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Hello folks- As a musician who's currently in two active bands, I've always had that inkling to put out a solo album but never really had the technology knowledge to do so. I'm an old fart so I've been thinking about this since around 1990... fast-forward a few decades and now that it's entirely possible for someone to do it themselves, I'm giving it a shot. Here's a sample tune of where I'm at. Although most of my material is gonna be on the techy side, this one is more of a groovy romp. (I literally wrote this one from a discarded riff from another tune; I wanted to see if I could write a whole song around a single riff idea.) Although commenting on the tune itself is fine, I'm much more interested in comments on the Production. It has taken me a long time to get this sounding the way it does, and now I'm at a wall; it's not 100% what I want but I feel it's so nicely balanced I'm afraid to touch anything. So I figured I'd ask people I don't know- do you like the way this sounds? It's not properly mastered, I'm just using a limiter to test with. It definitely sounds flatter on some systems and I'm not sure if that's something I need to tackle in the mix or in the master. When the time comes I'll probably get the whole thing professionally mastered. There are also no vocals in this version, there will be eventually (my next big hurdle, I've never recorded vocals before. How hard can it be, right?) https://soundcloud.com/narkybark/swing034
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Jul 1, 2014 03:32
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 11:50 |
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Thanks guys. I agree about the "radio" tone and that's what I was talking about when I said it felt a bit flat. I do intend vocals to fill up some of that space, and in fairness I probably should wait until some vocals are in there before I can really judge. I think part of it is also the lo-rent way I'm "mastering" it. The original is much quieter across the board but a little more dynamic. This is why I'm going to let a pro do the final mastering since I think I need to get that space filled out properly. I may also try to get the guitar tone a little more aggressive but I kinda like the clarity. Fine line. This tune is probably going to be the most "standard" out of them in terms of composition and riffs, like I said it's more swingy than anything else. I'm tempted to put a different tune up but I'll save those for later. Oh, I forgot to comment that I am listening to it through KRK rokit-8's. And it sounds really nice through them. It's when I listen through small headphones, computer speakers, car speakers, etc. that some aspect seems to suffer. Actually, I was amazing how different it sounded compared to the speakers I was using before the monitors. They were putting mild reverb on everything and I never noticed! Oh, AND one final thing, I do have some hearing damage in the 3K range, so I'm always worried that I'm boosting that area too much to sound good to my own ears. Maybe that plays into the whole flatness thing too, hmm...
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Jul 6, 2014 19:50
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Thanks for the ideas. Everyone's comments as they are will make me revisit a few things, including making sure I'm not sucking out too many mid-high freqs. I should probably wait until throwing some vocs in to make a better judgement and adjustments. The bass is only single tracked, although I did split the signal for processing. It's true that it is set dead center. I've known other local bands that have double-tracked the bass and I didn't think the difference was worth the hassle, but perhaps the reason you mention is enough to try it. I do have compression on the bass tied into the kick drum; I was under the impression this was a normal practice. I have added verb/delays to all of the hit drums; you definitely hear it with the drums alone but less so with the band. I did scale it back from my original setting since it seems like techy metal tends to have a drier sound. One thing that may be hurting me is that I do have some pretty severe EQ settings to carve out individual drums, to separate all the instruments. Maybe I should relax that a bit...
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Aug 1, 2014 03:33
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