Need suggestions for track recorded in Garageband

[Ian M.]

So a friend and I have recently decided to start doing some DIY home recording in Garageband. I've had the program for over 5 years and have dabbled with it over the years, but since starting this project I've had to re-acquaint myself with the program.

This is a song we first recorded before re-familiarizing ourselves with the program. Since dabbling in it I've gone back and re-recorded the guitars and added some effects, as well as my friend's vocals. The track is unmastered as of this time as there are some things I want to figure out first:

https://soundcloud.com/ian_dizzle/interconfessional-2

1) The vocals were recorded by my friend on a tape recorder, which was then recorded into GB. The only problem was no matter how we set the levels on the tape player and in GB it still clipped like crazy, and they're still insanely harsh. Is there any way to smooth the distortion out or get rid of the clipping in post without completely re-recording them?

2) The guitar tone sounds pretty weak to me. I created a custom amp set up in GB that mimics the actual Fender Twin Amp I own, and the virtual amp sounds great when I'm testing it out. But once it finally records it sounds pretty mushy. I've messed with the EQ, but the attack my single-coil Strat usually has is all but gone once it's recorded. Any idea how to punch up the guitars?


And for further reference, here's a track I recorded all by myself this weekend using many of the same techniques as the song above (Guitars plugged directly into the laptop with a virtual amp, vocals recorded into a tape recorder and then transferred to GB, etc.):

https://soundcloud.com/ian_dizzle/hold-on-were-goin-home-mono

To me it sounds much clearer, even though it has easily double the amount of tracks and effects on it. Any idea what could be making the tracks sound so different if they were both recorded by the same people using the same methods?

 

[mjbphotos]

Re-record the vocal - if it was clipping and bad-sounding when recorded, no amount of work is oging to make it osund much better.
On the guitar - amp sims can lose all the dynamics of your playing if you are are not careful with settings - maybe that's the problem? Sorry, can't listen while at work.

 

[David Cooke]

The reason you might think the guitar tone is different after you record might be because you aren't hearing the picking and the resonance of the actual guitar like you are when you're playing. It happens a lot of times with rock guitarists too who generally use too much gain they aren't just hearing the amp they are hearing themselves and theres also psychology behind it too so don't think headphones will solve this. Just a theory. I'd suggest you turn the gain down and eq it a bit differently if you aren't happy with your tone. Not having a decebt interface will give it a bit of that blanket-over-the-speakers type sound. My 2 cents

 

[Ian M.]

Re-record the vocal - if it was clipping and bad-sounding when recorded, no amount of work is oging to make it osund much better.
On the guitar - amp sims can lose all the dynamics of your playing if you are are not careful with settings - maybe that's the problem? Sorry, can't listen while at work.

For the vocals we were going for a warm kind of distortion by recording it on tape first. However, the end result produced harsher distortion than we intended. Being new to this and also a subjective part of the recording process I can't objectively tell if it works or if it sounds like crap. If you could check it out when you get home I'd appreciate it!

The reason you might think the guitar tone is different after you record might be because you aren't hearing the picking and the resonance of the actual guitar like you are when you're playing. It happens a lot of times with rock guitarists too who generally use too much gain they aren't just hearing the amp they are hearing themselves and theres also psychology behind it too so don't think headphones will solve this. Just a theory. I'd suggest you turn the gain down and eq it a bit differently if you aren't happy with your tone. Not having a decebt interface will give it a bit of that blanket-over-the-speakers type sound. My 2 cents

Yeah, I'm not using an interface to record, just a guitar plugged directly into the laptop. The blanket-over-the-speakers sound is a great way to describe it, as the attack and high-end of the guitar doesn't come through and the final result is more muffled than I'd like. I'll try messing around with the EQ, but if worse comes to worse it wouldn't hurt for me to invest in a decent interface.