General Music Chat

Greetings from Phoenix, Arizona. I took a listen through great speakers and for a first effort I hear a band that has a good sonic pallette to begin "working" from. I can't give a constructive critique without alluding to my experience - just like my old recordings from 2005 which were nothing more than experimentation with the entire recording process in a fairly well acoustically treated dedicated home studio. I sat back and listened, listened hard to your material. Man, I wish I could be there to "man the desk" and be a kind of Bob Rock who showed Metallica the way to "heavy" and for the first time actually got them to slow down and convinced Hetfield to SING ala "Nothing Else Matters". My point is to zero in on what defines your sound and crafting songs that sound like no one else but THE LAST STAND. The recording issues will be solved in the process. Its cliche, and you may have already applied this method, but my approach is INPUT DRY, OUTPUT WET. Sometimes you can't help but EQ on the input side, or add compression to vocals while recording. I use a round POP SHIELD though have gotten better at backing off on my P"s and T's, using good mic technique on a high-end condensor mic. I would be very much appreciative if you (and anyone else here at the forum) take a listen to the two songs posted at my bandmix site; see the link at the bottom of this post. THE LAST STAND. Keep those songs coming, we're all here to support the METAL BATTALION.

Oh wow thank you to everyone for the reviews and advice. Working on the tracks tonight and will apply some of your suggestions. Man, I really enjoy working with Recording. I am thinking about taking a course on sound engineering at one of the colleges.

Man, I wish I could be there to "man the desk"

Dude that would be awesome! I really like your songs and structures. We don't have much money though..... but we got beer!

Thanks for taking time out to give the MEDUSA tunage a listen. Hell, if TFS (even the acronym cool sounds I think me, hmmmm?) was located in Phoenix I'd do it for the shear feeling of accomplishment, nailing a song that for whatever reason has been a bitch to finalise, stumbling across a mic position that ultimately MADE a particular song. Little things like that add up in the end. I'll end with this: I heard some nice tonal variations on the guitars. Since everyone pretty much has to throw in some advice on the recording side, at least this is what you could TRY however with only 8- tracks I think you mentioned, some bouncing will be necessary to free up tracks for vocals etc. 1. Shure 57 spot on axis of guitars speaker cone, 4 inces out to tighten up bottom end. Plave a fourXfour piece of carpet foam or Sound Board (Home Depot sells this "absorbing" stuff) propped up behind the 57 or whatever your using. This will allow for the immediate capturing of sound waves leaving the speaker as opposed to a few stray ambients that might hit bare walls, build up in corners (standing waves, the worst). It works if you need to EQ on the input side or apply Limiter, Compression. Take that Sound Board away and all of a sudden its baked, raw, untamed on the playback. Try it, it really does work. Record basic rhythm guitar part like this on track one at 12 o'clock position. Then record exact same part on track 2 only now pan the play back track 1 ALL THE WAY LEFT while you record panned all the way to the right. It will sound so linear and huge through the cans. Could even do the same with the bass, boosting the mids and bass unless you have semi-parametric EQ. I know, a whole lot of information. It gets my adrenaline pumping. If you give it a shot, love to hear a rough cut!

Hey my friend, first I wanna say I like your music but you may need a little help on your mixing levels, if you get frustrated I'd love to help you mix your demo, I know times are tough right now and I charge $40 a track but I'm willing to scratch that and do it for free. This way you won't have the burden of mixing and you can get back to the band and write some more tunes. I have a couple of samples of the work I do on my page, check em' out, if you like what you hear let me have a go at it, thanx,

Draves

Finally someone caught a major "glitch" in my two home studio tunes now being played by a real band called MEDUSA. Now to be honest, I'm not 100% if you are referring to the mix-on-the-fly or the difference in volume levels between the two songs. One thing is certain: Neither song was MASTERED AT A TRUE MASTERING SUITE FACILITY. I used a Korg D1600 40GB HD CD-ROM BURNER Digital Home Studio w touch LCD screen, non-PC based. Once I mixed down to stereo 2-track and changed the setting from "bounce" to "input", I could add presets of Stereo Limiter or other mastering but it was NOT the real deal. All it did was allow me to work a few semi-parametric EQ parameters then go in and raise the gain on the mix, +7DB say, to +9dB, lowering the threshold of the limiter to avoid clipping. But its all an "aural illusion" when you do that. Their is a very technical and rather blah to most musicians regarding the noise-to-signal ratio and the threshold of distortion % at which volume affects the EQ. First, a serious recording is not done using store purchased CDs which only meet the Orange Book standard industry. This means your homemade demo might NOT play in every CD/DVD player out there, so no distributor is gonna make a deal with a thousand mastered, artworked, COPYRIGHTED, and shrinkwrapped product. As I understand, ya gotta buy these RED BOOK INDUSTRY STANDARD CDs and once you get THE MIX, you get a glass master off of which all your subsequent copies are pressed. The deal would be me putting in my CD to hear the same two songs you took time out to hear, and instead of having to turn it up, you probably have to turn it down! BAM! My issue is with home studio guys who have Pro Tools or Cubebase with a so-called MASTERING SUITE. But I will take a listen to your stuff. Thanks, Dean.

Hey my friend, first I wanna say I like your music but you may need a little help on your mixing levels, if you get frustrated I'd love to help you mix your demo, I know times are tough right now and I charge $40 a track but I'm willing to scratch that and do it for free. This way you won't have the burden of mixing and you can get back to the band and write some more tunes. I have a couple of samples of the work I do on my page, check em' out, if you like what you hear let me have a go at it, thanx,

Draves

Draves, THANK YOU very much. I will certainly take up your offer with helping us with our levels. In return, I can offer my services with web design (my daytime profession). I will contact you through bandmix. I should have a full membership soon. By the way, I have done guitar tracks for many Chicago hip hop artists. The latest one was for a Chicago crew named: Raw Footage (Bo G and Frank Nit)

Wondering if you know them.

Hey my friend, first I wanna say I like your music but you may need a little help on your mixing levels, if you get frustrated I'd love to help you mix your demo, I know times are tough right now and I charge $40 a track but I'm willing to scratch that and do it for free. This way you won't have the burden of mixing and you can get back to the band and write some more tunes. I have a couple of samples of the work I do on my page, check em' out, if you like what you hear let me have a go at it, thanx,

Draves

Something I have heard over the years from A&R industry insiders etc. is that they have slipped in some dynamic volcanic 3D audio ecstatic demos and after 15 seconds hit eject and sent that MEGAMIX MASTERBLAST on a one way trip to FILE 13 CYBERFAST. Then, like that, came a wild untamed but crafty Cat; 2-track live in a well acoustically treated room using baffles to separate drums bass and guitars' mics. Dude had a rack mounted Gate/Reverb and a Joe Meek Stereo Compressor. It was Niel Young's Crazy Horse meets Social Distortion genre. The CDs four songs got a full review and the indie label scout requested 5 more in exactly 7 days - if they were great songs as were the four prior, a possible meeting in LA to re-record basic rracks at A&M's studio B was a reality. It came down to the songs first. Good thing they had done the original demo months before. So they went in with fresh ears. So I guess my point is, I heard your two mixes and was impressed with depth, dynamics, volume, crossover effect (?) and overall punch to the entire mix. We'd have to re-record the songs as a band. My studio is RIP, and I did not save any songs in their premix state onto a reliable digital format like an Alesis 16 track using SuperVHS Tape (still a used medium).

Hey Santos, you don't need to become a premier member to get my info, here: [email protected] thats my email, hit me up when your ready and we'll go from there.

Hi Mate,
Just had a quick listen to your recordings and it sounds quit good to me.
I really do like the intros they have the aggressivity and speed I like.
Ok I'm not Really a Fan of the Vocalist and to me the Singing seems to take the Pressure out off the song.
But that means not that The song or singing is bad is just not my cup off tea.
Might be I have to listen a few more times into it to like it more.
But for all it is quit good and keep doing
Sorry about my catastrophal english I'm German and just try my best.

Hi Mate,
Just had a quick listen to your recordings and it sounds quit good to me.
I really do like the intros they have the aggressivity and speed I like.
Ok I'm not Really a Fan of the Vocalist and to me the Singing seems to take the Pressure out off the song.
But that means not that The song or singing is bad is just not my cup off tea.
Might be I have to listen a few more times into it to like it more.
But for all it is quit good and keep doing
Sorry about my catastrophal english I'm German and just try my best.

danke schön mate! Your English is fine. I am glad you liked the music. I hope my vocalist improves his style and range over time so he can reach a wider audience. We hope to incorporate more musical styles into our compositions. We thank you for taking the time to give us feed back. When you post music up, I would love to hear it.

Hi santos,
and thanks for your replay.
As You can see I'm new here and need to fill up my Profile.
But I will upload a few of my own songs soon.
I tried it last night with one of my what I call 1minute insperations but loadet it up in WAV format and so you just can here it when you load it down.
Next time I load something up it will be in MP3 format promise.
At the moment I'm still seaking for the right buddies to create a band (old men's club lol).
Till than I do just my own thing at home in my office.
Is a bit boaring but since I got me the "Tascam US-224" I'm actually surprised how easy you can make Your own songs at home, where we payed in the past lot's of money for a few hours in recording studios if You know what I mean.
Take care of Yourself and hope to listen to more of your stuff in the future.
Keep rocking
Wolli

Here's a great name for a band...'Santos'. What'a ya think?

Here's a great name for a band...'Santos'. What'a ya think?

What? like the luchador?

Here's a great name for a band...'Santos'. What'a ya think?

Just like "The Final Stand"......"Santos" is in use.

http://www.santosbonacci.com/news.php