Hey guys - so I dragged my laptop around to a mate's place the other day as he wanted to quickly throw down some ideas he had. His guitar was a complete piece of shit so I got him to use my piece of shit guitar (which is still slightly better than his!) Either way, it's a cheap Epiphone with stock passive pups.
This was plugged into the instrument input on an M-Audio Fast Track Pro and we connected shitty computer speakers.
God, this guys playing was untight as fuck and he's no sense of timing. His ideas ended up sounding poor especially with the constant 16th note picking and dramatic, unnecessary tempo changes. The 16th notes were made worse by how he was holding the pick - he was cutting and digging into the string with the edge of the pick. After a while I couldn't take it much longer and asked him to pick properly - that's the only thing I can think of that changed the guitar tone in the middle of the track (01:35). Nothing was changed, the input wasn't touched etc. Just his picking style. Go figure!
So once that was done, I pulled out my cheap earbuds and programmed some drums quickly over what he'd done and put together a quick mix.
Slate Drums prob would have made the drums pop a lot more, but hey, you work with what you got!
So I basically made the track loud as fuck after that (prob way too loud) and he seemed happy. Not bad for a few hours work on the cheap.
So anyways, with all this in mind - what could I have done to make this sound even better given the many constraints? There's only programmed drums and ampsim guitars here (no bass), but I'd appreciate any tips you could give that'd help me bang out better sounding, budget demos like this for other guitarists who just want to lay down some rough ideas. And please forgive the Glitch intro - guitarists can be so easily amused!
http://stashbox.org/858613/Song1.mp3
This was plugged into the instrument input on an M-Audio Fast Track Pro and we connected shitty computer speakers.
God, this guys playing was untight as fuck and he's no sense of timing. His ideas ended up sounding poor especially with the constant 16th note picking and dramatic, unnecessary tempo changes. The 16th notes were made worse by how he was holding the pick - he was cutting and digging into the string with the edge of the pick. After a while I couldn't take it much longer and asked him to pick properly - that's the only thing I can think of that changed the guitar tone in the middle of the track (01:35). Nothing was changed, the input wasn't touched etc. Just his picking style. Go figure!
So once that was done, I pulled out my cheap earbuds and programmed some drums quickly over what he'd done and put together a quick mix.
Slate Drums prob would have made the drums pop a lot more, but hey, you work with what you got!
So I basically made the track loud as fuck after that (prob way too loud) and he seemed happy. Not bad for a few hours work on the cheap.
So anyways, with all this in mind - what could I have done to make this sound even better given the many constraints? There's only programmed drums and ampsim guitars here (no bass), but I'd appreciate any tips you could give that'd help me bang out better sounding, budget demos like this for other guitarists who just want to lay down some rough ideas. And please forgive the Glitch intro - guitarists can be so easily amused!
http://stashbox.org/858613/Song1.mp3
