Just a quick shootout of the bass guitar settings I setup on my PodXT Live.  
For the inquisitive Pod XT Live users, the bass amp is the CC Brit Bass (Collector Classics expansion pack required).   

1st sound is just the amp, no effects.  (Ok, light reverb).
2nd sound is the amp with a light chorus.
3rd sound is the amp with a very light slap back delay. (Not happy with that one).
4th sound adds the bass overdrive effect (and I think has the chorus still on).   

Between the 4 sounds I should have a decent soundscape to vary things up in Sunday morning worship (notice that there are no really hard core bass sounds, that's why).

Also, my JBass has a very annoying fizzy buzz when the tone pot is turned off of 0.  At church, we were notching that out on the board, but that doesn't get sent back through the Aviom system so I would still hear the buzz, hence I would always leave the tone pot at Zero... You lose a lot of flavor in the tone that way.  Using the Pod XT, I notched out the buzz, so the tone pot is set about 1/2 way.

Bass Shootout

Recorded in a quick afternoon.  A Quickie.  Not very dynamic, more of that garage band feel.  Mainly recorded it to get my brain back into recording, which I've been very very very very lazy about for the last few years.

Garage Days (A Quickiie)

A quick recording, "written", recorded, and mixed in an afternoon.  Mainly, I did this to get my brain back into recording mode.  I used to record a LOT, and after the RPM challenge (which proved I could record in a hurry and well), I took a break... a long break... 3 years... (oops).  I think I recorded 3 songs since Feb of 2013.  

This one has a garage band type feel to it.   Drums are Addictive Drums II.  Guitars are all through a Pod XT Live.  Recorded in Sonar.

Quickies

Garage Days (A Quickie)

Another in the "Quickie" series... this one recorded this afternoon.  Challenging myself to do more recording, and not spending forever on it.
Started with the basic theme of Pachelbel's Canon in D (but ported to E because... guitars).   

Apologies to Pachlbel

Another in my Quickies series...   This is loosely based on one I did several years back using BandInABox as the backing I'd called "Smooth Mocha Latte".   This piece is all live except the drums, which as usual are Addictive Drums 2 with some editing using the "Transform" feature.  (The entire drum track is actually composed of only two patterns, one for the main theme, and one for the bridge, but alterations from section to section using transform).  

The chord pattern should be more than a bit recognizable, it's been the backbone of a few hits over the years, most noticably "Stray Cat Strut" and an old Christian campfire song "Blind Man".  

Started with the drum and bass, then added a few guitar layer tracks.  

Times:  Programming/Drum Sequencing: 30 minutes
Bass:  2 takes, 10 minutes.
Guitars: About 30 minutes.
Mixing:  About 30 minutes.

Smoother Mocha Latte

Finding The Center

Flying With Fenders

Steamed Vintage Noodles

The Will of the Wanderer

My cover of <a href="https://soundcloud.com/letterseventeen">Letter Seventeen's</a> "Music Is Math".   A little embarassing, as my version is hitting SoundCloud before his is (He's polishing up his <a href="rpmchallenge.com">2013 RPM Challenge Album</a> one track at at time.  

You can hear his rough cut on his <a href="http://rpmchallenge.com/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7384&Itemid=296">RPM Challenge Profile Page</a> (scroll down to the bottom and you'll find his player).  

This is still a rough edit.  It still needs lots of proper mixing, but I thought I'd throw it out there for comments and such.

I went two different directions with this.  One is I turned it from the pop song he wrote it as into more of a hard rocking grinder... the other is I had a load of fun making fun of myself during the guitar solos.  I remember an album by an 80's artist Steve Taylor where he intentionally messed up the rhythm on a synth lead, and then you could hear him talking to the engineer overtop the track "oooh, polyrhythms... I hear Bowie's gonna do this on his next album", etc.  Being a big fan of 4th wall humor in general, I thought why not?  :)

Music Is Math (A Letter Seventeen Cover)

Cover of <"a href=https://soundcloud.com/jamieguttache/thesunwillshineagain">The Sun Will Shine Again</a> by <a href="https://soundcloud.com/jamieguttache">Alan Collins</a>, a friend of mine over at Home Studio Corner.  

This one's personal, as my Father in Law passed away yesterday, which is one of those things that can bring on emotions of sadness and futility.  Alan posted this song just a short time ago, and I happened to have it on my mp3 player in the rotation.  I get the phone call with the bad news, go back to my desk and the very next song on the player was this one.

Very simple arrangement here, two acoustics, a tambourine and an egg shaker.  I'd actually planned on producing this much more, but realized mid way through that for me, this was how this song had to go.

The Sun Will Shine Again

Took a little more time to mix <a href="https://soundcloud.com/brian-k-trotter/the-sun-will-shine-again">The Sun Will Shine Again"</a>, the cover I did of Alan Collin's original which can be found <a href="https://soundcloud.com/jamieguttache/thesunwillshineagain">here</a>.  

Fooled around with some new vst plugins including a channel strip I found over at <a href="http://terrywest.nl/index-7.html">Terry West Productions.</a>  I was blown away by the quality of the channel strips and compressors.  

Sun Will Shine Again Mix 2

My entry for the <a href="http://www.sweetwater.com/emails/contest/puremix/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=puremix-contest">GearFest Puremix Contest.</a>  This contest is to take a live recording they made last year at Gearfest, and mix it.  There's some great prizes available.  

Technical details:
Ok, this was mixed in Sonar X1 Studio using my shiny new Scarlett 8i6 as the interface. 

I started out getting the drums the way I wanted them.  There's a Kick, Snare, and an Overhead track.  It felt to me, right off the bat, like the kick and snare needed a bit more oomph.  I duplicated the kick, and compressed the two kick tracks a bit differently from one another. One with a fairly tight attack, but still letting that pop through, the other I compressed much more heavily to give the kick some more beef.  
The snare, I pulled back some of the mids, give a little boost around 300, and another boost around 5k, and then just some light compression.  I set that snare a bit to the left, which helped it to stand out a little better in the mix as well.  
For the bass, I blended the amp and DI sounds, with much more emphasis on the DI, then ran that through a light bass amp sim to give it a bit more body.  
I put quite the High Pass filter on the guitars, around 250hz.   The bass was already doing a great job of covering that range of sound.  From there it was some very light compression, probably the least compression I've used on an electric guitar... 2:1 ratio, a huge knee (15, I think).  I tend to compress guitars until it oozes sap from the headstock... a habit I need to change.
The vocals I hit last.  Probably the only unusual thing I did there was I found it sounded a bit fuller when I boosted the low mids.  A little more light compression, and things sounded great.

Then I got creative... Anybody who knows my mixing, knows I like a lot of reverb.  Every channel took a nice sweet bath in Epicverb, one of the best reverbs out there in my opinion (and it's FREE!).   For everything but the vocals, it was just a Post send to the reverb bus...  But for the vocals, I took a slight detour...
I used  a trick I found at the Recording REvolution.  In his 5 minutes to a better mix series, he highlights a trick where you send the vocals to a bus... then use a delay with the mix at 100% wet on the bus.  In this case, I used a stereo delay that comes with Sonar to delay one channel a quarter note, and the other a half note.
So it's this DELAYED sound I sent to the reverb.  The effect is that you get a nice delayed reverb but not the delayed dry signal.  It lends a nice haunting sound to her voice.  

Anyways, that's the long and the short of it.  I'm not under the slightest illusion that I'm going to win, but it was fun to mix this one.  The source files were excellent, especially considering the fact that it was a live recording.  There's a bit of mic bleed all around, but that's always the case with live. 

GearFestPureMixContest Oh Baby Bkt Mix

I've been playing guitar for almost 30 years.   I started when a Youth Pastor offered me free lessons, and from there learned from practical experience and some music theory classes in college.
I've always been in the worship team of whatever church I'm attending, and have been in my current worship band for the last 5 years.  I've also played in several cover bands back in the 90s, and was a member of a Christian rock band that might have had a shot had we been located in a more populated area.

I record using Cakewalk Sonar X1 Studio

Instruments:
Squier Stratocaster - using <a href="http://www.daddario.com/DADProductDetail.Page?ActiveID=3769&ProductID=22&productname=EXL110_Nickel_Wound_Regular_Light_Plus_10_5_48">D'addario Nickel Wound Regular Light Plus</a>
Dean Electric Guitar using same strings as above.
Rogue Accoustic Guitar using <a href="http://www.deanmarkley.com/products/by-subcategory/2-catalog/268-blue-steel-acoustic">Dean Markley Blue Steel .12</a>
Crescent Bass Guitar
Yamaha DD55 Drum Machine
Korg NanoKEY2

Hardware:
Line6 Pod XT Live
Line6 Toneport DI Silver
Dell Inspiron Laptop
HP Pavilion DV9810 Laptop
Compaq Presario Desktop

Want to collaborate?  I do!  Easiest way to make that happen is connecting through Indaba, my profile is <a href="//http://www.indabamusic.com/people/brianktrotter">http://www.indabamusic.com/people/brianktrotter</a>



Brian K. Trotter

Popular tracks