Long Time Lurker requests your feedback for 100% DIY Tune.

[HDWR]

First time poster, long time lurker. I've learned a lot of great and vital info creeping around on this board and now it's time to post up a song.

I did the whole thing myself. Writing, performing all instruments, mixing and shit mastering. This whole thing was an exercise to get more familiar with the process of recording and mixing. I used Reaper for it.

All aspects of this are open to suggestion, impressions, criticism or just general mockery!

I'm no kinda singer and not a lead guitar player at all. I've never tried to sing a song before (being a drummer mainly) I opened my mouth and this is what came out. If one of you guitarists want to throw a lead down that's be great!

Please let me know what you think. Good bad or indifferent.

Thanks in advance!

http://shup.com/Shup/215911/01-Envision-2.mp3

 

[Pot]

guitars sound VERY muffled, really needs improvment (i dig the riffage do)
drums sound very fake, clipping and audible distorion in the beginning and the snare doesn´t cut it
needs verb in the chorus and spoken words
i´d say that it really isn´t mixed, sounds more like u´ve put together the tracks
it doesn´t have dimension, depth.

i wrote as i was listening...


As u said it´s an exercise and as so needs more exercises.

 

[HDWR]

Hey thanks for listening. I appreciate your impressions and agree with pretty much all you've said. How would you fix the problem of it doesn't sound mixed so much as the tracks are just put together?

 

[Pot]

i think u need better sounds to start with specially the guitars do kinda suck..sorry

 

[guitarguru777]

Well your definitely a drummer as you can tell by the mix.....lol

Snare has to come WAYYYY down in the mix
Bass and guitars need work. The guitar tone is weak and thin. Is this a Pod Farm, some plugin or a real amp?

If its a real amp redo it, the tone coming from the amp has no balls AT ALL. If its a plugin, try going for something with a little more meat in the midrange. That scooped out midrange sound is just so "shitallica".

I think you should sound replace the drums with drumagog. But thats me personally. I just think the tracking was done badly so no matter what youll get a bad recording.

Rule #1 if its shit going in, don't expect a cup cake to come out the other side (not saying your music sucks just the capturing of the instruments to tape).

When you go to re-record the parts listen to an album whos production you like along side it. Listen to how the drums react with the mix. I personally LOVE drum heavy mixes. Especially in the kick and snare areas, but this is just way to heavy on SNARE and Vocals and everything else is almost inaudible.

Couple threads here you may want to check out:

Drum Samples and Drum replacement Info

Drum Samples

Acoustic Drums For MetalA Guide)

As far as recording the guitars go. Its all about mic placement and getting the amp dialed in for a good tone. The problem today is alot of noobs to recording think that sccoping the midrange sounds heavy. Well it does!!

But when you are subtracting midrange you are subtracting volume. A guitar is a midrange instrument so you need to have those mids in there. So dont scoop them all.

Another tip i learned is PANNING IS EVERYTHING. Giving everything its own place int he stereo field is HUGE. It can turn a great recording into shit if done improperly.

Well those are my pointers.

Good luck

P.S. +1 on the great riffage !!

 

[HDWR]

guitarguru! Thanks alot for the pointers man. This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to hear! The guitars are Guitar Rig 3 with a preset from guitarampmodeling.com. A guys death metal preset. Don't think it's working to well with my gear. Last night, I started messing with an Acme Bar Gig Amp C-60 with Boogex and some different IR's. Sounds so much better than that $$$ Native Instruments deal. I'm kinda bummed about that but I can still use some of it's fx. There is a lot going on with GR3.

Regarding the drums... That's me playing my electronic kit (except cymbals are live) triggering Battery 3's Multi Mic Rock kit. The battery cymbals just sound poopy. I guess it's just a question of finding good samples. I'm not sure at this point how to load different samples in the cells of battery. I will look into that and collect some better sounding samples for my next effort. I'll also start reading the links you supplied as well. One thing I do wonder is Battery has all the different velocities with their sampes. Would this function work with other samples or will it be all machine gun?

I will heed your advice (and anyone else's that happens through here) and have produce a better effort next time. A few tweaks will probably help clean this one up quite a bit. Not so bad for my first tune really. Actually there were a helluva a lot of firsts on this one.

Glad you dug some of the riffs. Thanks again for the listening and the pointers!

 

[guitarguru777]

Believe me I am no genius when it comes to recording. All the knowledge I have has come from here. Guys like Karzog, Kev, Martin, and cobhc have really helped. Mixing is an art form and there is a HUGE palette of info on this message board for anyone getting into it.

One other thing I learned, if you think something needs "a little bit more" its probably good where it is.

There are a TON of tone shaping tools for guitar. I have been able to get decent results with Guitar Rig. I havent heard of Acme Bar, Ill have to check it out. My fave is Revalver MKIII at the moment (probably cause I havent got pod farm ...lol) But i am a purist and nothing beats a real tube amp.

Make sure your getting a good signal going in. If your peaks are hitting 0 on the meter your too hot. I find backing it down to about -6 does the trick to keep the peaks from fizzing out and digitizing. This is again more info I got from here.

For the drums and samples. You can drag and drop them in Battery. Just drag them into the cell you want them in. Keep the drums panned as if you were an audience member. Theres a great post here on drum mixes I just cant seem to find it at the moment. But look around for it.

if you have any other questions feel free to ask

 

[HDWR]

I'm def going to start looking into more functionality with Battery. It hurt my brains trying to figure out how to trigger samples in the box with my electronic kit through my alesis trigger I/O. My Alesis DMPro drum modules stock samples sounded even worse than Battery's stuff.

There's a nice thread going on over on the Reaper forums regarding amp sims. The amp sim shoot out. Check it out if you have time. It's educational! http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=42079

BTW, all of Acme Bar Gig's plugs are free!

Again thanks for the tips. I'm going to start doing some research on Battery and begin collecting drum samples!