Guitar Tone Competition 3: Files and rules

[MarkG]

Guess it's too late now, but in Wavelab you can select a folder and he will convert every wav to mp3 and keep the name for it.

I also need to change their names to ensure anonymity (sp?) and I sorted by submission, so all the converted files need to be in the source folder. Looking for a nice converter to do this now, I forgot which one I used before and my other computer died on me so I can't check. Suggestions? Right click menu functionality would be cool

 

[::XeS::]

If you're on mac there is Switch

 

[MarkG]

If you're on mac there is Switch

Switch also works for windows, just downloaded it works great!

 

[::XeS::]

 

[Proggm]

I couldn't make it in time, too much work maybe next time

 

[MarkG]

I just about finished converting all the files to mp3. If you submitted a file, check your email. If the latest email is a pleasant thanks and good luck you are fine. If you received 2 emails however you did one of the following:

A. Sent me a waiting time link (I yelled at you)
B. Sent me a popup site link (I yelled at you, a lot)
C. Sent me an empty email (nice one man)
D. Sent me a corrupted link (2 of you)
E. Sent me a corrupted file (2 of you)
F. Sent me an invalid share request (whats up with this?)

Check your emails to make sure everything is dandy, please. If you only have the thank you, everything is fine. If you did one of the above, you might want to get back to me.

Mark

 

[muckypup1]

Well all I gots was a email saying good luck lol

I have no chance of winning, but it was pretty fun doing it

 

[Trevoire520]

Well all I gots was a email saying good luck lol

I have no chance of winning, but it was pretty fun doing it

Totally in the same boat. Not got a chance of winning but it was a good exercise tbh!

 

[MarkG]

After about 10 hours of downloading, converting, renaming, emailing and uploading I can finally get some sleep! I just PM'ed Anssi with the anonymous mp3s so he can check if everything is in order. Once I hear back from him I'll post the first round!

 

[Wolfeman]

Awesome! Can't wait to hear every ones submissions. I have a feeling it's going to be tough to choose.

 

[ahjteam]

downloadin the files... with 3g modem... 2 hours remaining...

 

[ahjteam]

Alright, I checked them 68 mp3's thru; What a great way to ruin an awesome song to yourself

- 2 clearly needs disqualification (louder background track than others)
- 1 track has pops and clicks on it + it was a bit louder than others (if you know this is your submission, contact MarkG immidiately!)
- 1 track had quieter background track than others (if this one gets disqualified, it's up to mark, because unlike boosting the background tracks level, lowering them doesn't make the track sound "instantly better" :Spin
- 4 mixes were missing the lead guitar parts (3 from the a pre-verse and 1 from the end). if these get disqualified, it's up to mark (and maybe jeff)
- 2 unsure cases, the low end seemed a lot louder than on others, but it might be from just the guitars
- 5 mixes that really jumped to your face when you flipped thru the mixes, because the guitars were really mid heavy and loud, and thus made the background track sound louder, but most likely they were not
- 1 mix sounded like it didn't have distortion on one of the rhythm tracks at the beginning(!)
- few mixes (didn't count, less than 10'ish?) had some serious phasing going on in the guitar tracks.

[personal opinion]
In the end I was really amazed by the overall good quality of the submission, but I _HATED_ how similiar all the guitar tracks sounded compared to the previous competitions... Unlike on the previous competition, I didn't hear a single clear "better than others" sounding track. I mean, yeah the 5150 sounds awesome but you could just flip to the next mix and wonder "wtf, did I change the track or not?"

For this I have to blame Jeff, Javi and Ermz (good job lads!), as the track was maybe "too good" sounding for this purpose. It can be a good or a bad thing, but I see it as the track now sounds like there are "big amount of average engineers" and less "my awesomeness as engineering shines thru", because honestly; It's almost impossible to ruin awesome sounding performance with bad tonez
[/personal opinion]

 

[Helius]

I didn't use a 5150 or any simulation of the 5150

 

[Lasse Lammert]

I can't even remember what I used for this one, lol..
but I lisened back to it two weeks after I reamped and can clearly say I won't have much of a chance...was trying something new and I guess it'll be way too dark for most people's tastes here .
I do think they were quite mid-heavy though.

good song though, enjoyed it

 

[Ermz]

It's almost impossible to ruin awesome sounding performance with bad tonez
[/personal opinion]

I think there's a lot to learn from that statement for some of the newer guys who are asking 'how do get awesome tones?' regularly. It rarely has anything to do with the guitar tone itself, and mostly with the performance and frame-work feeding and surrounding it.

 

[Helius]

100% agree to Ermz. In my opinion guitar tone is also very subjective. Different people often like quite different tones. By the way I think you cannot differentiate between average engineers and awesome engineers just regarding their guitar tones. It takes quite more than that to be an awesome engineer.

 

[Harry Hughes]

Urghhh, I've got a feeling my submission could be one of those "too loud" ones.
In my DAW, there is no "stereo track" option, so I just doubled the backing track and panned them hard left and hard right (as it said in the rules to pan.
Or maybe I'm just an idiot and doing it like that was the correct way to go about it and that effectively turned it into a proper stereo track, I don't know.
If this was me, I can send screen shots confirming nothing was on the master bus and that the master bus was set to unity/0dB gain.

Also, I agree with Lasse, I really dug the tune, very well written and great vocals.

 

[MarkG]

I'll check over Anssi's suggestians as soon as possible, most likely sometime tonight. I agree that a lot of them sound extremely similar, I wondered sometimes if I converted them properly but I checked and there was no mistake there!

At that time I will also go over the replies people have sent me regarding the emails I have sent.

 

[Mago]

I think there's a lot to learn from that statement for some of the newer guys who are asking 'how do get awesome tones?' regularly. It rarely has anything to do with the guitar tone itself, and mostly with the performance and frame-work feeding and surrounding it.

A great tone for a mix is anyway a lot different from a good tone playing alone. some great guitar sounds don't sound too good if you solo them.
But anyway it's 100% right that even with the sound of [INSERT POPULAR PRODUCTION HERE] it will sound like ass with a sloppy performance...tightness is really important for most mixes in metal.

edit: oh and sorry anssi but the 6505+ is the only amp I have lol

 

[rlcramer]

I totally agree with everyone that it makes things much easier to mix if the performance and original takes are top notch. For this competition, the backing track sounded SOOOO good, it didn't take much to get the guitar tone really thumping.

I was actually thinking that the next competition should be a drum tone competition. I think that would really separate the men from the boys, and give the noobs like myself some real practice with drum mixing, which in my mind is one of the hardest parts of creating a great track in these genres.

And oh yeah - I was guilty of throwing a mic in front of my 6505 too! Guaranteed I won't win, but for this tune, I think it really worked well...

Thanks again to everyone involved in this comp. I'm sure it's a ton of work to make it happen, but for guys like me, it really helps us learn and hone our craft.

Bobby