Download 16 bit 44.1 khz AIFF (986kb)

Recently I have been in the process of recording a 12-song album with my band, and we’ve been doing a lot of tinkering in the studio. I’m really happy with the drum sounds we got on a particular song and thought I’d share a perfectly remix-able loop.

Here’s a two-bar drum pattern I played which I’m naming the Lucky Chopsticks Break for reference. Recorded in Studio A at BRC Audio Productions and processed at home.

• 18” x 14” Mahogany kick drum with coated single-ply coated heads on each side - AKG D112 placed on the batter side, very close to where the beater hit
• 14” x 5.5” Tama Brass Starclassic Snare Drum with Aquarian medium weight Modern Vintage heads - Sennheiser MD421 with a ton of 4k boosted on the Trident 90 EQ
• 14” Zildjan CIE Hi-hats - SE Electronics SE3 as an overhead

High-pass, buss compression, and the new Ableton Amp on the “blues” setting was all I did with this thing.

• Native tempo is 85.88 bpm
• 16 bit 44.1 khz
• 
  Lucky Chopsticks Break by Ross Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
  Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://rossisbrown.com.

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Everybody does a cover of this song at some point, I’ve heard. I did mine about a year ago and never did anything with it. I made it a rule to use no digital synthesizers in this recording. The bass is a Yamaha CP-30, the drums and percussion are acoustic, and the rest is guitars. The swelling pad sounds were achieved with electric guitars through a Multivox Multi Echo MX-312.

If I remember correctly, most of the instruments were tracked mono with a Cascade Fat Head. Electric guitars were a G&L ASAT Special Semi-Hollow (Tribute) and a Mirage Beram. I think I ran them through a Electro-Harmonix Stereo Pulsar into an early 90’s made in USA Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. Drums were recorded with two separate distant-miked full kit tracks (panned hard left and right) and one close-ish miked snare track, all hitting the Pro VLA II pretty hard. That’s about all I remember. Enjoy.

Update: I added a chain for one of the guitar sounds in this recording. Shows a little about how I got the sound.

Goodbye Horses by Ross Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://rossisbrown.com.

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A remix I did of “Salt” by The Sailor Sequence. Enjoy the headroom.

I was planning on sharing the Live set as well, but it’s pretty large. I’m holding out to see if Ableton’s Share feature can handle stuff like this.

Salt Remix by Ross Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://rossisbrown.com.

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Disregarding audio quality, playing quality, singing quality, lyrical quality, and overall quality, I put this song together tonight.

Most of my gear is in several different places, so I’ve convinced myself it’s alright to make crummy recordings using the MacBook built-in microphone. The bass is the only exception, recorded straight through an FP10 pre, which I borrowed. Mixed in Ableton Live 7 without care. Enjoy.

Smile by Ross Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://rossisbrown.com.

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This will probably get remixed, but here’s what I’ve go so far. The idea, mostly: electronic instruments on the left, real instruments on the right. It sort of happened.

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Started this a while ago. Sort of finished it the other day. It’s a weak ending, but I like the rest of it. Plus, I got to overuse my new Pro VLA II

Banana Gun by Ross brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://rossisbrown.com/contact/.

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Original song is here.

This is an Ableton Live Pack (.alp) for use with Ableton Live. I created the set with Live 7 and I’m not sure if it’s backwards compatible. The set file should be, but I do make heavy use of some of the new features of 7:

• Gate Sidechaining
• Sampler ¹
• Drum Rack (awesome!)
• Analog (analog subtractive synth)
• Compressor ²

There are a few instances of Operator, too. I’m sure you can find viable alternatives ³ to these.

I’m also using a couple (free) third-party plugins:

• LiveCut from Smartelectronix
• mucoder’s wonderful hypercyclic

I’m having fun with my new copy of Live 7. I think it was definitely worth the student discounted price I paid for it, and I will surely use it -for educational purposes only-.

John Locke Syndrome by Ross Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

¹ I think this was introduced in Live 6, but I believe it got some tweaks for the new version.

² This replaces Compressor I and Compressor II from earlier versions and is way better.

³ Might I point you to studiotoolz?

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This is a piece I’ve been working on for a while. I tried to experiment with things I don’t usually do, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

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UPDATE: Hear more audio of the Cascade Fat Head on Signal Chains.

Here’s a little test song I did mainly with the Cascade Fat Head.

Drums: MS Stereo – MXL 991 as Mid and Fat Head as side. In front of and about two feet above kit. About a foot right (low tom side) of snare to try and stereo image the toms a bit more. My high tom is right above the snare, and MS accurately depicts that. SM57 on snare and some cheap Nady kick mic in front of the kick. I was more concerned with the overhead sound. No EQ on Fat Head, scooped out some high mids on the MXL.

Electric Guitar (both): Fat Head about 6” from speaker, on-axis.

Acoustic Guitar: MS Stereo with Fat Head and MXL 991.

Bass: Fat Head about 4” from speaker, on-axis. Rounded off low frequencies at 100hz.

Tambourine: Fat Head. Duhhhh.

There are no effects on any tracks, save for some EQing I talked about above and light compression on the drum bus and master track.