I made a Ska-Punk Album using only IK Multimedia products

[veno_mk._1]

Hey y'all, I'm back!

My ska-punk band "PAINT BOMB" has released our first album called "Paint this Town" on November 4th of 2022. As per usual, I have mixed and mastered the album only this time I used quite a bit more products.

Here's what I used:

- Amplitube 5 (Metal and SE)
- T-Racks 5 MAX (including every single processor like the Joe Chiccarelli Vocal Strip, TASCAM Tape Collection, etc.)
- ARC 3
- Mixbox
- SampleTron 2
- SampleTank 4 (Alternate Keys, American Acoustic, Art Deco Piano, Hitmaker - Reggaeton, Hitmaker - Trap, The Grid)
- Miroslav Philharmonik 2 CE

For Drum Sample Enhancing I used:
- MODO DRUM 1.5
- Billy Cobham Drums
- Hugh Padgham Drums
- Neil Peart Drums
- Terry Bozzio Drums
- Beat Machines
- Modulum
(Then I basically pitch corrected the samples to the recorded drums and blended both sampled and real together!)

[Again, while not on the album, I used MODO Bass 2 to record the demos]












You can find our album on our Linktree to all major streaming services here. We also have CDs and Cassettes of our album but we're debating on selling them online (we usually sell them at our gigs).

This is probably our most experimental and insane album we've ever made. It took us about 3 months to make and was really really fun to make!

Thank you guys for the comments on my last post, you guys really inspired us to push forward with this band. We were actually able to get a gig opening for the Mad Caddies because of this album!

Thanks for listening!
--Steve

[sbn]

catchy tunes and sound, great positive vibes

[Timo2019]

Good Stuff! Inpressed!

[mklankin@hotmail.com]

Hey Steve,

Certainly glad you posted your latest! Excellent, upbeat tunes across the board and it seems you threw almost everything IK has to offer at it the project……IK should sponsor you guys! BTW - any thots on using the Joe Chiccarelli Vocal Strip (that’s one I haven’t trialed yet)??

Super to hear things are moving forward for the band too & hope you all have been able to breathe somewhat easy out there as of late!

All the best,
Michael

[CrazySchmidt]

Well jeez Steve, aren't you the sneaky rockin fukin bomb!!!

Holy fuk dude, there are some wickedly fukin cool sounds churning off this thread my man, very professionally produced and a real pleasure for the ear indeed.

I am very curious to know what your recording environment is like, are you in your garage, are you in a studio, are you using backing tracks or are playing everything yourself?

Anyway it goes, top sounds, top talent and a pleasure to be listening to your schit, lookin forward to more.

Cheers, CS.

[veno_mk._1]

Hey Steve,

Certainly glad you posted your latest! Excellent, upbeat tunes across the board and it seems you threw almost everything IK has to offer at it the project……IK should sponsor you guys! BTW - any thots on using the Joe Chiccarelli Vocal Strip (that’s one I haven’t trialed yet)??

Super to hear things are moving forward for the band too & hope you all have been able to breathe somewhat easy out there as of late!

All the best,
Michael

Hey Michael. That's a great question!

Personally I like the Joe Chiccarelli vocal strip quite a bit! It's a very solid plugin that makes mixing vocals incredibly easier. Plus, I like the tools the processor has. Like it's pretty much a Swiss army knife for vocals.

One thing I will say is that the drive (vocal saturation) can get a bit hairy if you add too much. It's pretty sensitive. A little bit of distortion is all you really need in that processor Otherwise, the noise can be heard a little. Our vocalist for Paint Bomb wants very forward vocals, Therefore I can't use too much drive. So I used a preset that sounds very forward. Then I tweaked it a bit.

Where I found this processor to shine the most was with saxes. With some drive, It gave my sax so much edge without sacrificing the quality. I'm into rock saxophone, plus the dry saxes we recorded sounded dull so this processor gave it new life. A reference I used for sax is Tim Cappello's "Blood on the Reed" (he was the saxophonist for Tina Turner back in the 80's). I'd say I got it pretty close and then some!

I'd say it pretty much worth your money overall! It'll take some practice to find the right vocal settings but once you got it you're pretty much golden.

Thanks for the question!

--Steve

[veno_mk._1]

Well jeez Steve, aren't you the sneaky rockin fukin bomb!!!

Holy fuk dude, there are some wickedly fukin cool sounds churning off this thread my man, very professionally produced and a real pleasure for the ear indeed.

I am very curious to know what your recording environment is like, are you in your garage, are you in a studio, are you using backing tracks or are playing everything yourself?

Anyway it goes, top sounds, top talent and a pleasure to be listening to your schit, lookin forward to more.

Cheers, CS.

Hey CS! Thanks for listening to it!

To answer your questions, we pretty much recorded this DIY style without the help of any other audio engineer. Basically this album and the EP that came before was self produced by us!

I didn't play everything myself tho. I'm in a band of four. I play sax, backup vocals, and the misc instruments, Alex plays guitar and lead vocals, Eric plays bass and backup vocals, Brass plays drums!

Last Year in February, Omicron (Covid-19) was still going around in Canada. So what we did is that we produced the EP over discord and google drive. We recorded our parts respectively in our own homes. It was pretty simple, it was only about 14 tracks per song. The result was pretty good.

The album was different. We got together and Produced everything within Alex's basement! The only thing we didn't record in that house was drums. It had to be tracked over at Brass's house. This was a bit more organic and less chaotic. With this album we made a lot of tracks. I think it was somewhere close to 80-120 tracks per song of guitars, saxes, vocals, etc.. We didn't have all the fancy recording pre amps and gear but we worked with what we had.

We were a bit burned out by the end of the 3rd month of recording the album just because of the amount of stuff we put into it. Alex almost lost his voice doing those crazy screams, You can hear his voice rasp a little in Jackal & Formeldahyde. My lips were so sore by the end of the sessions but I was able to pull through pretty well. Eric was pretty good but Brass was shaking in his hands after the fast songs we made. But the end result was phenomenal. A lot of people liked it more than the EP! Everyone that we knew wanted CD's or some T-shirts!

For our live shows, we actually don't use backing tracks! It basically just the 4 of us on stage hammering it out! We wanna give people an authentic live performance from us. Plus it'll be easier for the sound guy to actually mix us!

That's pretty much a summary of our process and what happened so far. I've been very grateful of being in this band as it gave us a lot of opportunities in the music industry. I hope it's up from here on out!

Thanks for the questions!

--Steve