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 Where:
New Hampshire,
USA
Who:
Andrew Connell
When:
[..] "The beginning is perhaps with the supposed story
that before i could talk, I was humming Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water"
Why:
[..] "Music is everything"
What:
Rock
In
Short:
Influences:[..] The bands that have had the biggest impact
on me would be Alice In Chains. first album i ever bought was 'Dirt' and
to this day it's still one of my favorite albums. closely following would
be Spacehog, Radiohead, Stone Temple Pilots, Supergrass, Nirvana, Pearl
Jam and many others. the grunge/ alternative rock scene was what I most
related to. I'm all about good honest rock and roll with creative twists,
anything i'm gonna listen to depends on my mood like switching up the
Doobie Brothers to Project 86. more recently, the artists I've been finding
a great liking to have been The Who, Bjork, Incubus, Mogwai, Reel Big
Fish, The Stone Roses, Air, and others in other otherwise categories.
the tastes vary greatly, but for some reason most the music i make ends
up being acoustic folk rock-like. i hope to dabble with some more electronic
sounds without sounding too Depeche Mode, and hope to incorporate more
styles in the future.
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AC on the Mic
by Alessandro De Murtas
Featured
Songs:
The Storm 
#note:This is a song i had stuck in my head for months before
i was able to lay it out on the guitar. it took so long to figure
out i needed to tune the guitar differently. it's about having a baby.
Politic
#note: this one i wrote in the thought of a bad person, a really
really bad person. it's appropriately entitled Politic.
Coward (I'll See You in
the End)
#note: i wrote this song on 9-12-01. the video i was watching
on the news was pretty stomach turning. the lyrics were written in
the view of a victim and the such. i tried to create two different
feelings for the verses and the chorus, horror and hope.
Warped
#note: this is the first full-blown instrumental i've recorded.
it started out as a freaky acoustic riff, then i just kept adding
to it. it wasn't complete till i recorded the guitar solo throughout
the track. it has a nice heavier feel that i'm looking for.
[..] "Music is everything. The beginning
is perhaps with the supposed story that before i could talk, i was
humming Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water'. good taste as a lit'l
'tike. played the saxaphone throughout the school career, only enjoyed
playing in jazz band though. picked up my mother's guitar in the attempts
to mimic my brother's playing while i was in junior high. i'm a lefty.
so when i picked up the righty guitar, I held it upside-down. I've
been playing like this ever since. Started making up short little
riffs and decided to record them on the pc with my little crappy pc
microphone. then started adding a second guitar part and simply mixing
that into the first. using a simple .wav editor i recorded my first
song which included a Casio drum beat and a tropical-like guitar harmony.
It wasn't until a year later that i discovered multi-track recording
on the pc. Ever since i've been learning and trying to get better
at it. Each time I completed what i wanted, i wanted to do more. after
creating a little over 14 songs, many test recordings, and buying
more and more instruments and equipment, I'm just about ready to start
final recordings for my first album."
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Tips
and Tricks from AC on the Mic using n-Track Studio.
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Gear: (Hardware)
I play a Yamaha FG-402 acoustic guitar, generic bass
(Memphis), generic crappy crappy shitty electric guitar i
bought off my friend's little brother for $40 (Strat style
with modified pick-ups), Yamaha PSR-540 keyboard (for
drum sounds, piano, and all that other cool stuff i might
throw in the mix), Rimo Djembe, and other accessories.
for recording equipment, I started out with a SB 16-bit sound
card and one of those microphones you mount on your monitor.
through the years I've upgraded to a Midiman Omni-Studio 24-bit
sound card with an awesome break-out box (highly recommended),
Superlux CM-H8B condenser mic (quite a decent mic,
I was gonna get an AudioTechnica but this was cheaper). and
most recently I got myself a Tube Works Blue Tube overdrive
pedal (works great on any audio to boost warmth and add some
smooth distortion).
Gear: (Software)
For basic editing and chopping I use Goldwave while
for more powerful editing and effects i use Cool Edit.
My favorite program of all is n-Track Studio.For my drum samples
(bitchiest part of all) i use a little ditty called The
Drums Pro. Anyone who's heard of this know's how old and
weak this program is, but i'm yet to find something better.
[..] "For tips and tricks, it's hard to lay down
a few simple facts that I know of. I've been recording for
a little over 4 years now. I've just kinda fumbled my through
figuring out how to 'not make it sound like crap'. But for
starters, the acoustic guitar is extremely hard to get it
to sound right. I'm still working on it. I use a straight
up Yamaha acoustic guitar, and mic it with my Superlux side-address
compressor mic. The thing that so greatly throws off the quality
of an acoustic guitar track is the slap of the pick. The position
you strike the strings at as well as the position of the mic
all matter. I happen to place the mic about half a foot away
from where the neck meets the body and placed towards the
high strings. After the track is recorded, using Cool Edit,
I perform a "De-Esser" compression to soften the
smack of the pick, and add a slight spatial echo. Then in
n-Track, I purchased the Compression Plug-in (highly recommended),
and apply it to each track including the guitar. On top of
the compression I add a large room and stereo reverb effect.
This results in a decent sound of the guitar, and other lack
of quality is simply because I'm recording it in my bedroom.
For people who are doing home recording by themselves, drum
tracks are a huge problem. Unless you own a drum set and can
play it well, you're forced to use MIDI samples for your drum
sequences. So do I, and it's my biggest tackle. I use a very
old program called "The Drums Pro", but you can
use Cakewalk or something else that allows you to map midi
sequences. I map out the entire song's drum sequence in software,
using loops wherever possible. I then take the MIDI output
and send it to my Yamaha PSR 540 keyboard. The keyboard has
built in effects make those weak little MIDIs come to life.
I apply whatever effects I feel suite that drum track on the
keyboard, then send it back to n-Track for recording. I apply
a peak compression in Cool Edit, and also apply the compression
in n-Track as well. Slap on some reverb and boom, half-decent
drum tracks. I can't stress enough how important the keyboard
is in this picture, straight up MIDI drum tracks just don't
cut it"
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Work
in Progress