Wanna listen to my godawful guitar playing?

S

Shaky Tee

Between being and nothing
Really??? You do???

Well hop on over to my page and AL and check it

The song is called "If All The World Were Like New York City", and it's admittedly something I threw together this weekend.

I recorded this piece aiming a Shure SM 57 at my badly tuned Baby Taylor guitar and my vocals using an Oktava MK319.

I really had to heavily compress my vocals, and I did a lot of EQing. I think they came out ok, but, again, it's a VERY ROUGH demo.

And I'm sorry about the hum. It seems to happen every time I use my Tascam US-224's ASIO drivers with my audio recording software (anyone know how to fix that?)

When I redo this, the arrangement is going to be a lot lusher, not to mention a lot faster.

Anyway, is this song worth further work? And waddya think of the lyrics?

Thanks all!

Oh, and while you are there, check out the other artists on AL. Buy a CD if you can. They REALLY need your support. Thanks again!!
 
listened .......

man that guitar....lol....but it does the job...when your singing i hear a huge hiss .....lyrically its very cool....love would be discrete down on market??..street....

i would love you and hate you nd need you too.....like that too..


1:..tune it up..

2:...fix the hiss



fix it post it !!!!

good song btw...

jamal
 
Hey Jamal!! Thanks.

I'm thinking it's time I get a new guitar. I was warned that the Baby Taylor couldn't withstand the dry climate, and well...I think that's what's going on. But, well the Taylor factory is here in El Cajon, so I may just bring it down there and have them look into -it. I try my best to tune the damn thing, and well, I can't seem to get anywhere...

I think the hiss is being caused by all that compression I used. Like I said, there's also a hum that seems to happen everytime I use the ASIO drivers for my Tascam. I wish I knew how to get rid of it.
 
yeah i was gonna say too the actual guitar part is cool its just so distracting being out of tune like that.......




.....of course thats exactly how my voice is most of the time and sadly i cant take back to the factory....lol



j
 
I bought a baby taylor for my daughter a few years ago, and it does the same thing...and the climate here is about as dry as your average swamp during a monsoon.

:D

Definitely keep the song. How often do I get to hear "tenderloin" and "purloin" in the same day. Cool, trippy, urbanesque stuff.

You already seem to know the rough spots in terms of this recording, but I'll add that compression will definitely make a floor noise into a roaring hiss. Also, you mentioned that you EQ'd the vocals...to me, it sounds like you maybe hyped the high end and took some lows out...maybe not, but if you did, I'd leave some of the lows in the vocal. Sounds kinda' thin without 'em.

Have a great whatever :D
Chris
 
Hey Chris! Thanks!!

Yeah, I thought I could get by by keeping the guitar in it's case and not need the humidifier. Oh well...

Yeah, I used the low shelf EQ function in N-Track and it made the highs even higher...

I guess I should have used a Gating thing?

Oh well...I'm consdering resinging this anyway...
 
It's a song with more work, and the lyrics are descriptive without being cliché.

Spinning it for the third time now... "We still face hunger at the feast"... there's also a bit about 9/11...

So, the hiss is in your vocal track... I heard it go out for a few seconds after verse one. Is there a way to mute the vocal track when it's just hiss, it's not nearly as noticeable when you're singing.

Do you experience any vocal fatigue? Sorry if that's an impertinent question; it sounds like you might.
 
Personally, I think I'd not worry about gating, EQing, and all the fancy smancy mics you must have and such. I am of the belief that you can get a great sound with "so called inadequate" equipment, and what you are using is definately several steps above that. I would work more on the source... doing whatever it takes to get the guitar in tune, and concern yourself more about getting a good performance into your mic(s).

Not that this means anything, but I hardly ever use a lot of EQ, and find that you can get yourself into more trouble trying to "fix" something with it, rather than using it for 'enhancement.' Can't really help you with the hum/hiss problem, but it would be nice to conquer that too. But sticking a 57 in front of your lil' taylor should get you a decent enough sound. No...not nashville slick, but a GOOD sound.

Iron out a couple of these kinks and I think you'll jump out of the "really ruff" stage, to a adequate demo stage in a hurry.

Also, you might think about getting someone in the know (if you can...or can afford to pay someone) to help get the "nastys" out of your system so you can at least get a fairly clean sound. You don't need a full blown setup to do that. It may be something as simple as a bum cord, or something. But on this end, I think people could guess all night long as to what the problem might be without looking specifically at your setup. Hopefully I might be wrong on this account, and some electrical guru will come along and tell you exactly what to do.
 
Thank you all for your comments!

Participant,

I have this plugin called Floor Fish that I now think I should have used. OTOH, someone pointed out to me the technique of backing away from the mic when I sing louder, which I definitely neglected to do this time.

If I don't figure out how to get rid of that hum using my Tascam's Asio drivers, I'm gonna switch to my VXPocket for recording vocals. I get no pops or clicks when using MME drivers on that thing.

And yeah, I've been experiencing some vocal fatigue lately. I blew my voice out warming it up last week, and it's taken a while for it to come around again.

Mixmkr, thanks. I acutally got a new cable for my mic to preamp, and actally, the hiss came from my vocal track and not the guitar track. I probably didn't spend enough time tuning the guitar before recording it. Also there was the voice placement thing.

I gotta find a local electrical guru. It's kinda hard to find people who record with their laptops in the San Diego area, but I guess I gotta start trying...
 
Re: Thank you all for your comments!

Shaky Tee said:
Participant,

And yeah, I've been experiencing some vocal fatigue lately. I blew my voice out warming it up last week, and it's taken a while for it to come around again
Click to expand...

Yeah it's something in your vocal tone... I hesitate to bring it up, because I'm afraid you may be sensitive to it... but wtf this place is for help, right?

Your voice, to me, sounds close to a falsetto. May have asked this before but-- have you ever had a vocal coach? You obviously have some talent there, but the fact that you get vocal fatigue and your vocal tone suggest that you need some training. A more relaxed throat, without that "tightening" you probably feel would help. It's likely your larynx (voicebox) is too high.

Now I'm not a vocal coach, but have been training my own voice for some time. A method that takes some practice is the "yawning" technique... this lowers your larynx, relaxes and opens the throat, and helps the fatigue quite a bit.

More on this in Roger Love's book "Set Your Voice Free", or you could enlist the help of a vocal coach. This is if you'd like to get rid of the fatigue, and be able to sing all the time without losing your voice.

Good Luck


Chad
 
Holy schmolly...yeah you need to tune that sucker. When was the last time you put new strings on it? Take it down to the music shop and have them do a setup, you'd be suprised. A lot of this isn't just guitar tuning though, I'm hearing wrong strings and wrong frets here and there :)

Also, I know that playing with your fingernails is kind of easier, but it doesn't sound that great. Try a very very thin pick (like fender thins) for strumming songs like this, they'll come out much nicer.

Your voice is nice as usual...if you ever learn how to use reverb you're going to be dangerous!!!!

Good song, good lyrics!

Slackmaster 2000
 
I agree with Slack that you may want to have someone look at that guit. You may need to get the neck straightened out. A guitar with a warped neck is impossible to properly tune.

A micing trick you might want to try is to position the 57 at the 12th fret and angle it 45 degrees or so towards the sound hole.
 
Thanks guys!!

There's a couple of mom and pop music places in town that could probably look at my guitar for tunability purposes.

The manufacturer of it is also based in El Cajon as well (!). So they may be expecting a visit from me.

Part, I've heard both good and bad things about Roger Love's book. While I did have avocal coach for a few years, I had been out of practice for a while, and it's been difficult for me to loosen up the throat area.

Thanks for reminding me of the "yawning" technique.

At this point, I'm looking for new warm up techniques. The Roger Love book couldn't hurt.
 
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