Jody Whitesides

Category: News

Tone Test: Blue Steel Strings Breathe New Life Into My Acoustic Performances

Today I’m finally getting around to changing the strings on my Taylor 615ce with a set of Dean Markley Blue Steel acoustics. After several live performances and a couple of recordings, including a cover of “Not A Bad Thing” by Justin Timberlake, it’s time I sit down and get my first impression of a new line of strings.

Sit with me as I take off some old flat strings that got played to death. Then watch me do things I don’t recommend doing with your strings.

Get tuned up. Stretched out. Ready to play.

Finally top it off with what my initial reaction is to hearing how Dean Markley Blue Steel acoustic strings make me feel. Rather what I think they sound like on my favorite acoustic guitar.

First Impression Dean Markley Blue Steel Acoustics

Transcript:

Sometimes your strings are flat and you need to change ’em.

First things first. Sexy, minimalistic packaging going on. Some kind of sticky thing. Inside we have a package. Sealed strings. Let’s open ’em up. Let’s find out what they’re like.

They come in two winds. They look like they’re kind of color coded. Better read the packaging. High E, is black. The B string is blue. G string is black. D string blue. A string black and low E string, blue. Alternating color scheme. I’m using medium acoustics. Thirteen through fifty-six, my favorite kind. De-tune strings. Get ’em off. Here we go.

Low E string if I remember correctly that is going to be black. The B string. Agh. I can tell you right now that they don’t taste very good. String G. Cryogenically activated strings have a very very odd taste. Don’t eat your strings.

Fly and be free.

Black for the A. The lower strings, they don’t taste any better than the upper strings. Ah, what a symphony of sound that is.

Stretch ’em out just a little bit. Blue steel’s generally don’t require a whole lot of stretching on the electric side. So hopefully they won’t require a whole lot of stretching on the acoustic side.

Handy dandy PolyTune by T.C. Electronics. Awesome app for getting your guitar in tune.

Ok. We’ve got it tuned up. Let’s clip the strings off. Once you’ve clipped the strings it’s a good idea to tune once again. Just incase there’s any slippage.

That’s interesting… No slippage whatsoever, it’s still in tune.

As far as sound goes.

They have a good solid tone to them. Not overly bright but nice and solid at least with the fingertips.

They have a real nice solid tone to them. I really dig it. Don’t sound overly buzzy. They sound nice and big and full. That’s actually a really good thing. I like that.

Dean Markley I think you’ve hit an A+ out of the park home run with these strings.

2014-04-22
Why Every Musician Should Explore New Rap Artists Right Now

What could be more out of wack than three white men discussing rap music? That’s right. Jesse Stern starts us off with an off the cuff remark about rap music and George Leger III takes over discussing the state of modern rap in Southern California. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of rap I like for it’s originality, it’s beat, it’s wild-blue-yonder approach. Yet listening to George talk about the artists he’s hearing about from the youth group he works with, is definitely an eye opening and mind expanding situation for myself and Mr. Jesse Stern.

Find out my expression and how I react to a group that I’ve never heard of. Actually all the groups that George mentions are groups I hadn’t heard of until he mentioned them. Jesse takes it all in stride. What ended up happening afterwards is that I’m now more aware of some of the new modern rap coming out of Southern California. Not necessarily a bad thing.

What say you? Who is rapping stuff so awesome that you can’t believe they’re not uber famous yet? Give me some names so I can flesh out my measly commercial rap collection.

White Men Discussing Rap

There’s a lot of really cool rap out.

Productionwise it’s so minimalistic.

Uh Hmmm.

That I… it’s like driving on ice.

Do you do a lot of rap?

I do where I work ’cause the kids, that’s what they want to do.

That’s what the kids are doing these days…

They’re not producing music. They don’t even know what music is. Well, that’s not true. I can’t really say that, ’cause… You know. They. It’s been really intriguing with them to try and turn them on to other kinds of music.

Uh Hmmm.

And other stuff because they’re so into this ridged little clique of music. ASAP Rocky, fuckin’ ah, SPM, South Park Mexicans. Yeah.

Is that a band or a style.

That’s a band.

Ok.

I was about to say if that’s a style, it’s way off my radar.

There’s a band down in Orange called FUNK.

They’re just called FUNK?

They’re just called FUNK. And like all the gangsta kids love ’em. They’re all like, I want FUNK man. I hear it. Like who the fuck is FUNK? FUNK is the they’re a band man.

Funk is that guy right there. He got the funk.

Well, they’re, you know. Eh, South Park Mexicans, SPM, there’s like four or five guys, that’s all they talk about when they talk. ASAP Rocky is one of them.

–

Give me some more rap to check out in the comments.

Enjoy your day!

– Jody

2014-04-08
One Trick You Didn't Know For Loud Mastering

One thing these days that lots of people have complained about is extremely loud mastering of music and how it tends to kill the song. I’m someone who has heard many a song released where the mastering and/or mix was so brick wall limited that it ends up sounding distorted, lacking dynamics, and it’s disappointing. It destroys the vibe of the recording, all in the name of attempting to stand out above all others when broadcast to the world. The end result of these loud mixes that are overly compressed and limited is one of making the song sound small and shitty. Small and shitty is not necessarily the result any self respecting musician would ever want for their releases. However, many record labels now force this concept of “make it LOUD” to the mixing engineers and the mastering guys.

Once in a while, a mistake can lead to a new discovery about how to approach doing something. Said mistake can end up starting a new way to look at a problem. Such is the case with an approach George Leger III stumbled upon while putting his mastering skills to the test for my song Touch. I have a version of Touch that has been mastered by the great John Rodd. But before I end up releasing the song, I’ll consider going with a second master based on George’s new technique. To put it simply, it’s mind shredding loud mastering, without sounding distorted or compressed.

Watch as I get George to discuss the process of super loud mastering he stumbled upon, to my buddy Jesse Stern, who is also the co-writer on “Till We Meet Again.”

Loud Mastering

Transcript:

So we can get the low down on all this trickery.

Well really all it is… is this is a 32 bit hard… uh, software mixer right.

Yeah.

But because it’s 32 bit, you can crank the crap out of the levels internally. So I can take this fader and ride it up to say +9. And it won’t clip.

Hmmm.

It chops the top off, but it does it in a way that it doesn’t sound dynamically compressed.

Like a soft clipping type thing?

So you can push it up and it sounds loud without sounding [distorted] compressed. Or distorted. Jody was just like: I don’t know what you did man, but the file you gave me, the mastering… It’s the loudest I’ve ever heard and it’s like doesn’t sound bad at all. It sounds great.

Well, yeah. He did a master of Touch.

Uh huh.

That he gave back to me and I was like it was just… what did I say? Mind shredding loud?

Yeah. It was super super loud. [it was so loud…] I didn’t even realize I had done this when I did it. Until I went back and looked and I went, oh wait a minute I didn’t go through this whole thing that I thought I was going through.

And I’m looking at the meters of my thing and my meters are still going up and down with all the dynamics. I’m like how the F^#$ is it so God damn loud!

Yeah. And not like: Phhhhfffftttt! Like crushed. Normally you do that and it gets crushed. What I discovered is that you can actually use this internal little mixer to jack the heck out of your levels, but it doesn’t distort.

Wow.

And it doesn’t sound compressed.

That’s cool.

It is really cool. Cause it’s like you can add 6 to 9 db of limiting without it sounding at all like that’s what you did. The nice thing that I like about the master that I did is… The attack of the kick and the snare are still there. Dynamically it’s like BAM BAM it just sounds so good. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, what the hell.

Okay, are we ready?

We’re ready. We’re ready. Anybody ready?

Have thoughts on loud mastering for your music – chime in in the comments below. I’m happy to discuss.

2014-03-25

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