NAKED (with onlx a guitar) personal work

TECHNINOT

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Hello Everybody!

Eternal newbie that I am, I decided to finally put something out there for your fine and respected observations. It’s one of my songs, called “NAKED (with only a guitar)”. I recorded it on my Tascam SD24. There are 6 tracks of acoustic guitar recorded with Shure SM81 with a bit of TASCAM reverb and some light EQ and 1 vocal track recorded with AKG SolidTube with light EQ and some t.c.electronic VOCAL REVERB. I don’t use any kind of DAW (my eyes are too tired and I still love faders :-)

Whaddya think?

Thank you for any and all constructive criticisms/suggestions.
I’m ready to learn.

William
 

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  • NAKED 1.mp3
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There's too much proximity effect in the vocal. It's got a real woof in the lower frequencies, so needs more EQ and maybe a little compression.

When everything is piled in, I hear too much low end overall, too, so it gets muddied up. I'd go through and figure out which of the tracks is supposed to be supplying the bottom, and just put a low shelf on the other tracks.
 
There's too much proximity effect in the vocal. It's got a real woof in the lower frequencies, so needs more EQ and maybe a little compression.

When everything is piled in, I hear too much low end overall, too, so it gets muddied up. I'd go through and figure out which of the tracks is supposed to be supplying the bottom, and just put a low shelf on the other tracks.

I was gonna say there should be less compression on the vocal.
Otherwise, I agree on the woofiness of the vox and the slight mud on the guitars.

What are your FX chains on the guitars vs the vox? The vox sound like they have more reverb and are in a different space for it. It's also a little over-affected in general for such a minimalist song.
 
Thank you VERY much, Keith, for your observations and suggestions.
Listening to the tracks again was like opening Pandora’s Box; I discovered that, in fact, the guitars were not really all playing together, for one thing. (I wanted to create a sort of orchestral sound just with acoustic guitars). Nonetheless, in order to see what could be done in an ideal situation, I cut a lot of LOWs out almost everywhere, and sang a new vocal a bit farther away from the mike.
At the same occasion, I discovered that the ambient noise level in my storage room studio had increased with the “improvements” of the parking garage ventilation system - just next door. Consequently, I have to use the NOISE SUPPRESSOR of my Tascam - with a threshold of
- 26dB! This, of course, is not helpful for having a really true and good vocal recording. Oh well… for the moment I can’t really change my working conditions.

Anyway, once again, THANK YOU for your instructive communication. I love to learn!

William
 
Thank you for the woofiness support of the vox. The slight mud, other than the fact that everybody (me) wasn't playing at exactly the same rhythm, was also intentional, to create the orchestral effect. The FX chains are different 'cause I use the inhouse FX for the guitars and the t.c. electronics reverb for the VOX. You're probably right for the "over-affected" qualities. I wanted to make a tribute to the guitar itself. Thanks so much, VomitHatSteve
 
I agree that the vocal has a low-end woofiness. I think you could roll that off pretty easily.

The vocal sounds noticeably more compressed than the guitar. The vocal is way up front and the guitar is further back. The vocal is also dryer than the guitar.

The guitar gets a little brittle at times. Not bad though.

Little things mostly. It didn't sound too bad to me.
 
Hi TripleM,

The VOX is my messenger. The other instruments are the crowd around him, whispering, so that the King may hear my message. The King is YOU. Thank you so much for your thoughts and technical suggestions. For the moment, for this song, I’ll take “not too bad” as being alright. All the ideas expressed in this forum concerning NAKED I will put to use in my next recordings. I love to learn. Thanks again,
William
 
Thank you everybody. Your comments have helped me discover an error in my recording technique - of the acoustic guitar. I was miking it way too close to the sound hole and not obeying the rule of "the twelfth fret". That was the cause of the boominess that invaded the whole mix. I re-recorded the finger-picking parts with this in mind and the result is really different. Once again, THANK YOU.
William
 
Can I "update" my request with a new mix of the same song?
If it's possible, how do I do that?

Thank you.
William
 
Can I "update" my request with a new mix of the same song?
If it's possible, how do I do that?
You can attach a new file, usually with a different name, and just ask folks to listen to the new mix in this thread is probably the most common way.
 
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