f13.net

Since it seems we have a few musicians in this crowd, I'd like to request some feedback on a recording I just finished:

Persian Moon - MP3 (http://www.llamamuds.com/uploads/PersianMoon.mp3)

This track is the lead-in track to the first song, which is more 'middle eastern' flavor rock.  It is meant to be a simple 'jam session' type song.

This is a completely new recording setup for me.  I used to be using 8 track analog recording machines, and standalone rack effect units, but as anyone who buys music gear knows the cost of maintaining and upgrading standalone equipment is quite high.

This track was recorded on a new DAW setup using the following components:

• Sonar Producer for tracking and recording
• Maudio Delta 1010 for doing the D/A and A/D chores
• All effects are from the Sonitus FX package
• Mic's are mostly AKG condensors for drums and acoustic guitars
• Microphone preamps are direct from a Mackie VLZ 1202 pro (mixing buss bypassed)
[/list:u]

For this track, guitar was a blend of direct pickups (piezo-electric pickups) and a condensor mic placed close to the bridge for string 'clickness'.  Guitar was a Martin D-15 spruce top acoustic.  Background drum (a 3foot bass conga) was recorded using a SM57 under the drum sound hole and a large diaphram condensor placed over the drum head.  Background 'high pitched' notes were done using an ebow and an ESP guitar directly connected through a mic preamp (no cabs).

In any case, let me know what you think of the sound quality.  No mastering has been done, only mixing.

One thing I notice is the mix seems much brighter than I am used to, however than can easily be fixed in mastering.

Shit, that sounded good. Reminded me of some of Page's stuff from Zep. Very good recording as well, with only a slight airiness noise in the background.

I'm no musician, but I liked the song.

Could you post a higher quality MP3? It's harder judging the sound quality with all the high end frequencies chopped off. I really like the sound you are getting from the acoustic guitar -- reminds me of some of those "New Age" (for lack of a better term) guitarist playing Spanish-style nylon string guitars like Ottmar Liebert and Craig Chaquico. There's something about that background EBow track that bugs me, though. Part of the time it just sort of drones on without any change in pitch and it's during those times it seems more a distraction rather than adding to the overall composition. It might help to make that part a more active counterpoint to the main acoustic guitar during those sections (typically the first few bars of the main melody) instead of just letting it be a sustained background note.

The e-bow didn't bother me.  I believe he was using it as a drone to reinforce the tonality for the piece.  That was largely in one of the Phrygian modes, no?  Isn't modal style playing usually used over one chord vamps (I guess that's modal jazz)?

Very nice. Hell, nice enough I'm gonna put it on my mp3 player.

The original mix had no ebow part as well.  This part was put in to help reinforce the chord structure that is only 'implied' through the guitar part.  In fact, it's common to middle eastern 'drone' instruments like sitars that have strings that have sympathic tones (which don't change).  Ideally, we would have borrowed a real sitar to add these parts, but ebow is all we have.

Thanks for all the feedback!  When you mix something yourself, you hear it so many times that you quickly loose perspective.

As far as a better MP3, the software I am using is limited to 96k encoding:  can anyone suggest a freeware encoder that can do 182k or better?

LAME is the best. The source can be found here:

http://lame.sourceforge.net/

The latest compiled binaries for Windows can be found here:

http://mitiok.free.fr/

A lot of people recommend an older version, 3.90.3, instead but you'll have to poke around the Net if you want that one.

You'll also probably want a front end for it unless you're a Unix/Linux command line junkie. I use winLAME (http://winlame.sourceforge.net/) but there are a ton of other ones out there.

dMC (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm) may be usefull.

I play a little Spanish/Middle Eastern/Gypsyish stuff myself (bazouki, sitar, guitars), and I loved it man. The guitar itself is great, but if you could make the guitar track a little more spatial to blend with everything else, it'd be right on I think. It just seems a little too upfront (like when guitars are mixed for most acoustic music or folk...which works there) compared to the other tracks. Also, just for kicks, try an alternate take where you flood everything with echo or delay. This is what a lot of middle eastern music albums do. You might be surprised.

What tuning are using anyway? I was messing around one day and found a good sound if I tuned to G minor (D G D G A# D), and it's pretty much what I always use if I'm trying to get anything droning or middle eastern like (at least on guitar).

Jeez, what's going on? Several people have complaints, but I'm a guitar player who thought it sounded cool and I have no complaints or suggestions for making it a better track.   I understand that the acoustic guitar was the main instrument, and as I demonstrated before, I know that the e-bow drone was to reinforce the tonality of the piece.

Are you hip-hop people picky bastards, or do rockers just hold more knowledge?  Or perhaps rockers are just more complacent.  All I know is there were a lot of complaints that I didn't think were valid here.

Heh, he asked a question and I gave an answer. Doesn't mean anything more than that, really. I really liked the music too, but that doesn't necessarily mean the recording is not open for suggestions. I'm not "complaining", I'm just offering a small critique. Even some of the greatest albums and recordings are subjected to (valid) critiques. Sometimes from the artist himself years later....and sometimes even immediatly after release.

As for rock or hip hop, well, as a musician, I guess rock is my thing, but I listen to and try to explore everything. If only to improve what I do in a rock context.

Just to clear things up, let me go back to my critique: The only thing I was pointing out was the massive spatial textures that pervade middle eastern music (guess it has something to do with the "desert". I dunno) All sounds take a back step to the space itself. That's the foreground, not the instruments. There are exceptions, yeah (if it's of the festive variety), but that's usually the way these slower, droning songs are produced.

I say crank up the reverb, delay and even more eBow, but that's just me :) And if he can get his girlfriend to make a few moaning noises on one of the tracks, even better (EDIT: Heh, wow. Hopefully that isn't intrepeted as something sleazy. It's just a joke, and I'm just referring to the "moaning" type of sound of arabic vocals).

This is very nicely done, especially for an amateur recording. I'm assuming this isn't what you or the band do for a living, though it sounds like either of you would have some potential to make some money at it.

My primary criticism is that I'm not feeling enough of the low end on that drum, where at times it is clearly meant to be a deep middle eastern "THOOMP". And I'd consider running the Ebow at an octave lower, which could give it more of an effect like a traditional bass line.

Obviously you would have to experiment a tad on both, because you don't want to change the intended mood of the piece, and either one could serve to give it a slightly darker mood.

I really like what you've done with the high end particularly with the way you mic'd the drum head and guitar. Some very bright tones on the guitar, and a sharp snap can be heard on the drum head. That is quality quality stuff.

I can only speak for myself, but I'd be interested in hearing the final master, and more material by this band. This, of course, is perfect for a lead-in song at the opening of a CD. If you want to throw us more MP3's when it's all said and done, I won't mind a bit.

Bring the noise.
Cheers...............

Again, thanks for the feedback:  I consider any feedback to be good feedback.

Here is a previous MP3 of another song, done with my old setup:

Glass - MP3 (http://www.llamamuds.com/uploads/glass.mp3)

This is of course a full song, with all parts (drums, bass, guitars, vocals, etc).

On my old setup, I had the opposite problem:  I could not get any low end OOMPH to save my life, even with the bass controls dimed.  I think the main problem was that this particular song required a lot of tracks (21 to be exact), however with only 8 channels of mixing, a lot of bouncing had to be done.  And whenever you bounce stuff, you loose control over the individual sounds (since when you bounce you only have control over the sum of the sounds).  My frustrations with this mix is what preempted layout out several months rent for a brand new setup. :)

My complaints about this mix:  there is no bass drum kicking you in the ribs, and the bass guitar is non-existent.  You can mostly hear guitar, lyrics, and cymbals.  The distorted guitar tone wasn't menacing or heavy enough for me.  The solo was a bit snarly sounding to me:  a good metal solo sound to me should sound full and creamy, not like a razor scraped across sheet metal.



I think I'll try a mix with some delay.  Several others have mentioned that the guitar sound was quite dry, and could use some more modern effects.



Next time I am recording, I'll be sure to light some candles and crack open a bottle of wine, and we'll see what happens. :)



I will try that when I add delay to the main guitar part.



Of course not!  The band is composed of two people: me (mainly doing bass lines and producing), and the guitar player (most guitar parts and solos, vocals).  We (thankfully) both have good day jobs.

I think the wave of the future is small groups doing their own stuff in basements:  it seems the recording quality you can get for less than a $10k invenstment is better than what was being put out for many years in the past.

To the previous poster, sorry for getting out of hand, but this is what I was getting at.  I doubt this recording was done in a million dollar studio, with a crack producer and engineering team, with the intent to make it a national release.

I think the piece is cool for what it is, and I think that the critiques he was getting were kind of nitpicky.

Truly awesome. Playlisted!

I would tend to agree with you. Needs more low-end as this is clearly a very dark piece.

The lyrics were decent, though I didn't care for the vocal take in certain parts. I probably would have gone the slave-driver route and pushed him for a better take. there are parts where you can hear the tonality drop out of his voice completely, particularly in the last few lines before the first chorus. He is also flat on a few notes throughout the course of the song.

But again, for a completely amateur work, it's very good.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

Ok last one - I promise! :)

We are doing two 'middle eastern' flavored songs.  I posted the intro track to the first one - it was guitar based.

This is is all bass guitar playing (with the exception of drums, of course).  This is only a rough mix (all I have):

Etherial - 192k MP3 (http://www.llamamuds.com/uploads/etherial.mp3)

That's all I have until after the holiday break I am guessing.

There's something about that drum track which to my ears makes it sound like it's coming from a drum machine -- i.e. its got kind of a synthesized sound to it.

I liked "Glass" -- reminded me of my youth when I listened to bands like Dokken, Rainbow, Scorpions, etc.

Sounds cool to me. Being primarily a bass player, I really liked the etherial track. That kid's got some talent. I didn't care for the production on glass, the new setup sounds much nicer. It's a little too overproduced for my taste (don't feel bad, my recording teachers hated me), some of the heavier sections need more punch, more rawness. The slower sections, though, sound great. Singer's a little too out front and maybe a bit too clean, because the instrumental sections sound more cohesive 'on tape' (nice solo, too!).

Solid songwriting, which is usually my primary concern. You've got a solid band, there.

Here (http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/spanish_jam.mp3) is a little guitar piece I did a while back, with some crappy shareware recording program that won't let me export a mixdown, so it's a raw recording, unmixed or really processed at all. It's also just a straight improv, one take rythym, one take lead, lead written while listening to the playback of the rythym one time through. I'm not good with multiple takes, I'm from the Page school that says leave the mistakes if there is a vibe to it. Again, drove my teachers nuts. I wanted to tweak the effects and eq so it sounded like a nylon acoustic, it's an electric strat in actuality.

I use iTunes to convert to mp3.

I liked Glass. Good song, man. The singer reminds of Ian Anderson for some reason too. Not that he sounds like him. He doesn't...It's just, that...Hmm, I don't know. The song reminds of pirates for some reason heh.

Ok, this thread needs a good rant, and this is a good subject for one.

I spent a LOT of time analyzing how 'modern' rock recordings are produced:  from reading web sites where producers post, reading recording magazines, and from extracting and looking at the WAV files of various songs.  What I am finding is that two things are happening with rock mixes over the last several years:

First, producers and engineers are compressing the HELL out of the overall mix, and the individual instruments as well.  It looks like studios must have gone out and bought up every brick wall limiter they could find and use it on EVERYTHING.  I extracted several heavy songs from bands like PoD, Staind, and Linkin Park, and I'm finding that all dynamics have been essentially stripped out of every song.  You can look at the WAV file, and it's solid signal from beginning to end:  even during the 'quiet' parts!  It's all in a effort to make the loudest sounding CD's, apparently.

Also, I'm finding that more and more midrange frequencies are being removed, making for 'cleaner' mixes.  You'll find a lot of mixes that are 90% bass drum, bass guitar, and palm muting/heavy guitar licks.  The singer has most of the midrange removed emphasizing the high-bass, low midrange bands between 250Hz and 900Hz.  Then there's very little content up until you get into crash and ride cymbal ranges.

So the question is:  which sounds better? A more 'organic' recording, with dynamics and more natural instrument sounds?  One band I can recall from recent memory that does this is Audioslave, which has a more natural sound.  However their CD certainly doesn't sound like a majority of the commerial mixes that you find out there today.

So that leaves me two options:  I can compress and limit all my takes, chop out the midrange, and make a very good copy of a modern commercial recording, or I can take the purist route and leave everything pretty much alone, and have mixes that definitly sound 'un-commercial'.

What would you do?

Ok, rant off.

Go purist. Fuck commercial.

As usual, succinctly summarizing my position, Hammy. I truly do have a healthy respect for you, man.

I'm pretty much about not doing production, my perfectly produced recording would be 'transparent', you wouldn't know someone did anything to it. I do favor a real hot sound, though, so I do tweak a little to get that. As a bassist, my ideal sound is Steve Harris or early Geddy Lee, a bassist friend showed me how to get that tone and I've used it since as best I could with available gear (right now my gear is shamefully bad).

My recording philosophies are grounded in my overall band philosophy, that live is everything. Putting on a great show and playing well is what it's all about. So I try to capture the live sound of a band on a recording, if the band doesn't have their sound together, there's not much I'll do to help them (partly why I haven't pursued a post-musician career in the studio). So instead of trying to so studio tricks to fill the freq range, I try to fill it with instruments.

The latest album I've been enjoying production-wise is Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle. The bass sound on there is very nice, just a great mix with plenty of good sound to work with. Bass might be a little too solid for some folks, but I love it (obvious bias, heh). Audioslave is another great example. Great translation of all the member's sound to tape.

I dunno, nu-metal is so much about the low registers, I just don't like it much. I just threw on Staind's first album after listening to songs from the previous two artists I named, and ecch...you're right. I never paid much attention to the production before. I pretty much discount the entire movement, it's decent enough music, but it's so limited and formulatic. I kinda liked Linkin's first album, but their second I see no reason to buy.

I'd say stick to what you think sounds best, and only deviate from that after much careful consideration of criticism, because sometimes fresh ears hear things you might miss (as you know anyway). But I've almost always gone with my original mixes after tweaking them from suggestions. Trends in recording come and go, recordings that showcase the band live on forever. And finally, don't worry too much about the production, spend time making the original source sound as good as possible and producing the recording will work itself out.

I guess my taoist view of production would be pretty unpopular with recording engineers, no wonder my teacher hated me so much ;) Conversely, I was the improv teacher's pet!

Bah, I need to spend more time on music, less time gaming!

I'm always reminded of Ratt's 3rd full album when discussing mixing and sound recording. I used to listen to that album in awe, because they managed to not only make sure that every instrument is heard, but that every single solitary sound outside of the instruments is heard clearly. A technical masterpiece, but it sounded like so much shit (and not just because it was Ratt). It was like every single bit of color and flavor was leeched out of every instrument and the singer's voice, leaving a perfect vaccum.

You said it.  I put on Maiden's Powerslave for the first time since, like highschool, a couple weeks ago and have been listening to it a lot.

WHAT??? HEAVY METAL WITHOUT DETUNED GUITARS?  HEAVY METAL WITH MUSICAL MELODY, HARMONY, AND ACTUAL SINGING???

What happened to metal =(?

Ooo, goody.  A homebrew music thread.  I'll post something short out of respect for my poor cable modem.

30 second orchestral clip (http://plangent.mine.nu/audio/orchestralIntro.mp3)

Grunge.

Or to put it another way, Ugly Kid Joe.

Well I figured out the secret to nu-metal success.  Listen to this:

Evility - MP3 (http://www.llamamuds.com/uploads/evility.mp3)

I threw this together in about 1 hour (two guitar parts, a bass part, and a few simple drum beats).  Here is the super sekrit formula:

1) Play in dropped tuning
2) Find someone who can grunt a lot - lyrics are irrelevant
3) Put in a shitload of bass drum in rhythm with the palm muted guitars
4) Wear torn up cloths and use a lot of mascara on your face

Don't tell me this doesn't sound like 90% of the death metal you hear nowadays.  And I didn't even need to fire up a crack pipe before I hit 'record'!

So all I need now is someone who can grunt something hateful sounding (although the actual words are pretty immaterial), and it'll go double platinum.  Then we cash out, bobs yer uncle, at everyone at F13 gets flown out to Los Angeles to party like rock stars.

Any volunteers?   :)

Frighteningly accurate. You should make us an exclusive f13.net death metal parody album. I don't think weird Al will be doing death metal any time soon.

One-finger powerchords for teh win!

Speaking of dropped tuning, I picked up the Live King's X disk a couple days ago and it's pretty good.

Just make sure it's about how much you hate your parents. Being 30 years of age or older helps too.

Don't forget to mention how the corporations run everything through the military-industrial complex. Oh and rivers of blood, many rivers of blood. Somewhere. For some reason.

Sounds pretty fucking good, actually. If you can find someone to rap over that with a red hat, you'd be in the moolah.

Ok, first a parody album needs some song titles.  Keeping with the F13 theme, and nu metal, here are a few suggestions:

1) VN in the Meat Grinder
2) Geldon Lost It
3) Teh Hate is Strong with Haemish
4) The Furry Died for You
5) Shockeye's News
6) The Gauntlet Has Been Tossed
7) Lum's Bitches
8) Catass to Victory
9) Bloody Patch Day

and featuring the #1 hit single:

10) The Grind Owns You

All I need are some good lyrics!

The Grind Ownz J00 (Must use d00d speak to keepz it realz,y0)

Rivers... rivers of blood
rats... millions of rats
dead
murdered in their beds
smoking hole of my soul
left to drown as it spirals down
the hole that is my LIFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFEEE
MY LIFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFEE

The Grind it ownz me
The Grind it ownz J00
The Grind it ownz me
Over and over I fall

Dings... hear in my sleep
Levels... more levels to go
time
ticking away
never to end bodies I rend
a mountain of death shattering my SOULLLLLLL
MY SOULLLLLLLL

Haemish is the pseudonym for Dennis DeYoung.  I knew it.

Here's what I have so far for 'The Grind Ownz J00'.  I tried to match it with Haemish's Lyrics.

The Grind Ownz J00 - MP3, 192kb (http://www.llamamuds.com/uploads/TheGrindOwnzJ00.mp3)

It's just the basic foundation.  Needs a lead part and some harmonies, and a neat intro/exit.   There's plenty of space for the vocal parts.

I can hear the 'MY LLLIIIIFFFEEEEEE' being screamed during the heavy palm muted segway sequences. :)

When it speeds up at the end, the only thing I can hear is someone repeatedly screaming "TRAIN, TRAIN, TRAIN" until the end.

Edit: Or to make it more topical to the song "RATS" or "DING"

Of course a mixed parody CD would be fun as well.

How about an old fashioned SRV/Clapton 12 bar blues song?

Slow Blues - MP3 (https://www.llamamuds.com/uploads/slow-blues.mp3)

Catass to Victory
====================

Logged in last evening,
To see what SOE had in store for me.

*guitar riff*

Played for 19 hours,
Played 'til I could no longer see.

*guitar wail*

What was it Raph Koster told me?
Oh yeah, it was 'Catass to Victory'.

*soul tearing guitar solo*


That's me on drums, bass, and backup rhythm guitar part.  My buddy Robert is the one tearing up the guitar solo.

Dear God, that's about twenty times better than anything Metallica has produced since I left high school. And I can totally see it fitting with the lyrics, especially if you take schild's "TRAIN" suggestion.