How has your "Sound" changed over the years?

aytchster

aytchster

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Jun 30, 2010
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This could be from a mixing, production or even songwriting stand point. Since I'm no engineer, just a songwriter/producer I'll speak from the those sides of things.

I guess that the best way to put it is that I've gotten more in tune with tying in the elements of the song structure and the production elements together in a way that works better for the final product rather than to justify my eagerness to utilize a specific patch or whatnot into a song. I think my "sound" is definitely still in pursuit, I'm not sure I've reached or I will ever reach THE sound because then after that what's the point, right? haha.

On specifics, my guitar tones are getting more mids cranked in them...drums are uber compressed (I've had this disease since childhood)...bass tones are inspired by a skunk's ass but somehow work :lol:...and I've started to sing for just over a year now so that's added a whole new dimension to songwriting and production!

I guess that you engineers and producers out there would have lots of interesting answers to this!

Hadi
 
My writing has gotten more delirious, chromatic yet whole-toney. My mixes have gotten slightly fuller, in that I'm not as terrified of the low-mids as back when I used to make very trebly mixes with untamed low-mids.
 
Almost everything I wrote in the beginning was death metal and I used way too much gain on the guitars (but never scooped the mids :D )
My drumsound was sooo shitty, you won't believe it, I never used distortion on bass and went more for a hifi basssound.

Nowdays, writing wise, I tend to write more riff orientated stuff, even the songs are more technical and complex, loads of inspiration from
red seas fire, arma gathas, and sick of it all, just to name a few. And I write alot on my acoustic guitar, even hardcore stuff or without
an amp, used to write everything while blasting it through my 4x12.
My drumsound got better, but still sucks, my bassplaying got better and I started to play a bit groovier, started to use distortion for metal
often but reducing it again atm :D

And I started to sing, was the singer in a death metal band for a few years, but now I actually sing and not growl, writing a few songs atm
that need a male voice, too, normaly a good friend of mine sings my songs, she has a great voice.
 
I think I've started to have an ongoing riff/idea running through songs now, sometimes not noticing until everything is finished. Things become more developed and structured now, as I've been studying classical music for the past two years, so that has inspired me as well.
 
IN everything.... Production, Mixing, Guitar sound, Writing.... Less Metal and better.
 
I don't get to do as much as I want (ie ALL THE DAMN TIME), but I still look for things to work on or improve and it really pays off. You notice little things that have changed about the way you work or the quality of your work. Especially working with people that are inexperienced with all this shit, you realize just how much of your life you've wasted because you're obsessed with this bullshit. I shit you not- I browse craigslist and music catalogs and have some subconscious knowledge of what the original retail price of said item was. It's ridiculous. Like they run 'sales' and I'm like, "lol, that's only $10 off the price when that thing came out two years ago, they jacked the price up $25 last april, so this looks like a really good deal, but it's not bro.".

I'm getting better every time i write, track, mix, perform, etc. The only way to improve is to DO IT!
Writing and arranging is probably one of the hardest areas to improve for me since i don't do it as much as the other things. i have notebooks of song/lyric/suicide note/music ideas and I hope to THE GODS that nobody stumbles upon them, it would be super embarrassing.
 
2007/8 - [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCUG6T03ZwM&playnext=1&list=PLA13A18F096B0C70B[/ame]
2011 -

Difference being I didn't record the guitars on the latest one, but still.
 
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I can definitely say my sound has matured and improved a metric fuckton then say... 2 years ago. I'm starting to really hear each instrument properly, how each frequency and tone affects every other element in the mix. I'm also really starting to learn how to correctly use the compression techniques at my disposal.. To be fair, all of those improvements are because of all you fancy folk on here vicariously teaching me through your own works!

I still hate guitars though.... haha
 
greyskull said:
IN everything.... Production, Mixing, Guitar sound, Writing.... Less Metal and better.
Click to expand...

This - way more indie/radio/pop rock and less metal, kinda culminated in joining a pop punk band.

I've been going for more raw, natural tones and performances lately, too. Standard or Eb tuning, real drums with only minor editing, passive pickups, etc.
 
JeffTD said:
This - way more indie/radio/pop rock and less metal, kinda culminated in joining a pop punk band.

I've been going for more raw, natural tones and performances lately, too. Standard or Eb tuning, real drums with only minor editing, passive pickups, etc.
Click to expand...

The EP i'm working on currently.. *barre the Kick drum* all natural drums, 60% editing, avoiding most passages... PRS Custom 24 passive pups, Mesa Mark IV and Engl Invader for guitars...

It's so nice to work without samples/ sims etc as much as possible! :)
 
Melb_shredder said:
The EP i'm working on currently.. *barre the Kick drum* all natural drums, 60% editing, avoiding most passages... PRS Custom 24 passive pups, Mesa Mark IV and Engl Invader for guitars...

It's so nice to work without samples/ sims etc as much as possible! :)
Click to expand...

You mean... recording an actual band?? :lol:

Keen to hear it when it's done! Love natural shit these days, can't do the plasticky stuff anymore. Tired of pretending I'm listening to a drummer/bassist/singer/etc.
 
JeffTD said:
You mean... recording an actual band?? :lol:

Keen to hear it when it's done! Love natural shit these days, can't do the plasticky stuff anymore. Tired of pretending I'm listening to a drummer/bassist/singer/etc.
Click to expand...

LOL! Yes.. an ACTUAL band! I'm integrated into the project as it is all members of an old band of mine just doing an EP.. but yes, it's great to see a project through from start to finish knowing it's going exactly to spec! I'll definitely show you when it's done dude! It's Standard D tuned, I guess.. modern metal/ rock to a degree too. The vocalist is not very 'metal' haha!
 
Melb_shredder said:
LOL! Yes.. an ACTUAL band! I'm integrated into the project as it is all members of an old band of mine just doing an EP.. but yes, it's great to see a project through from start to finish knowing it's going exactly to spec! I'll definitely show you when it's done dude! It's Standard D tuned, I guess.. modern metal/ rock to a degree too. The vocalist is not very 'metal' haha!
Click to expand...

Sounds like I might actually like it in that case. :lol:
 
No verse/chorus/verse/chorus style songwriting. I learned that I really like songs that build to a climax without repeated sections.
 
amarshism said:
all natural hey, sounding great dude, great drummer
Click to expand...

Crap! I mentioned it in the thread bit not here! The snare is 40% sampled with itself... There's a lot of OH in the snare, my idiocy... I didn't position the mic well enough to avoid it :( so I sampled it enough to dull out some OH :)

The drummer is my brother from Orpheus, stupid kid is quite good :p
 
I really like raw trashy shit sounds, but learning HOW to make everything perfect to a grid and exact really helps when you go back to just letting it rip. You know the rules, now you can break them and have it still sound solid. I'm still striving to get that robotic, exacting with a band, but the musicianship of the people I deal with is honestly not there and I can't do everything myself.
 
Just everything really, from the guitar I play guitar/bass guitar, to how I listen to music etc.
In general I listen to less metal compared to years ago.
More indie, post-hardcore (no, not that metalcore stuff people call post hardcore now, I mean ACTUAL post hardcore without the metalcore elements like Thrice, At the Drive In, Refused etc), more alternative rock, more hip hop and more classical music.
I was going through a big 'prog' phase for a while, but came to really appreciate simpler song structures more again.

When I do listen to metal, I listen to far less of the 'traditional' styles, and more post metal (Isis, Pelican, Cult of Luna etc), and less technical, less complex alternative metal stuff like Chevelle, Splat88's band March Hare etc.

The Sneap forum really taught me that less is ALWAYS more when it comes to arrangement.
Get rid of those bazillion layers of keyboards and guitars in the music, just use the bare minimum you need to get the musical point across and bam, suddenly everything now has room to breathe and sound huge rather than a bazillion things fighting for sonic space and consequently sounding so tiny just to fit in there.
Also has the side benefit of making the song writing sound much more focused and in control too.

Playing more bass guitar, as well as the Sneap forum, really helped me to recognize the importance of bass guitar in heavy music.
Again, less is often more when it comes to bass guitar. Playing too much often leaves things sounding muddy and overblown.
 
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