Recordings on a reasonable budget, what do you think?

M

mousedadrummer

Junior Engineer
Hey,

I haven't been recording for long, perhaps about half a year, I'm slowly building up my equipment to a reasonable standard, well at least trying to, atm i have a slight problem with my computer but i dont wanna go into that here lol Anyway, ive recorded my band and some of the recordings can be heard at

www.myspace.com/onlyofyouuk or our website www.onlyofyou.co.uk

Have a listen and tell me what you think, wheather im crap or ive done well on my budget and considering the equipment i have, fanx alot

Equipment at the moment:

Alesis Multimix 8 Firewire interface
Cubase SX
Shure Sm57
Rode Nt1
2 Takstar PCM1600 pencil condensors
JTS bass drum mic
A few other odd, cheap mics

all in all, id say ive spent about £300 on all this gear
 
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Listening on headphones...

Shift From Normality sounds pretty good even though it's smothered in distortion. Guitar on the right sounds way too distorted. Drums sound buried. I think a better amp/distortion, or less of it would sound a lot better. And some slight mix adjustments would help too. Raise the drums, and maybe the vocals slightly.

It sounds cool though and I like it. I think you'd benefit most from a better amp, or as I said, turning down the distortion a little.

"Tony Why" sounds good too, I like it. Guitars sound better in this one. I like the chord progression. Tight playing too.

Did you record these songs one track at a time or in a live setting?

I think you're doing good so far.
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hey, cheers, the songs were recorded one track at a time and i agree with what you say about the distortion, try telling that to the guitarist though, ive had the discussion many times lol but yer, fanx for ur opinion!
 
In Your Dreams just started playing. Nice acoustic guitar sound, even with MySpace's shitty quality. Maybe slightly too much reverb on the vocals.

But I really like the song a lot.

What kind of guitar(s) did you use in that song? (When distorted guitars come in it sounds really cool, I like the change. If only the guitars were turned down some though, they're clipping like crazy and it sounds fuzzy/real loud, if you turned them down/retracked without the clipping it'd sound awesome).
 
klkl, yer the guitars on in ur dreams were a yamaha acoustic, dnt no the model or n e thin n a fender strat. We wanted it to really hit u at the end of that song, like the guitars come in with a bang kinda thing, but yer probably a bit too loud

cheers
 
not bad.

you may want to explain to your guitarist that for live purposes, balls-out distortion is fine, but for the studio he's better off backing off the distortion and double-tracking the rhythm. distortion by its very nature compresses the audio, which squashes the dynamic range. this results in lot of crunch but a very small sound. the guitar will sound MUCH bigger and in your face if you double-track them with less distortion and pan each track left and right (i'd go 9 and 3 o'clock with the drum overheads at 10 and 2).

he may also want to lower some of the bass freqs (you could even do this without his knowledge in your daw) and let the bass guitar carry the low end. things muddy up when the bass and rhythm are fighting for the same freqs. playing solo he may think the guitar has no beef without major distortion and low end, but that's irrelevant when it comes to marrying the parts together for a song in a quest for a punchy rock sound.

the drums need to be louder in the mix on every song.

for what you're using, you've done pretty well for yourself. much better than my stuff sounded when i started out!

cheers!
 
Not bad mousedadrummer. Nice lead vocal sound but too much reverb...and as others said the guitar dominates the mix too much on "shift from..."...plus it's kind of harsh and thin sounding to me, but I'm more a fan of a thicker Les Paul type of sound. I like the electric guitar sound better on "in your dreams". If you want to hear something with the guitar much further back in the mix you might have a listen to my myspace page. I play guitar and most of the keyboard parts: http://www.myspace.com/lejaz I play a different style of music, but may be worth a listen. All that said, I wish I sounded that good at your age!
 
Yeah, guitarists & distortion, like bass payers & chest thump, drummers and stereo separation and vocalists with cabaret ahs.
Did you ever see Hail Hail Rock n Roll where Keith Richards argues with Berry about the settings on his amp not sounding that way when recorded? Classic demonstration of the problem.
Get him to record the same track clean, tell him you need it for tonal balance/reference or something then either reamp it of throw on the voxengo boogex free vst at an apprpopriate setting & SHOW him the difference.
 
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