An MP3 for all you metal fans

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sapientia
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Sapientia

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umm...

What the heck? Has this happened to anyone else before? I posted but it erased all the text!... anyways Please check this track out, I did it all solo effort.. I realize the drums need some "humanizing" in areas so I will get another version done later with that fixed, and maybe add some keys, but feedback would be appreciated.

 
Hey,

Cool tune. I like it.

Theres not a whole lot of advice I can offer. One thing I would suggest is bring the vocal level up just a tad...not a lot, just a little.

That outro startin at 1:38ish is pretty cool, I like the bass kicks at 2:10. The guitar solo fits nicely and flows well.

Nice work. I like it.
 
cool.

Cool. Yea just a slight boost, otherwise they'd overcome the rest of the mix.. Cause really, it's pretty much fine right now in my opinion, I've tested over a few systems. Just that when I add a bit of extra compression they become buried it seems. But when I add some tweaks on the drums, that will be fixed.

Any other opinions?
Last time I posted about my other solo stuff
( http://www.mp3.com/illomennation ) I used the same gear I do now. The bare minimum, seriously. And people had plenty of suggestions then so I guess I've improved.

- AMD 266 PC w/96mb RAM
- 1 Gibson SG Guitar
- 1 Cheapass PC Mic (difference is then I used for guitar & vox.. now just vox and guitar goes through the following.. )
- BOSS GL100 Guitar Driver (which goes into.. )
- Fostex 4 track.. which goes into the PC.

Listen to the difference between this current song and that old material.

I got alot better with my drum programming, mostly in a sense of making a "real sounding kit", not necessarily "human performance".. It is still a bit mechanical, but who's to say that's right or wrong, like techno is completely repetitive loops, so is industrial. However as time progresses I will be working on that aspect more. I do have a drummer, technically we are a band, just that it is inconvenient to head to a studio for every demo and we need some cheap but effective way to get his drums miked and recorded at home.
 
iravage

Sapientia,cool song, what kind of sound card are you using? the quality is pretty nice.
 
just an el cheapo YAMAHA OPL3-SA card that came with this computer.

Thanks!
 
Execellent quality I thought it sounded real good i listend to your old stuff and noticed a big difference i was wondering what you think your biggest change was between each recording
 
Actually I think there's a few factors which are just about equal in importance..

1. I stopped using my cheap condensor microphone for guitars (which in combination with my amp which wasn't exactly the best anyways didn't produce the thickest sound) .. now I go line in through my BOSS GL-100 like I mentioned above.

2. Studied alot about EQing and finally grasped the concepts I needed to understand before I could get a nick thick guitar sound every time.. Did one heck of a lot of tweaking my BOSS and comparing to cd's I liked.. One thing that really helped me was using the Fostex between the BOSS and my PC to control some extra EQ.. ie I would turn up the bass to maybe half on both the Fostex and the Boss, turn the treble on the Fostex to full, and totally OFF on the BOSS.. This gave me a much more "pleasing to the ear" sound,.. warmer and not nasally like it was before. I followed some advice I read about not going for the "scooped" mids, which honestly I never liked anyways.. so I put my mids on the BOSS to half more or less.. In Cool Edit Pro, cutting everything under 100khz to make room for bass and drums, definitely..

3. Listening back to old tracks, the drums pretty much sound horrid in retrospect.. I found some better samples and tried to make them match cd's I owned as close as I could. 1 big step was to ditch d-lusion drumstation and learn fruity loops pro. Much less of a hassle for exporting loops and organizing them, not to mention tweaking individual drums and adding the proper reverbs for realism.. also the "humanizing" options are such a bonus. I love it.

4. My playing and mixing technique. It's been half a year and obviously these have improved somewhat. I'm going for the "each ear has it's own party" kind of thing.. The guitars kinda play off each other, left and right, good harmonies and whatnot, makes it interesting, and it's clear and crunchy enough that it still has that "wall of sound" effect. I despise the idea of layering rhythm guitars 2-3 times.. For this style, it would do nothing but muddy the mix I think.

Well, that's about all I think!
 
Yup cool track.

The vocals are cool I like that, I agree bringing them up a tad. It kept my attention. It has a pleasing melody/harmony/sound to it which isn't my personal thing but I think more people would like that.



Few things

I have a personal vendetta hatred for reverse cymbal sounds!

The mix sounds harsh to my ears less mids somewhere would please my ears. bear in mind I have a crap monitoring situation.

I love to double/triple/quadruple track by guitars, i find it nice and easy to get a big sound, it has to be a simple riff (or fucking excellent player) otherwise it wil all muddy up obviously. Bit of a bitch when I come to record a new section and have to record 4 parts instead of one.

About humanizing drums.

When I started off not that long ago using my keyboard for drum sounds I tryed to make them sound as authentic as possible (ending up sounding nothing like real drums!) Then it pissed my off that they stilll didn't sound like real drums however much I tryed because only real drums sound like real drums (save for a V-drum set or something ...mmmmmm). Keyboard/drum machine drums have huge advantages over real drums cause what drummer can play 32ths on two different snare drums and the bass drum whilst simultaneous play a crash/ride/cowbell and playing most of the toms? The computer can. I've given up trying for real drum sounds until I get some decent mic's and can record my drum kit. 'Pah' is what I say to humanizing electronic drums. I will add that your drums are excellently programmed! (Could be even better ignoring practicalities of human limb numbers!)


But overall a most cool track!
Keep it up
ta
raindrops
Nick
 
hey hey.. thanks, yo I have done some final work to the track and re-uploaded the file so give it a check.. I beefed up the drums as well as the bass, brought up the vox a bit and toned down the harshness, think my ears must have been pretty fatigued when I made that last one. Oh, and I added some atmospheric keys here and there. I think I am finally seriously happy with this result.. compared it to a couple of favorite bands of mine (In Flames, Children Of Bodom) and it stands up pretty well in both musicianship and production..



(please rename it to Sapientia - The Etherea Theme.mp3 after download)
 
Yeah it sounds alot better. It has more power and is a bit easier on my ears, in a good way! I think the vocals could come up some more even and it would be nice to hear vocals over the end section like around 2 20 onwards. But overall it sounds really good, it isn't my style of metal but it is good!

Keep it up

Nick

If you have some time kickin around i'd appriciate it if you downloaded my latest track to have a listen. I tend to find most of the people on here aren't metal. Cheers
Oh yeah its a fairly recent post. You Are Not What You Ought To Be
 
ha ha.. ya most aren't but I knew that. sure I'll check your stuff out.
 
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