help me polish this turd?

  • Thread starter Thread starter groucho
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groucho

groucho

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Well, this here's an old one, recorded on a Tascam Portastudio with a radio shack mic years before I'd ever even heard of digital recording (or sound quality). I've been trying to polish it up as sort of a restoration exercise and I could really use some new ears.

I don't want the gear disclaimer to inhibit your remarks. Just treat this as any other tune in the clinic. If it hopelessly sounds like ass, go ahead and tell me.:)

I should mention though that although I can edit the tracks individually (I managed to line them up seperately which is a real pain with tape), there are effects (reverb, and especially some terrible eq) that cannot be undone, sadly. So I'm trying to see if I can salvage a listenable recording out of this. It may be hopeless, but let's see what y'all think.



thanks,
Chris
 
Wow-excellent song-I get a nostalgiac feeling hearing this in its lo-fi glory. Very good lyrics-I usually dont get into lyrics the first few listens but the voice just kinda sucks you in and makes you listen close.

Obviously you could re-track this pretty easily-its only guitar and voice-but I bet theres something about this one that you'll always like--Can you make it sound as good as your latest stuff? NO, but why even try, its like a cool black and white picture-And if you decide to re-do it that would be cool too.

Enjoyed mucho.
 
man this is great ..you sound like that "shawn collvine"(sp)??..the "rockabye " guy.....great lyrics...i really like the stripped down vibe to this REALLY like it.."her eyes lit up like ferris wheels"....AWESOME.
the guitar sound could be bigger..im listening on headphones so ...i can hear it a bit bigger in my head...ok ....TOO SHORT..lol...




excellent!! the lyrics really stand out ...its one of those where i dont even notice for the most part what the hell the instrumentation sounds like..


jamal...*****
 
Nice tune, lots of feeling in the vox. Good lyrics


Peace
Bill
 
I dig the way you mix your vocal. ON TOP, BABY...never gets on my nerves, though.

The vocal SOUND on this kicks ass, in my opinion. I'm going the TASCAM/Radio Shack route starting tomorrow.

As good as the vocal sound is, the guitar sound is equally bad, lol. Sounds like a capo'd practice guitar...run direct.

Okay, now that I've said that, I have a totally bizarre suggestion. USE THAT TRACK SOME MORE, lol. Try the copy/paste/offset/pan trick with the guitar track, and verb the crap out of whichever one is behind. The reason I'm suggesting this is b/c I did that on a track not too long ago that had an equally "small" guitar sound, and you didn't bitch about the guitar sound, lol. Seriously, as long as the relative volume b/w the guitar and your vocal doesn't change, I'd like to hear what a little fake stereo would do to this. Besides, I'm guessing that (with the timing oddness on this) there's no way in hell you could play that guitar part again, right? I know I couldn't.

Oh, and if you've already done the copy paste thing on this and I just didn't hear it, lol, then use a longer offset and wider panning :D

"She'd been passed around like a cigarette." That's the one I liked the best, b/c I'm all into projecting as much human misery as possible via metaphor.

You were smart when you wrote this too, lol...go figure?
 
Guitar sounds kind of dinky and separate from the vocals. I think it needs to match the tracking of your voice more, which sounds great. Always a pleasure listening to you sing.
I don't know if the guitar is tracked as brittle as it sounded to me or if that's the result of some combination of effects. It Needs some bottom end on the accoustic IMO.
 
Thanks to everybody for the nice words re: the tune. And thanks for confirming my suspicion that the guitar is a hopeless pile of poop. WHY oh WHY didn't someone tell me back then that you're not supposed to record acoustic guitars direct?

Oh, because I didn't have the internet, that's why...

Anyway, I tried chris's panning suggestions but I could never quite mask the fact that it was a direct-recorded acoustic guitar, so I decided to go another direction. With the help of Cakewalk's Amp sim plug-in, I attempted to turn the guitar into kind of a jangly electric instead of an ass-sucking acoustic.

I didn't want turn on the fuzz too heavy - just enough to make it kinda sound like an electric with not too many effects on it.

Anyway, if it's not straining your patience I'd really like to know whether it's an improvement or not.

The new ("electric guitar") version is at:


The old "unplugged" version is still at:


if you wanna compare.

Thanks much guys,
Chris
 
Well I'll be damned, lol...What a creative solution.

I'm colored by the original sound, so I can't honestly say whether I like the guitar sound now or not, but I can honestly say that I like it better, lol.

Cool On You,
Chris
 
I don't know that either guitar sound was that bad...

I did like the first one better.

Sometimes that kind of sound works - Billy Bragg's earlier stuff, for example.

It sounds like a board tape from a VERY quiet club - I like it as it was.
 
Hey, that's funny - I was actually trying to imitate Billy Bragg's setup on this! The one time I saw him live (solo) he played this totally crappy-sounding electric running through some cheap amp and it sounded so bad it was kind of cool.

Chris
 
Yeah, I like the first one better too. I don't generally like the sound of direct acoustic without at least a blend with a room mic, but it didn't bother me at all here.

I don't think there's anything to "salvage" here, this is great. Not "great for the gear used", just great.
 
Hmm. Tallying up, we've got about a 50/50 split on the DI'd acoustic. You people are as confused as I am.:)

I'm flopping back and forth on which one I like better. I dunno why I don't just re-record this - I just hate doing that, especially when it's an old song. I could even probably sing it better now, but I just like the feel on this one, clams and all.

Ah well, I'll give my ears a break and wait and see if anyone else chimes in with an opinion one way or the other.

Thanks for the ears, folks.

Chris
 
I like the mix :) the skinny guitar works for me, counteracts that great vocal well.
 
I haven'[t heard the new one, but I think you should record a big assed bomy accoustic track for this with as rustic and intimate a sound as possible.
 
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