Where Have All The Cowboys Gone...

J

JAPOV

Progressively Challenged...
What can I do with this VOX...?

https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=14150933

Done no time, done no crime, what's your sign,
Meat head street cred
Outa' your mind, feelin' fine, your sun don't shine,
Pray you don't wind up dead

No credit for men like ol' John Wayne
You bling-bling 'cause you're feeling no pain

Decadence in sin city
My boots and hat will never betray me
Where have all the cowboys gone...

Mama cried, Daddy lied, brother died
Pleasure to meet you
Downtown wise, Defiant pride, so you try
These streets don't forgive fools

No account for men like Johnny Cash
Love the blame 'caue your fame will never last

Decadence in sin city
My boots and hat will never betray me
Where have all the cowboys gone...

Tall in the saddle with a dead-eye six gun
Wrong or right the west had to be won
Hollywood shining brighter than the setting sun
I beg your pardon but a cowboy got it done
Where have all the cowboys gone...
 
I love that main guitar riff - I'll leave it to other more knowledgeable people to comment on the vocals. They sound country-ish which is cool considering the theme of the song. Catchy!
 
Good song fun cool guitar work and you can sing but...IMO you have a good voice and stay decently in tune..In some parts you're singing the words but you're not singing the shit out of the words your just singing them...in certain parts you get a little more into and get a little raspy and that's where I think this needs to go...more emotion and loosen up go crazy take the notes a little longer...hell I don't know. You can also double them and harmonies in parts would also add some weight to the vocals...but you have a good voice ...totally good enough to sing your songs...you just haven't learned to play it ( use your voice) as well as your play guitar...it's an instrument and you have to get used to using it ripping with it.. I think your voice could get in the Axel Rose direction just don't be afraid of going a little higher now and then and getting raspy....
 
Tequila, Marlboros, and Axl Rose ruined my voice 30yrs ago :ROFLMAO:

Here's my setup;
SM58 / PreSonus Audiobox iTwo (as a pre-amp) / BOSS ME80 (light comp and Eq) / POD Go (hard comp, little chorus, tile reverb with lots of predelay, parametric Eq and volume boost, interface) / Logic Pro (Comp, limiter, de-esser, Eq, room send).

With all that, I still keep the mic right in my mouth to maintain a consistent volume level...

I see videos of people singing into mics a foot away, people on the news with tiny condenser mics pinned to their collars..., what am I doing wrong?
 
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Nice riff, the vocal is great and I love the wah. Guitar tone has a bit of a hollow DI rasp to it. If Korn were playing this, what would it sound like :D? Good jam, nice job
 
JAPOV said:
Tequila, Marlboros, and Axl Rose ruined my voice 30yrs ago :ROFLMAO:

Here's my setup;
SM58 / PreSonus Audiobox iTwo (as a pre-amp) / BOSS ME80 (light comp and Eq) / POD Go (hard comp, little chorus, tile reverb with lots of predelay, parametric Eq and volume boost, interface) / Logic Pro (Comp, limiter, de-esser, Eq, room send).

With all that, I still keep the mic right in my mouth to maintain a consistent volume level...

I see videos of people singing into mics a foot away, people on the news with tiny condenser mics pinned to their collars..., what am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...
Man who knows....It's all smoke n frickin mirrors. There's this headroom thing.
I'm totally amature but I am getting closer..
So my goal has been to lay down my vocal as I wanted it recorded because I have been doing all live one shot recordings. That means what I hear going in is the end product with reverb and eq done.
No fiddling with individual tracks after the fact. Just run it through a few filters, the whole file and I'm done.
By doing these I believe I got better at working with the mic and getting a decent recording live
You need a totally silent space when you record.
Your mic is fine..use a pop filter
Turn up the volume as far as you can without hearing noise
You do have to learn to play the mic meaning on soft parts come in on screaming parts back off. fading in and out for certain parts is cool..Like I said we practice our instruments like crazy but I find most musicians who also sing do not practice or work on vocal technique even 5% as much as they invest in playing their instruments....Thing is our voices are instruments to...the more we practice using them the more proficient we become.
There are ton of videos and audio files out there where they show you famous singers vocal tracks both raw and after and those are good to listen to understand how they approached their songs.
Some of the Beatles lost stuff is great to listen to...They were human and sometimes some takes sounded pretty bad...that sure gave me hope.
When you do the one shot lives, it disciplines you to get it right or have do the whole thing over again. I am still not great at singing live but I have gotten a lot better after doing the one shot stuff.

You can spend the rest of you life watching and listening to tutorials but just exercising / practicing will help you.....You have a rock solid voice you just need to practice practice practice and find your jam...what you like.

I stumbled upon this video the other day and I did find it interesting... I am planning on doing multitrack recordings this year with a few of the cats I played with in the mid 70's yeah like 50 years ago...fer cripes sake. I may utilize this trick when we lay down our stuff....or not ...we'll see



Lastly on the raspy... I always had a little rasp but nothing like Axel Rose or Rod....but inspired by someone here ( can't remember who it was ) they had done like a rolling stone quite different from the original..using poetic license. I used to have to do an hour drive in traffic coming home from work and I would run stuff through my head,,,music ideas would come about and low and behold I came up with this crazy idea of Like a rolling stone with this super raspy vocal....Man when I got home I ran back to my room and laid down a rough track and a few days later did one of my first one shot live recordings...I got some good feedback from it and the rest is misery..

 
TAE said:
So my goal has been to lay down my vocal as I wanted it recorded because I have been doing all live one shot recordings. That means what I hear going in is the end product
Click to expand...
RIGHT! Plug-n-Play!
Lots of folks believe you can work miracles by mastering...
I've learned that a computer is still just a computer lol, "garbage in / garbage out". The better your original track, the less mastering you have to do.
TAE said:
Turn up the volume as far as you can without hearing noise
You do have to learn to play the mic meaning on soft parts come in on screaming parts back off.
Click to expand...
I totally get the tone difference between close and distant mic, how your palate interacts with the diaphragm. However, if I just pull my mic 4" away the volume plummets. It's like I can't get enough drive without distorting. I'm literally eating my mic to maintain volume...
TAE said:
Man when I got home I ran back to my room and laid down a rough track and a few days later did one of my first one shot live recordings...
Click to expand...
Great track! I can totally hear the dynamics in that. Please describe you VOX rig ;)
 
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Great track! I can totally hear the dynamics in that. Please describe you VOX rig ;)
Click to expand...

Very simple then and still very simple...
That song was recorded with a SM57 for vocals and my keyboard going into a spirit folio eq'd and a little reverb that's it. Audio out into a little sony stereo digital recorder...took that file and loaded into the computer and leveled it out with Audacity...that is it.

For the one shot stuff these days I still use a sm 57 but I also sometimes use a ADK 51 ST condenser mic that I do like...but what do I know ;) The 57 or 58's were good enough for many pros back in the day and still are...Grammy's have been won off of them...so who knows.

Now I run my keys and mic into a Behringer Xenyx QX1204USB and the same thing.. no eq on the stereo keyboard and just a smidge of eq and reverb as needed on the vocal.
I run that usb stereo out into my iphone. I do the iphone so can video record the live performance. I can just edit the video's beginning and ending and if needed I can run the audio through audacity and then upload to youtube. Been through some medical shit these last 4 years so I have been a bit apathetic on pushing the red button.....Been playing a ton and some live performances with the country band I play in... We are booked for several once a month gigs at Downtown Disney this year....as it warms up it should start getting more peeps and more fun. Time will tell...
 
Well, hopefully that BOSS VE-8 is going to tighten things up for me...
I think the problem I'm having is I'm running my mic through guitar effects ;)

We'll see...
 
Rhythm guitars are huge and sound great. Lead guitar tone is nice too. Maybe nudge the guitar licks up a db or so. Bass is OK.

Drums are OK. Kick has a bunch of low end and kind of has that bouncy-ball sound. Hats are kind of high in the mix.

I think doubled vocals would sound great. At least on the "cowboys" hook-line. A small pitch issue here and there.
 
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