Can I rock?

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singlespeak

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I was asking myself this question. Bought myself my first electric guitar (ltd ec-50) a couple of days ago, thought I'd take her for a spin. Yes it's a "her" and yes I'm in love.

This is still just a doodle really, I'll be making it full-blown, vocals and all. I've learned so much since I joined this forum, I think it shows in this little piece so it's sort of a thank you to people who took the time to listen and comment. Big cheers.

It's so nice to be able to start from scratch on something. Much more attention went to recording and thinking about how the instruments overlap before laying down a track.

All thoughts welcome, no title yet.
 
its a nice little ditty you can work on, Im not on my daw but i can definitely hear its muddy and needs separation...the drums are lost in there (mind you after three days of electronic drums i cant hear anything except boom boom boom lol)

trick when tracking guitars is when you think you've got the distortion right, stop and turn it down a 25% to a third...and make sure the guitars set up at a shop...sounds like youre a wee bit out of tune and that could be the intonation..

but its got a jingly/indie feel about it and considering its your first guitar you've got the basis of a tune there

how much experience do you have on tracking and mixing guitars as there are a few guidelines to make life easier, like mixing the bass to the kick first, then building around them??


keep at it single, I like guitar tracks :)
 
Can you rock? Maybe, but this aint it. This is way too poppy and nice sounding. It's the opposite of rock. :o

The guitar is fizzy and messy. It sounds direct through a pedal or bad sim.

Read up on guitar recording techniques and try again. :)
 
@kcearl
Yeah the drums would like more attention for sure, especially in the small break in the middle. I did try to make sure the snare, kick, and copper punch through the rest of the mix and on my monitors, celestions and headphones it seems to work. I noticed they get buried a little though, I'll be extra critical about it.
Experience tracking guitars: about 10 hours. Experience mixing them: about 6 months but the bulk of the learning process started at 5.8 months, at which point I realized I needed more experience in tracking :p

@Greg_L
The opposite of rock huh. Isn't that paper? Good to read you write "maybe" though. Fine: can I pop-rock? :D
The guitar is DI+amp sim (I'm so craving distortion). No pedals - yet. Spent about two hours tweaking the "amp"+"distortion"+eq, thought it sounded pretty good. You use guitar rig, right? Maybe I should look into that? Are you happy with it?
I was standing in the guitar shop and made my way to the amps. Stood between a Marshall monster and an Orange behemoth, got a hard on and thought "some day I'll buy myself one of these and drop the DI shit". So, some day Greg, I'll tell you to read up on guitar recording techniques. :laughings:

Thanks guys.
 
Yup, I use guitar rig, and it sounds about as real as you can get without using an actual amp. You just need more practice. There's a learning curve, even with sims.

I also have access to two full-blown 100w tube rigs (a Diamond custom head and cab, and a Krank w/ 4x12). I'd still rather use Guitar Rig.
 
Greg_L said:
You just need more practice. There's a learning curve, even with sims.
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I use the Logic built-in guitar amp, and I have no idea if it's particularly good or bad. So let me pick your brain.

So far I've worked like this: DI guitar, tweak the pure sound to something I like (good balance between highs and mids/lows mostly), then add amp simulator, fiddle until I like, then add distortion, fiddle until I like, then add eq, fiddle until I like. Sometimes I'll put eq right after the clean recording even though logically (as in simulating reality) it doesn't really make sense. This chain poses some problems though. If I don't like the final sound, too much mid say, I can go back to any of the previous links and change it there. Too much mid can be found in original sound (what with the knobs on the guitar), in the ampsim, in the distortion and in the eq. Not having an external amp and distortion is just confusing, really.
 
singlespeak said:
I use the Logic built-in guitar amp, and I have no idea if it's particularly good or bad. So let me pick your brain.

So far I've worked like this: DI guitar, tweak the pure sound to something I like (good balance between highs and mids/lows mostly), then add amp simulator, fiddle until I like, then add distortion, fiddle until I like, then add eq, fiddle until I like. Sometimes I'll put eq right after the clean recording even though logically (as in simulating reality) it doesn't really make sense. This chain poses some problems though. If I don't like the final sound, too much mid say, I can go back to any of the previous links and change it there. Too much mid can be found in original sound (what with the knobs on the guitar), in the ampsim, in the distortion and in the eq. Not having an external amp and distortion is just confusing, really.
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I don't know about all that. Sounds complicated.

Guitar Rig acts like a real amp. It looks like a real amp. It sounds like a real amp. You turn knobs and shit just like a real amp. Choose a head, a cab or two or more, some mics, put em where you want them, dial it in, and rock the fuck out.
 
singlespeak said:
I use the Logic built-in guitar amp, and I have no idea if it's particularly good or bad. So let me pick your brain.

So far I've worked like this: DI guitar, tweak the pure sound to something I like (good balance between highs and mids/lows mostly), then add amp simulator, fiddle until I like, then add distortion, fiddle until I like, then add eq, fiddle until I like. Sometimes I'll put eq right after the clean recording even though logically (as in simulating reality) it doesn't really make sense. This chain poses some problems though. If I don't like the final sound, too much mid say, I can go back to any of the previous links and change it there. Too much mid can be found in original sound (what with the knobs on the guitar), in the ampsim, in the distortion and in the eq. Not having an external amp and distortion is just confusing, really.
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no tweak the entire guitars sound from within the amp sim..I dont know logics built in one but i know it gets great reviews...thats how you would do it with a real amp

now Im no guitarist but I know i can get a better tone from even my v-amp or Pod and they arent anywhere near as flexible as your software, so something's not right...its either your critical listening or you are not referencing anything to compare tones...Id say turn the gain down at least 25%..it really sounds fizzy and not good at all at the moment

you may be over thinking it
 
Oh I'm most probably overthinking it. I do plan to sit down one of these days and say "fuck it" and just rock out as you say, but right now it's all new and shiny and shit. But seriously, my lead sounds quite close to this, no? - even though that might not be what I want, I just happened on it during a csi episode. So is it the strums or the lead that are most jarring?
 
singlespeak said:
Oh I'm most probably overthinking it. I do plan to sit down one of these days and say "fuck it" and just rock out as you say, but right now it's all new and shiny and shit. But seriously, my lead sounds quite close to this, no? - even though that might not be what I want, I just happened on it during a csi episode. So is it the strums or the lead that are most jarring?
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Lol, no the leads are not similar. The playing is similar, but the tones aren't. The coldplay (ugh) track is clean and clear and has space and depth. It's mostly the rhythm sound that is most grating on the ears, but the lead aint there yet either. It's good to use reference music though, even though it's pro stuff. You'll probably never match it, but you can get close.
 
Yeah, I've listened a bunch of times in a row just now and I think this could be the beginning of something cool if you fleshed it out, but right now I'm not liking the guitar tone so much. I think you could back off or change the distortion effect considerably and get better clarity and more punch. Right now there is a kind of constant low level crunch that simultaneously buries other mid range sounds while making itself less audible.

Anyway, I liked it enough to listen quite a few times (helps that it's short ;)) and I would like to hear it again with different guitars and added vocals. Maybe some additional percussion? :)
 
Virtual amps are pretty good for many applications, especially playing clean, but you can't get musical feedback with them. If you want to rock out like the classic icons who use feedback, I don't know any way to get it without micing a real amp.
 
Hmm... In answer to the direct question, I'm thinking of a nice way to say - uhh.... That didn't seem like "rock" at all to me. That sounded much more like bubblegum pop.

Though I'm no pro at guitar sounds, my ears tell me the distortion on the rhythms sounded quite un-natural. The drums had no pump or drive to them at all which didn't help this song rock. They sounded rather jittery - especially the hi-hat.

If ya wanna rock, I'd try modeling AC/DC, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, or some other band like those.

Gotta start somewhere, though, man... I was there once, too. Keep at it.
 
@heatmiser
thanks for listening (multiple times!). I'll add +1 to the bad guitars category. Ok so I'll post just the guitars because I'm thinking maybe there's another instrument that's causing problems because the guitars really don't have a lot of lows. See end of post.

@tonesponge
I'm also thinking the feedback is the problem. It's not on the amp, it's a separate insert. I'm already saving up for a real amp, shouldn't take much more than a year. Stay tuned ;) Thanks man.

@PoeticIntensity
ok so can I bubblegum pop? :laughings:
yeah see the title was mostly a honey-pot really, seems to work :D. I'm staying far away from those bands you mention, not because I don't like them but that style is just not in my veins. I'll never rock that hard. But damn I like these drums man I thought this was the best drum job I've done so far. The fuck is wrong with me? See I'm not a noob I've been making music since screamtracker, although not audio recordings at that time but I am familiar with sounds. I am, however, a guitar noob. Y'all spotted that pretty quickly :)
Actually every time I listen to this piece I get energized and I feel like dancing, I post all proud and stuff and then it gets torn down. Don't get me wrong it's very motivating to get these good criticisms but I'm starting to think my otosclerosis is more of a problem than I thought...

Why don't I post just the guitars, and my amp+distortion settings. Anyone have any ideas?
 
Look at your "amp" settings. If that were a real amp, I'd bet it would sound bad too. You have the volume pegged, and a whole bunch of everything else. To make things worse, you're simulating a 1x12 cab. A freaking 1x12? No one rocks with a 1x12. You need more 12's dude. Like 3 more at least. And then on top of that, you dialed in a "British" EQ style, which is naturally kind of scratchy and screechy. And I don't know what that "distortion" box is at the bottom, but where it says "tone - 3100hz", I'm sure that's adding to the fizz.

Now I've never used the sim you're using, but I've used real, high-power, high-wattage amps, and other good sims, and those kinds of settings would never work for me.
 
I'd be willing to bet that your multiple (and unnecessary) layers of extra EQ combined with logic's built in amp sim are the result of your messy tone. Invest in some better amp sims, and work hard on getting the best sound possible you can at the source. It's possible to get great tones from amp sims (I've done it with gearbox), but you just have to know what to listen for, and often times, having an ear for that kind of thing takes time to develop. Having experience with good real amp tones helps a lot. Pick an album that you think has great guitar tone and try to achieve that.

Next time you might also want to consider double (or quad) tracking your rhythm guitars. That means playing it two separate times, and NOT playing one take and just double it. After you have your 2 separate takes, pan one of them hard left and the other hard right. That will open up the sonic soundscape in the middle for you drastically for things like bass, vocals, snare, kick, etc, while actually increasing the presence and size of the guitars.

That being said, this is not my cup of tea at all. Your melodies lack refinement and seem to hang on dissonant notes (which is kind of hard since there are almost no chord changes) before they resolve.

In total and complete honesty, I can hear this song on some car commercial for a Prius or some other yuppy car. No offense man, I'm just being completely honest with you. You need to work on the phrasing of your melodies and your song-writing before you can write something that rocks. I'm definitely not saying give up, I'm just saying that you aren't there yet.
 
@FadeToMuffins
Hi Goliath, David here.

Double tracking, good call, I might give it a try if I can still muster the courage.

Other than that... that bad huh?
I'm just about to give up on making music right now. I mean if this piece enthuses me that much and all people can say is how bad the guitars, the drums, the melodies, the phrasing, the bloody song-writing are, then what's the fucking point? What the fuck is left to be motivated about? I can just stay in my room and fiddle with stuff that nobody except my aunt likes, that's great.

I guess I shouldn't have posted this piece. Forget about it.
 
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