new acoustic instrumentals

patlang12

patlang12

New member
I have been home for the holidays and a friend called me up and asked me if I wanted to record a few songs. They are pretty different from what I usually play, but I would like to hear what you all think of them. They are acoustic instrumentals, one of them also has drums and bass. The songs were pretty much written and recorded in a week so it was a quick project, but a lot of fun. We did four songs, here are two of them:

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=10741
http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=10742
 
Great stuff - these turned out nicely for a quick jam session!

I like the complexity of the arrangement on the first one - really keeps things moving. On a couple of the passages it sounds like the picking on the banjo (?) is lagging a little. So it tends to work better when the guitar and the banjo are not picking complex passages at the same time, which makes it sound a little busy. The drums and bass sound lofi but good - it fits the song.

I like the second one also, although (at least on my phones) the hard plucked lead guitar started to hurt my head a bit. I'd limit the signal or roll off some of the treble. But I like how the two guitars have different voices - mellow for the fingerpicking, resonant for the lead. Is that a dobro on the lead? Nice playing.
 
jmasek said:
Great stuff - these turned out nicely for a quick jam session!

I like the complexity of the arrangement on the first one - really keeps things moving. On a couple of the passages it sounds like the picking on the banjo (?) is lagging a little. So it tends to work better when the guitar and the banjo are not picking complex passages at the same time, which makes it sound a little busy. The drums and bass sound lofi but good - it fits the song.

I like the second one also, although (at least on my phones) the hard plucked lead guitar started to hurt my head a bit. I'd limit the signal or roll off some of the treble. But I like how the two guitars have different voices - mellow for the fingerpicking, resonant for the lead. Is that a dobro on the lead? Nice playing.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. We wanted to make sure the arrangement of the first one was complex so that the song didn't get boring. There actually is no banjo, just a guitar and a dobro. I'm glad the drum sound works because I had a helluva time getting to not sound horrible. The snare is 30 years old and parts of it were so corroded away that we couldn't really tune it.

One the second one I did almost no mixing at all. I was worried that the lead was getting a little too bright and it sounds like maybe it did. It is not a dobro on that one actually. The lead is on a koa martin dreadnought and the fingerpicking is on a martin 000X1.
 
I like the 2nd one. The lead seems to be played real "hard" and the sound kind of smacks you in the face in a few places. :D Sounds really good though, nice playing.

What kind of mics/room did you record with, and how'd you set it up? Some details would be nice, I like the sound you got.
 
Pumpkin Whiskey - I really like the groove you got between the drums and rhythm guitar. The busy-ness is fine for me. Definitely not boring :D.
For me, the dobro could be louder and the kick drum seems a bit hot. Could be mic placement was too far away, just a thought.....
Again, very cool tune, with excellent live delivery.....:D:):D:)
 
thanks for all the replys. As far as the mics and placement I'll try to write everything I can remember.

The mics we used were not great mics, we just experimented with what we had until we found what sounded good, which was not always the most obvious choice. On pumpkin whiskey we recorded it all live except the lead guitar part which we overdubbed because there was too much bleed in the original track. The drums had a nady starpower 9 in the kick, about two inches from the inside head. The snare mic was about six inches away from the snare (I think, we moved it around a lot and I can't remember exactly where it ended up). The snare mic was a CAD tsm411 (from a CAD drum mic set). The overhead was a few feet above the drums, somewhere in between the kick and snare. The overhead mic was a MXL 992. The dobro was recorded in a bathroom. I used sm57 on it about two feet away pointed at the cone. The bass was recorded with a sm57 on the grill of the cab. The lead guitar part was recorded in a bedroom with the MXL 992 at about the 12th fret about a foot away.

For the second song the lead guitar had the MXL 992 at the 12th fret about a foot away and a sm57 at the 3rd fret a few inches away. The rhythm guitar had a CAD GXL1200 (from the CAD drum mic set) at the 12th fret about a foot away and a nady starpower 9 at the 3rd fret a few inches away. The mics aren't great but they are all we had so I'm pretty happy with the results considering what we used. I'll try to post some pictures of the room so you can see the setup we used.
 
I listened with particular interest as I was given a resonator guitar at xmas.
I'm at Pumpkin Whiskey-
It soudns really good - agree with some comments about the bass drum - generally the drums at too loud OR the dobro could be louder.
I know it's part of the dobro's thing but both gits are toppy with not much mid or bottom. the bass fills in the bottom well but might use a 3khz pinch to give it more defiinition & fill in some missing git mids.
Nice stuff by the way.
 
PUMPKIN WHISKEY 3:
this is really cool. i like the funky guitar tone you start out with for the rhythm guitar. it sounds cheep, but really works well in the mix. it reminds me of how my shitty Ovation sounds(note: i didn't read any comments before i wrote, so i didn't know that was a dobro). it's misleading because i was expecting something that was a roughly recorded tune, but this holds it's own really well. nice balance of tones and nice playing as far as i'm concerned. groovy tune!

2ND TUNE:
some really nice guitaring. it might sound a little tiny on some of those hits, but it makes it sound more "real" or like a lap steel. good stuff, but it's hard to enjoy as much as the first (which i really dug) because of the simplicity or stripped down nature, but it's still a cool tune for sure. nice work man!
 
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