskeys.com/Recording_Equipment.html

How many times have you been sitting behind a drum kit or at the organ laying down a track and oops, you screw up. Now I have to walk over to the computer, reset the track, hit record and quickly run back over and sit down again. Very frustrating when you are recording alone.

There may be a solution to this dilema. X-Tempo Zone created an awesome product called the Pok. It is a wireless foot controller that controls your DAW (as well as other things).

X-Tempo Zone was cool enough to send me a Pok Wireless controller for review. I was instantly in love with this controller. It was built very sturdy and looked awesome too. I noticed immediately how much more effecient the Pok makes the recording process. No more getting up and resetting takes, no more tripping over cables, no more missing the first bar of the song.

The Pok allows you to free up your hands and use your feet to control your DAW. The Pok wireless signal will reach up to 100 feet. I would imagine there would also be some really awesome live applications for the Pok as well, but I rarely play live these days. Imagine triggering drums, loops, sequences and backing tracks without your hands ever touching the laptop. You could be your own one man band!

The Pok can be customized and will support over 20 commands. The Pok has 8 pedals and each pedal can have three functions.The Pok comes programmed for Pro Tools but can be used with all other leading DAWs such as Ableton Live, Acid Pro, Audacity, Ardour, Audition, Cubase, Digital Performer, FL Studio, GarageBand, Logic, n-Track, Nuendo, Reaper, Record, Sonar, and Sound Forge. It comes with editing software so you can easily customize everything to your specific needs.

Even for those not doing the playing, the pok can be a godsend. Setting up the microphones for that perfect acoustic room sound? You can test the sound quality from the recording point, adjust the mics and test it again, without having to run back to your computer.

The Pok actually emulates a computer keyboard and sends the keystrokes (including macros) directly to your computer using a USB device. It is completely wireless and runs on batteries so it can be easily moved to where you need it most. The thing I like the best about the POK is that you can configure it to control the things you do most with your DAW. Since the Pok is actually just a keyboard, you can customize it to do other things. It will basically work with any software that accepts keyboard commands. The sky is the limit to what you can do with the Pok wireless controller.

The Pok goes for around $320 and for $50 more you can get a nice gig case for it. Check out X-Tempo Zone for details on the Pok Wireless Controller.

The Pok is an extremely valuable tool for those of us who record alone. I highly recommend giving the Pok a try if you are looking for a better way to control your DAW remotely.

Lately, I've been using MIDI drum loops in all of my songs. For several reasons; I prefer to have full control over my drum beats, I like to work alone, and last but not least, I hate trying to program drums from scratch. Using loops, I can easily drop in my beats and then fine tune them as needed later on. This provides a way to make human sounding drums with spot on timing without dealing with some drummer guy and his giant kit. Plus, having a brand new baby means most of my recording these days requires less noise.

The awesome people at Groove Monkee hooked me up with a few packages of MIDI drum loops. I got the Studio Pack, Rock 2: Alternative/Soft, Rock 3: Contemporary, Punk and Twisted Beats. These libraries really help to complete my MIDI drum collection, this is all I should ever need as far as drum loops go. I'm good.

Groove Monkee has provided MIDI content to Cakewalk, FXpansion, Propellerhead, LinPlug, Music Tech Magazine, Computer Music Magazine and is considered an industry leader in MIDI drum loops. 

Excellent product, I can not say enough great things about Groove Monkee. I highly recommend these loops to anyone looking for killer drum patterns.

The Groove Monkee loops are fantastic, well worth the money. The loops were not quantized at all and have an exceptional human feel. The grooves were all played by professional studio drummers and are completely royalty free. No need to add any thanks in your liner notes, however I'm sure Groove Monkee would appreciate a nod. Things such as drags, flat and double flams, ghost notes, inter-kit dynamics are all there. There is also a ton of timing and velocity variations. The loops include everything from straightforward drumming to very busy, "had too much Red Bull" drumming. The Groove Monkee loops include many different feels like ballad, 8ths, 16ths, quarter/driving, half-time, floor tom grooves and 4 on the floor. Not to mention the Twisted Beats offers some very interesting loops for people that are looking for something a little different.

Some details on the Groove Monkee products:

• The Rock 2: Alternative/Soft pack includes 700 loops in various time signatures such as 3/4, 6/8 and 4/4. The Rock 2 pack is broken up into song segments such as intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro, etc. The Rock 2 pack is meant for lighter type rock but also includes half-time, displaced back beats, stick/tom grooves and more. The Rock 2 pack can be downloaded from the Groove Monkee website or you can choose the CD-ROM option. The Groove Monkee Rock 2: Alternative/Soft pack lists for $29.95.

• The Rock 3: Contemporary pack includes over 400 loops and are broken up into song segments such as intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro, etc. The Rock 3 pack can be downloaded from the Groove Monkee website or you can choose the CD-ROM option. The Groove Monkee Rock 3: Contemporary pack lists for $29.95.

• The Punk pack includes 600 loops and are broken up into song segments such as intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro, etc. The Punk pack can be downloaded from the Groove Monkee website or you can choose the CD-ROM option. The Groove Monkee Punk pack lists for $29.95.

• The Twisted Beats pack includes over 800 loops and includes many unique and exotic feeling grooves. The Twisted Beats pack can be downloaded from the Groove Monkee website or you can choose the CD-ROM option. The Groove Monkee Twisted Beats pack lists for $29.95.

• The Studio Pack includes 11,000 loops in various time signatures such as 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 5/8, 6/4, 6/8, 7/4, 7/8, 9/8 and 12/8. The Studio Pack includes genres such as Blues, Country, Electronic, Funk, Hip Hop, R&B, Fusion, Jazz, Metal, Rock, Progressive, and World Beats. The loops come in 2, 4, 8 and 12 bar segments and include hundreds of extra drum fills. The Studio Pack can be downloaded from the Groove Monkee website or you can choose the CD-ROM option. The Groove Monkee Studio Pack lists for $269.00.

Groove Monkee also offers several other MIDI drum loops products such as Blues, Metal, Power Rock, Prog-Fusion, Country, Electronic, Funk, Hip Hop, Fusion, Jazz, and World Beats. Groove Monkee offers a wide variety of affordable MIDI drum loops. Whether you get the full Studio Pack or just one or two genres, you should have plenty of loops to keep you happy for your latest projects.

The Groove Monkee loops will work with just about any drum program such as Addictive Drums, ADM, BFD, DFH, EZdrummer, Groove Agent, GURU, IMAP, Larry Seyers, Live Session Drums, Reason, Session Drummer 2, Steven Slate and Superior Drummer. These will also work with any program that can use standard MIDI files such as Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, Acid, Reason, Fruity Loops, Reaper, and Cakewalk.

I will be using Groove Monkee loops quite a bit in upcoming projects. I will post a song once I get one done. Groove Monkee has provided me with an endless variety of beats, fills and patterns. More than I will ever use in this lifetime. I really like the fact that the loops are broken down into song segments. This makes it very easy to find the pattern or fill you need to easily create an entire song. My favorite was the Twisted Beats pack as it had a ton of variety and wasn't just your basic 4/4 beats.

The Groove Monkee loops are extremely versatile and sound great in different tempos. All of the beats, fills and patterns have an incredible natural human feel to them. They provide professional-quality, real-feel that most musicians are looking for. The loops are very well played and can be placed quickly and easily into a song. Groove Monkee even has free loop samples for download on their site.

Most of the loop sets go for around 29 bones, which is a great deal for what you get. Groove Monkee is very affordable, you simply cannot argue with the $29 price of most of their products. Groove Monkee is definitely worth looking into if you want some professionally created grooves with a human feel. Check it out!

I recently got the MIDI Drum Loops Complete library from Smart loops. Very impressive collection of MIDI drum loops. I'm taking down my "Drummer Wanted" ad.

Seriously, I can see myself using Smart Loops as my go to for beats on future recordings. MIDI Drum Loops Complete includes a wide variety of beats, fills and patterns. I was impressed with the fact that each groove includes a ton of variation. For instance, if you need a double kick fill, there are 10 different patterns to choose from. Making it very easy to find the fill that would perfectly fit your particular part. Some of the grooves have as many as twenty different variations, now that's awesome.

These loops are versatile and sound great in different tempos. Most of the loops are in 4/4 or 6/8 with some double-time and half-time feels. All of the beats, fills and patterns have a great natural human feel to them. They are very well played and can be placed quickly and easily into a song. You can listen to loop samples on the Smart Loops website.

I attached a short techno-metal track to the bottom of this post that I created using only Smart Loops MIDI patterns. It was done in Reason so the drum kit could sound better, but the Smart Loops patterns are awesome. The loops required very little editing and tweaking to get them to fit into my parts. I'm looking forward to trying these loops with something like a BFD2 or Superior Drummer kit and Pro Tools.

According to Smart Loops:

All of the loops were performed live with no quantizing, keeping the original feel of the performance by professional session drummer and Smart Loops founder Frank Basile. The loops are professional-quality, real-feel MIDI drum loops and can be used with any PC or Apple MIDI-compatible music software or hardware sequencer capable of reading standard MIDI files. All of the MIDI Loop libraries include loops in four formats for compatibility with nearly all hardware and software MIDI sequencers. Formats include Standard MIDI File (.MID) type 1, Standard MIDI File type 0, Cakewalk Session Drummer 1, Cakewalk MIDI Groove Clip (Compatible with Cakewalk Session Drummer versions 2 & 3).

You get all of Smart Loops' 5 MIDI drum loop libraries for only $59, which regularly goes for $145. Needless to say, this is a great deal for this set of loops. There are over 1,000 MIDI drum loops, beats, fills and patterns covering various styles such as metal, hard rock, blues, country, disco, funk, hip-hop, jazz, latin, pop, rap, reggae, r&b, shuffle, swing, and more.

In addition to MIDI Loops, Smart Loops also offers Acid, Apple and Rex2 loops as well as professionally recorded drum, guitar and bass samples.

Smart Loops is very affordable, you simply cannot argue with the $59 sticker price. It's definitely worth looking into if you want some professionally created beats. Check it out!

The people at Toontrack were cool enough to send me a copy of Superior Drummer 2.0 for review. I've heard a ton about it by reading on the web and I've watched lots of videos and heard demo songs created using Superior Drummer 2.0. Needless, to say I was pretty excited to get my mits on it and try it out.

Superior Drummer 2.0 comes on 5 DVD's. Install was relatively painless and authorizing the program wasn't too bad either. There are four different modes of custom installation, from the 4Gb basic install up to the full 20Gb sound bank. I had used EZdrummer in the past and Superior Drummer 2.0 seems like a huge step up from that. There are a ton of settings in this puppy. Actually, the interface seemed a bit daunting at first. Took me a while to figure out what was going on.

They've completely overhauled the dfh-Superior engine so it's optimized for use with electronic drum kits, makes even more effective use of sample layers, and loads much faster than before. Plus, the sounds are top notch. Toontrack created the brand new Superior Drummer 2.0 engine expressly to showcase the sounds, instead of just releasing them as an expansion pack.

You can get great sounds right out of the box or you can lift the hood and tweak almost every minute detail to your liking. Superior Drummer 2.0 is primarily a mic-centric program, so learning the mics and how to mix them is key to getting your sounds. In terms of mic's that can be accessed it's got overhead, close, mid, and far ambient mics, mono ambient and an ambient bullet mic that can all be tweaked in and out to tailor your sound. It's pretty amazing how many different sounds you can get out of one snare just by playing with the mics.

The mixer has your standard groupings, bus assignments, detailed bleed control for every instrument, and allows for 16 channels of output into your DAW. It is possible to do all of the drum mixing within Superior Drummer, saving valuable DAW resources. The Sonalksis FX are rather efficient, but when you do a complete drum mix inside Superior with 20-something plugins of course they hit your CPU like native plugins would.

One difference between EZdrummer and Superior Drummer 2.0 is that the midi engine is no longer a part of the drum engine like it was in EZdrummer. To use the included midi grooves you need to install EZplayer Pro (free with Superior Drummer 2.0) and place it just ahead of Superior Drummer 2.0 in the fx chain and then all will work as expected.

Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 Features:

• Recorded at Avatar Studios
• Drums played by renowned live/session drummer, Nir Z
• Custom MIDI engine
• EZplayer Pro arranger
• Functions stand alone with Toontrack Solo
• Optimized for use with e-drums
• Effective use of sample layers
• Improved loading times
• New built-in effects by Sonalksis

System requirements are:

• Windows XP SP3 or newer, 2 GHz Pentium 4 or Athlon processor with 1 GB RAM (multi-core CPU with 2 GB RAM or more recommended)
• Mac OS 10.4.11 or higher, 2 GHz G5 with 1 GB RAM (multi-core CPU with 2 GB RAM or more recommended)
• 4GB free hard disc space, DVD drive (25GB free hard disc space, Sequencer application and professional soundcard MIDI controller such as keyboard, drum pads or electronic drum kit recommended)

Superior Drummer 2.0 is compatible with:

• Ableton Live
• Acid
• Cubase
• Digital Performer
• Fruity Loops
• Garage Band
• Logic Pro
• Mackie Traktion
• Pro Tools
• Reaper
• Samplitude
• Sonar

Superior Drummer 2.0 works well with electronic drum kits as well, and tracks all the stuff the electronic drums can transmit, like cymbal chokes and hihat foot splashes. I've done some testing, like seeing how many degrees of open to closed I can hit with my hihat pedal, or mixing jazz percussion stuff from other libraries in with the Avatar kit that comes with it and it performs excellent.

When downloading the latest update to version 2.2.1, you will get the integrated MIDI grooves browser, just like in EZdrummer. The update also adds a mapping/stacking function, which is very useful for the users with E-kits out there. When downloading the latest update flr the Avatar sound library, there is tons of mixer presets included, for the users who don't have the time or experience to mix on their own. There is additional MIDI for download, when registered your EZplayer Pro and also from the Superior Drummer 2.0 product page. All of the above is of course free for registered owners.

Toontrack has some great videos up on their site here: http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=30#3. Take a look at some of these, the videos will show you how intense Superior Drummer 2.0 really is. It probably has more bells and whistles than you will ever use, but it's nice to know they are there if you want to dive in.

Overall, I think Superior Drummer 2.0 sounds amazing and is very intuitive. It is a must if you are looking to have realistic sounding drums without learning to actually play them yourself. It doesn't require that you are a midi programmer or a computer engineer to run. You can have great sounding drums right out of the box without a huge headache. I would recommend Superior Drummer 2.0, check it out!

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of FXpansion BFD ECO. BFD ECO is the little brother of the beast BFD2. BFD2 requires it's own dedicated 60 gig hard drive to run, which is a dealbreaker for most people. BFD ECO only requires somewhere in the ballpark of 4 gigs which is much more economical, hence the name ECO.

In my book, FXpansion can do no wrong. Every product they create that I have had the pleasure to use, has been exactly that...a pleasure to use. They create top notch products that are well made as well as add dynamics and professionalism to any home studio.

BFD ECO was easy to install and was fairly easy to register and authorize. I'm still not a fan of any software authorization, I know it's necessary to combat piracy, etc. but it seems like authorization is always the most complicated part of any application install.

As I stated earlier, BFD ECO only took up about 4 gigs of space on my hard drive. This makes it an excellent product to run on a laptop or a modest DAW. In a perfect world, I'd recommend running the full version of BFD2 on your main DAW and throw BFD ECO on your laptop for making beats on the go, that way you'd have the best of both worlds.

Featuring the highlights of the expansive BFD2 library and fully compatible with all BFD2 expansions, BFD ECO provides a simpler way of bringing lifelike drum sounds to your DAW. BFD ECO will be released in April, 2010 and will sell for around $150. BFD ECO will be upgradable to BFD2 at any time for a special upgrade price. BFD ECO comes as RTAS, VST, AU or as a stand alone.

BFD ECO Features:

• 5 kicks
• 6 snares
• 12 toms
• 3 hi-hats
• 11 cymbals and selection of percussion
• Includes jam-blocks, cowbell, cabasa and tambourine
• 15 built-in effects including EQ, filtering, dynamics, drive, reverb and more
• Groove section with over 1500 patterns and advanced humanization
• Customizable keymaps and electronic drum support
• Built-in Stereo audio export
• Mixing section, EQ and dynamics/effect processing
• Overloud's Breverb plate algorithm
• 40 mixed presets and kits in various musical styles like rock, jazz, funk, metal and more
• Mix and match individual kit-pieces to build your own 12-piece kits
• Internal EQ and FX slots on each channel including ambience, aux and master channels
• Integrated mixer includes 2 aux channels for adding extra reverb/parallel compression
• Master output and Direct output for each channel
• Full plugin integration for your digital audio workstation
• Compatible with FXpansion and 3rd-party expansion libraries
• Upgrade path to BFD2

BFD ECO allows you to create the exact drum sound you want by providing dynamic effects processing and a powerful mixing section. Not to mention there are presets that sound excellent right out of the box. BFD ECO also comes with over 1500 drum patterns. You can and drag and drop the patterns into your DAW and create complete songs without having to create your own (time consuming) patterns. All of the patterns sync up with your project and you can add humanization effects to make it feel like a real drummer.

BFD ECO will also do customized keymapping and will work with your electronic drums. You can also combine kit-pieces from different expansion packs. The interface is very simple and straightforward as I was up and creating awesome sounding drum beats in minutes, without any hassle.

FXpansion BFD ECO Requires:

• Windows XP SP3 (32-bit)
• Vista SP1 (32-bit)
• Windows7 (32-bit)
• Pentium4-based CPU or better (Windows)
• OSX 10.5.7 or higher, Intel CPU (Macintosh)
• RAM: 1 GB of RAM
• Hard Drive: 7200 rpm HDD with at least 5 GB of free space
• Other: DVD drive for installation
• Internet connection required for product authorization

I love the fact that I can create realistic, killer sounding drums without annoying my neighbors, wasting valuable studio space with a giant drum kit or having to deal with some flakey drummer dude. Call me anti-social, but I enjoy the idea of creating a full band sound entirely on my own.

FXpansion has done it again! They created a reasonably sized drum program that is affordable, sounds great and is easy to use. I highly recommend checking out BFD ECO when it comes out in April. Perfect for small project studios all the way up to high end professional producers. BFD ECO is a killer drum application for anyone who wants realistic sounding drums and complex patterns without the headache of being a full fledged computer programmer (or actually learning to play, record and mix a real drum kit).

FXpansion BFD ECO is worth every penny, check it out!