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Tedster, I have gone back and forth regarding the bass. Initially I didn't have any at all, thinking that the bassy tones created by my Strat would be enough. In the end I settled on the bass tones "sitting" on the kick beats, just enough to color them and round them out. Perhaps you're right though. I'll revisit the mix... ;)

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Edit: Sorry about the double post, I thought this thread might be dead :) Here are 3 tracks I recently recorded. The first two are of myself, third is my friend, all are guitar/male vocals. what I'd greatly appreciate is if anyone could give me any comments or suggestions on how the recorded quality turned out... I'm always looking to improve!

 

 

Songs

 

The recording was done with an MBox2 and protools6.8, and two cheap large diaphragm condensors (Studio Projects B1, and MXL990) , both ORTF on the acoustic, and the B1 on vocals, recorded seperately. The harmonica was recorded with an old Electrovoice mic.

 

Ah and I almost forgot. "mastered" with Izotope Ozone 3... if you could call a little EQ and limiting mastering.

 

Also... I am open to any suggestions on what would be a good choice to buy next to improve the sound of subsequent recordings... perhaps a nice large diaphragm condensor, or maybe a pair of smalls?

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Musicians helping Musicians

Hi everybody any help extremly apppreciated

 

I built a pc at pcAudio Labs here's the specs:

AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ Dual CoreSoltek SL-K8TPro motherboard2GB DDR400 2x1024MBATI Radeon 9550 256MB Dual VGA Plextor 16x Dual Layer DVD /-RW 2MB80GB EIDE (Primary Drive)Hitachi250GB RAID 1 - (2 x 250GB SATA II) (Audio Drive)Hitachi160GB SATA II (Samples)HitachiWindows XP Professional

I will be working with Sonar 5,Acid Pro 5 (rewire them together) Reason 3.0,Antares Avox and AutoTune.

 

I'm a solo musician playing one instrument at a time (unless I can get ahold of some toxic ooozz that will grow me some more arms).

 

Will need to record Vocals,Electric guitar,Electric Bass, and use Midi for Soft-Synths.All drums will be created via Loop cd's and Reason 3.0

 

Any opinions either way would you go with for this situation.

(these are things I've researched endlessly and seemed to fit my needs.

(One of each of these is my exact price range.)

 

1.Mic for male singer with mid-range and kinda nasaly voice.

(mic will be stricktly for my vocals all instruments will be direct into the audio interface)

 

a.Audio Technica 3035 (heard it picked up bass better)

b.Rode NT1000(great reviews to help warm the voice)

I know the mic won't do all the work but one of them must pick up the bass in a mid-range voice better than the other.

 

2.Audio Interface

(for vocals,Guitar,Bass and Midi).

a.Novation X-Station (with all those features in one unit the preamps must suck but if they were good I would'nt need a midi controller cuz it would be there with my audio interface.

b.PreSonus FireBox (been kinda hard to find terrible reviews on this thing)I would need a midi controller with this one though which is fine if it's got better pre-amps than the novation.

c.E-MU 1820M(these look nice cause effects won't burden my cpu as much for effects and Latency may be lower than the USB Novation or the Firewire Presonus.but I've heard it's very difficult to use and get used to.I'm not a tech head so I should maybe stay away from this one.)

 

3.Headphones

(Only to use while tracking vocals)

a.AKG 271Studio (Looks good)

b.AKG 240Studio (may save me $100.00)

c.or perhaps the gradys everyone keeps mentioning

 

4.Monitors

(This would be the last piece besides a simple midi controller if the novation preamps suck.)

a.Event TR8 Tuned Reference (looks nice)

b.M-Audio BX8a (looks nice)

c.Behringer Truth B2031a(most seem to agree these suck in some way or another but someone told me don't believe the hype they are used by more professionals than we think and are quite good).

 

It seems that musical style would matter while picking mics and monitors.I like and record

Hard Rock,Hip-Hop,Ethnic,Symphonic,and New Age.

 

Harmony Central truly, truly Rules.

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this is my "Strawberry Fields Forever" cover - yeah, i know, this is risky - but i did it!

 

http://www.cms.consisto.it/concms/AspUpload/liederszene.net/downloads/321_Strawberry%20Fields%20Forever.mp3

 

what do you think? i tried to rework it so that it could be played by a 4-piece-guitar band in a live situation. what do you think of the recording quality?

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Hey, thanks for the comments gsHarmony! I definitely have much more experience listening to acoustic tone than vocals, so yeah haha. The vocals actually do have some compression (JoeMeek plugin) but I went rather light on it. And I hear the ess too, I think part of it is that the B1 doesn't really mesh too well with my voice.

 

In fact! I have a recording I just made, in my dorm room, with two dynamic mics (an old Electro-Voice 664 and a Sennheiser). If you want, check it out and listen to 2 things. First, the main acoustic part is mic'd the same as my other tracks, but with these mics which are as poorly suited to acoustic as any i could think of. Still sounds decent! Second thing... the vocals are recorded with the electrovoice... I think it works well with my voice... what do you think?

 

Dead Man's Will (cover)

 

- Oh and as to your orchestral piece... i'm rather inexperienced in recording this kind of music. What I love is that it's very very clear with excellent separation between instruments. You can really hear everything and it never gets cluttered. The only things that occur to me is that I'd like to hear a little more in the low to low/mid range... it feels like it could use a little more "girth"... perhaps by a touch of EQ on certain parts? I'm not sure. Like, when the bass really comes in at like 1:15, I hear a lot of VERY low frequency power, but i think it would be more effective if it extended a little higher. Also at 2:18 on, the drum part sounds alittle weak... maybe this could be improved by panning it more center, i hear it's almost all on the left. Also in the end, with that last few cello? lines, i think it would be awesome if you did something neat with the panning... maybe like move from one side to the other... that would be sweet.

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greetings all

 

I run a small project studio out of my house, but keep a pretty steady client base. been doin this for a couple years now. i have pro tools LE, minimal microphones (one shure 57, some audix drum mics, and a blue baby bottle), one focusrite twintrak pro, and a behringer ultragain pro A/D converter with 8 mic pres. nothing too high end, but it gets the job done.

 

i have 4 songs that i've done fairly recently on my myspace account:

 

http://www.myspace.com/evanburckrecordings

 

any critiques are appreciated, thanks!

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My band has been wanting to record ourselves for quite a long time now, and I've finally got a setup that I believe can do it decently. Just to test it out, we recorded some practicing we did.

 

This is a really rough take and I know the performance isn't very great (but I'm looking for mix criticism, not performance criticism), but I'm trying to mix it the best I can and for what it's worth, I don't think I did too bad. But I bet there's a lot I could work on, and criticism is appreciated. :p

 

http://s53.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3G88JTW2WJOOH2XD7REJ7FBR7P

 

My setup was:

 

--M-Audio Delta 1010LT Recording Interface

-SM57 on Snare

-AKG D110 on Kick

-2 cheapo Digital Reference tom mics as overheads (these need to be replaced ASAP)

-Marshall JMP-1 Preamp's speaker emulated output direct-in on the right guitar

-Digitech RP100 multi-effects pedal output direct-in on the left channel (I EQ'd the hell out of it to try to make it sound decent)

 

The bass track was left out because the bassist thought it would be a neat idea to use a phaser the entire time. Needless to say, constantly sweeping frequencies doesn't work at all in the bottom end of a mix. Slaps to the face will ensue.

 

Also, the guitarist on the left accidentally flicked his pickup selector switch near the end of the song with the other pickup's volume at 0, so he drops out and you only hear me for end of the song. Once again, mixing critique, not performance critique.

:freak:

 

But in all seriousness, comments are appreciated.

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I just recorded a brief riff with drums and a synth pad. I am a beginner at mixing and making all the instruments blend well together so I want to get some tips on making my track sound better with all the included instruments.

 

here is a clip of the track:

 

http://streamer.soundclick.com/jarry_DL/16/02/freemp3/riffballer+synthmetal.mp3

 

how can I make sure the synth blends in well with the rest of the track?

 

how do I get my guitars to sound more even with the rest of the instruments?

 

what else can I do to make the track sound mixed well?

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bball_1523

 

i like the guitars sound pretty well, but i'm a drummer not a guitarist.. the drums just sounded clrealy fake to me so that kind of annoyed me i guess, but overall as far as mixing it sound pretty good except i would turn the guitars down a good bit.

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Originally posted by yureal

bball_1523


i like the guitars sound pretty well, but i'm a drummer not a guitarist.. the drums just sounded clrealy fake to me so that kind of annoyed me i guess, but overall as far as mixing it sound pretty good except i would turn the guitars down a good bit.

 

no doubt they are fake! they are professionally sampled, but you know how that goes...

 

I'm trying to fix the levels a bit and get the keyboard to blend in well because it seems as if the keyboard is in its own space.

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I've finally finished producing the band Manganista. I produced, engineered, mixed, and helped a little with some playing and singing, all the while making sure it was Manganista's album.

 

It's kind of "Talking Heads meet Danny Elfman and jam on some English Beat tunes."

 

It's been a lot of work but I've learned a ton. You can check out a couple tunes here if you'd like...

 

http://myspace.com/manganista

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Here is a song I recorded a few years ago now, this is my First ever recording using a computer and to be honest I haven't done much since. I really should get into it more but was wondering what people's preferences were to using either a computer, a dedicated DAW like say a Yamaha 4416 or to Use both together.

The song as you'll hear came out over distorted in places especially at the solo, but as I say it was my First attempt.

 

Any advice would be welcomed

regards

scsi

 

The Crossing

http://guitarplayers.net/riffgallery/The_Crossing_(remastered).mp3

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I've been writing stuff on cubase with midi over the last few days for college & to help build up a general portfolio of work (and for experience), and I put 3 recent songs and an old cover of the tetris theme up on www.myspace.com/geoffontour04

 

Comments on all aspects of the mix & composition would be very helpful (I'm a music student) and if anyone has any ideas for em I'd be happy to try them.

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Originally posted by pktaskes

I mixed this down a little while ago. Oct 012's and a Marshall V67 for vocals. dbx376 pre.


http://stillsmallvoice.info/Still%20Small%20Voice-Favour.mp3

 

I dug this. The guitar, pad and piano sound really cool.

 

One thing I I felt is that one of the cool elements is the guitar slapping in the verses really drives the song and becomes a hook. When the song takes off and goes to the chorus or bridge... I kinda miss it.

 

Maybe a conga or other hand percussion?

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Originally posted by GeoffonTour

I've been writing stuff on cubase with midi over the last few days for college & to help build up a general portfolio of work (and for experience), and I put 3 recent songs and an old cover of the tetris theme up on
www.myspace.com/geoffontour04


Comments on all aspects of the mix & composition would be very helpful (I'm a music student) and if anyone has any ideas for em I'd be happy to try them.

 

Track 1: The first half reminds of the soundtrack to Arena or Daggerfall, (or maybe more recent Bethesda games). The solo piano is just ok

Track 2: I llike the feel, the bass, pad, guitarish chords. The drums seem like thay are building up to something, but don't go anywhwere. At 1:28 with just the bass and drum, kind of weak, the drum isn't interesting enough to contribute to that section. After that, the drums are a bit awkward. The "music-makers" clip has been used.

Track 3: Sort of a jazzy Windham Hill thing. Nice for kicking back.

Track 4: A lot of fun. The drums are a bit muted/compressed, but otherwise I like the guitar work.

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Originally posted by scsibear

Here is a song I recorded a few years ago now, this is my First ever recording using a computer and to be honest I haven't done much since. I really should get into it more but was wondering what people's preferences were to using either a computer, a dedicated DAW like say a Yamaha 4416 or to Use both together.

The song as you'll hear came out over distorted in places especially at the solo, but as I say it was my First attempt.


Any advice would be welcomed

regards

scsi


The Crossing

http://guitarplayers.net/riffgallery/The_Crossing_(remastered).mp3

 

 

That was Cool! I pictured it as a video game soundtrack. That solo breakdown was sweet. Kinda Children of Bodom-ish. Make it SQUEAL!!

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