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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Recording Corner »

Permalink Recording Surf with a Joyo and some free software (incl. samples)

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Hello everybody,
Home recording has been one of the recurring topics on the site lately and also in the weekly video chats. While talking about various gear, we noticed that several of us own a Joyo American True Tone Pedal, which itself is a copy of the Tech21 Blonde, an analogue Fender style preamp / amp simulator pedal, that is very cheap but sounds pretty decent. (In Europe the pedals are distributed by Thomann under their Harley Benton brand.) However, there has been almost no talk about these pedals here on SG101 so far, which led me to the question: Could these pedals be a real alternative for recording at home?

So I set out an a little experiment today: Recording surf music with the Joyo and only free software. I ended up using Audacity as an audio editor and Hydrogen as a drum machine. Both are freeware, open source and work on Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

I compiled the various stages of this experiment into an audio file as a sort of walk-through, which I will add to the download section here on SG101 in the demo category.
EDIT: Here it is:
https://surfguitar101.com/downloads/details/864/

Besides the Joyo and the software I only used my cheap but sturdy Digitech Digiverb; here are the settings:
image

I used the middle pickup of my Fender Mexican Strat into the pedals and then directly into the soundcard input, and then tweaked the sound with the plug-ins in Audacity.

One of the helpful things I learned on the way, was how to add a grid in Audacity, so that the drum samples can be sequenced more easily. Here is a tutorial on Youtube.

For someone like me, who does not enjoy tinkering with submenues and comparing the benefits and shortcomings of different VSTs, which are supposed to model the same amp, this turned out to be a quite satisfying way of recording a few measures. I hope this is interesting or helpful for anyone; feel free to make suggestions!

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

Last edited: Jun 01, 2020 05:07:35

I'm looking forward to hearing the results of this test. Thanks for doing it!

Sorry, I forgot, that it can take some time before the upload is cleared, otherwise I would have waited with the thread.

For the time being, I also uploaded the demo to Dropbox, where you can listen to it or download it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b59uphjzz8ct5qy/Joyo-Surf-Experiment.mp3?dl=0

I also uploaded the Audacity-multi-track-file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kcio8tjpw5si9rg/Joyo-Demo.zip?dl=0

So if people want to try out different plug-ins in Audacity or remix the tracks, feel free to experiment. (But please: no techno remix.) The coolest thing would of course be, if someone records a bass (has to be done with a Joyo though Wink ) or finds a better way to process the audio in Audacity, than I have.

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

Sounds great - the Joyo really is superb for the money!
Here's the "FakeBass" part from your multi-track played an octave lower on a real bass:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X5t-NdFzGbquuoj8H2hlVQ0VWkmhJodl/view?usp=sharing

I left silence at the start so that it should align correctly if you drop it into your Audacity project. I extended it to the end of the drums in case you want to do another mix with a fade-out.

Signal chain:
Squier PJ bass (P pickup only, GHS Precision Flatwound strings, foam mute, plectrum, tone control @ approx. 30%)
-->
Joyo American Sound (all settings the same as in your picture, except Level which was increased to provide a stronger signal to my audio interface)
-->
Focusrite Scarlett 2i4

The Miramars (2017-2022) https://www.facebook.com/themiramars / https://soundcloud.com/themiramars

Wow! Thanks, I didn't expect that someone reacts with an audio contribution so soon! (And I realize only now, that the Audacity-file was a bit messy with some parts still too long and others too short. Sorry for that!)

I made a new mix, now with your bass track. It was interesting to see, how just adding the bass changed the whole mix and made some adjustments necessary.

First, I had to EQ the bass more precisely than the guitars to get a sound that fits into a rather traditional surf mix. For this I used the graphic EQ with the following settings:
image

After that I adjusted the mix to these levels:

Drums -7.5 dB
Rhythm Guitar +3.5 dB
Lead Guitar +3.5 dB
Bass -9 dB

After the mix-down I added reverb and limiter again as described in the original demo. The result can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zi41p0d6snbfr6/Joyo-Demo-Bass-Master.mp3?dl=0

For me, it would be interesting to hear, how other people mix these tracks. One thing I now notice just half a day after the initial recording, is that the bass drum is still a bit too loud. But I'm too lazy to open up Hydrogen again and change the levels there, then reimport the new drum track etc. Wink

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

I got a Joyo ACTone pedal (Vox emulation, basically a copy of the Tech21 Liverpool pedal) to play around with and check out the sound, but I've not tried using it to record. I've been using my Tech21 Trademark 30 amp to record with its direct out (it's basically the Sansamp circuitry) and have been happy with that.

Your experiment sounds really good to my ears, and shows how much you can accomplish with a really low cost rig. However, at 0:22 and 0:28, I noticed some distortion/fizz - I don't know if it's my headphones or maybe my computer, but you might have the mix clipping at those points.

This is really an interesting observation, especially since I don't really hear the moments you pointed out as distortion. Here is what I hear: The lead guitar player, either for dramatic effect or because of a lack of attention to his picking dynamic, played the two chords "too loud", resulting in more treble and a little more "character" from the amp. I actually thought of re-recording the lead, because the reason really was a lack of attention on my side, but then I decided to keep the take, since it is something that can happen in recording. And afterwards, especially in combination with the limiter, which kind of "crushes" the chords, I actually thought that this is something that happens a lot in some of the more lo-fi surf recordings.

Some of us talked some more about Hydrogen drum machine in the video chat in Sunday, and I offered to make the drum pattern available, so that people can experiment with the software. I decided to extend the pattern a bit to better showcase the possbilities of the software and made a four bar phrase with a drum roll at the end, which makes use of smaller subdivisions and the possibility to assign different intensities to individual drum hits. You can download the file here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/puz1dllwd8vtje3/surfbeat-demo.h2song?dl=0

After opening the file in Hydrogen for the first time you may have to assign the pre-installed drum kit to the pattern or there won't be any sounds played. Choose the GMkit from the sound library in lower right of the screen, left click and "load", as shown here:
image
(Sorry, my menues are in German and I don't know how to change hem to English.)

If you don't want to tinker and just have the loop with the fill, here is the exported WAV:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d4g4dqpwbw2z17l/surfbeat160-demo.wav?dl=0

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

Hi Simon, Thanks for sharing your audacity project and the Hydrogen drum pattern. I'm a novice with drum patterns and seeing an example of how it is done is really helpful. Thank you, also, for providing the tip on how to load the drum kit. It's like you were reading my mind.

You have started a really cool thread and you are providing some great information for getting started with digital recording on a budget. I'm a novice with all digital recording and it seems like there are a million things that need to be known just to get started, with very little of it being intuitive, especially if you have no background in recording whether digital or traditional. Having your Audacity project file and listening to your demo as you talk through your process is wonderful. I look forward to reading more from you and everyone else in this thread.

-Tim
MyYouTubeChannel
My Classic Instrumental Surf Music Timeline
SSS Agent #777

Thank you for starting this. I think this could grow into a very informative thread. Smile

Hey guys, thanks for the interest and the friendly words!

I just want to reflect on some aspects of this project and some of the points you brought up. I can only agree, that there is a learning curve to recording, that can be frustrating. Even though I pointed out, that recording and mixing the demo only took about an hour, this did not include the time to familiarize myself with the software. Actually I had used both Audacity and Hydrogen in previous attempts of home recording and remember, that so much time and energy went into learning how to deal with the software, that there was none left to actually record something afterwards.

Also, I made things easier for myself this time, since the plan was to only record a demo for the software and procedure, which is something entirely different than to demo a full song or even produce a self standing recording! Especially in the latter case, the drums would become an issue for me, since they would have to be worked out much more in detail to fit the different parts of a full song.

On the more technical side, there are some things that could have been done better, and I may try to fix these with a new mix at some point:
1. The guitars could be EQ'd more carefully with the graphic equalizer or even the filter curve EQ to get a better balance between fullness and punch.
2. The bass drum needs to be quieter or EQ'd separately. (Hydrogen can export the different parts of the drum kit to different files, so they could be treated seperately in Audacity.)
3. Even though the whole demo uses just a one measure drum beat, it would have made sense not to export a single measure loop but a sequence of multiple measures, as the "humanize" function of Hydrogen would render each measure a little differently.

Last of all, I chose Audacity for this project, because it is free, open source, works on multiple platforms and has a certain simplicity to it. The major drawback however is, that it is a "destructive" audio editor: Whenever you add an effect to a track and save your project file the result is permanent. To deal with it I keep notes on the parameters and procedures of mixing, and everytime I want to change something I re-open the original file and basically start from scratch. (Real DAWs like Reaper offer non-destructive editing, but have a steeper learning curve. Also, even though Reaper is free and works cross plattform, it is much harder to get it to work in Linux. And none of the VST-plug-ins work in Linux without extra software, which is one of the reasons why I want as much sound as possible to be generated with hardware/pedals.)

SilverFlash wrote:

I'm a novice with drum patterns and seeing an example of how it is done is really helpful.

I'm just getting back into drum patterns myself. What proved helpful to me in past attempts was to transcribe basic patterns from sheet music into the drum machine. This way you get to know different rhythms and also get a handy collection to choose from and to modify for different songs or their parts. I did this with a less intricate drum software a few years ago, and now started doing it in Hydrogen based on this:
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~sbirch/Theory/21341%20CMT/Drums/Drum%20Beats%20and%20Grooves.pdf

Here is the current file (I will probably do the latin rhythms next):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vw3t7pv2kubf7y0/Beat-Collection2020.h2song?dl=0

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

Or maybe you could copy a track before adding effects in Audacity and keep it muted. Then if you don't like the effects you've added, you don't have to scrap everything each time. I guess there's a history option, can't remember how it works. Audacity is a lot of fun

That's a good idea! The project files will be a bit larger, but nowadays that really isn't a problem anymore. Thanks for your input!

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

Very nice demo, simoncoil.
The playing is great, but all the elements sound a little thin to me, I think emphasizing a bit of low-mids individually via selective frequency compression (not E.Q. necessarily) could liven it up. The drums surely could benefit from slight tempo and emphasis variation.

As for REAPER -

It's a steeper learning curve than Audacity because it has a LOT more functions, but once you're settled with the interface, command shortcuts and your own workflow, it gets pretty smooth and intuitive. Of course, use what you're most comfortable with anyway.

simoncoil wrote:

Also, even though Reaper is free and works cross plattform, it is much harder to get it to work in Linux. And none of the VST-plug-ins work in Linux without extra software ...

It is not FREE, it's just NICE. After the demo period, REAPER politely asks you to buy a license for 5 seconds, which most software of this caliber won't even allow and just shut down.
And though the native plug-ins' graphic interface is not much to behold visually, the perform as good as the best of commercial VSTs, IMHO.
Hardware is easier, but you can't exactly recall unless taking a lot of notes...

Last edited: Jun 08, 2020 13:39:43

Thanks for the feedback and the ideas! I might try some of that, if I do another mix or record another track at home.

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!

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