Brian’s Bedroom

Hi guys,

I have recently stumbled upon an excellent series of books/ebooks that explain how to get the most out of your home recording studio. It’s written in an interesting and down-to-earth manner, however the author, Brandon Drury, doesn’t leave out any of the gory details. The details are particularly gory because this book collection is known as The Killer Home Recording System.

If you click on the advert below, you will be able to get the first book in this series (Killer Home Recording - Setting Up) for free. From this you will be able to tell if you like the author’s style and info. Then when you’re ready to get more advanced, you can purchase the other books in the series that interest you.

With book titles like the ones listed below,  this series is definitely worth investigating for any home recording enthusiast.

• Murderous Mixing
• Audio Engineering
• Acoustic Guitar
• Electric Guitar
• Vocals
• Bass
• Drums

The “Amen Break” is a 6 second drum beat which was originally played by Gregory Sylvester Coleman in the song “Amen Brother” by “The Winstons” in 1969. It is probably the most popular drumbeat in the world because it is used (and some would say “over-used”) in many forms of Hip-hop, Jungle, Rock, Drum and Bass and Breakcore music. The history behind this beat is quite extensive and interesting and is well summarised on Wikipedia at the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break

For your interest, this is the original sampled beat: AmenBreakOriginal.mp3 (110 KB) - I’m sure it sounds familiar, even if you’re not into that sort of music.

Since this is such an interesting and useful beat, I decided to make a Hydrogen song/beat template out of it. This can be useful for DJs, drummers or people who just want to have fun with Hydrogen. This is can be downloaded from the links below:

Amen Break Hydrogen song: AmenBreakHydrogen.h2song (100 KB)

Note: These songs require the GMkit which comes standard with Hydrogen, otherwise available for free download from here.

Demo of the Hydrogen song: AmenBreakHydrogen.mp3 (167 KB)

Note: This mp3 demo is recorded straight from Hydrogen it’s sound can obviously be improved with the use of effects and EQ. But I’ll leave that up to you guys, ’cause that’s where you can have some real fun.

Enjoy!

We have officially started a forum on Brian’s Bedroom. You can get to the forum from the page tab at the top of the screen or by following this link: http://briansbedroom.org/forum/

The aim is to setup a global area where we can all have our say about anything related to home recording and using Linux audio software to enjoy music. I will definitely keep an eye on things, so feel free to ask questions and the answers will come.

I need some suggestions for a good layout of categories, so please tell what you think in the Suggestions and Comments section of the forum.

There’s been a lot of activity on the Ubuntu Studio Users list these last few days revolving around the future direction of Ubuntu Studio. Most importantly, the guys are looking for developers, testers and documentations writers to help out with the project. If you want to get involved in this great project, check out the Ubuntu Studio Launchpad Page or go to the wiki.

The future of the distro in general is being discussed as well, so if you want to have your say, you can join the discussion by signing up at the Ubuntu Studio Users list.

The bass drum, which many know as the kick drum, plays an important role in music. It stirs emotion in the audience, making them want to dance as it thumps through their bodies. This is of course, what it’s supposed to do but if the kick drum is mixed incorrectly, it will leave the audience feeling pretty bored - no matter how good a song might actually be. Don’t worry though, because that’s why I wrote this post. To help you learn from my bad experiences…

Okay, so it’s called the bass drum… So, if you’re anything like the younger version of myself, you’ll be thinking that the more bass the better, right? Well, I’m afraid not, but I won’t just tell you, I’ll show you. Below is a picture of the EQ settings for a kick drum. It is evident from the picture that only the bass frequencies (100 - 200 Hz) have been boosted.

EQ for a kick drum, where only the bass has been boosted. Click on Image for full size.

One would think this would make your kick drum more lively. Don’t get me wrong, it does give it some thump, however, when added to the rest of the instruments, the bass gets lost and the beat with it. Below is a link to an .MP3 extract from a song where the above EQ has been used.

kick-with-only-bass.mp3 (588 KB)

Okay, you might be thinking that it didn’t sound too bad, but if you play around with some of the higher frequencies (3000 - 5000 Hz) you will find what many call “the Click”. The Click is the sound of the kick pedal’s beater hitting the drum head, and it gives the bass note more definition. The picture below shows the EQ setting used to get the Click.

EQ for a kick drum where both the low (100-200 Hz) and high (3 - 5 kHz) frequencies have been boosted. Click on image for full size.

When this EQ is used, the bass drum cuts through the mix in a good way and if you look carefully, you might even see your audience clapping their hands. You can hear what this EQ sounds like by listening to the .MP3 extract below:

kick-with-3kHz-boost.mp3 (588 KB)

If you have trouble believing my theory, you can go listen to almost any well-produced song out there and you’ll hear the famous Click cutting through the mix. Sometimes it’s really quite emphasized but hardly ever in a bad way. In recent productions they even overlay each bass note with a MIDI kick drum sound to improve the fullness and to get more Click… so get creative and go crazy!