What in the sam hell?

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Slackmaster2K

Slackmaster2K

Gone
Got a wierd one for anyone interested.

Went to sleep a few nights back trying to find a direction for the main progression of this tune and couldn't. Had a crazy ass nightmare and woke up with everything figured out. That should happen more often...

First of all I have to say that I hate mp3 with a friggin passion. 128kbps sounds like garbage. Total loss of clarity in all my highs both guitar and drums.

Same setup as last time. All the "special effects" were done with my guitar and a whole buttload of reverb. The voices are me after a run-in with Goldwave. Fun stuff.

Oh and I broke my cardinal rule and used my old effects box on this one. It's a boss something or other.....doesn't have the case anymore so it's just a big circuit board that shocks me every now and then.

All the guitar and bass parts were recorded this evening...the effects and voices were recorded yesterday. The solos are really rushed unfortunately...you can hear me going "hmmm, now what" every now and then. I'm just too damn lazy to spend days and days on a single tune....eventually.....excuses excuses.

Blah blah I can ramble for hours. This is mixed for and should really be listened to with headphones. Trust me.


lemme know

Slackmaster 2000
 
This has to be my fave...
Kick drum is consistent throughout... Something was definately going awry with the last song I listened to...
There's one thing that bugged me... And I have noticed it on many, many other demo's that I have heard... And probably a few pro recordings...
Your distorted guitar sounds quieter than the clean guitar...
I don't know how to put it into words but I had this problem alot live... And when you turn down the clean channel, you can't hear it... I spent more time tweaking the levels between my two channels on my amp than anything...
I would suggest more upper mids on the distorted channel but I can't seem to work those upper mids into my own sound so I donno.
I generally have my distorted channel cranked so loud live that you usually cant hear the clean channel... Yet the clean channel wants to be so loud... I have my distorted channel on 10 and my clean channel on 2.25... And sometimes soundmen ask me to turn the clean channel down!!! It might be my shitty Peavy preamp (Which has the poorest excuse for a parametric EQ you'll ever hear) but it is all tube... I don't know...
Somehow distortion is overpowered by clean volume in a way that I can't seem to compensate for.
EQ and compression would probably do it.
I don't run my live rig through any effects except an Alesis M-eq230.. I eq the clean channel and the distorted channel seperately... Its the only wat I can get near-consistant volume between the two...
I bet this applies to recording too...
I havent really used any clean channel in recording yet... I started avoiding it because of the problems it presented on stage... And my tastes became heavier and heavier... One day I'll bust out with a blues tune since it seems to be what you guys drool over...

S8-N
P.S. Dreams provide the best inspiration ever... If you are disciplined enough to remember them...
 
I know exactly what you mean. The problem is that I wrote the guts of this tune on an accoustic....on which the chorus sounds real good. Electrifying it didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I'll have to work out something new for it. I'd like to compeletely eliminate the clean guitar from the chorus.

Another problem is that the distorted guitar was competing with my leads so I had to quiet it down and pan it a bit for clarity. Didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I guess this also boils down to arrangement. I'll work it out next time I dream I suppose :)

I just did this so fast because I was excited. The lightbulb was on and I didn't want to spend too much time perfecting anything...I just wanted to see how it would sound if you know what I mean...and I wanted some feedback to make sure that my head isn't fudging things like it has a tendancy to do. Now comes the boring part that I'll probably put off for a month or so...they don't call me slacker for nothing. I have to get shit down in a single night or I'll get bored and move past it...story of my life. So many ideas so little time :(

Slackmaster 2000
 
I really like this one. It creates a kinda mellow vibe like the way my head used to feel the day after an all-nighter. You ever listen to any Butthole Surfers? The guitar towards the end reminds me of Paul Leary from The B.S. in the late 80's. Especially the heavy tremolo action and the pitch shift on the voice. As for the mix, I'm definitely no expert but it sounds good to me. It seems that in an earlier post you had mentioned that you are using software drums, they sound really good. Which one are you using? I use Fruity Loops and have found it to be a godsend.
 
It's a program called Drums! Go to www.harmony-central.com and get into the software section...you'll find a link to the website there. It's a good program in my opinion...a bit pricy for the number of bugs and inconsistancies though ($50). No midi or anything so it's very much like struggling with an actual moron! (BTW, that's vibrato...no trem bar on my les paul)

Slackmaster 2000

[This message has been edited by Slackmaster2K (edited 10-27-1999).]
 
After your ammended post I had to go back and listen to it again. Nice touch on the vibrato, it definitely fooled me. Anyway, I will probably upload my 1st mp3 to my web page tonight; I'd like your opinion and anyone else's on the mix and on what improvements I can make.

dmc

[This message has been edited by dmcsilva (edited 10-27-1999).]
 
"The stuff that dreams are made of..." Ok, that's a pretty cheesy quote...but if everybody had nightmares like you did, music in general would be better off...Your whole sound is excellent. This tune has a lot of emotional feel to it...I'd like to know, if you wouldn't mind me asking, about how long did the actual recording process take, including any programing of the drums. I don't think most people realize that a good sound can take some time. For me (and I am nowhere close to you in production ability or musicianship) getting a tune down as an actual recording(even rough) can take a hundred times longer than the riffs that form the basis of the thing in the first place...and I'm sure the folks just getting their first equipment would like to know too...gibs
 
Well...I actually wrote the guts of the tune about a year ago during a jam session with a friend of mine (or afterwards...whichever). Very simple jazz (maybe?) chords. I've always wanted to do SOMETHING with it and finally figured it out this weekend in my "dream"...I think I might have actually been awake...kind of that wierd stage right in between where things are a bit twisted.

Anyway, I did the initial drums, simple guitar, and half the sound effects on Monday. Took about 40 minutes for the sound effects...the voices took a while cause I'd never done that. The initial drums took about an hour or so to get out. Once I knew it would sound cool I quit for the night.

Yesterday I came home from work at about 2PM and went at it. Played through it a few times and decided where the changes would be, then modified the drum track to reflect this. Then I did the rest of the sound effects...oh, and I wrote the little poem at work (SLACKER!)...Then the rhythm track took two takes. It's played solid from start to finish. The sound took about 10 minutes to get and the playing took maybe 20 minutes. I didn't have a bassline at the time so I had to come up with one and practice it. I guess that took about an hour and about 4 takes to get the sound right so it was audible (I wish I had a good amp!) and error free(ish). Then there are two accoustic tracks that I took out cause they just muddied everything up...they took about 30 minutes to record...what a waste. The distorted guitar took about 5 seconds to record...just picked a cool sound out of the Boss and went with it. Used the same sound on the solo guitar parts. The end solo was done in a single take and the middle solos were done in maybe two-three takes each. I'm going to redo them all in one long wav so that I can capture the feel of the song. As it is they're disproportionate and need work (TIMING!). Let's see...then it's just a matter of mixing...I just move the sliders up and down until the levels are right. Applied default compressor and reverb settings to bass and drums and rhythm guitar. Got rid of some noise and shit. That process probably took about an hour.

So I'd say that all in all I worked on it for about 2 hours on monday and yesterday from 2:30PM to about 11:30PM...not solid though...took an hour nap and ate dinner...smoked some smokes. 6 to 8 hours maybe? So 8 to 10 hours total I guess. But the song has probably been mulling in my mind for a year.

This is only the 2nd full song I've recorded with my PC and I've recorded a few songs over the years on my 4-track. I don't do anything special at all. I leave my microphone right in front of the amp. My "mixer" is a Fostex 4-track running the monitor line into the computer (I know that's wrong but it works). I just record everything as loud as I can get it and usually end up mixing levels down...rarely up...and I avoid over-using effects at recording time. Basically everything's setup and I just plug in, tweek a bit, and hit record.

Personally I'm very excited that these things are turning out better than I had thought they would. The stuff I had done on the four track sounded really really bad.

Wow, long winded as usual. :) Thanks for responding!

Slackmaster 2000
 
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