Haunted

[Radiohead0709]

Just got my first of many songs to come up on soundclick. I'm still working with the settings in Sonar, and so far it's been a mind numbing yet worthwhile venture to pour through the manual to find out about all the effects and such that are available. But enough about that, here's my recording called Haunted.

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6132549

Im thinking about putting a solo at the end, but I've just been too lazy to get around to it. Not sure the song really needs it, but we'll see. Enjoy, and any criticism is welcomed!

 

[Jederino]

Hey man!

Well, its a start and you've delved into the world of recording and mixing! Yeah!

A few suggestions

- EQ first. Work with presence, especially the guitars and vocals. Be sure to take the unwanted lows out of the vocal track.

- Less is more, especially in the case of the vocals. Bring the reverb down, and also watch out for the silibance, which is piercing. Use a de-esser to take the "ess" away from the vocals. What kind of mic did you use? Preamp?

- Work on the drums. They are electronic, right? Virtual drum machine?

- You might want to put this up on here for some of us to mix, so you can here the different styles and approaches. Some of the guys on here can turn up a decent mix pretty fast, so it's worth a shot. This would be a great tool so you can ask questions about how people went about it. To do this, you would have to bounce each track so that it all the audio starts at 0. This is so that we can load it into our sequencers with ease and don't have to align the tracks (we don't all use Sonar).

 

[Radiohead0709]

Hey man, thanks for the advice.

I use a presonus tubepre as my preamp, a sm 57 on my guitar cab and an octkava MK 319 for the vocals. All of that is run into my presonus firebox. I was unsure about the reverb settings, I think that I had listened to the track so many times that my ears finally just gave out on me. I'll go back and try to play with the settings a bit more. I'm still learning about EQ'ing tracks. I've EQ'd bass and guitar tracks before, but have never done EQ on vocals. I tried messing with some of the presets in the EQ that were supposed to be geared towards vocals, but they just sounded like crap, so I figured no EQ was better than crappy EQ for the time being.

For the drums I used a program that comes with Sonar called Session Drummer 2. Basically just a drag and drop program, and so far I've only touched the surface of making drum arrangements and my skills pretty much equal up to putting down a verse pattern and a fill .

Again, thanks for the advice and I'll see about mixing down those tracks separate later today!

 

[SnakeDog5050]

Hey what up Radiohead. I've been using Sonar too for the past year or so. Definitely like it after figuring a bunch of things out. As far as the recording goes, catchy rocking tune. I like how the mix sounds in the verses. If I had any recommendations I'd say to mess with the dynamics more. The chorus is cool, but sounds like it could rock more mixwise and have more impact. Maybe try throwing a volume envelope on the drums during the choruses since they sound the same throughout, therefore getting buried a bit when things pick up. As far as EQ goes... during the chorus I'd try messing with finding your voxes best frequency and lowering that frequency on the electric guitar, then bring up the guitar in volume. That might blend them together more for more volume and impact. Anyways, just some ideas... cool tune man

 

[Radiohead0709]

Hey what up Radiohead. I've been using Sonar too for the past year or so. Definitely like it after figuring a bunch of things out. As far as the recording goes, catchy rocking tune. I like how the mix sounds in the verses. If I had any recommendations I'd say to mess with the dynamics more. The chorus is cool, but sounds like it could rock more mixwise and have more impact. Maybe try throwing a volume envelope on the drums during the choruses since they sound the same throughout, therefore getting buried a bit when things pick up. As far as EQ goes... during the chorus I'd try messing with finding your voxes best frequency and lowering that frequency on the electric guitar, then bring up the guitar in volume. That might blend them together more for more volume and impact. Anyways, just some ideas... cool tune man

Thanks man,
I just skimmed over the effects in the sonar book and came across the envelopes. I haven't even thought about using it for the drums, but I'll give it a try. I was looking at the frequencies on the analyst that comes with sonar and it seems that my voice and guitars hit in the same area . I did play a little more with getting a good base setting for both my vox and the guitars though. Good call about the dynamics, I'll work with a it some more to see what I can come up with. As always, thanks for the critique, it is much appreciated!