How's this sound?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Zarathustra
  • Start date Start date
Z

Zarathustra

New member
Well, this is completely the first time I've posted anything like this on here.

Well, I'm a teenager with a band. Three person group, we've kind of taken up the name The Bagels, and hope to actually get good at playing someday. We're working with a little bit of talent, two cheap radio-shack microphones (a dynamic and a condenser), a budget Yamaha mixer, and Audacity.

Not a "professional" set up by any means. Anyways, this is an on-the-fly, somewhat unpolished cover of Teach Your Children by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. It's just me playing bass (on a recently broken Fender acoustic bass that I love...d :() and my friend singing and playing his Martin. There are mistakes, which I don't really care about right now. And yeah, an awfully prominent and primarily improvised bass-line.

I'm mainly concerned with the overall sound of it, how the mixing goes, if you hear noise on your (probably) awesome super-speakers, if you think some thing's equalized or mixed wrong. I discovered a weird quavering on the acoustic guitar while posting this, I'm not sure of the source, so any advice on that would be appreciated. I'm also aware of some distortion towards the end, which was not in the original file.

http://www.box.net/shared/cbmkjpog4s
 
Not too familiar with the style or song itself. Not to be harsh but the bass sounds like someone playing in a separate room. It doesn't ever seem to line up with the guitar and just kind of wanders around doing its own thing the whole time and not really in a good way. I would focus on playing together a little more before pushing record. The sound was passable for a demo, a little dry for my taste. The bass and guitar being split left and right was distracting but maybe not too distracting if the bass were more in sync with the guitar? Tough to say.....
 
Well

The thing is that I'm not much of a fan of playing root notes to chords, even if that's what folk music generally calls for... I'm also too incompetent of a bassist to remember my basslines. I actually really, really liked how most of the meandering came out.

And we were in the same room and playing at the same time, so I suppose that's really my fault.

I don't know why it split the audio like it did, I was trying to get both tracks to be doubled up alittle different on the left and right and it just split them left and right. I still have the original raw file, so I might just go back and work that.

We had just played Rocky Racoon, which actually turned out alright (minus the intro where my friend sounds more like he has a speech impediment than the faux-Western accent the song is generally done with), and I had been playing virtually all root notes, so I was wandering a lot with this one. Oh, and the sync problems come from my crappy sense of rhythm.

Thanks alot for the feedback!
 
Zarathrusta

I like it, but the bass execution should be more "solid". Meandering, and Syncopating, yes, but with "swing".

Cheers,
 
Not to be a dick or anything, but why add the bass? It would actually be pretty decent without it, but the bass ruins it completely for me.
 
Zarathustra said:
The thing is that I'm not much of a fan of playing root notes to chords, even if that's what folk music generally calls for... I'm also too incompetent of a bassist to remember my basslines.
Click to expand...
All the more reason not to play bass.
 
You know what? On second thought I'm just going to take this down. It wasn't that great of a take of a relatively new band, and it wasn't really fair to the other people in it. Especially considering how bad I'm making us look by trying to explain why I suck at bass. I just wanted some comments on the mix quality.

I'm sorry, I just wanted to participate, but I guess I'm too thin-skinned.
 
Last edited:
Zarathustra said:
You know what? On second thought I'm just going to take this down. It wasn't that great of a take of a relatively new band, and it wasn't really fair to the other people in it. Especially considering how bad I'm making us look by trying to explain why I suck at bass. I just wanted some comments on the mix quality.

I'm sorry, I just wanted to participate, but I guess I'm too thin-skinned.
Click to expand...
No need to back out now.....you have been given some good critiques. You wanted to know how it sounded and you were told, you also apologized for your bass playing. Knowing that your bass skills are not up to snuff and recording it anyway was brave.....not good for the mix but, brave:D
Keep chipping at it, we all get less than sterling reviews......and if you quit because of what folks say here....you were done already:D
 
Zarathustra said:
You know what? On second thought I'm just going to take this down. It wasn't that great of a take of a relatively new band, and it wasn't really fair to the other people in it. Especially considering how bad I'm making us look by trying to explain why I suck at bass. I just wanted some comments on the mix quality.

I'm sorry, I just wanted to participate, but I guess I'm too thin-skinned.
Click to expand...

You are a pussy. I wanted to hear this, I finaly get to sit in front of the monitors for a while, and it's gone. :mad:
 
There's other stuff going on in my life right now, this just got me unnecessarily upset.

I suppose I'm making a fool of myself.. here's the file again. I don't care if you don't like the bass, that guitar is actually severely damaged (a patch-job that a previous owner had done on it broken open). I can't really work on my bass lines with a broken neck. :rolleyes:

http://www.box.net/shared/sci44l0bkk
 
Lol. That was worth the wait. I'm convinced that you can't actually play bass at all and it's awesome. :D
 
The natural order:

1. Learn the instrument.
2. Score your music.
3. Turn the metronome on.
3. Push the REC button.
 
Greg_L said:
Lol. That was worth the wait. I'm convinced that you can't actually play bass at all and it's awesome. :D
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I agree.

The positives:
The guitar and vocals sound pretty good, when they aren't clipping, or being played/sung incorrectly.

Practice dude. Bass isn't that hard...
 
That part around 1:55 was pretty fun - put a smile on my face....:D

The recording is not that bad, the instruments and vocals are pretty clear and even. I'd prefer a bit more guitar in spots - the vocals tend to mask it a bit. The guitar sound includes a lot of pick noise so you can work on recording further up the neck at the twelfth fret maybe to eliminate some of the pick sound.

I know you didn't practice this song enough on the bass before you played it on this recording. :rolleyes: On bass you usually follow the main beat of the song with the root notes and embellish it with nice little runs. At least that's what my bass player tells me :D

Your recording skills aren't bad. I encourage you to keep practicing and post another song when you have it ready. You don't have to be perfect - lord knows I'm not. But a little more practice will go a long way to getting mix comments instead of playing comments in this forum. After all, this is called the MP3 Mixing Clinic, not the How's my playing? Clinic....

:D:):D:)

_________________
My Songs are here
 
I actually recently bought a metronome, but the main thing is that root note playing is boring and isn't particularly inventive.

I can do that, it's a really simple progression, but this was just supposed to be some fun recording, and it sounded nice enough to us. I guess I was expecting people to hold back a lot on me, but I suppose I was assuming you knew it was a really rough take.

I've only been playing guitar for a year (I'm much better at it than bass but I enjoy both instruments thoroughly) and getting a band to play tightly together when we've only been playing on and off on the weekends while one of our members isn't sure if he plays anything isn't particularly easy.

Bass is also impossible with a broken neck. I don't mean to whine, it's just completely shitty that I'm being told to practice my bass when I've got a massive neck crack that makes it unplayable. I'd like to practice it alot, I'm usually switching between guitars pretty frequently at home, I just can't do it right now.

Onto the mix:

A. I can't take the bass out. Either the microphones or the mixer aren't putting out a lot of volume without the gain cranked up, so the microphones were constantly picking up each other, and this one was pretty loud.
B. We've only got two microphones: one dynamic, one condenser. Naturally, I used the condenser on the acoustic guitar and the singer and the dynamic on the bass amp. They were picking each other up all over the place, I tried to get optimal volume level with minimal noise and other instruments, but it's not really in the cards. I know, mic the sound hole, mic the singer, mic the twelfth fret, etc. The guitar is a Martin, and it's a combination of playing style, recording, and the sound of the instrument itself that makes it so picky, I tried to roll off some of the high end but it kept itself throughout the mix.
C. I didn't bring my microphone stand. I only own one, and I brought an electric guitar, an acoustic bass, an electric guitar and a mixer and cables and a microphone. I don't have cases for the bass or the electric guitar. So, something had to stay back in the name of space conservation.

I've been doing audio mixing longer than I've been playing anything reasonably well. I was actually pretty surprised with myself on the audio quality. I also recognize that my playing was absolute crap.

I've got some other stuff from those recording sessions, and I've also got my own "sound music" that I did before I formed my band and occasionally try when we're not getting together. I think I'll post some of that.
 
Last edited:
The flaw in your logic is that you're saying you don't like playing root notes and want to be inventive, but say that it's impossible to play whatever because the neck's screwed up.
Wha-huh? So instead of playing something where if you hear how far off it is you can adjust, you play something where 1. you don't know where you're going and 2. you don't know if it's going to sound correct?
I'm all for playing outside the usual style in instruments, but not if it makes it sound like total ass. K.I.S.S.
 
OKay, lots of stuff going on here.

First off it's great that you want to play. But, if you're going to play bass, you have to do a bass player's job, which in this case is to carry the entire groove. You gotta play the downbeats, unless it's a deliberate syncopation. In folk music, the bass player's job is the least fun, but the most important. I didn't hear anything in the bass part that suggested that you were listening to the song, or to your band mate, it was almost a random scattering of notes.

Your friend is a serviceable player, but you've got to lock in with him.

You don't have enough equipment for anyone to begin to critique the sound, mix, or master. This is all about playing fundamentals. Learn this tune by playing to the record. Over and over and over, until you know it like the inside of your mouth, and are comfortable playing it in your sleep. THEN have your friend play with you. SLOW IT DOWN, you're going way too fast. It needs to swing a little.

I'm not smacking you around, I'm telling you to find the joy in it. As a bass player, one who plays this very tune fairrly often in singalongs, can tell you that joy is there in this song.
 
andyhix said:
Bass isn't that hard...
Click to expand...

I beg to differ. :) Guitarists tend think that it's easy because it's only one note instead of six, but bass is barely at all about the left hand. A bass player can spot a guitarist playing bass a mile away, trust me. Most guitarists that pick a bass up sound like a hack for a really long time. Nuance on the instrument is a lifelong quest.
 
Oh, and Zara, if you were looking for sunshine to be blown up your skirt, you came to the wrong place. If you want frank, honest critique, then welcome in. Wear a cup, because people are gonna tell you what they think, good or bad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top