Hammond Cheese and an inquiry

[Blooby]

While I have been doing a gig or two each month with John, I haven't recorded in a dog's age and haven't worked on anything of my own for a while.  I needed to give myself a kick in the rear, so in a bout of G.A.S. not seen since the Beanie Baby craze of the late 90's, I bought a dedicated computer and put together a full-blown D.A.W. Credit cards be damned!  

I am still firmly in the throes of making sure it is working correctly, so I'm setting small goals for myself. This "tune" of first passes had my first recorded electric guitar (I had to put that Zappa phaser on there after the fact) and bass through it, first midi instrument (my cheesy organ), first use of loops, and I messed with all sorts of plug-ins. I haven't found my way, but it's fun to fumble around in the dark. Too much bass, but I like the sound of the Squier fretless procured for $90.

My inquiry: You'll notice all the hum from the guitar.  When I solo the track, I don't hear it, but when I mute the track (and have everything else play), the hum goes away.  I noticed that the actually graphic of the file is pretty flat, so I assume I didn't record it hot enough. Any ideas?  

Peace.

Blooby

[Oldrottenhead]

braw indeed very zappaesque indeed.

[AndyR]

Some monstrous playing there!

Love it.

On the hum... er, can't quite tell. It just sounds like a guitar being played through a lot of gain to me. I'm wondering, is the hum there when you turn the phaser off? Could it be there's a bunch of "inaudible" stuff on the track that becomes somewhat more noticable when you stick the phaser on it?

Try sticking a hi-pass filter on it to take out the inaudible noise/rumble (about 50Hz or so) before it goes through the phaser?

The overall track is quite quiet as well - had to turn up my monitors to listen.

[Hook]

BADASSTASTIC!
Rock On!

[bruno]

Cool track. The hum, try putting a noise gate on the DAW, sounds like guitar/high gain/effects hum to me, may be an earth loop. Hum's are the bain of a recording engineers life.
B

[Flash Harry]

Kerpow!

Guitars is majik! What did you do for drums?

Did you have an outboard effect on your guitar?

[64Guitars]

Cool tune and some great guitar playing.

My inquiry: You'll notice all the hum from the guitar.  When I solo the track, I don't hear it, but when I mute the track (and have everything else play), the hum goes away.  I noticed that the actually graphic of the file is pretty flat, so I assume I didn't record it hot enough. Any ideas?

Very strange. It's hard to believe that you can't hear the hum when the guitar track is soloed. That would suggest that the hum was added after the guitar track was recorded. Perhaps during mastering? I suspect that there is some hum in the guitar track, though it may not be noticeable, and it was boosted during mastering.

I only noticed the hum in the more sparse parts of the guitar track (between notes). Did you use a lot of compression in mastering? If there was a small, unnoticeable amount of hum in the guitar track, a compressor could exaggerate it by boosting the signal level when it goes low in the input. That would boost the noise too, making it noticeable when it was not noticeable in the original track. But because the compressor only boosts the signal when it's low, you don't hear any hum when the guitar playing is louder and more dense (not much space between notes).

The overall level of the recording is quite low. That reduces the dynamic range which could make the hum more noticeable. If the recording level was higher, the desired signal would be that much louder than the unwanted hum, making the hum less noticeable. In other words, you'd get a better signal-to-noise ratio.

[T.C. Elliott]

I like that tone and playing on the guitar. Cool.

re: hum - Sounds like 60 cycle hum to me, you got anything with a ground problem? And I too only hear it when the lead stops covering it up. I don't think it goes away but is just masked. Have you tried inverting the phase to see if it is still there? Or umm... yeah, just what they said about compression or limiting. Did you try all the tracks solo to see if it was noticeable? ERm... strange.

[IanR]

There is a way to set up and use EQ to cut a specific frequency.  Once you have a sharp enough cut, you can adjust the EQ frequency until it it matches the frequency of the hum.  This will usually be outside of the natural frequency of the guitar.  Once you are there, cut the crap out of that frequency and hum will disappear.

I'm writing this at work and I can't remember the right terms to describe this process - its new to me too!  Someone else will know - or I'll try to remember to look it up tonight and post an edit to this.

Ian

[cuthbert]

I'm writing this at work and I can't remember the right terms to describe this process - its new to me too!

You dial in the frequency you want to attenuate on a parametric equalizer, give it a high Q value and then turn it way down. So for a ground/mains hum, that's 60/50 Hz depending on your AC system. That's 60 Hz for Blooby and those of us in North America.

Also known as a notch filter.

But the fact that it's inaudible when soloed makes me think it may be a phase issue, and T.C's suggestion might be the one to investigate, especially if there's more than one electric guitar track.