Nick Blair

When you open up Kristal and start a new project it has a window that comes up which is called 'Waver' if I remember. There are three or four icons in the top left of which from memory the furthest left one is a folder like thing. If you click on that and navigate to where your wav is stored it will then import it either in stereo or mono as you choose. You can then do what you like with it. once you have opened it you press the F3 if I remember and that opens the mixer window and you can then make it sound as horrible as you choose

Could do with some feddback on this today as we play this evening! Had a practice yesterday before playing a gig tonight and am getting used to operating the PA I bought. One thing I would like to improve if possible is the sound coming from the acoustic guitars. I realise that putting them through mics would be the best answer to get a decent 'guitar like' sound but that is not an option - I don't have enough (or suitable) mics and the two of us would probably not stand still enough to get a consistent sound! I have a Fishman pickup which I take on and off my acoustic (which I believe is supposed to give a good sound) which goes straight into the input on the amp designed for such, Alastair's has a pre-amp on his guitar. The levels that come out are fine. When we played live I must admit that I didn't think the guitar sound was bad, but listening to it last night on tape (I recorded it directly from the amp as all the instruments and voices are mixed through the amp) the guitar sound that 'amplified twangy acoustic piezo pick up' sound which it would be nice to chop down on if possible. Questions... 1 Is the sound on tape likely to be different or is it a 'true' representation? 2 Does the mix direct out of the amp to tape sound different than it does live - I think I read something somewhere that it does sound different? I particularly noticed that the bass was very up front whereas it didn't sound like that when we did it? 3 Are there some basic EQ settings that might make the guitar sound more like a guitar! If not such is life. I have a separate LOW MIDDLE HIGH on each channel. I realise every set up is different but any general hints would be handy Other ones... 4 We are playing outside - anything to bear in mind? 5 We played in a hall yesterday at what we consider a similar volume level to today. As we have no monitor speakers we pointed the speakers towards us so we could hear. There were no feedback problems. Do you think we will get away with putting the speakers to the side and back of us - it's either that or trying to sort out monitoring Something like: SPKR .................................................................... SPKR ..................................... US AND MICS ........................................ AUDIENCE Thanks in advance

Had a play with Kristal Audio Engine and some of the plugins you mentioned and they are an excellent addition to what I have. Thanks for that

Reckon so. Bugger to change to an open tuning though... Lots of similar stuff at Harp Guitars etc

There's a reasonable article here.

You're getting there. I tend to apply the effect nd listen - if you don't like it unapply it and do it differently. It's like learning to fall off a bike

You need to click and highlight the track first before you can apply effects. If you click on the grey bit to the left of the two thin windows (I presume you have imported it in stereo if not it can be set in Preferences) then the audio will highlight. Once it's highlighted you can then apply effects There are various effects you can download from the audacity site in the plug ins bit When it says that it 'automatically mixes' I think it purely means that it will automatically mix the tracks together but you still have control on mixing levels - effects etc and doing what you want

And take your existing one to the shop with you when you go to buy so that you can compare others to it. At least you know the good and bad bits about what you have - playing a new guitar with no point of comparison is really hard!

Thanks, Nigel - I'll whizz down to pc world later and get one. I'll probably have a new group of questions after that!

I have borrowed a Roland 250 from a friend to do a track or two. One of the things I would like to experiment with is to use it as something to generate some MIDI files. I know next to nothing about MIDI set ups. I have software on the machine that I can fiddle with MIDI stuff but I don't know what I need to get them chattig to each other. On the back of the machine are three 5 pin din plugs - the one I realise is the one I need is the MIDI out one. I was rather hoping that I could plug the lead into the computer and it would work but I realise now that that doesn't seem to be how it all works ... What do I need so that the software on the machine (I have an old copy of Cakewalk and an old piece of Evolution software which I think will be ok for what I want to do) will recognise the notes I play on the piano? As per usual I am looking for a simple low cost solution - free is even better!

Well there are 2888 live concerts. A different concert every day for seven + years!

I think you'll find he always sounds like that

Sort of relevant link - Live Music archive. In case you haven't come across it before, this is part of the Internet Archive which has been archiving web sites etc since 1996. Currently contains about 1 petabyte of information and is an online digital library with very large collections of audio, video, texts, web sites, and software. For example, it claims to host footage of more than 20,000 live concerts, and snapshots of the Internet dating back to 1996, accessible through the well-known Wayback Machine, which currently hosts over 40 billion web pages. If you are a Grateful Dead fan there is a VAST quantity of Live Concerts available. There is a fair selection of artists there.