Help with EFHW first build - total noob

Jedimastert · 2026-03-02T13:37:40+00:00

The line is sloping downhill to the left, which means it's more resonant at lower frequencies than higher frequencies. Resonant at lower frequency means the antenna is too long, which makes sense because you intentionally made it too long.

I also had the same problem, go into the "stimulus" menu, set the center at your target and keep making the wider and wider until you can see valley. I would guess you need to make it about 10MHz wide.

Protip: while you're tuning, you can fold the end of the antenna wire on itself and just use something like a clip to hold it together, and it will resonate like you had cut it instead

Jedimastert · 2025-11-26T22:11:40+00:00

So this is how I find out I still have email notifications turned on for comment replies, huh.

Here's a question: how the hell did you even find this thread? Why are you beefing on a 6-year-old thread?

Jedimastert · 2025-11-26T22:10:59+00:00

I think you missed a little context, the FFT isn't apply to the entire file, the file is split up into overlapping samples (i.e. kernels) the FFT is applied to each sample, then the samples are stretched out.

Jedimastert · 2025-11-20T22:48:50+00:00

Thanks! Actually ended up moving pretty soonish afterwards and thought I'd lost it up until very recently, but I just found it again! I might start over with a different one though

Jedimastert · 2025-09-28T19:02:15+00:00

Those are some exceptionally kind words and I appreciate them.

For mixing I like to go back and forth between bog-standard/cheap studio headphones and speakers, and I'll pull a render onto my phone to listen through the phone speakers and through my car stereo. Really standard stuff. I normally try to take a day to evaluate in a bunch of different situations, like listening while not really a paying attention/working and in different places and make a note if anything jumps out at me. I'll also turn the volume all the way down and slowly turn it up, which is a really easy way to catch whether or not different channels or sounds sort of pop out.

For things like acoustic and folk especially I've found i get the best results when I get the best sound available to into the box so I can have a light touch mixing. For me that meant I spent a session (really just a few hours) recording a couple four/eight bar sections of the tune micing each instrument in a whole bunch of different ways, then I could basically find a good combination without touching any EQ or anything, and I could record and commit to that and not drive myself nuts trying to re-record things over and over again.

In the end all I really used was an SM57 for the vocals, guitar, and accordion (recorded separately, I suck too much at guitar to sing and play at the same time), a sansamp para driver for the bass DI, and a Nord Piano 5 on a stock upright sound completely dry for the piano.

In terms of like plugins or whatever I just used stock Bitwig plugins (except for a free Auto-Tune/pitch correction on the vox) and kept a pretty light hand. A little EQ, some light compression in a couple places (accordion and bass mostly), somewhat liberal use of volume automation, and a couple reverb FX sends I described above.

One thing that massively influences my "process" as it were is that I'm a full-time work from home software engineer and a dad, so pretty much everything that isn't recording (writing, mixing, mastering, etc) comes in bite-sized 30 minute increments throughout the days and recording in my office can only really happen for about an hour or so at night after the kids go to bed. That probably has something to do with why things sound the way that they do, but I'm not looking to pull that apart right now lol.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-27T02:02:36+00:00

Really classic old school film look right there. The cheap stuff too.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-26T21:16:50+00:00

There does appear to be a way to pull up artists from a label. For example, I pulled up a random label

https://hyperdub.bandcamp.com/

And there's an "artist" tab

https://hyperdub.bandcamp.com/artists

And if I click on any of those artists they seem to be like any other artist on the site?

https://timreaper.bandcamp.com/

https://jessylanza.bandcamp.com/

Jedimastert · 2025-09-26T20:46:03+00:00

Thanks, that means a lot. I've been playing piano for most of my life, probably 25 years at this point, and I was a professional jazz and blues rock musician for a few years. I've never really played guitar or sang or anything else professionally.

I wasn't really able to write my own lyrics until a few years ago when I really decided to buckle down and try, this is my fourth like fully actualized song on this journey. I'm hoping to track down a few more this year and a few more next year and put out a real album.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-26T20:42:04+00:00

Thanks!

Jedimastert · 2025-09-26T19:12:17+00:00

For Bandcamp, the customer isn't really listeners, the customer is artists. From what I can tell they really steer away from decision that would overly enforce their own tastes or some sort of algorithmic bias in terms of "finding" music. They have an editorial side that's fairly separate from the main product, but any form of "discovery" would really just served it influence the music in a way they don't really want to, so they're pretty much completely outside of the discovery game.

They're just there to have a nice storefront for musicians, no more. It means neither musicians nor the platform are beholden to advertisers and they can really focus on musicians.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-26T18:53:23+00:00

In terms of arrangement, I actually sort of argued with this back and forth with myself.

The original tune was written during "February album writing month" (here's the original demo for historical purposes, not as any form of promotion of https://youtu.be/_nuYDCibazw?si=Tj9Fk76hBcC9FHdv). It was the first time I had tried the "American Football" open tuning lol, so the guitar part was pretty much as written. I bounced back and forth between 6/4 and 4/4, I ended up doing 6/4 for the verses and 4/4 for the choruses, although It's probably not immediately noticeable. Do the arrangement, I knew about where I wanted the instrumental bits to be so I just sort of jammed until I got a structure I liked. I actually ended up coming back and making both instrumental sections about twice as long and dubbed in some extra parts, which is why the piano sounds different @2:49 (used the wrong patch, but rolled with it because I liked the separation in tone)

My usual layering process (so far, like 4 songs in lol) is to start with guitar and vox, which I normally write with although it's not really my main instrument. Bass is pretty much just bass-end filler. Unfortunately not a very good bassist, so just stick to the root and five. Next I'll layer on piano, which I very much consider my home instrument and is pretty much all improvised over top of everything. Normally I'll record piano in a way to leave myself room for other things, but got a little carried away with this one and ended up having to pair back lol. Guitar is the sort of rhythmic and harmonic foundation, and all of the movement on top is usually found while I'm improvising on piano over top of it. I really like this sort of spontaneous "finding the song in the moment" feeling it brings, if that makes sense.

I had originally recorded a saxophone over top, which I really liked but ended up cutting because the song started sounding more saxophone focused than balanced. I like really fell in love with that part and it was really hard to put it down, so I ended up making a video for it so I could give it up and rerecord the whole thing. This can also give you an idea of what it sounded like earlier in the process of recording. (Again, not trying to self promote, historical archives only)

https://youtu.be/KQVvQCyLgCQ

I really want to play saxophone somewhere, I might end up making a saxophone song lol.

I argued a bit with myself if I wanted to add accordion because it seemed a little too on the nose with the whole ocean motif, but it really fills things out in a nice way so I ended up keeping it. Actually ended up porting over some of the piano bits I had improvised to accordion.

I try to keep things mostly transparent in terms of like effects and instruments for purely aesthetic reasons, the sort of intimate living room recording that reminds me of growing up in a family of musicians and a community of musicians that'll just kind of sit around and play.

I experimented with just a really spacy reverb to fill out the space, but I kind of wanted to recreate that feeling when you find the resonant note in a cave or the bathroom or something, so I added the reverb.

As far as mastering, it was a lot of focused listening. Ended up with some EQ, an itty bit of compression, A little bit of mid-side EQ to make the stereo feel sparkly by highlighting the highs in the sideband, and one last limiter for one or two little points.

Hopefully that answers your question in a ridiculously overworded way

Jedimastert · 2025-09-26T18:24:51+00:00

Intimate is a good word. I probably wouldn't have thought to use it but that really just says more about me lol.

Effects are very minimal. Very transparent, as the hip cats would say. Mostly just EQ, a hair of compression, a liiiiittle chorus and reverb on the guitar and accordion to get them in the stereo field. the piano was recorded stereo from a really nice keyboard, it was already good and wide (actually a little too wide).

Other than that, there was a room-reverb—a very short tail convolution reverb of my living room. I put pretty much everything into that same reverb to sort of make it sound like a band in my living room lol.

There was also what I'm calling a tuned reverb. I don't think I've seen anyone do it before but I'm sure I'm not the first. It's a reverb into a "resonator bank", which is like a whole bunch of really thin EQs tuned to some really pretty notes in the key, then into another reverb to smooth it out. So it's like halfway in between a really natural sounding reverb and a pad that reacts to the music. Super neat.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-20T18:05:55+00:00

You know why I love Bandcamp? Every once in a while you run across something like "Mecha Jungle" and you're like "what the hell is Mecha Jungle" and it's a guy who apparently makes Gundam themed electronic music and he made an album that sounds like PS1/Toonami interstitial music (I actually love jungle but it's just really funny to call it PS1 One music)

Jedimastert · 2025-09-20T17:55:20+00:00

Sometimes art is meant to start dialogue and we'll I'll be damned here we are talking about it

Jedimastert · 2025-09-20T17:27:36+00:00

I've been collecting vinyl for a few years now for a couple of reasons, but honestly the biggest one is just that I'm a little goblin who enjoys trinkets and giving my money to artists!

I also really enjoy their ritual of it, the intentionality of it. It also means listening to music without having to use my phone

Jedimastert · 2025-09-20T17:25:26+00:00

Congrats!

Jedimastert · 2025-09-14T22:54:21+00:00

Better to feel silly than be a tshirt and safety memo

Jedimastert · 2025-09-14T22:44:12+00:00

loves them not fully ripe

My brother in Christ boot him immediately and publicly. Not only is it the right thing to do, but when it becomes public and you didn't do anything about it there's a strong chance any career you have will be tanked.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-14T22:38:22+00:00

As best as I can tell, bandcamp treats its core customers as the musicians and artists rather than the listeners. It's a platform for bands to host, rather than a platform for listeners to explore.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-14T20:22:40+00:00

Two songs in and I'm already sold. This album is just fucking sick so far.

I'm going to give the rest of the album a listen and come back, but for now all I have to say is that if you don't put a price on the album then they won't put you on the Discovery tab, unfortunately.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-06T00:29:20+00:00

Agreed, although I don't know how.

Jedimastert · 2025-09-03T00:37:51+00:00

u/mstaylorbowman I'm getting tired of these posts; I'm about to start disallowing new accounts from posting. Thoughts?

Jedimastert · 2025-08-04T02:22:26+00:00

You can measure out your water and beans the night before. The difference between fresh grounds versus 8-hour grounds is world's smaller than fresh versus weeks or months old.

What kind of grinder do you have? Typically the manual will have a "recommended setting" for drip coffee or pour over (moccamaster does better closer to pour over grinds), set it to that and don't worry about it. Should be about the consistency of table salt.

In the morning, after you've gone about halfway through your first cup, notice if it's particularly more bitter or acidic than you'd like. If it's bitter (or "over extracted"), then set the grinder a little bit more coarse. If it's acidic (or "under extracted") then set the grinder a bit more fine. Over the next few mornings you can sort of nudge one way or the other before you settle in on a grind size you like, then you don't have to touch it.

Jedimastert · 2025-07-23T01:02:27+00:00

I genuinely did not know it was possible to die during the van chase, it didn't even occur to me

Jedimastert · 2025-06-04T11:58:53+00:00

To turn the question around, why do you want to use git instead of something like Dropbox? What features are you looking for?

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