Instruments & Gear

Joceyln Celaya performs as Radical Classical. She uses classical elements with open tunings, percussive sounds, and vocals for a unique, alternative sound.

"Gear Guy Chris," who writes about instruments and gear, was a roving reporter at the 2010 NARM convention.

In Part III of my NARM 2010 Convention wrap-up, I had the opportunity to talk gear and music with the nylon string powerhouse and vocalist Jocelyn Celaya aka Radical Classical. (Ed. Note: Read Part I and Part II of Gear Guy’s NARM coverage.) 

A musical journey that began when she picked up her father’s old classical guitar at age fourteen has taken her to clubs and concert halls across the country and internationally. Hailing from the border towns of San Diego, Calif., and Rosarito, Mexico, Radical Classical is blazing a trail of fretboard pyrotechnics that’s pushing the boundaries of the classical guitar to new and amazing places. [Ed. Note: Watch a short clip of Radical Classical performing.]
 
Gear Guy Chris: Thanks for taking the time to chat – tell us about Radical Classical.
 
Radical Classical: Radical Classical is the style that I play and sing. I play classical guitar and that covers the foundation of a classical technique, and I add a lot of tapping and percussion and flamenco elements, as well as the tunings I’ve created that gives it a multi-dimensional alternative sound.
 
GGC: Can you elaborate on your alternative tunings?
 
RC: Well, one thing that I like to do when creating tunings is to find certain chords that stick out to me, maybe like a C minor for instance, and just tune each string to the notes that are in that chord. For example, alternating C-G-C-G and throw an F in there or something like that, or just alternate the tunings. That’s where I come up with the sound.
 
GGC: Very unique indeed – definitely not you run of the mill dropped D (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  Let’s talk about your guitars.
 
RC: I promote Fender Classical Guitars. Not many people know that they have a wonderful line of classical guitars.  The model that I play is the Fender cutaway classical guitar, which is a very modern style. The neck is a lot thinner than most, so it’s a lot more comfortable if you play a steel string acoustic guitar or electric guitar and just switch over to a classical. There are a lot of guitarists who love the tone of a classical guitar, but they don’t necessarily want to play the much of classical technique, they are not quite serious about that style.
 
With the cutaway neck, it makes it so much easier to reach up the fretboard. And the body of the guitar is thinner than normal, so all around, it’s a very comfortable, classical guitar with a real nice tone.
 
** GEAR GUY NOTE: The Fender CDN240SCE Cutaway Acoustic-Electric Classical Guitar is definitely worth a look if you’re interested in a comfortable nylon sting experience that’s easier on the fretting hand than a traditional classical guitar. Features include a mahogany neck with rosewood fingerboard, rosewood sides and back, a solid cedar top, and built-in electronics featuring the Fender On-Board Active Preamp with Piezo Pickup, Volume Control, 3-Band EQ, and Mid Sweep. A street price of around $350 makes the Fender CDN240SCE a compelling and affordable nylon 6 string option.
 
GGC: OK, let’s talk about your picking technique and your choice of plectrum.
 
RC: For the right had, I do use my fingernails to play, so it’s like using 5 picks. Every once in a while, I use a thumb pick to get a stronger baseline groove to what I play.
 
GGC: Who makes that thumb pick?
 
RC: Strum-N-Comfort. The model that I use is the SharkTooth. It’s a really fantastic pick to play. A lot of times thumb picks can be very stiff and rigid and you can’t quite get a nice strumming sound, but the Strum-N-Comfort’s name says it all — it’s very comfortable to play with, and you can still use it for heavy thumb picking as well as a nice strumming tone too.
 
GGC: And the left hand?
 
RC: I like to add in a lot of tapping and hammer-on techniques, and that way you get little bit more of a rhythm groove to the style, as well as because of the tunings that I play, I’m able to harmonize and you add a lot of counterpoint with keeping a traditional  classical technique on the left hand.
 
GGC: Do you have certain string preference?
 
RC: I use La Bella classical guitar strings. La Bella is my string of choice and I use their extra hard tension. Because of the alternate tunings that I use, there’re different tensions, and for me, by far, the extra hard tension works the best.
 
GGC: Makes sense for the radical classical approach! For live gigs when you plug in, what is your amp of choice?
 
RC: I’m kind of in between amps right now. I’ve been testing out some different Fender models. They have one called the California Blonde which is an acoustic bass amp that sounds so beautiful with a classical guitar. To plug a classical guitar into a bass amp sound really nice — that’s the model that I’m looking into at this point, so we will see.
 
GGC: Anything else you would like to mention about your gear preferences?
 
RC: Sure, I do use a pre-amp for concerts. It’s a direct box pre-amp by LR Baggs. That’s a pre-amp that I would highly recommend for any acoustic guitarist to use, especially if you perform in mainstream venues where maybe the venue is not quite fit for an acoustic guitarist, that really boasts the tone and sound and gets rid of all the feedback problems that you may have to deal with.
 
GGC: Thanks Jocelyn! Continued success and we’ll see you down the road.
 
Visit Radical Classical – for music, merch, tour dates, latest news, and some jaw dropping in concert videos. If you ever get a chance to catch her inspiring live show, do so, you’ll be amazed.

“Gear Guy Chris,” aka Chris Grova has been providing shelter, love, and a good home to wayward guitars, amps, effects pedals, and other assorted musical gizmos for over 30 years. Luckily, his wife and neighbors don’t seem to mind.

Stephen Wise is your guide to home recording.

Until now, I have not encouraged the use of Audacity® 1.3 Beta versions. They have had some instabilities and have been less than reliable.

Audacity® 1.3 Beta nonetheless has some compelling improvements that are hard to resist, such as side chaining and graphical interfaces for VST plug-ins. With 1.3, Audacity® is turning into a real studio. You will need 1.3  in order to try the technique in this post.

You can download Audacity® 1.3 Beta here. There are instructions on-site and you can refer to my earlier posts on installing 1.2. Do not uninstall 1.2. You can and should maintain both versions for now. Projects that you created in 1.2 can be opened in 1.3, but 1.3 projects cannot be opened in 1.2, so save your 1.2 projects and be careful not to overwrite them.

Fun with ducks
Has this happened to you? You record a narration, say for a YouTube video, and it sounds, well, dull. There are silences where you only hear the hum of equipment and some random sounds. Some of the more interesting narratives have background music, so you add music, but the music makes the speech hard to understand.

You turn down the music, but now it sounds like someone playing a radio in the background. What the pros do that you’re not doing is that they “duck” the background music. Whenever there is speech, the level of the music is lowered automatically so that both the speech and the music can be at the maximum level.

“Ducking” requires a side chain, something that is not available in Audacity® 1.2. In order to perform a duck, we will revisit our old friend the compressor; only this time, instead of the track compressing itself, we will apply a different track, the speech track, to the level detector. When speech is present, it will knock down the audio that is passing through the amplifier.

To get started, record and process your audio track to its final version and save it. It can be in stereo. Do the same with the narrative track. If you have a project where synchronization is important, you can work with audio and narrative at the same time.

Audacity® 1.3 is set up so that the control track must be placed immediately below the track to be controlled. Since you will be ducking the “background”, you will place it on top. Next, you will place the narrative track immediately below this track. Now, select the entire background track (or the portion that you want to duck). In the Effect menu, look for “Auto Duck…” and select it.

You will see the window in Figure 1. This window is showing you what will happen to the background when the narrative track reaches the Threshold level. The default settings work well, but a 12dB drop is a little extreme for my taste. Figure 2 shows the result of using the default settings on typical music and voice files. You will want to play around with the settings until you get just the effect that you want.

What can you do with ducks?

The background doesn’t have to be music. In fact, you can create some very realistic “on-site” narratives using local sounds. For example, if you’re a rail excursion fan, you might want to record some loud, close-up train engine sounds as a background. Then you can “shout” your narrative (recorded separately).

When combined, you will capture the excitement of the moment as your narrative will appear to be forced over the very loud ambient sounds, yet every word will be clear. Perhaps you’ve persuaded a veteran to recount some of his more harrowing combat experiences. Imagine how much more compelling the story will be with the sound of artillery and shouts “interrupting” the narrative. The story of how your parents met can be that much more romantic if you include appropriate backgrounds such as period dance music, restaurant sounds, etc.

If you want to create excitement as in a TV commercial, then you want loud! Back the breathless narrative with some pumping music. Drop the music level just enough to get the voice in and set the slopes of the Ducker very steep so that individual beats pop up in every little hole of the narrative. Conversely, if you’re doing a scholarly lecture, then you will want to drop the music a lot and very gently (long slopes).

No one says that the control track has to be a narrative. There are a lot of creative effects possible when both tracks are music. Many of the hard driving pop hit tunes are, in fact, mixed this way. Typically, you would want to use one or more rhythm tracks as the control track. Alternately, you can use the solo or melody track to knock down the accompaniment. You might also use a non-musical track, since you don’t have to include the audio from the track in the mix.

“Hollywood” used to use these techniques a lot, but lately, with the “reality” movement and the wireless microphone, dialog is once again becoming difficult to understand in a noisy background. If not for the technology of captioning, much dialog would again be lost. I’m not a big fan of wireless microphones in other than a live setting. It’s much easier to understand someone who’s standing next to you than it is to understand someone in a TV mix. I still prefer the artificial reality of the ducker.

Stephen Wise has been designing electronic musical instruments since 1975. Steve specializes in realistic recreations of traditional instruments. He became interested in the field after hearing Walter/Wendy Carlos’ “Switched On Bach” and upon being introduced to the Allen Digital Computer Organ, the world’s first all digital musical instrument. Steve is currently designing instruments for Schulmerich Bells, maker of handbells, electronic carillons, and the breakout MelodyWave® instrument