https://soundcloud.com/midnight-down/dnb-test-5v6-waves

You're in luck, I've been working the mix quite a bit and the guitar is much clearer now.

[quote="Marekenshin"]https://soundcloud.com/midnight-down/dnb-test-5v6-waves
[/quote]

ohhhhhhh I like this one!

Digging the Chill song you posted too!

I reworked the hell out of them both. I have more to do to improve the DnB song, but the Chill one is getting pretty close to done.

I added this UWWAAAAA sound to the ending of the DnB one that I'm super in love with lol. I'll try to hold myself back, but I really want to use it in like...everything? lol

https://soundcloud.com/midnight-down/wa ... b-test-5v8
https://soundcloud.com/midnight-down/chill-v4

Dewith, Superficial Horse was really cool, I especially liked the chorus - almost wish there were more of them, or more play on that part. Really nice flow with a bit of a jarring kind of vibe.

Almost on the opposite end of the aural spectrum, Mare, I really dug your Endless Disco Party v2. Your electronic songs are really an interesting turn from the other work you've done. Will you still be doing more singer-songwriter style songs?

And thank you for the advice on Oklahoma, I'm not sure if you saw my reply, but I re-tweaked the song again. The issue with it mainly is that my new computer wouldn't let me record with my amp for a long while, and so that song was recorded with my little electric guitar plugged right into the interface and I had to mess with it post-recording to get it to sound right. Good advice, though, I'll be looking into that more for sure.

All that said, for those who haven't seen it and would like to check it out, I reworked a couple songs and added some and threw together a little playlist on SoundCloud. Here's the link:

https://soundcloud.com/myrmer/sets/some-music

Just finished listening to the rework, definitely sounds a lot smoother on that left channel guitar now! It took me a good twenty minutes of messing with things to get a satisfactory tone/level from my tele when plugging it straight into the mixer, doing a direct input for a guitar is a little weird haha. Most of the time people will use a lot of post-processing like amp/cabinet simulators and audio effects in order to make the signal sound more like a guitar afterwards (Native Instruments has a plugin called Guitar Rig which is pretty sick; I've been using Ableton's stock Amp/Cabinet simulation effects though).

I definitely plan to continue doing rock/acoustic stuff in addition to the various new styles I'm messing with - now that I have a good set of tools there's really no limit to what kinds of music I can do besides my own willingness to put in the time and learn things. Life is endlessly busy but I have a lot of different songs I want to try putting together over the next many months.

Right on, it'd be cool to try out some other programs. I'm working with Cubase and it's a UI nightmare, though it does have strong capabilities. I really just wish it were more sensibly designed, haha. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more of your music.

As for mine, well, I've gone and reworked pretty much all of them some more by now, haha, some of them significantly, and some only minor changes were needed. Overall I'm more satisfied with how they sound now.

As well, I recorded a new song over yesterday and today, so check it out if you like:

https://soundcloud.com/myrmer/moving-on

It's also in the playlist I linked to in my last post, in case that's more your SoundCloud listening style.

[quote="ShwahnStuff"]Moving On[/quote]

Cool. I liked the guitar solo and the tone of the lead when it came in, sounded real good. Though, I'd suggest tuning up before recording, and perhaps taking a look at your intonation. The melody and tone were great, but it sounded a little sour.

I might also suggest dialing back the reverb on your vocals? I think a lot of amateur songwriters like ourselves can have a tendency to hide behind reverb, but it can really do a disservice to your voice and lyrics. Plus, when you have guitar mixed fairly dry and present, with heavily reverbed vocals, it creates this spatial mismatch. Like your guitars are here in the room, but your voice is in a cave. Which is too bad, cause it sounds like your vocals are coming along well!

Boy I'm late getting back here, haha.

I appreciate the feedback, GR, thanks! I definitely hear what you're talking about, I think about a bar into the solo. Must have been so focused on getting a take where I hit all the strings smoothly I overlooked that sourness, haha. I think what happened is my fretting fingers bent the strings a bit since I was keeping them in an awkward position to let all the strings ring out while hitting a couple of those notes on the G string. Now that I think back on it, it's not like those ringing out notes can even really be heard in the mix, haha.

Thanks for the vocals comment and advice as well! I don't know why I always manage to write songs that are just outside my own comfortable singing range, but I do, and that song is sure the poster child for that problem, haha. I enjoyed putting the reverb on the higher parts during the choruses, but there's definitely some play on the low verses, too, since those were really giving me trouble, and I like my voice more affected than plain, but overall I see what you're saying and agree.

In other news, I put up not one, not two, but three (well, okay, so it's like two and a half) new songs on my page (https://soundcloud.com/myrmer), each with a different feel to it. I always appreciate feedback, so if you've got the time, let me know what you think, how I can improve, etc.!

The tuning sounds just slightly off on some parts for these as well. It may be that you just need to retune more often between takes, or perhaps your tuning knobs could use adjustment. Another possibility is the intonation needing adjustment (bridge and/or truss rod stuff?) if the tuning goes out based on how high you go up the neck.

In general, a small amount of imperfection or even purposeful detuning can be really great (like that held note you do around 2:20 in Painting in the Sky, I dig that). Just make sure you're being conscious of it and using it purposefully! It's really a matter of time and experience - keep practicing recording, mixing, and reworking things as much as you have the patience for. The act of actually recording music well is incredibly difficult and I think you're improving really well. Keep it up!

Don't Get Fazed sounds the best to me of these three. I know it's a rework, but it feels like the most developed of the three for sure.

Thanks for the feedback, Mare!
I have tried to be better about retuning if a session is taking a few takes. The intonation is something I wanted to work at fixing a while back, but I tried it on my bass and it ended up not going very well, like I could only adjust it so far instead of as much as I could tell needed to while I was tuning to the harmonic, and it's kind of stuck in an odd spot now where it's hard to tune, so admittedly I didn't try messing with the guitar, as I don't have a backup to use right now like I do with bass. The guitar is just a cheap little Ibanez, but I like it well enough otherwise. I should really look into the intonation all the same, because I'm sure the guitar is more flexible about it than the bass was, and it'd be nice to have done, haha.

I agree about the occasional off note, when tastefully done it can add to a melody what nothing else really can.

Aye, Don't Get Fazed's guitar was redone in its entirety, though Painting in the Sky reused the guitar tracks from before and the vocal take, but both were remixed and bass, drums were finally put in, as well as that other guitar part to help round it out a bit. The vocals for DGF gave me some trouble in mixing, but I waited this time to upload any of these three until a few days of tweaking had gone by, since I knew I'd want to touch up little things here and there and didn't want to deal with reuploading and such. I'm glad I did!

I definitely intend to keep at it. The practice with using Cubase is much needed (the UI is so confusing!), and it's cool just to finally get these songs out in some format or another. With the band, as the Brambles, we play some of my songs, but not all, and when we do, there are often a fair amount of differences between those versions and what I'd call the originals, as I wrote them, and I really like being able to hear both, plus recording new songs (or as-yet unused old ones) myself is a good way to introduce them into the Brambles mix and get to practicing them for performing.

I think I mentioned this before, but paying a guitar tech (hopefully one who has their own shop specialized in guitars if you can find it! Guitar Center is very, very hit and miss) to set it up right is pretty great if you can swing it. Even if you intend to learn and do it yourself, having an example of one "right" way to do it will help!

And re detuned parts, I mean whole sections and not just individual notes, actually, although that as well - having some notes just a bit out of tune can create a wide and interesting sound with the proper layering (google "supersaw" for one such example, but a slightly discordant bend can hit a similar 3ffect).

If you haven't looked into it yet, your public library account or college account if you're a student may have access to the tutorials on Lynda.com. They have learning tracks for recording and mixing that you would probably find useful for picking up more techniques to buff up your demos!

This still sucks because I literally only worked on this for like an hour tonight and this is the first time I'm giving this a real shot, but how about some the pillows: French House style? Gotta do actual arranging and tune the samples, but I think there's potential.



Edit: now a fully arranged sketch with a bad kick and okay snare: https://soundcloud.com/midnight-down/bo ... es/s-r1jjT

New profile, holler at me: https://soundcloud.com/lostinair/bass-music/s-vGbID

I found a mentor/tutor who knows there stuff. I applied a tiny bit of what he went over with me on this track and although it doubled the time involved, the quality increase was crazy, I think. My best track yet for certain, as production goes.

whoa, it's been a good second since i've been here!

Got a couple songs I'd like to share. One of which was composed on this old Hammond organ I bought from a thrift shop a while back.

https://soundcloud.com/dewith28/sets/if-1

I've been recording some stuff lately. Most recent two songs are "real" ones (the others are little tracks I made up for a friend's video game.) They're pretty rough demos but at some point I'l re-record everything. The joys of being able to make my music all by myself at home!

[url=https://soundcloud.com/user-943269903]Actionpuppy[/url]