If you own a smart phone or tablet, chances are you already know it’s a great tool for capturing musical ideas anywhere, anytime. How cool is it to carry a recording studio in your purse or pocket?
Meanwhile, ingenious app developers are doing amazing things with iOS and Android software. There are powerful multichannel DAWs, from Apple’s GarageBand to such third-party options as Harmonicdog’s Multitrack DAW and Music Studio by Alexander Gross. There are fine amp simulators like IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube for iPad and Positive Grid’s BIAS. Positive Grid even offers Final Touch, a frickin’ mastering suite for iOS!
But just how good can phone and tablet recordings sound, given the devices’ hardware and software limitations? What are the best results you can expect from their humble built-in mics? How much of an upgrade should you expect when you connect third-party mics and audio interfaces? In other words, can a mobile device be more than a musical notebook? Can you create keeper tracks?
I wasn’t sure either, so I tried a few experiments while home for the holidays, far from my studio gear.
Phone Alone
I focused on miked acoustic recordings because you can get keeper electric guitar tracks using a mobile device, a decent interface, and a good iOS amp modeler, like the ones in GarageBand, AmpliTube, and BIAS. (As an example, check out the audio clips in PG’s April 2014 BIAS review.) At the very least, you can get a decent dry recording, something you can reprocess or ReAmp when you return to the Mothership.
First, I recorded a brief acoustic passage on my iPhone 6 using GarageBand. (Disclosure: I’ve worked as an Apple audio developer.) I was in my childhood bedroom—a bland-sounding space with thick carpeting and a soft, absorbent ceiling. I set the iPhone on a small folding table in front of my guitar, experimenting with different angles. Audio 1 is the best sound I got.
The result is boomy, dark, compressed, and noisy. You hear the acoustic space, though not in a particularly cool way. The microphone also exaggerates string, instrument, and fidgeting noise.
Later I popped the file into Logic Pro to see how much I could improve it. I applied the EQ shown in Image 1, removing some lows and low mids, adding treble sparkle, and applying a touch of stereo room ambience to combat the boxy feel. Those adjustments help—but only so much. Audio 2 is still a bit noisy, flat, and uninviting.
Tablet Time
Next, I repeated the experiment with an iPad 2. It’s interesting how different the mic sounds, yet the same weaknesses are apparent. There’s another problem, too, and I’m not talking about my sketchy intonation. (Sorry, I was so busy troubleshooting that I forgot to tune. I suck.) I recorded the clip while listening to a pair of GarageBand loops. Even with only those two stereo tracks playing, the processor load introduced the digital clicks in Audio 3 (Maybe I’d have had better luck with a newer, faster iPad.)
In Audio 4, I’ve applied fixes similar to the ones in Audio 2. They help—but only so much.
Mind you, Audio 2 and Audio 4 are quick fixer-uppers that don’t demonstrate the sort of invasive surgery you can perform with dedicated audio-repair software like iZotope’s RX 4, where you can eliminate unwanted room ambience, preamp noise, and digital clicks. These recordings can sound better—but getting there requires advanced tools and skills.
Tone Tip #1: When recording with phones and tablets, aim for the driest sound possible, because the built-in mics tend to capture room ambience in an unflattering way. Try working in a room with soft, absorptive surfaces. Spreading a blanket or comforter on the floor may help.
Image 2: A big, wide cut at 60 Hz and boosts at several higher frequencies minimized recording noise and added sparkle to a high-tuned 12-string.
I/O, I/O, It’s Off to Wank We Go
For Audio 5 I added a Line 6 Sonic Port VX, an inexpensive interface with a built-in stereo condenser microphone. Same guitar, same part, same room, same approximate mic position—but a very different result!
Big improvement, no? Wider dynamics. More presence. More warmth. Better balance. Basically, it just sounds more like the actual guitar. There are still issues: There’s more noise than you’d expect from a studio recording, and the mics’ relatively unfocused pickup pattern emphasizes every creak of this old guitar (and guitarist). That’s no slight against the Sonic Port VX, a cool all-in-one product that sells for far less than a pro quality mic, let alone a mic, preamp, cables, and stand. Generally speaking, this is the sort of sonic upgrade you can expect from an inexpensive hardware add-on. I added a touch of EQ and reverb for Audio 6, but with subtler settings than before.
Another example: While preparing this column, I was also working on a review of the Veillette Avant Gryphon. It’s a small-bodied, mandolin-like 12-string tuned almost an octave above standard. The results are similar: Audio 7 reveals a surprisingly decent sound, though it might or might not suffice for a “real” production. (It helps that it’s a great-sounding instrument.)
Again, I added EQ and a breath of reverb. This time, though, I could dial in a deeper and broader low-end cut, because this high-tuned instrument simply doesn’t transmit many low frequencies. Audio 8 is more sparkly and spacious, and the relatively heavy bass cut also nixes some undesirable ambient noise. Image 2 shows the EQ adjustments as made in Universal Audio’s Pultec EQ plug-in. There’s a broad cut at 60 Hz, and slight boosts at 200 Hz, 1.5 kHz and 8 kHz.
Would I use use this sound on a serious project? It depends on the context. How about for a PG product review? For better or worse, I did.
Tone Tip #2: When using an inexpensive audio interface, try not to turn the input gain too high, because cheapo preamps are notoriously noisy. It’s usually better to play louder and get closer to the mic, or just record more quietly than usual. Chances are you’ll encounter less noise boosting the level within your DAW than via a consumer-grade preamp.
The Plug-In Punch Line
So is it reasonable to hope that phone and tablet recordings might make their way onto your “serious” projects? That depends on your projects and your definition of serious. Let’s return to Audio 1, the raw phone recording that I pissed on briefly before moving on to other options.
Recordings like this may never sound “good,” but they can be useful and interesting. I spent all of 90 seconds auditioning this imperfect recording through Logic’s amp and pedal modeling plug-ins, and found myself getting sucked back in. With added distortion, delay, and filtering—plus bass and a hyperactive drum machine beat—it begins morphing into something I wouldn’t mind listening to for a few minutes. In fact, the result might be more compelling than any number of “properly recorded” sounds. It’s not pretty, but it’s starting to feel like music.
The lesson, I suppose, is that if you can’t make it sound good, at least make it sound interesting.
Okay, your turn: Have you had successful experiences capturing quality audio on mobile devices? Any tips and techniques to share? Cough ’em up in comments!
Billy Gibbons is an undisputable guitar force whose feel, tone, and all-around vibe make him the highest level of hero. But that’s not to say he hasn’t made some odd choices in his career, like when ZZ Top re-recorded parts of their classic albums for CD release. And fans will argue which era of the band’s career is best. Some of us love drum machines and synths and others don’t, but we all love Billy.
This episode is sponsored by Magnatone
Originally released in the 1980s, the Victory has long been a cult favorite among guitarists for its distinctive double cutaway design and excellent upper-fret access. These new models feature flexible electronics, enhanced body contours, improved weight and balance, and an Explorer headstock shape.
A Cult Classic Made Modern
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Effortless Playing
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Flexible Electronics
The two 80s Tribute humbucker pickups are wired to push/pull master volume and tone controls for coil splitting and inner/outer coil selection when the coils are split.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Gibson Victory Figured Top Electric Guitar - Iguana Burst
Released in 1983, the Roland SDE-3000 rackmount delay was a staple for pro players of the era and remains revered for its rich analog/digital hybrid sound and distinctive modulation. BOSS reimagined this retro classic in 2023 with the acclaimed SDE-3000D and SDE-3000EVH, two wide-format pedals with stereo sound, advanced features, and expanded connectivity. The SDE-3 brings the authentic SDE-3000 vibe to a streamlined BOSS compact, enhanced with innovative creative tools for every musical style. The SDE-3 delivers evocative delay sounds that drip with warmth and musicality. The efficient panel provides the primary controls of its vintage benchmark—including delay time, feedback, and independent rate and depth knobs for the modulation—plus additional knobs for expanded sonic potential.
A wide range of tones are available, from basic mono delays and ’80s-style mod/delay combos to moody textures for ambient, chill, and lo-fi music. Along with reproducing the SDE-3000's original mono sound, the SDE-3 includes a powerful Offset knob to create interesting tones with two simultaneous delays. With one simple control, the user can instantly add a second delay to the primary delay. This provides a wealth of mono and stereo colors not available with other delay pedals, including unique doubled sounds and timed dual delays with tap tempo control. The versatile SDE-3 provides output configurations to suit any stage or studio scenario.
Two stereo modes include discrete left/right delays and a panning option for ultra-wide sounds that move across the stereo field. Dry and effect-only signals can be sent to two amps for wet/dry setups, and the direct sound can be muted for studio mixing and parallel effect rigs. The SDE-3 offers numerous control options to enhance live and studio performances. Tap tempo mode is available with a press and hold of the pedal switch, while the TRS MIDI input can be used to sync the delay time with clock signals from DAWs, pedals, and drum machines. Optional external footswitches provide on-demand access to tap tempo and a hold function for on-the-fly looping. Alternately, an expression pedal can be used to control the Level, Feedback, and Time knobs for delay mix adjustment, wild pitch effects, and dramatic self-oscillation.
The new BOSS SDE-3 Dual Delay Pedal will be available for purchase at authorized U.S. BOSS retailers in October for $219.99. To learn more, visit www.boss.info.
English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is as recognizable by tone, lyrics, and his vibrantly hued clothing choices as the sound of Miles Davis’ horn.
Itchycoo Park
“I like my songs, but I don’t necessarily think I’m the best singer of them,” he effaces to me over Zoom, as it’s approaching midnight where he’s staying in London. “I just wanted to be a singer-songwriter because that’s what Bob Dylan did. And I like to create; I’m happiest when I’m producing something. But my records are blueprints, really. They just show you what the song could be, but they’re not necessarily the best performance of them. Whereas if you listen to … oh, I don’t know, the great records of ’67, they actually sound like the best performances you could get.”
He mentions that particular year not offhandedly, but because that’s the theme of the conversation: He’s just released an album, 1967: Vacations in the Past, which is a collection of covers of songs released in 1967, and one original song—the title track. Boasting his takes on Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play,” and Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park,” among eight other tracks, it serves as a sort of soundtrack or musical accompaniment to his new memoir, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.
Hitchcock, who was 14 years old and attending boarding school in England in 1967, describes how who he is today is encased in that period of his life, much like a mosquito in amber. But why share that with the world now?
In the mid ’70s, before he launched his solo career, Hitchcock was the leader of the psychedelic group the Soft Boys.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
“I’m 71; I’ve been alive quite a long time,” he shares. “If I want to leave a record of anything apart from all the songs I’ve written, now is a good time to do it. By writing about 1966 to ’67, I’m basically giving the context for Robyn Hitchcock, as Robyn Hitchcock then lived the rest of his life.”
Hopefully, I say, the publication of these works won’t ring as some sort of death knell for him.
“Well, it’s a relative death knell,” he replies. “But everyone’s on the conveyor belt. We all go over the edge. And none of our legacies are permanent. Even the plastic chairs and Coke bottles and stuff like that that we’re leaving behind.... In 10- or 20-thousand-years’ time, we’ll probably just be some weird, scummy layer on the great fruitcake of the Earth. But I suppose you do probably get to an age where you want to try and explain yourself, maybe to yourself. Maybe it’s me that needs to read the book, you know?”
“I’m basically giving the context for Robyn Hitchcock, as Robyn Hitchcock then lived the rest of his life.”
To counter his description of his songs above, I would say that Hitchcock’s performances on 1967: Vacations in the Past carve out their own deserved little planet in the vintage-rock Milky Way. I was excited in particular by some of his selections: the endorsement of foundational prog in the Procol Harum cover; the otherwise forgotten Traffic tune, “No Face, No Name and No Number,” off of Mr. Fantasy, the Mamas & the Papas’ nostalgic “San Francisco,” and of course, the aforementioned Floyd single. There’s also the lesser known “My White Bicycle” by Tomorrow and “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” by the Move, and the Hendrix B-side, “Burning of the Midnight Lamp.”
Through these recordings, Hitchcock pays homage to “that lovely time when people were inventing new strands of music, and they couldn’t define them,” he replies. “People didn’t really know what to call Pink Floyd. Was it jazz, or was it pop, or psychedelia, or freeform, or systems music?”
His renditions call to mind a cooking reduction, defined by Wikipedia as “the process of thickening and intensifying the flavor of a liquid mixture, such as a soup, sauce, wine, or juice, by simmering or boiling.” Hitchcock’s distinctive, classic folk-singer voice and steel-string-guided arrangements do just that to this iconic roster. There are some gentle twists and turns—Eastern-instrumental touches; subtly applied, ethereal delay and reverb, and the like—but nothing that should cloud the revived conduit to the listener’s memory of the originals.
And yet, here’s his review of his music, in general: “I hear [my songs] back and I think, ‘God, my voice is horrible! This is just … ugh! Why do I sing through my nose like that?’ And the answer is because Bob Dylan sang through his nose, you know. I was just singing through Bob Dylan’s nose, really.”
1967: Vacations in the Pastfeatures 11 covers of songs that were released in 1967, and one original song—the title track.
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“I wait for songs to come to me: They’re independent like cats, rather than like dogs who will faithfully trail you everywhere,” Hitchcock explains, sharing about his songwriting process. “All I can do is leave a plate of food out for the songs—in the form of my open mind—and hope they will appear in there, hungry for my neural pathways.”
Once he’s domesticated the wild idea, he says, “It’s important to remain as unselfconscious as possible in the [writing] process. If I start worrying about composing the next line, the embryonic song slips away from me. Often I’m left with a verse-and-a-half and an unresolved melody because my creation has lost its innocence and fled from my brain.
“[Then] there are times when creativity itself is simply not what’s called for: You just have to do some more living until the songs appear again. That’s as close as I can get to describing the process, which still, thankfully, remains mysterious to me after all this time.”
“In 10- or 20-thousand-years’ time, we’ll probably just be some weird, scummy layer on the great fruitcake of the Earth.”
In the prose of 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, Hitchcock expresses himself similarly to how he does so distinctively in his lyrics and speech. Amidst his tales of roughing his first experiences in the infamously ruthless environs of English boarding school, he shares an abundance of insight about his parents and upbringing, as well as a self-diagnosis of having Asperger’s syndrome—whose name is now gradually becoming adapted in modern lexicon to “low-support-needs” autism spectrum disorder. When I touch on the subject, he reaffirms the observation, and elaborates, “I think I probably am also OCD, whatever that means. I’ve always been obsessed with trying to get things in the right order.”
He relates an anecdote about his school days: “So, if I got out of lunch—‘Yippee! I’ve got three hours to dress like a hippie before they put me back in my school clothes. Oh damn, I’ve put the purple pants on, but actually, I should put the red ones on. No! I put the red ones on; it’s not good—I’ll put my jeans on.’
Robyn Hitchcock's Gear
Hitchcock in 1998, after embarking on the tour behind one of his earlier acoustic albums, Moss Elixir.
Guitars
- Two Fylde Olivia acoustics equipped with Sennheiser II lavalier mics (for touring)
- Larrivée acoustic
- Fender Telecaster
- Fender Stratocaster
Strings & Picks
- Elixir .011–.052 (acoustic)
- Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom .010–.054 (electric)
- Dunlop 1.0 mm
“I’d just get into a real state. And then the only thing that would do would be listening to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart. There was something about Trout Mask that was so liberating that I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t care what trousers I’m wearing. This is just, whoa! This music is it.’”
With him having chosen to cover “See Emily Play,” a Syd Barrett composition, the conversation soon turns to the topic of the late, troubled songwriter. I comment, “It’s hard to listen to Syd’s solo records.... It’s weird that people enabled that. You can hear him losing his mind.”
“You can, but at the same time, the fact they enabled it means that these things did come out,” Robyn counters. “And he obviously had nothing else to give after that. So, at least, David Gilmour and the old Floyd guys.... It meant they gave the world those songs, which, although the performances are quite … rickety, quite fragile, they’re incredibly beautiful songs. There’s nothing forced about Barrett. He can only be himself.”
“There was something about Trout Mask Replica that was so liberating that I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t care what trousers I’m wearing. This is just, whoa!’”
I briefly compare Barrett to singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, and we agree there are some similarities. And then with a segue, ask, “When did you first fall in love with the guitar? Was it when you came home from boarding school and found the guitar your parents gifted you on your bed?”
Robyn pauses thoughtfully.“Ah, I think I liked the idea of the guitar probably around that time,” he shares. “I always used to draw men with guns. I’m not really macho, but I had a very kind of post-World War II upbringing where men were always carrying guns. And I thought, ‘Well, if he’s a man, he’s got to carry a gun.’ Then, around the age of 13, I swapped the gun for the guitar. And then every man I drew was carrying a guitar instead.”
Elaborating on getting his first 6-string, he says, “I had lessons from a man who had three fingers bent back from an industrial accident. He was a nice old man with whiskers, and he showed me how to get the guitar in tune and what the basic notes were. And then I got hold of a Bob Dylan songbook, and—‘Oh my gosh, I can play “Mr. Tambourine Man!”’ It was really fast—about 10 minutes between not being able to play anything, and suddenly being able to play songs by my heroes.”
❦
Hitchcock does me the kindness, during our atypically deep conversation—at least, for a press interview—of sharing more acute perceptions of his parents, and their own neurodivergence. Ultimately, he feels that his mother didn’t necessarily like him, but loved the idea of him—and that later in life, he came to better understand his lonely, depressive father. “My mother was protective but in an oddly cold way. People are like that,” he shares. “We just contain so many things that don’t make sense with each other: colors that you would not mix as a painter; themes you would not intermingle as a writer; characters you would not create.... We defy any sense of balance or harmony.
“Although the performances are quite rickety, quite fragile, they’re incredibly beautiful songs. There’s nothing forced about Barrett. He can only be himself.”
“The idea of normality.... ‘Normal’ is tautological,” he continues. “Nothing is normal. A belief in normality is an aberration. It’s a form of insanity, I think.
“It’s just hard for us to accept ourselves because we’re brought up with the myth of normality, and the myth of what people are supposed to be like gender-wise, sex-wise, and psychologically what we’re supposed to want. And in a way, some of that’s beginning to melt, now. But that probably just causes more confusion. It’s no wonder people like me want to live in 1967.”
YouTube It
In this excerpt from the Jonathan Demme-directed concert film of Robyn Hitchcock, Storefront Hitchcock, the songwriter performs an absurdist “upbeat” song about a man who dies of cancer.