This Wild Life

M

MEvansMusic

New member
Hey everyone,

I was wondering if anyone could steer me in the right direction with this...there's always been that "sound" that I've been aspiring to achieve in my recordings, and when I stumbled upon the band This Wild Life a while back I realized that their sound is almost exactly what I want (in terms of quality, simplicity, instrumentation). I record mostly acoustic music (covers and originals). Here's a couple links to their music:

"Take it Back" Take It Back - This Wild Life - FREE Download - YouTube

"Roots and Branches" This Wild Life - Roots and Branches (New 2013) - YouTube

They have a very simple sound, yet it's so polished (maybe it's just the pureness of the vocalist that shines)...I'm just wondering what they do to get that sound.

Here is a sample of my music, a song I wrote called "The Bottom of This Ocean": https://soundcloud.com/matthewevansmusic000/the-bottom-of-this-ocean

Thanks guys, any feedback helps :)
 
LA Band = mucho production. I found some live stuff and what you are hearing is a very sophisticated recording studio. Don't kid yourself. I found a couple of live shows on youtube, it thins out live, so you are hearing a lot of studio support,

Your vocals sound like they have almost no processing (honest recording is what I am saying). Other folks on the board can help give you better tips, but the distance your are from your mic, the room (sounded pretty bright on your sound cloud) is probably playing a role. Did you notice how close the dude was on the microphone, that makes it much deeper sounding. You have one guitar, they have two. All of those clips were in a studio. They are using pickups, and probably processing the hell out of the acoustics, there is another big area.

I heard your stuff and it is as good, you just need to start working on getting a better production and either learning to play both parts of the guitar (double tracking), playing the guitar parts and then singing or grab a friend. You have the chops, you just need to have some help with getting your recording sound down.
 
I see what you mean. I went back and checked out some of their live performances and it was definitely thinner - not that it's necessarily a bad thing, either.

Guitar tracking has never been a problem for me, for lead or rhythm, sometimes though since I don't record the vocals at the same time as the guitars, I get lost halfway through my recording and it gets frustrating. I want to get my sound as polished as possible but am not exactly sure how to go - or how far I can polish my sound with my equipment. Currently I record with a Zoom H4N and do all of my producing in Pro Tools 11. Have decent studio monitors, but don't quite know what producers do to their tracks to make them so processed/polished. I know a lot of it is just training your ears/years of experience. I would book studio time and get the song I wrote professionally done if money wasn't an issue :p
 
You could sing low first round, then come back and record vocals. Make sure you have your timing set. Start there and just work through it. But I think getting your vocals and guitars set will give you a huge momentum going forward.
 
Thanks! I see what you mean. If I wanted to produce a sound a little less processed and more like this: (D at Sea | Parkway Drive | Carrion | Acoustic Cover - YouTube), what exactly can I do to improve my current sound to get something like this (quality wise)? I can tell that the guitars were definitely recorded directly and were double tracked (lots of layers I hear), and I can discern that the vocals have a bit of reverb, a touch of autotune, etc, but can't discern as much as I'd like. Any thoughts help :)
 
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