Not A Love Song (redux)

This is my first attempt w/ an all new rig; sound card and software. Lemme know what you think. Critique away! Enjoy!

• play
• pause
• min volume
• max volume

posted by snsranch (4 comments total)

Ah, so this is how the song was supposed to sound. Well, I stand by what I said about the other version: it's a catchy melody! It appears that you have good rhythm as a guitar player, and a good voice that will get better with increased confidence. I have some thoughts about the production:

The voice is too low in the mix, it's getting lost. It also sounds muffled, as though recorded through a bad mic or unfortunate settings. The guitar distortion sounds muddy and "canned," a bit like my old zoom pedal's cheap distortion. My advice would be to tone down the level of distortion. I used to make my guitar sound like this in an effort to match a rockin' sound I'd heard on CD. I later realized that when listening closely to most of the songs I wanted to emulate, the distorted guitar sound was: 1) not as distorted as I had remembered or thought, and 2) not the result of a single guitar. In my highly uneducated opinion, you are trying to do too many things through one guitar part. Play fewer strings at once to avoid muddiness, distortion is not friends with chords. Instead, build your guitar assault by combining several simpler guitar parts that each have a different color to their tone. Pan these parts around the stereo field a little, and EQ them differently. Just a little distortion on each part will result in an overall feeling of plenty of distortion, in a much more musically satisfying way, if played well and "economically."

Please keep in mind that this advice is coming from someone who has never set foot on a stage or in a recording studio, these are just things I've found through my own home recording experiments over the years.
posted by edlundart at 6:15 PM on April 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

edlundart: Hey you made my day. Thanks for taking the time to give me such a great critique and great advice. I will definately work on the economy and see how it works!
posted by snsranch at 7:08 PM on April 6, 2007

Glad to be of "service," snsranch. I wish there were more comments in MeFi Music. I think it's always interesting to hear people's critiques or impressions.
posted by edlundart at 9:33 PM on April 6, 2007

It sounds like you are plugging the output of your amp into the mixer without mic'ing the amp. If that's the case (and, really, even if not), try playing around with the space in terms of mic placement. You'll find that different amps will sound ideal at different placements.

edlundart seems to cover the rest fairly well.

Otherwise, I second the catchy melody comment. Rock on!
posted by spiderskull at 2:36 AM on April 7, 2007