My (un)finished solo project, take a listen!

[Erkan]

"Hey dudes and dudettes (yeah right, as if there are any dudettes here!)!

I've been working on a solo project for a while now, and I was thinking that I was gonna lay the vocals myself but I'm pretty sure now that if I do that, the music will sound more crap than it already does, so I'm here to see if anybody is interested in doing some vocal work. Let me tell you about the project, grab some snacks and a drink and read (or just eat!).

About me:

My name is Erkan, I live in Sweden and I'm 21 years old. I have played the drums since I was 14 but it didn't get serious until a year ago when I finally understood that this is what I wanted to do, so from then and on I have been practising a lot more. I also happen to (somehow) be able to play the guitar ... strangely enough, since I never practise it, but anyway, this allowed me to start my very own little solo project." - From the " = Forum Collaboration Repository = "-post.

Well, that's a little intro I guess So what happened with the project, did I get any vocals on it?
I have been searching for a vocalist here in Sweden as well, but I've had no luck. But if anyone would like to add vocals to this project, it's never too late although I'm putting it behind me now. I did try to do the vocals myself last night but I sound less aggressive than a koala bear (I don't really know what they sound like, but still) so I just broke my own #1 rule: "I will not "release" this to anyone without the vocals on it". I did really want to have vocals on it before "releasing" it, but hey.. better stop bitching and keep on moving .

I kind of consider this project as a sort of payback to this forum, because in only one month I probably doubled, if not tripled my knowledge about guitar tones, mixing, drum recording and a lot more. What better way is there to use all that knowledge, than making a little solo project?

On these 5 songs, I play every instrument except the synths etc which I have programmed (I guess that's a form of playing?). I did however let a friend make a guest performance on the beginning of one song and on the end of another. I think you'll be able to distinguish him in the mix since his tone is pretty muddy and he doesn't play so clean either, but he's good. Oh and by the way, I have more respect for bass players now than I had before this project because man... it was hard to lay the bass on this stuff!

So, big thanks to this whole forum! I didn't know anything about mixing techniques, and I knew VERY little about micing techniques and getting good guitar tones (creds to GubbKuK for help with guitar tone), before I started reading every thread here on this forum. You guys are the first to hear the whole tracks, not even my IRL friends or even my band has gotten to hear this project yet

If there is anything you like in the mix/song and if you wonder how I did it etc, just ask and I'll be more than glad to help. Speaking of the mix.. I mixed it all in giant Wharfedale LX215 PRO full-range speakers, so the mix might not be good!

Ok, I'll shut up now and give you the links to the songs:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=c058d05e371c641795af63b7d44918aafc3f1aa57baaf0dc

They don't have any lyrics... and they don't even have names! Haha, as you can see quite clearly, their names are just working titles

All feedback is appreciated! Thanks!

 

[tagradh]

This stuff is really cool brah. How did you do the guitars? The tone is great.

 

[Erkan]

This stuff is really cool brah. How did you do the guitars? The tone is great.

Thank you for the reply!

The guitar is Revalver mkIII, 6505 and that famous englv30higherpres cab impulse. The guitar I played on had a LOT of bass, so before the signal hit Revalver I cut below 100 hz, then I cut below 100 hz again after Revalver, and then I cut even more, around 150 hz or so in the mix (yes, the guitar had that insane amounts of bass in the signal). Oh and as usual I had the TSS in front of it all... nothing special about the tone really. I've gotten some feedback saying I could've used a lot more mids in the tone, but if you like it as it is, then that's good I guess

The settings on the 6505 was lead channel, about 5 on the gain, about 5-6 on bass, 4 on mid, 5-6 on treble, lead post was on 10 I think, resonance on 12, presence on 5 or so and output as you desire (obviously). But as I have mentioned earlier, GubbKuK helped me with the tone and he sent me a preset he made for me, and I tweaked that one a little bit. I think he might've tweaked the amp in its components, I'm not sure.

But for my next project, I'm really gonna try to get a good guitar tone IRL with an SM57 instead... using digital stuff is convenient but I want to practise on the real stuff too.

 

[JonWormwood]

Hey man I read your post in the collab thread and heard this stuff when you first posted. Sounds really fuckin good, cool writing to boot.

I'll try to work some Vox on it and see what happens.

 

[Erkan]

Fucking sweet! I have no clue what you sound like but rock on man, it can't be worse than my attempt at it haha As I've said already, you have full freedom on writing, singing/screaming etc and choosing which parts to do it on. Write me a PM and let me know how it goes!

 

[Erkan]

Hey man I read your post in the collab thread and heard this stuff when you first posted. Sounds really fuckin good, cool writing to boot.

I'll try to work some Vox on it and see what happens.

Oh look, I can use your reply as an excuse to bump the thread

How is it going with the vox Necromancer?

 

[Metaltastic]

They don't have any lyrics... and they don't even have names! Haha, as you can see quite clearly, their names are just working titles

Oh, so you WEREN'T planning on calling a song "Happy Fucker?" Downloading "Beyond" now, will listen in a bit.

 

[Metaltastic]

Holy shit dude, this rules! I LOVE the disco-esque groove of the first main riff, and the solo that starts around 1:30 is really tasteful and works so well, not to mention the section after it, very Dream Theater - it's the synth stuff that really holds this together and takes it to the next level, which reminds me how much I need to continue to incorporate synths into my own stuff! Cool bass playing here too; the bass sounds perhaps a bit wooly, maybe some cutting around the 100-300 range would help, but that's just a ballpark guess, and it's not that important.

One thing I'm not too much of a fan of is the piano that makes a brief appearance; that's a little too Dream Theater IMO (and not in a good way this time ), but at least its quick.

Oh, and I'm not sure of that opening sound effect, specifically because I've heard it in A LOT of video games, one in particular that I can't fucking think of for the life of me that's gonna drive me crazy

 

[pifos_2]

It actually sounds very good!
Them mix too!

What about the drums ?

 

[Erkan]

One thing I'm not too much of a fan of is the piano that makes a brief appearance; that's a little too Dream Theater IMO (and not in a good way this time ), but at least its quick.

Oh, and I'm not sure of that opening sound effect, specifically because I've heard it in A LOT of video games, one in particular that I can't fucking think of for the life of me that's gonna drive me crazy

I just shat brixx! I didn't think many on this forum would like this because... well, the songs just aren't brutal and shit which I supposed everyone was into here but I know that isn't true. Anyway, I'll start by thanking you greatly for your reply!

The bass sounds the way it does because I had to really mess around with the EQ on it to get it to sound ok. The reason for that is because I am not a bass player (I'm barely a guitarist but damn, I just love playing the guitar sometimes so it all still works out for me), so while playing the bass I made a lot of fret noises and alot of unwanted noises from the strings and stuff so to get rid of those I made some severe modifications in the EQ... which I probably overdid, but anyway.
I also separated the bass and the guitars too much in the frequency spectrum I think... but that's a lesson I've learned now for next time

Ah the opening sound is actually some random sample from www.freesound.org (it's like a community where people upload their samples they've recorded, and I've actually uploaded my kick, snare and toms there!). So if you have heard that sample before, I guess the guy who uploaded it there stole it from somewhere else... too bad

And about the piano, well, I kinda thought it would be nice to have it on that part where it gets a bit more "tech death metal"-ish, I think I was inspired by a local band named "Theory In Practise", and they used a fair amount of piano in their songs if I recall correctly Well in any case, I was NOT inspired by Dream Theater since I stopped listening to them years ago (not calling them bad, I just ended up on another path).

It actually sounds very good!
Them mix too!

What about the drums ?

The drums are played by me. It's my Pearl Export kit (nothing fancy, but it's mirror chrome finish... shiiiny!). I miced it up with a set of low-budget microphones (a swedish brand called JJLabs... probably not swedish in its origin but still ). Before the recording I also sampled my whole kit and used those samples to blend in with the actual recording. Man I've learned so much from you guys on the forum, and from my little project, I can't believe it now that I'm writing about it

If you have a specific question about the drums or anything, just shoot! I don't know if you wanted to know just in general, or if you wanna know everything in detail.

 

[jess.oceans]

I really like this. Listening to Beyond right now. Love that groovy part
What did you did to the kick and toms, as in eq adjustments? You said you sampled your kit, any chance we could test out your samples
Your guitar tone is really crisp and tight. I love it. I'm really wanting revalver mk III now....
Where did you get that englv30higherpres impulse? haha always interested in trying out different impulses
Really good job on this, cant wait too hear it with vocals. Sounds like theres lots of room for them as well.

 

[Erkan]

I really like this. Listening to Beyond right now. Love that groovy part
What did you did to the kick and toms, as in eq adjustments? You said you sampled your kit, any chance we could test out your samples
Your guitar tone is really crisp and tight. I love it. I'm really wanting revalver mk III now....
Where did you get that englv30higherpres impulse? haha always interested in trying out different impulses
Really good job on this, cant wait too hear it with vocals. Sounds like theres lots of room for them as well.

Thanks!

To the kick I raised the 40-50 hz region up until I got that "kick in your chest" feel. I scooped out a good amount from like 200 to 800 hz and after that I let the EQ stay normal until around 2.7 khz where I start to raise it up for the "click". I didn't want that super high click so instead of going for the 6-7k region I raised more in the 2.7 k - 4k region and just slightly boosted at the 6k region. I used my own kick sample to get the sound I wanted, and I found out that slightly delaying/pre-delaying the track which the sample is on (I made a copy of my kick track and put the sampled kick on that one so I could have easy separate controls of both tracks in the mix) gave me a very different character to the bass drum than I could get with any EQ. So at first I went for perfect phase sligning of the original kick and the sample kick, but that sounded too boring, so I started shifting it around and when I had the sample track running like 1 ms before the kick track I got this really chuggy and nice kick sound. I'm pretty happy with the kick overall, for this music atleast.

The toms are pretty much only high-passed from around 150 hz and scooped out a bit to kill the boxy sound at 250~ to 800 or something, not too much though since a lot of the toms' character lies there (which always isn't a good thing, but remember it!). Then I boosted the toms as well around the same frequency as the kick so they have the same "feel", that is 2.7k to 4k and slightly above. The samples on the toms are aligned a bit differently than the kick I think... I think I went for perfect aligning on the toms as opposed to on the kick, well it's a matter of taste anyway.

But one thing to remember, I did cut away a lot of the highs on the original toms and on the original kick because once I blend the samples in, I can raise the high frequencies on those samples instead of on the original tracks, and thus avoiding a LOT of cymbal bleed in the mics. But I still use a lot of the mids and lows from the original toms and kick to make it sound not too much like programmed drums.

My next experiment might actually be buying a set of Red Shot triggers from Ddrum and trigging my own kit with my own samples (but this time I need to sample a LOT more since I only have about 9 samples per drum at the moment). It would be fun to sample each drum about 40 times and then trigging the whole kit with its own sound, and still have the feel and sound of an acoustic kit Also, to avoid goddamn hihats and shit in all the mics, haha!

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=c058d05e371c6417ab1eab3e9fa335cab0a1d1f359985e14

These are the samples I used on this project but I resampled the snare during the mix because it didn't have the punch I wanted to. I hit the snare fucking hard (never hit a drum that hard really) and then replaced the old snare sample in the mix and voila, much better I can share that snare too but right now I have no access to my rehearsal place since some morons broke in to the whole rehearsal complex and kicked in all the doors without stealing anything (my room and 3 others are fine though, luckily). They've locked the place down until shit gets sorted out so we'll see.

 

[Black neon bob]

You're the man Erkan! this stuff rocks!

 

[jess.oceans]

Thanks alot for the samples gojira
I think I may just try out your kick sample idea, putting it behind about a ms.

 

[Erkan]

Thanks alot for the samples gojira
I think I may just try out your kick sample idea, putting it behind about a ms.

behind or infront, you gotta try both and see if you like any of them The reason why I even started messing with the delaying is because ApTrigga doesn't have an automatic "sync" feature as far as I know, and even though I've cut the samples dead tight in the start so that the wave file starts right at the transient, I think that you can still trim it a little bit by delaying it very very slightly. In my case, making the sample go off 1 ms before the actual drum kick gave me a fatter sound but as with everything, I don't think you can take this for granted. You might end up with an extremely phasey and hollow sound, but you have to try to know... might work, or it might not but in my case it did make it better!

You're the man Erkan! this stuff rocks!

Hey, thanks a lot Black neon bob! Feels good to hear it from you *giggles like a girl*

 

[kass]

daaaaaaaaamn

this shit is rad

 

[Djabthrash]

Very good stuff.

Guitars sound great.

 

[Erkan]

Very good stuff.

Guitars sound great.

Really? From my swedish colleagues over at the forum "Studio", I'm getting very split opinions Either they like the guitar sound or they sort of... hate it, haha. Actually, I think the majority hates it, but maybe scandinavians have a different taste for guitar sound?

Well for my next project I'm gonna try recording a real amp and cabinet, and aim for quad tracking as well... AND with a guitar that costs more than 200$, yes please!

Anyways, I'm glad you like it... I guess it's not that bad considering the circumstances.

 

[Morgan C]

Sorry to half-resurrect but for some reason I downloaded this before but didn't end up listening it. I'll add my compliments to the list, everything is great but I REALLY want to know what you did to the snare? My drums are sounding great at the moment except for the snare, which either sounds like a box or really tinny.

 

[Metaltastic]

You know, I had forgotten about this, but I'm listening to "Beyond" for the first time in awhile (well, like a month), and it still fucking rules, but I'm noticing some RETARDED-ass master-bus compressor pumpage, especially when the riff kicks in at like 0:07; might wanna tame that homie. Music still kicks ass, though!