Pain By Numbers.

[RAMI]

Cool rock guitars - I enjoyed the change of tone & emphasis with the piano too.
Classic rock guitars & valve amps - you're becomeing a classicist.
Great backing track!

Thanx a lot, Ray.

I can't wait to get this one done. I just have 2 lines to write for the verses.

I can't believe I have keyboards in some of my tunes now! What has become of me????

I've never had anything against real keys, like piano and organ. It's synths, fake strings, 1980's "Tear for Fears" type sounds that I hate (even though I don't hate TFF for what they do. They actually have some really great songs).

 

[Steenamaroo]

You kick a lot of ass RAMI, but this we knew.
New guitar sounds great.

The piano sounded a bit 80s casio but that's rich coming from me, and it probably wont with the vocals over the top.
Can't wait to hear those!

 

[RAMI]

You kick a lot of ass RAMI, but this we knew. New guitar sounds great..

Thanx a lot Steen.

The piano sounded a bit 80s casio

Really? I'm no expert on piano sounds, so you might be right. But I thought I had a pretty decent piano sound there. Anyway, it will be under the vocals, so hopefully it will do it's job without sounding too cheesy.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Maybe it's just 'cos there's no sustain or, at least, it sounds like there's no sustain.
I always find that a bit odd sounding.

Very few people could write and record an instrumental (you know what I mean) that keeps you completely entertained.
Great job.

 

[Mr Clean]

Got to love the sound of an SG. I really like that lead riff and the tone. Sounds super sweet. Drums sound as great as ever.

Looking forward to hearing the vocals on this one.

 

[RAMI]

Maybe it's just 'cos there's no sustain or, at least, it sounds like there's no sustain.
I always find that a bit odd sounding.

I see. Good point. I might re-record those parts while holding down the sustain pedal. Maybe it will help. Thanx brother.

 

[RAMI]

Got to love the sound of an SG. I really like that lead riff and the tone. Sounds super sweet. Drums sound as great as ever.

Looking forward to hearing the vocals on this one.

Thanx buddy. It's going to be hard to convince myself to use my Strat again for rock songs. I might use it for one of the tracks when I double a part, just for variety. Or maybe I'll just use it for cleaner sounds. Or not.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Thanx buddy. It's going to be hard to convince myself to use my Strat again for rock songs. I might use it for one of the tracks when I double a part, just for variety. Or maybe I'll just use it for cleaner sounds. Or not.

It's gonna be like new-mic-syndrome, huh? You just use the SG for everything for a while until the novelty wears off.
You're probably on to something with the doubling parts thing.

I don't do much e-guitar work but when I do I get the feeling it'd be nice to have a strat kicking about for variety.
I've only got the epi les paul with BB pups at the minute.

 

[RAMI]

You just use the SG for everything for a while until the novelty wears off.

Yeah, I figure that's what's going to happen. For now, all I want to do is play the SG. Eventually, I'll make decisions based on what's right for the particular part. Right now, it's more of an emotional thing. I'm in love with the SG so it's all I want to play. Luckily for this tune, I think the SG was the right guitar to use anyway.

Same thing with the new piano to a lesser extent. I love the thing, but I've never been a huge "keyboard in rock songs" fan, so it was easier to make a decision on where not to use the piano in this tune, for example.

 

[Steenamaroo]

I love the thing, but I've never been a huge "keyboard in rock songs" fan, so it was easier to make a decision on where not to use the piano in this tune, for example.

Fair play man. People usually gradually improve when they add new strings to the bow, but I remember listening to the piano parts in a recent song and thinking, shit...he's really going for it here!
That was impressive.

 

[Greg_L]

Thanx buddy. It's going to be hard to convince myself to use my Strat again for rock songs. I might use it for one of the tracks when I double a part, just for variety. Or maybe I'll just use it for cleaner sounds. Or not.

I think it's good to use different guitars for the rhythms. Or at least different amp settings. I've done a ton of songs with my SG on one side and my Strat on the other. Probably more than half the songs I've ever posted in here were done that way. I don't use either guitar much anymore, but I still follow the same principle - Les Paul on one side, my Hallmark Mosrite clone on the other. Or if I do use the same guitar, I change the amp, amp settings, speaker, etc. Bottom line - change something. I think rhythms sound bigger and better that way.

 

[RAMI]

Fair play man. People usually gradually improve when they add new strings to the bow, but I remember listening to the piano parts in a recent song and thinking, shit...he's really going for it here!
That was impressive.

The Alice Cooper cover I did, probably. Yeah, I bit off quite a bit there. I didn't want to sequence or use MIDI, so I ended up practicing that part until I pulled a few hairs out of my head and was finally able to record it live.

 

[Steenamaroo]

The Alice Cooper cover I did

That's the one.

I ended up practicing that part until I pulled a few hairs out of my head and was finally able to record it live.

It showed. (not the hair bit...)

 

[Tadpui]

Looking forward to hearing this with vocals, interesting backing track here. Love the drumming, although the drums sound...I dunno...dry? Not quite sure what the element is there...it's like they want to be a little beefier and with a little more ambience. Nice drumming though, and the toms sound terrific. Guitars sound good to me, and have interesting stuff to do. That little Fender of yours still kills it for such a tiny little thing.

 

[RAMI]

Looking forward to hearing this with vocals, interesting backing track here. Love the drumming, although the drums sound...I dunno...dry? Not quite sure what the element is there...it's like they want to be a little beefier and with a little more ambience. Nice drumming though, and the toms sound terrific. Guitars sound good to me, and have interesting stuff to do. That little Fender of yours still kills it for such a tiny little thing.

Thanx a lot man.

The drums being dry is something I've heard before and I don't get it. I'm not disagreeing because if more than one person has said it, I'm sure there's something to it. But the reason I don't get it is that I add quite a bit of reverb to them. I know that will get lost in a mix to a certain extent, but if I use Greg's drums as an example, he has often said that he doesn't add any reverb to them, but they've never stood out as being "dry" sounding to me, even though they also don't seem to have a lot of room to them either. They just sound like good, "dry-ish" drums. So I'm wondering what it is about my sound that makes several people comment that they sound dry.

Like I said, I'm not disputing it for a second. It's more about wanting to improve my sound so that I don't get that "dry" comment any more. I know that if I added more reverb to them, they'd end up sounding too 80's-ish, which is the last thing I want.

I really appreciate the comment, though. I'll get to the bottom of it if it kills me.

 

[RAMI]

....I'm going to re-evaluate pretty much everything about how I process my drums. I think I'm over-doing it and killing the life out of them. I don't want to start experimenting now, because I know if I start, I'll be up until 4am, and I have to wake up at 5am, so that wouldn't be a good idea.

But I just quickly solo'd my drums and tried a few things and I think I know what I'm doing wrong, and have been doing wrong for a while now.

For starters, I've been compressing my snare and kik as well as putting the whole kit through a compressor (Density III). I just quickly bypassed the compressor that's on my snare and the beef just popped out. I think I was killing it, even though I was only compressing it for 2-3db's. It definitely sounded better without the compressor on the snare. I was also cutting some low's and low-mids from my overheads and snare. It also sounded better when I bypassed those, too.

So, basically, when I have more time tomorrow, I think I'm going to end up taking off the compressor that's on the snare, and also taking off the EQ's that are on my snare and overheads.

I'm actually kind of excited to do this, because for the few seconds I experimented with it, they already sounded better.

I'm pretty sure that's why people were sometimes describing my drums as "dry" or lacking some beef. I don't think they need more "room", they were just having their balls cut off with too much compression and EQ. I think so, anyway. I'll find out tomorrow.

Thanx Tadpui. You gave me food for thought that will hopefully lead to better sounding drums.

 

[Greg_L]

It's true that there have been many times I've used no reverb on my kit at all. That's not all the time though. My faster more in-your-face mixes usually have little to no reverb on the kit...or anything else for that matter. Some others mixes will get some room on the kit. What I never do is make it noticeable in the mix. You can hear the room on my drums solo'd, but not in the mix. I HATE reverb tails unless I'm going full crazy surf bonkers. I like a big room effect but with quick decay. That's what real rooms sound like - even big ones. There's no long echoing reverb tails in real life unless you're in Madison Square Garden, and I'm not making a mix to sound like I'm in there. Big room, quick decay, good drum sound.

 

[Tadpui]

Also take into consideration that I spent a couple of hours tonight laboring over one of my own fake drum tracks with EZDrummer and an e-kit. So my perception of what real drums in a real room sound like are most likely skewed at the moment (and in general ).

Unfortunately I'm too much of a novice to really give you a quantitative opinion on your drum sound. I just wanted them...bigger. Like a more present snare, mainly. The kick and snare are so huge to the fundamentals of western 4/4 music, something in the back of my brain just wants them to be featured in a mix. I just don't know how to elucidate what that means in terms of knobs and sliders.

I tend to compress the holy living shit out of the kick and snare, and mix them in at relatively low levels. Let the overheads do the work, and let the squashed kick and snare accentuate it. But again, that's me as a beginner drum mixer...

 

[dobro]

EDIT AGAIN: So that this thread doesn't go to waste, here's the instrumental version for now. Any comments on the mix so far will still help me a lot.

That little toy piano sound at 1.08 sounds little girl lost in the woods. Either bring it up or give it some kinda attitude. I don't think it's supposed to have attitude, so how can you make it better heard? Turn it up?

This just sounds so good. Listening to certain stuff in the this forum has got me listening to my own stuff with a more critical ear. Thanks.

 

[dobro]

It's true that there have been many times I've used no reverb on my kit at all. That's not all the time though. My faster more in-your-face mixes usually have little to no reverb on the kit...or anything else for that matter. Some others mixes will get some room on the kit. What I never do is make it noticeable in the mix. You can hear the room on my drums solo'd, but not in the mix. I HATE reverb tails unless I'm going full crazy surf bonkers. I like a big room effect but with quick decay. That's what real rooms sound like - even big ones. There's no long echoing reverb tails in real life unless you're in Madison Square Garden, and I'm not making a mix to sound like I'm in there. Big room, quick decay, good drum sound.

Thank you.