Does this sound off to you?

R

rfpd

Member
I've been getting a lot of timing issues, and someone said on the following song the timing is off.

YouTube

I mean it sounds good to me, but my ear for music is shit, so I would really appreciate a more experienced opinion about the timing and singing. I know I already posted this and already got the feedback, but it's seriously bothering me the fact I can't hear this mistakes.

Thanks in advance.
 
hi rfpd, the 2nd ac. guitar, that does the melody at the begining and along the song it's pretty off. try to drag it for the sides or record again. found some metronome on your daw or online and practice to play along, it should help. nice song though
 
You have a guitar strum pattern that is, well, uninspiring - dum-de-dum-de-dum. It's very basic, but this brings forward the fact that the down beats - your down strums in most cases are NOT consistent. They sometimes come early, sometimes late. The result is the tempo is gently flowing but it's rhythmically horrid - loose, the jazzers would call it, but loose in a beginners guitar playing way. When the other guitar comes in at 1:07, it does it's own version of hitting the rhythm and the two together fight like cat and dog - drawing attention away from the words, which also come ahead or behind the real beat. If you really cannot detect this by ear, you have a problem. Have you looked at the voice, guitar 1 and guitar 2 waveforms on the screen, stacked above each other and looked for where they are at the same time. Normally with a few instruments on the go, you can see matching peaks and troughs? This, even if you cannot hear it, might help you see how awful your rhythm keeping is. Learning to play to a click would really move your singing and playing on. One feature that military musicians have is an ultra sense of rhythm. If you hear a military band trying to play 'normal' music. Have a listen to this track


They have the exact opposite problem to you - then cannot loosen up and swing a bit. They have been taught to play with as much precision as they can. Accuracy is everything. I've played with a couple of military bands - we were the house band and had a big Military band in the show and the Director decided we would all play in the finale, and it was without doubt the most terrifying performance ever. Reading the music was not hard, in fact, it should have been easy. What we didn't have was their ability to play precisely, and their conductor could bore holes in you with his stare. When it came to swinging, they couldn't do it at all!

Practice with a click will really improve your playing.

Last thing - your voice is horrible dissonant at 2:18 onwards. I don't know what note you were aiming for - but it seems to be the wrong one?
 
rob aylestone said:
You have a guitar strum pattern that is, well, uninspiring - dum-de-dum-de-dum. It's very basic, but this brings forward the fact that the down beats - your down strums in most cases are NOT consistent. They sometimes come early, sometimes late. The result is the tempo is gently flowing but it's rhythmically horrid - loose, the jazzers would call it, but loose in a beginners guitar playing way. When the other guitar comes in at 1:07, it does it's own version of hitting the rhythm and the two together fight like cat and dog - drawing attention away from the words, which also come ahead or behind the real beat. If you really cannot detect this by ear, you have a problem. Have you looked at the voice, guitar 1 and guitar 2 waveforms on the screen, stacked above each other and looked for where they are at the same time. Normally with a few instruments on the go, you can see matching peaks and troughs? This, even if you cannot hear it, might help you see how awful your rhythm keeping is. Learning to play to a click would really move your singing and playing on. One feature that military musicians have is an ultra sense of rhythm. If you hear a military band trying to play 'normal' music. Have a listen to this track


They have the exact opposite problem to you - then cannot loosen up and swing a bit. They have been taught to play with as much precision as they can. Accuracy is everything. I've played with a couple of military bands - we were the house band and had a big Military band in the show and the Director decided we would all play in the finale, and it was without doubt the most terrifying performance ever. Reading the music was not hard, in fact, it should have been easy. What we didn't have was their ability to play precisely, and their conductor could bore holes in you with his stare. When it came to swinging, they couldn't do it at all!

Practice with a click will really improve your playing.

Last thing - your voice is horrible dissonant at 2:18 onwards. I don't know what note you were aiming for - but it seems to be the wrong one?
Click to expand...

Uploadfiles.io - song.aup

There's my audacity file. The lead part start and ends where it's supposed to, I don't get how it's off. Thanks for the feedback though.

I think it might be the lead, I think the rythm is on time.
 
Last edited:
I've spent a while on it this afternoon - I gave up in audition - just not really for me, so moved it into cubase. It's quite easy to bring the second guitar back in time - it appears to have slipped a little somehow - to be honest it is still a bit loose - but you can easily put a few cuts in and move the guitar a little more to tidy it up. Same with the vocal, again, it easily chops up and can be tweaked and indeed, the style of the vocal means that rather than try pitch correction, which doesn't work too well as your vocals slur from note to note - but - there are gaps where the slight pitch errors can simply be sliced up and then shifted up or down. The guitar is a bit tricky to fix though - you've not yet progressed with your playing so your strumming is open and undamped, with each fingering position left to ring, till the next chord sounds. You hear this a lot when people learn a few chords and then just strum them rhythmically. A more controlled technique uses light damping with your right palm to part-mute the fast strum, which might make it sound nicer.

When the vocal starts you sing the first phrase, then change chord and sing the next phrase with one note rising and falling. The second chord is a Major, but your rising note is not quite Major or minor - it really needs to be the higher one, but could be the other one for 'effect', although it sounds like a clash.

You have some work to do to 'repair' the recording, or perhaps re-record it? My advice is that the guitar needs some work to make it sound more controlled and musical, then you practice the vocal so you can hit the notes a little more accurately. Pitch, rhythm and timing really. As each one is a little shaky, I think that's why overall its a bit out of control.

Try aligning the two guitar parts - I did it by looking at the peaks - one came a little ahead of the other, and simply moving one (I moved the extra guitar) worked pretty well. Give it a shot and see.
 
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