Sound Great 1
Brandi Wendelberger
Emails have been sent back and forth couple times already. My potential employer's tone in his emails is somewhat business casual. I am grateful if you could provide me some advice for replying this email with professionalism.
If they have a problem with such a meaningless and insignificant thing such as saying "Sounds great" versus something more formal then I would rather not work there then to have to worry about meaningless nothings and sell my soul to a mindless, drone like company.
Even places like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Fords, GM, GE, etc. don't care about those things. It is part of what gives people personality and voice...never let a company silence that or change it, it is not worth it.
A view of professionalism is to consider other's time as valuable, if not more, than yours; provide information at the minimum investment of reader's time needed, and in the long term people will be grateful.
I don't think that you are are overthinking this. How you are perceived by a prospective employer comes across in every word you give them. Though this is true for emails and digital communication throughout your career, once you exist in an organization emails to your boss and coworkers can be more organic.
Your reply does everything that an email should do: you are acknowledging the information given and providing exactly what was requested of you, no more, no less. It would be rude to reply either: "Skype ID: XX", or a lengthy email outlining points that will be discussed on the call.
How can it be improved? Because these few words are representing you, you want the most bang for your buck. You are wanting to say "This information pleases me", without sounding like a cartoon villain.
Addressing emails to their attending recipients is very important, especially if that email has a chance of being forwarded or has multiple CC's. If I am sending an email to 3 people, I'll name all 3 of them: "John, Mark, Frank, ..."
Saying "sounds great" may give the impression that you are reserved in your enthusiasm. It doesn't just sound great, it is great. The call is going to happen, it's not conceptual. Try not to say words like sounds, feels, seems,etc. You want to be definitive.
Saying "great" on its own has risk of sounding sarcastic IMO, and exclamation points should never be used in emails. Replace "great" with something like delightful, excellent, marvelous, wonderful, fantastic, fabulous, splendid, etc.
Also, you know exactly when the call is. Replace the vague "talk to you soon" with the definitive "talk to you then". This affirms you understand there is a call and that is will be happening at X time.
Most guitar manufacturers that produce budget priced acoustic guitars typically save costs by installing a plastic saddle and nut instead of using bone. Bone costs more than plastic. It makes good business sense using plastic saddles and nuts on value priced guitars as it helps keep the street price lower for the consumer.
I recently purchased a new budget Yamaha FG830 for $340.00. This is the perfect guitar for vacations and for keeping around my office desk. I won't weep buckets of tears if it gets dented or scratched which is a plus. This model Yamaha guitar has a solid spruce top and laminated rosewood back and sides. When I first got it, I thought it sounded really good for the price. I tried different string brands in search for a boost of the low end. I was pretty much pleased with the purchase. Then I noticed when I would push it hard banging out full chords that it sounded a little muddy, meaning note separation was okay but not great.
With a little bit of research and for very little money, you can take you budget guitar to a higher musical level with a bone saddle replacement. And if you want to take it a step further, install bone string pins which will also help with tuning stability and sound transference. Look up Bob Colosi for bone pins, he's the best in the business!
As you move through your EQ, pay special attention to how each move you make is affecting the tone of the voice compared to how you remember the voice sounding when you were just talking with the communicator earlier.
I start with a 4-to-1 ratio, and a pretty fast release time. Like 40-50ms or maybe even less. A faster release will sound more transparent and less noticeable. Obviously, you can go overboard and make it too fast, so you need to know how to listen for that.
The idea is that when the communicator gets loud, the compressor will quickly jump in, turn down the volume, and then quickly let it go back to normal when he returns to speaking at a normal level again.
Tuning drums by ear can be a tedious and time-consuming task, especially for the inexperienced. Yet spending quality time with your drums will not only pay off short term in a great sounding kit, but you will also hone the skills to make tuning in future faster, more efficient, and more accurate. To get you started there are many videos on YouTube with expert explanations on the subject.
I have the Line 6 dream gig: Helix Floor into 2 PowerCab Pluses. My guitar is the James Tyler 89F Variax. The reason I got this system is to cover all of the variety of song styles in various cover bands I play in. My biggest issue is that I've spent so many hours in my home studio dialing in patches/presets through the PowerCabs only to find that they wimp out in a live setting on stage. They don't project like a tube amp and the tone, especially with distortion comes off very thin. Even when I EQ it in my studio where it sounds full, it doesn't translate well to the stage. What am I doing wrong? I would prefer to make my current set up work. I love how I can use midi to change speakers in the PowerCabs to accommodate my amp models in each preset. There are so many benefits using them, however, the most important one is simple, how it sounds on stage. And right now, that is the underwhelming result. I know Jason Sadites has some very informative videos on settings relating to the Helix and PowerCab. However, nothing has quite worked for me in solving this issue. Any advice is welcome. Thanks so much!
A big factor in creating tones in a home studio and then bringing them to the stage is simply volume/loudness. For best results you need to have the volume in your studio during tone creation at the same level as the stage volume. (Fletcher-Munson curve) Not sure how relevant this might be in your case.
Thanks for your reply. I understand what you're saying concerning the volume/loudness. I have a small 10 by 10 studio/office on the bottom floor, close to the garage of my house. it's actually pretty dead and records well in there. It doesn't take a lot of loudness to be loud. However, in a large room like the auditorium of my church, or a banquet room at the Hilton, the sound doesn't carry and project as well as a tube amp. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot I love about my PowerCabs. If I can get this one issue solved, I will be golden! Take care.
Exactly. Whereas on stage in a much larger room it does take much more loudness to be loud. And that is likely the problem. You need to find a place, other than your small studio, where you can create your tones at a loudness level closer to your live setting.
Yes, it is best to "set" your tone at playing volume, however if that is not possible, there are some posts on here that talk about adding an EQ to the end of your chain that supposedly simulates the Fletcher Munson effect at low volumes. Sort of like a loudness button on the stereo. The idea is you turn on the eq at low volumes and make then tweak other things to make that sound good, then turn off the eq at the end when you play live (louder). Lots of posts on this, look them up and they give you examples of settings for the eq block. Of course they are no where near exact, but by messing with them, you start to learn what is going on.
When I was starting out, I did use these eq tricks and they did help. Eventually, your ears will get used to how to set things in low volume that will translate to high volume, but the eq trick can help.
Some of the main things people say (and folks please correct me if I have them backwards:)) are don't use as much drive as you think for your dirty and leads. The low end and extreme high end will sound much louder than the mids when given more volume. So at low volumes your tones may be dull or not bassy enough, but that may be perfect at louder volumes.
The advice above about creating and verifying patches at volume is correct and is part of a broader point - doing patch design in the context in which they are intended to be used. That's simpler with a traditional guitar amp because they were designed mostly for one use - playing live and loud.
While volume is a key part of patch design, you may also be experiencing something I'm calling the "Digital Dilemma". The big advantage of digital amp models is they can get good driven, overdriven and distortion tones at any volume level. That's really hard to do with tube amps unless you're using pedals into a clean amp, or your amp has a master volume control and has good preamp distortion. When we think of glorious tube tone, we're usually referring to power amp overdrive, and that's going to be loud even with a 20 watt amp.
The Digital Dilemma is that this advantage of digital amp modelers is often what makes them not cut it in live situations. It's not just the volume and tone that doesn't scale up well, it's also the amount of compression or saturation. When an amp is clipping, it has no more volume left. Pushing it harder only adds more saturation, distortion or overtones. There can be a tendency to over-saturate digital amp models, because it's easy to do and sounds really good. But the resulting compression reduces dynamic range and tends to make it difficult for the tone to cut through a dense live mix.
Try turning your Power Cab levels up pretty high, running your amp model master and channel volume up (while avoiding any digital clipping on Helix output or PowerCab input) and use less gain/saturation/distortion. I try to use the minimum amount of distortion needed for the song. Then use your guitar volume between 7 and 10 to control saturation, and below 7 to control clean volume. You may find this sounds and behaves more like a traditional guitar amp, gives better dynamics, and cuts through the mix better.