Guitar Tone Competition IV: Drum processing needed! (URGENT)

[ahjteam]

for those who don't actively read the Guitar Tone Competition sign up thread:

I just got the guitar DI's from greg, now I'm waiting for the bass track from colonel_claypoo. If I don't get it by Monday, anyone else want to do the bass (I remember Trevoire was interested)? Has to be able to play and edit it in the same day. Standard E tuning, 175bpm, 8th notes at max, nothing hard.

BUT because of all these delays, Ermz said that he can't process the drums (or can he?), so I need someone with a good sense what pop punk drums should sound like to process already written midi, but possibly do some humanization if the person sees fit.

And preferably someone who is considered "good" and can preferably do it TONIGHT so we can get this show running by Monday.

here is a really quick demo of the track you'll learn to hate without a bass track (SSD + NI). If people are happy with these with maybe some minor tweaks, I can bounce them myself. I'd rather not tho, as I think they could be way better:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/gtc_demo.mp3

 

[Trevoire520]

Argh, I just loaned out my bass to a mate yesterday, if I'd known about this then I would have kept hold of it.

I'll see if I can get it back for doing this on monday, I've got nothing on so will be able to play and edit in a day. Just depends if I can get through to get the bass.

 

[ahjteam]

alright, good to know. I'll let you know asap when/if I get a word from colonel_claypoo. Also Shadow_Walker volunteered to check out the drums, so we might have progress! I need to finish writing the rules tomorrow too...


edit: as I was writing this, I just got the bass DI from him! Nice! I'll check it out soon.

 

[ahjteam]

The bass sounds great! Here is a demo with the non-final drums.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/gtc_demo2.mp3

 

[ahjteam]

And here is a demo with the final drums. The competition will start tomorrow. Now I gotta start finish writing the rules...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/gtc_demo4.mp3

 

[Eduardo Apolonia]

If I knew that earlier I could've done some Drums mixing with some good analog gear for a "CLAish" Drum type sound

 

[Soundlurker]

And here is a demo with the final drums. The competition will start tomorrow. Now I gotta start finish writing the rules...

link

I expected that you'd post the actual mix I sent you.

Anyway here it is:

MIX

 

[ahjteam]

I expected that you'd post the actual mix I sent you.

difference is that I'm not competing, you are, so I didn't want to spill the secrets

If I knew that earlier I could've done some Drums mixing with some good analog gear for a "CLAish" Drum type sound

Well, I did post about it like... 3 weeks ago

 

[Morgan C]

No offence intended to whoever mixed them, but I don't think the drums sound very good. There have been a lot of issues in the past with the backing tracks not being great, and so none of the mixes turned out great in the end (I think the bass in one of them was all over the place, in another the snare was quite soft and the DI's weren't great).
I'm happy to give mixing these drums a go (most people seem to dig my drum sounds), if you can delay the start of the competition a day or two - unless there's some urgent need to start it NOW I think people would be happier waiting a bit but getting a backing track that will let them produce a really nice mix.

Was there a decision made on bass processing, by the way?

 

[Trevoire520]

Bass processing is part of the competition this time around, so we've got a clean DI to work with.

 

[ahjteam]

unless there's some urgent need to start it NOW

_I_ want to get it running now. The competition was originally supposed to start by March 1, but now it's April 18. I already posted about the drums over 3 weeks ago, nobody volunteered, so you get what you get and you have to work with it.

 

[Morgan C]

_I_ want to get it running now. The competition was originally supposed to start by March 1, but now it's April 18. I already posted about the drums over 3 weeks ago, nobody volunteered, so you get what you get and you have to work with it.

Anssi I know you've worked hard at this and you want the competition to be the best it can be.. that's why you did all that research beforehand and now we've got bass processing in here too. It seems silly to waste all that by supplying some lacklustre drum tracks (I don't know who mixed them, apologies if its you), so that you can gain an extra day out of 2.5 months of competition time. I must have missed the post about the drums, I didn't see a thread about that.

Last competition there was I didn't even enter because I couldn't get a good sound to save my life. When I heard the other entries, I thought "shit, maybe I should have entered, mine was actually pretty decent in comparison" because NONE of the mixes were good. It's not a good incentive to enter, and not a huge deal of information came out of it because even the winning tone was kinda "eh" compared to what usually comes out of this forum. However the guitar and bass tones sound pretty killer this time round, so there's a lot of potential not only for people to practice, but to get some really nice information on what works and how to improve. It seems a real shame to waste all that potential by forcing everyone to mix around the current drum tracks, which are quite small and machiney and metal.. not at all what punk drums should be.

Give me til midnight tonight my time (10 hours from now, I'm at work atm) to whip up a drum backing for you.. if you like it, then we can use it and we've lost 10 hours out of 10 weeks of competition time, it's really not a huge difference. If you don't like them, then go ahead and use the ones you've got.

 

[Habsburgs]

The composition and drum programming are made by ahjteam, guitar DI's by lolzgreg, bass DI by colonel_claypoo and drum processing by Shadow_Walker.

 

[JeffTD]

No offence intended to whoever mixed them, but I don't think the drums sound very good.

This, and the programming is terrible IMO. Really unnatural phrasing/choices and the velocity programming is pretty poor.

The other issue is that the track is kind of manic and random, in a bad way, in that parts of it are sort of pop-punk ish, some are pretty metal, and most of it is pretty cheesy.

 

[ahjteam]

This, and the programming is terrible IMO. Really unnatural phrasing/choices and the velocity programming is pretty poor.

The other issue is that the track is kind of manic and random, in a bad way, in that parts of it are sort of pop-punk ish, some are pretty metal, and most of it is pretty cheesy.

Once again, lack of volunteers. I did ask for someone to post a pop-punk song since December, you said you could do one, but then you turned down the idea, when I posted the demo of the song, nobody said anything about it (positive or negative) and since nobody else suggested anything better, so... Here we are Nothing personal tho.

 

[JeffTD]

Yeah, and me turning down the idea was perfectly valid given the reasons I stated in the post you just linked to.

Not to mention I've already done a GTC - I think I'm exempt from having to contribute another track this time.

 

[ahjteam]

like I said, nothing personal. I just didn't get anything else.

 

[Soundlurker]

Time to clear some things up.

1. I was following the "sign-up" thread for days, waiting for someone to take care of the drums. No one did. And I knew why - because whoever does them, there will be someone who's not on the same wave and will consider his work poor.

2. When I decided to give Anssi a hand I told him that if people were not happy with them I am more than willing to change anything that is agreed upon as not sounding good (after all I had 1 day to process the midi drums). This can't happen when we go straight into the competition but I understand why he wouldn't want to open a thread for drums discussion and wait another week in arguments because all of us have different tastes.

3. Calling something lacklustre and not sounding good is a dickish move, whether you say "no offence" or not.
Not your type of drums? I'm fine with that, say that. If there's however a real issue regarding the levels, frequency balance or dynamics of the drums you could've pointed it out and I could change it.
(as you can hear they fit in a mix quite well: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1891957/GC4 - Demo Mix.mp3 )

4. Having the arrogance to come here after we've all been waiting for someone to process the drums and in essence claiming 'oh sry whoever did them sucks and his drums will always suck, I'll do them instead' is low, in my book.

 

[Morgan C]

Time to clear some things up.

1. I was following the "sign-up" thread for days, waiting for someone to take care of the drums. No one did. And I knew why - because whoever does them, there will be someone who's not on the same wave and will consider his work poor.

2. When I decided to give Anssi a hand I told him that if people were not happy with them I am more than willing to change anything that is agreed upon as not sounding good (after all I had 1 day to process the midi drums). This can't happen when we go straight into the competition but I understand why he wouldn't want to open a thread for drums discussion and wait another week in arguments because all of us have different tastes.

3. Calling something lacklustre and not sounding good is a dickish move, whether you say "no offence" or not.
Not your type of drums? I'm fine with that, say that. If there's however a real issue regarding the levels, frequency balance or dynamics of the drums you could've pointed it out and I could change it.
(as you can hear they fit in a mix quite well: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1891957/GC4 - Demo Mix.mp3 )

4. Having the arrogance to come here after we've all been waiting for someone to process the drums and in essence claiming 'oh sry whoever did them sucks and his drums will always suck, I'll do them instead' is low, in my book.

Chill dude.
1) Believe it or not, I would have gladly done the drums. However, the "sign up" thread was for signing up to the competiton. Once I had done that, I had no reason to check back over 7 pages.. I would have thought it something OTHER than signing up was to be done, a new thread would have been created.

2) Not going to go into that, its Anssi's choice and what's done is done.

3) I didn't know who mixed it, or if they were looking for criticism, but if you'd read my post thoroughly you would have noticed the following: "quite small and machiney and metal.. not at all what punk drums should be." If you're looking for more crits, the cymbals are too loud in comparison to the shells.

4) It's not arrogance. See #1, posting something in a huge thread that people are obviously only going to visit once and then complaining that noone saw the posts is not the way to do it. All I was saying is that all of the prior competitions have suffered right at the source, making the competitions not useless, but not nearly reaching their potential. Jeff, who's regarded as pretty masterful at programmed and real drums, pointed out the same issues that I did. And furthermore, I wasn't saying "I'm better than whoever mixed this, they're shit", I was saying "these drums don't fit, give me a chance to do it (because I didn't know about it beforehand) and if you like them better, use them so that the competition can be better".



I'm not going to argue anymore.
Despite all this, Anssi has done a great job organising this. Of course not everyone is going to agree with ANYONE's methods, but the fact that he's organised over a hundred people to enter the competition, got all the source material in, organised prizes is pretty amazing and should be congratulated.

 

[Soundlurker]

"quite small and machiney and metal.. not at all what punk drums should be." If you're looking for more crits, the cymbals are too loud in comparison to the shells.

I don't see how they are small and as for machiney and metal I'd say that describes the song, not the tones. The kick is not far from what you'd hear in say a Green Day album and the snare sounds way too natural and roomy to be considered metal.

You're right about one thing though - there's no use in arguing when there's already a thread announcing the guitar competition has begun, in huge font.