I bought Amplitube Fender with several Fender Amps and Cabinets as well as a 63 Reverb Stomp.

There are good surf rock tones to be had in the Logic native plugins. I've recorded some demos using only that and quite honestly been chasing an equally good tone with my real gear (which is entry level, to be sure) since then. You can do as Jake suggested and just use any of their Fender style amp setups and the spring reverb pedal. I've also tried out using one amp sim in front of another (with the cab/mic bypassed) as a makeshift outboard unit. Their surf preset isn't bad either, though a bit wet for my taste. You can always start with a preset and change things around to taste.

I have amplitube 3 & 4 and all their packs but rarely use them . I find I get better results with Scuffham X gear , and also Positive grids BIAS Pro than I do with Amplitube.., reason .., I just find them better products and more life like and seem to be more 3D

If I am too lazy to reamp my guitar DI sound to a real amp or my real reverb tank .., my go-to spring reverb (over IKM amplitube etc) is Springbox by PSP plugins.
A great experimental Reverb I like is Blackhole , by Evantide.

.., another V.I tip is to purchase I.R's (ie; impulse responses) from a 3rd party company that specializes in them .., they are soooooo much better than what is provided within the various amp sims. heres some links :
http://www.3sigmaaudio.com/shop/

http://www.rosendigitalaudio.com/impulse-responses/

http://www.ownhammer.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=169&products_id=379

Professionally recorded Drum Midi is hard to find and virtually non existent ..., and when you weed through other packs looking for them is also very limiting ..., I have been sending emails to 2 manufactures who sound slightly interested asking for a dedicated surf drums MIDI library (and a dedicated rockabilly swing MIDI drums library) .., these companies that seem a bit interested are Platinum samples , and groove Monkee
link;
https://www.platinumsamples.com
https://groovemonkee.com/ .., another is Toontrack

Please guys .., send an email to these companies and request they make a dedicated surf drums MIDI library .., the noisy wheel gets the oil (so to speak)

Last edited: Nov 20, 2016 22:44:52

Levis_Original_Music_101 wrote:

SlippyFingers wrote:

• Do I need different effects, e.g. a distortion? Or do surf guys usually play the same sound through all songs on an album?

thx!

hi SF .., remember .., most important is there are NO rules so don't dare cramp your creativity by trying to impose any rules or guidelines .., experiment and break boundaries .

Whatever sounds good IS GOOD !

ie; do what you want ,
..., Yes be influenced by others and borrow things from others sure , but be original and try to create something unique to you.

What Levis said...

Dive in and start recording. You will need to find yourself and only you can take that journey. Much of music creating is serendipity.

It's an accident for the most part.

Learn to identify those.

You will have to learn about the recording process as well as your abilities.

If anything you will see from playback where you are and what you did well and what you did not. We all go through that.

Start with a sound that pleases you on your guitar as that will give you the inspiration. No matter what plugins you have you will need to go through the catalog of trial and error.

Remember those plugin presets can be edited and tweaked later on.

Get the parts down is key.

Then when it comes time to mix that's another ball of wax but if you pay attention to what something sounds like and think in context of a final mix as you lay down the tracks, (you have to multi-task engineer, musician, producer at the SAME TIME) you will teach yourself what is needed, what it takes.

You are creating your music, and no one else's.

josheboy wrote:

I have Garage Band. There’s a current deal for Reason for 99$ if you have ever registered any of their Reason Essentials versions (which I have). That price is tempting

Don't. It's basically a fancy MIDI sequencer. If you wanna make electro, it's a nice toy, but there are better. I'm assuming the intent is to record and mix surf music or something in the realm. Reason's audio tools are inferior, and won't provide you with anything over Garage-Band beside redundant fx, heavy CPU usage, and non-industry standard protocols.

Get REAPER (fully functional 60-day evaluation, after that only a nag message. $60 for non-pro's.)
and it will cover all your audio needs from here to Mars (MIDI to the Moon, if needed for drum sequencing and stuff.)
It's light, powerful, fast (important for those with older systems), compatible with anything and everything, flexible, extremely customizable and support is second to none in the world of DAW's. The enormous, built in, top quality FX library should provide everything you need.
It's a software one is able to grow with, can be as simple or complicated as you want to handle.

For free you can try Audacity

Last edited: Mar 26, 2018 09:41:46

Hey SF

Use your ears for pick-up choice - as suggested above experiment and go with a sound that you like that fits the part.

The amp modelling plug-in that comes with Logic Pro X has some really good pre-sets - if fact if you have a look through them I think you will find one call Surf - its very clean traditional blackface fender sound, but if you want to give it more of a garage feel you could try using one of the fuzz pedals from the pedal board plug-in to dirty it up a bit or make it a bit more edgy.

Good luck and have fun.

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