New Song: We Can Do Anything

[mjhamil]

Gerry and I have whipped up another song for reviews please. Gerry on Guitars with 12 Les Paul Studio through Marshall JVM210, Mike on Bass with Rickenbacker 4001 through Ampeg SVT4pro, Gerry Lead Vocals through Sputnik Mic, Mike backups through Rode NT2A, Drum c/o Session drummer, interface Edirol UA101 using Sonar X1. What do you think?

 

[Greg_L]

I think musically it's good. All the instrumentation is nice. I have to admit though, I saw "Marshall JVM210" and got all excited about hearing some roaring Marshall tones. I was a little disappointed there. Lol. Love the bass. Very nice. The guitars sound good, but they're a little bland. The tone is nice, but they're just sitting there. Maybe a thicker reverb or quick delay will give em more pizazz in the mix. the vocals are the weak point. The vocal performances are fine, but they're very weak and thin in the mix. They sound like they were tracked and just left alone. No "wow" factor on the vocal tracks. No richness. Like the guitars, they're just there not really doing much. The good news with all of this is that it's all an easy fix. The tracks sound good. I think they just need more polishing.

 

[ido1957]

I'm using a new chain for the lead vocals. I've switched to an M-Audio Sputnik (recommended by my ME and has good reviews). I've retired my NTK for the time being while I work on getting a good tone on the Sputnik. The second new piece is an LA610 MKII preamp. The mic is pretty straightforward - just set to cardioid and turn it on. The preamp is the key now. I need to play with the knobs to find the complimentary settings. I'm not using the compressor at all - not until I get the tone down and then it will be sparingly for peaks mainly.

Right now I've cut the lows -3db at 70 (a high pass?) and a boost of 1.5 db at 10K which may need to be looked at.

I like the tone of the preamp and I like the way it cuts through the mix (which is why it's set like this now). I think it's just figuring out the eq - maybe boost the low end and cut the highs a bit or flat. One thing I'm slightly worried about is printing the wrong eq. Right now I think if Mike eq'd it in Sonar it would work out but if I boost the bottom end too much then it's really tough to take it out (which is one of the issues with the tone of the NTK straight into my interface).

For this mix, on vocals I used Sonar's V64? compressor, which is pretty transparent which I like. 4:1 at about 25 Threshold which is quite high but really tamed them. You should hear them before lol...

I'm also using a very different vocal reverb. Normally I use the Lexicon Concert Hall at 20% -12db on a bus. For this one I stacked two Lexicon plugins - Vocal Slap at 50% and Soft Chamber at 30%. I have the bus set pretty low at -22db so it's subtle otherwise I found it drove it back too far.

The lead guitar is Soft Chamber reverb at 15% but it's much higher level. If I were to change it I would add a tremelo which is not yet available on my plugins or on the amp.

So some work to do on the mic pre, but I knew that going in.... but I've always got lots to learn.

PS - the guitars are direct out of the recording XLR on the back of the amp. I'm very happy with the sound quality considering and it blows away the JCM900 in that regard. It's equally good with overdrive. We'll try a mic on future tunes but I'm sure liking it so far.