Late Century

This is a quick demo of one of the 12 or 13 songs I hope to release on an album this fall. I've been doing music for a long time but I am a novice at home recording so any feedback will be appreciated. The annoying hum is a bum cable in my guitar setup. :-( Here's a link to a text file of the lyric.
posted by persona non grata (10 comments total)

superb!
posted by quonsar at 9:13 PM on July 15, 2006

Thanks, q.
posted by persona non grata at 10:00 PM on July 15, 2006

I love the fingerpicking it sounds great, hope to hear some more good stuff.
posted by pwally at 12:35 AM on July 16, 2006

Absolutely lovely, definitely a favourite!
posted by ceri richard at 2:41 PM on July 16, 2006

The guitar sounds really nice. I didn't hear any annoying cable hum. (Although I do have an AC on right now, so it could be cancelling that noise out.)

One suggestion: Compression and normalization on the vocals. I could certainly see how you might not want to lose any of the natural qualities of your voice, but one thing I did notice was the levels seemed to vary.
posted by Alexandros at 10:06 PM on July 16, 2006

That's good advice, Alexandros. I played around with some compression and then decided to go without, and using the built in mic on my laptop doesn't help, of course. I'll play around with the mix and see what I can come up with. Thanks.
posted by persona non grata at 11:34 PM on July 16, 2006

The compression needn't be too obvious—some relatively gentle compression will even out the vocal level without squashing it. With the relatively even, undynamic guitar track, keep the vocal level steady will help a lot.

I can hear the hum, but I'm using a half-decent pair of headphones.
posted by cortex at 8:16 AM on July 17, 2006

Thanks cortex, that is exactly the kind of advice I am looking for. I'm going to pick up a quality cable this week and hopefully that will sort out the hum issue.
posted by persona non grata at 11:04 AM on July 17, 2006

Great stuff, great tune. You're right 'bout the built-in mic though, it's definitely not great. If you can get yourself a decent vocal mic that would be a big help since you do have a great voice. It could also be good to record your guitar with it as well as using the pickup, and panning the two tracks hard left/right for a nice stereo guitar sound. Did you try EQ'ing the hum out? A cut with a high Q at 60 Hz should do the trick (or at least reduce it a good bit) without affecting the rest of the sound
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:05 PM on July 17, 2006

Thank you, TwoWordReview, for your kind words and encouragement. I know I need to get a decent mic but I can't afford one at the moment (I have to get a decent cable first so I can get the guitar sounding better). I will get one ASAP and also a better input method than my iMic direct into my Mac/Garageband. I am working on it and I am just testing the waters now and ovet the next couple of months I have a lot to learn (I want to record and release this record myself, for good or ill). I will try EQing the hum out, but hopefully that will be a moot point soon. Thanks again to everyone for listening and for the feedback: it is very helpful.
posted by persona non grata at 6:42 PM on July 17, 2006