General Music Chat

I think this is fixable Grant. It sounds to me like it was recorded pretty well. I suggest you send out one song to have it re-mixed and mastered by a guy with fresh ears and a boatload of experience and industry credits. Probably cost $300-400 for one and then you can truly evaluate your product and decide if it makes sense to send out the rest.

The reality is you can make a really fine demo with a DAW home studio or local recording engineer but a top-quality full length CD in a pro studio with gold records on the wall is $10k minimum. If you want to sell it as a product or put it in films or on the radio, $10k is money well spent.

My experience is that the greatest song in the world can fail if poorly recorded and mastered.

The flip side is the best recording and mastering in the world can't make a crappy song good.

I see recording and mastering (production) as both connected and separate at the same time.

Recording is engineering- tone, quality of the track, noiseless, performance, etc.

Mastering is mixing, levels, etc.

Production wraps around both. With recording, it's arrangements, flow, working out what doesn't sound right, hooks, everything. With mastering, it's knowing what is too much or what is missing, and mixing it in a way that allows the music to breathe and flow, and also to avoid headroom conflicts, dissonance, noise, and over-compression.

Nothing in the world beats a super clean and crisp recording where the noise levels are balanced, all reverb and echos are subtle, yet pronounced and clear enough to hear the nuances, stops are felt, but not empty, and full-on all instruments isn't muddy or hard to hear each individual instrument.

Most of what comes out of "professional" studios can't even live up to those standards (most over-compress), so finding a great engineer and producer (master-er) are the two most important things. The rest is filler.

Kramer, well said... I believe that all you described for a good recording is quazi-present in some of my songs, and not there at all in other of my songs. At the end of the day, it ain't A-grade quality, cause it aint nash-holly-ville..(But what did I expect with what amounted to 4k out of pocket?) To be really fair, George, who recorded , mixed, contributed the bass, the drums) did an outstanding job, considering all he had to do for my stupid songs..The guy is a trooper..bar-none an outstanding professional, who never complained and did his best to meet up with my dictates... His chops are far superior to mine, that's for sure.

at the risk of drawing your ire even more....for 4k (depending on how ornate you wanted them to be) you could have had 2 to 4 broadcast quality songs that the radio stations would play.

They could have been songs that said "I'm seriously busting the door down and coming in"

it wouldn't be enough to make a CD and sell at gigs but they would been downloads you could promote and sell. If enough people like them enough to pay for them, it would get the attention of those whose job it is to sell music.

And then it's possible to get someone else to pay the bill for a full album produced right. Or, you build on it and keep building from there.

Honestly, I don't think you see how talented you really are, Grant.

Stop selling yourself short.




Your songs weren't up when we started this conversation so I've been going on your opinions of what resulted. Now that I've listened, it isn't nearly as bad as you've been making it out to be.

so nevermind.....

You sound exactly like the Grateful Dead on Home Remedies.

Hey Grant - if you paid someone to master and this is what you got, you should be going back to them and saying 'your work sucks, do it again'.

Easy way to tell if something has been over compressed/limited: look at the wave form in any DAW software.
If it looks like a sausage (rounded at end and straight-flat for the length of the song), then it has. Expand the time view so you can see it with a little more detail.
If the song has been mastered correctly you should be able to see up to a 12dB range from soft to loud spots in the song.
If you take a look at 'mastered' metal songs, you will see the sausage shape almost every single time.

Hey Grant - if you paid someone to master and this is what you got, you should be going back to them and saying 'your work sucks, do it again'.

Easy way to tell if something has been over compressed/limited: look at the wave form in any DAW software.
If it looks like a sausage (rounded at end and straight-flat for the length of the song), then it has. Expand the time view so you can see it with a little more detail.
If the song has been mastered correctly you should be able to see up to a 12dB range from soft to loud spots in the song.
If you take a look at 'mastered' metal songs, you will see the sausage shape almost every single time.

Thats a good pointer. I dont Have a DAW, but I do have Movie Maker, which allows you to add sound track, and view it in wave form. These songs dont appear sausage like (Others I havent checked yet) .
Now interestingly enough, George had explained to me that modern mastering is pushing the mix to a 'kiss the red, just shy of dead' db level. This is a common practice for metal work. He explained that the mastering made a point to avoid the red in most cases, given the style. We put in bass, with the hops of bearing some fang in the songs...if only for tonal qualities... I suspect there were trade offs.. I will talk to guy when he come back off vacation...
Well see what can be done.

My experience is that the greatest song in the world can fail if poorly recorded and mastered.

The flip side is the best recording and mastering in the world can't make a crappy song good.

I see recording and mastering (production) as both connected and separate at the same time.

Recording is engineering- tone, quality of the track, noiseless, performance, etc.

Mastering is mixing, levels, etc.

Production wraps around both. With recording, it's arrangements, flow, working out what doesn't sound right, hooks, everything. With mastering, it's knowing what is too much or what is missing, and mixing it in a way that allows the music to breathe and flow, and also to avoid headroom conflicts, dissonance, noise, and over-compression.

Nothing in the world beats a super clean and crisp recording where the noise levels are balanced, all reverb and echos are subtle, yet pronounced and clear enough to hear the nuances, stops are felt, but not empty, and full-on all instruments isn't muddy or hard to hear each individual instrument.

Most of what comes out of "professional" studios can't even live up to those standards (most over-compress), so finding a great engineer and producer (master-er) are the two most important things. The rest is filler.

Kramer, well said... I believe that all you described for a good recording is quazi-present in some of my songs, and not there at all in other of my songs. At the end of the day, it ain't A-grade quality, cause it aint nash-holly-ville..(But what did I expect with what amounted to 4k out of pocket?) To be really fair, George, who recorded , mixed, contributed the bass, the drums) did an outstanding job, considering all he had to do for my stupid songs..The guy is a trooper..bar-none an outstanding professional, who never complained and did his best to meet up with my dictates... His chops are far superior to mine, that's for sure.

at the risk of drawing your ire even more....for 4k (depending on how ornate you wanted them to be) you could have had 2 to 4 broadcast quality songs that the radio stations would play.

They could have been songs that said "I'm seriously busting the door down and coming in"

it wouldn't be enough to make a CD and sell at gigs but they would been downloads you could promote and sell. If enough people like them enough to pay for them, it would get the attention of those whose job it is to sell music.

And then it's possible to get someone else to pay the bill for a full album produced right. Or, you build on it and keep building from there.

Honestly, I don't think you see how talented you really are, Grant.

Stop selling yourself short.




Your songs weren't up when we started this conversation so I've been going on your opinions of what resulted. Now that I've listened, it isn't nearly as bad as you've been making it out to be.

so nevermind.....

You sound exactly like the Grateful Dead on Home Remedies.

Much Thanks for the props Ted, ( And my ire was never raised )
I dont disagree with your points. Honestly I hadn't thought about that strategy. Though I do not regret making the whole CD...I can in fact use it as cheap demo, use it as lessons learned for my EPSWC events, etc. the Title track, Mr Cornrose , bench for two stand a chance for some air time.


If I were prez, I'd pass a bill that made all studio time free ...

I think this is fixable Grant. It sounds to me like it was recorded pretty well. I suggest you send out one song to have it re-mixed and mastered by a guy with fresh ears and a boatload of experience and industry credits. Probably cost $300-400 for one and then you can truly evaluate your product and decide if it makes sense to send out the rest.

The reality is you can make a really fine demo with a DAW home studio or local recording engineer but a top-quality full length CD in a pro studio with gold records on the wall is $10k minimum. If you want to sell it as a product or put it in films or on the radio, $10k is money well spent.

Thanks Johnny7! Yes I see what you mean about demo vs gold... Maybe some day (right now I'm tapped , with the new house and all)

There is a local studio here called the Sonic Ranch. They are a full tilt operation, replete with overnight guest rooms,etc. I'll be talking to them soon.

They are already excellent demos and a local radio program would have no problem playing them.

I should have waited until I heard them, because you made it sound like a total loss and it isn't nearly that.

Just FYI, I have friend in Gnashvile who has mastered hundreds of hits, and his work is guaranteed. It's not that expensive to have it done by the best.

If you want to go that way, Brian Foraker is at 615 477 8400. Tell him I said he'd do the whole project for $600 and Merry Christmas.

Homemade remedies sounds really good. Better than Bench imo.
I was wondering if you had additional BG vocals that weren't used in the final mix?
Both sound better on me home speakers... overall imo HR is just a better song.
You're the one who has to be satisfied in the end. You should look into Yod's offer... don't think you can beat that price anywhere. I've priced it before200/song is minimal reasonable here anyway.
Good Luck with it and get er done!

Grant I just ran this song thru my flat response monitors. I would like to hear the base guitar just a tad bit more pronounced and your acoustic track guitar needs to be a little more gated to reduce the hand slide as you change chords. Also the lead you are playing needs to be a little more pronounced. Grant these are not big changes any PERFECT mix always needs a little tweaking. Welcome to the music Biz! Your songs are like your children and you always want everything to be perfect for them!

I never understood the concept of producing a REALLY GOOD demo.

Do you understand why an architect draws a building before the carpenters show up?

Yeah.
As a self-producing musical artist YOU are the carpenter AND the architect AND the guy installing toilets, et al.

A "demo", to me, is something to just scribble an idea on.
There is no intention to release it to the general public.
It's just a rough outline.
A sketch.
A simple boombox or 4-track recording should suffice if THAT'S all you're going to do.

True, but there are different uses for demos so what works for a "help me remember the song" demo might not be suitable for a "please book my band" demo which might not be suitable for "please record my song, oh Major Label artist" demo which would all be short for a "please sign my band and remix this and keep all the money, record label" demo.

Those days of blowing thousands of dollars on a demo to get gigs and get signed are long gone, with a few exceptions.
They want an artist with some product for sale, even if it is just a little bit.
The money & labor spent making a demo could also make a decent single or EP, in a small number of pressings.
Most bands that I know of released their own material first, had it out in the record stores and available at shows.
Record labels came calling when they started to make some sales.

My own experience is somewhat similar to this.
Tapes & merch that I sold in Japan got me interest from a few labels in Hawaii and California.
But, the genres I have dealt with have very low operating costs.
There is almost instant profit.
I got radio interviews from homemade press kits mailed in paper bags.

If you're going to commit to building a home studio, you're spending a considerable amount of money and putting a lot of work into it.
So, why wouldn't you put all that toward the finished product?

I've had a few friends who started putting all their time & energy into building a great home studio. Before long they are renting out the studio to pay for some of the toys they've bought for it. After a while, they become more engineer than musician.

Engineering can easily be a life-long pursuit requiring specific education and a huge investment of ever-updated gear. It's fun and intellectually stimulating, but like anything else it takes a long time to become a true professional. I'm pretty good at getting a great home demo, some of my non-professional friends can't tell the difference. I'm also a pretty good lead guitarist...but who buys a "pretty good" record? I'm going to hire a great lead guitarist and use a great engineer to produce something worth buying.

Having a home demo studio has helped me save $$$ in the "real" studio by knowing how the process works.

So we can put in years of experience and money to do it all ourself, or we can shortcut that process by renting an expert who has investing his life's knowledge, time, and money to build a broadcast quality studio.

Why choose between them?
Why not apply a bit of both?
Learn the skills at home, lay some basic tracks.
Then, you're not on the clock at a studio.
You can take your time to get it right the first time.
When you've got something that's really good and you cannot take it any further with what gear you have, hire a pro to finish it up.
Seems like the optimal way to stretch your resources, IMO.

Okay, first, I'm a realist.
If I could afford to hire my dream band, sure I would do it.
But, there is NO WAY that I could afford it.

Every band striving to be successful is a business. Any (successful) business owner knows there is an investment to get a business to the point of being profitable.

It would be stupid to invest in something you don't really believe in, but if you honestly think you have something to offer the greater world around you, then why not treat it like a professional would? You aren't competing with the best local band in town...you're competing with the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, etc..

You can't "psyche yourself" into being good...that take real-time experience and work...but if you are ready for prime time (like I think Grant is) then ACT LIKE IT

Like I said, I kept my overhead low.
Almost instant profits.
Can't argue with business like that.

I try to avoid competing with people with more resources than me.
In fact, I try to avoid competing AT ALL.
I focus on WHAT I CAN CONTROL.
So, the only competition is myself.
Am I good enough to be ME?
I DON'T WANT TO BE Lady Gaga or The Rolling Stones.
I want to be the best Mike Nobody I can be.
There is only ONE of him.

The music world is filled to the brim with unrealistic people.
People with stars in their eyes, with the vain belief that they are destined to be famous rock stars or something.

Those people are very sad.

Yea, but many a successful rock star started out that way.

We should individually define "success" on our own scale. Like I've said before, traveling non-stop isn't for everyone but you do what the job requires if that's the job you are called to do.

I have no doubt that neanderpaul would entertain any audience he plays in front of. It wouldn't be hard for him to go full-time if that was what he wanted to do. Yet he has chosen to stay home every night because being available every moment of the day for his daughters is his idea of "success".

Who couldn't respect that?

I do.

You can be fairly successful as a musician and make a meager living, if you don't mind being homeless for a lot of years.

Any business you might start will have lean years in the beginning. The only question is whether the (potential) pay-off is worth the work, imo.

No one gave me a chance when i started work on the CD that helped me get to that point. Even my own wife expressed strong doubts. She couldn't see the end from the beginning. Yes, it will take a strong will and lots of chudspah (guts), but when you really believe you have a product that people want to buy, you'll do whatever it takes to get it to an audience.


It's no secret how recording artists "make it". They produce a recording that's worth buying, go play concerts where fans can buy it, and after that cycle is complete, they do it all again. So you have to be at, or near, your best almost every day and repeat the process about every 2 years.

If that is the business you want to be in, you'll find a way to come up with the necessary investment to get it off the ground, even if you have to sell your mother-in-law.

Btw....anyone want to buy an 85 year old lady?

You can keep your 85 year old mother-in-law.

Yeah.
As a self-producing musical artist YOU are the carpenter AND the architect AND the guy installing toilets, et al.

I'd still draw it up before building to make sure the water lines meet the toilets.

Those days of blowing thousands of dollars on a demo to get gigs and get signed are long gone, with a few exceptions.
They want an artist with some product for sale, even if it is just a little bit.
The money & labor spent making a demo could also make a decent single or EP, in a small number of pressings.
Most bands that I know of released their own material first, had it out in the record stores and available at shows.
Record labels came calling when they started to make some sales.

Looks like we're talking about the same thing so I'm not sure why it sounds we're disagreeing?

Why choose between them?
Why not apply a bit of both?
Learn the skills at home, lay some basic tracks.
Then, you're not on the clock at a studio.
You can take your time to get it right the first time.
When you've got something that's really good and you cannot take it any further with what gear you have, hire a pro to finish it up.
Seems like the optimal way to stretch your resources, IMO.

Yes, I've done that before, but I find that playing with musicians live in the studio sounds more "real" so I will usually re-cut the entire song...just use the demo as a pre-pro map. We can keep a perc loop or whatever but my home studio doesn't have converters like the machine we'd use in a studio. No shortcut to that kind of quality sound.

I try to avoid competing with people with more resources than me.
In fact, I try to avoid competing AT ALL.

When your business is making music, you are competing with other people making music whether you realize it or not.

That might not be your primary interest, but it's true nonetheless.


Are you sure you don't need this 85 year old lady? I'll let her go cheap!?!



.

Those days of blowing thousands of dollars on a demo to get gigs and get signed are long gone, with a few exceptions.
They want an artist with some product for sale, even if it is just a little bit.
The money & labor spent making a demo could also make a decent single or EP, in a small number of pressings.
Most bands that I know of released their own material first, had it out in the record stores and available at shows.
Record labels came calling when they started to make some sales.

Looks like we're talking about the same thing so I'm not sure why it sounds we're disagreeing?

I don't know either.
I was just saying it the way that I know it.
I don't know why you took that as a disagreement.
It may be a little different than how you've done it.
But, that's just me.

Why choose between them?
Why not apply a bit of both?
Learn the skills at home, lay some basic tracks.
Then, you're not on the clock at a studio.
You can take your time to get it right the first time.
When you've got something that's really good and you cannot take it any further with what gear you have, hire a pro to finish it up.
Seems like the optimal way to stretch your resources, IMO.

Yes, I've done that before, but I find that playing with musicians live in the studio sounds more "real" so I will usually re-cut the entire song...just use the demo as a pre-pro map. We can keep a perc loop or whatever but my home studio doesn't have converters like the machine we'd use in a studio. No shortcut to that kind of quality sound.

Oh, if I had a full band and enough money I'd be doing things a little differently, for sure.
But, it's just me & my girlfriend, with almost no money at all.
We MIGHT collaborate with others from time to time.

Rather than going for a typical "live" sound like most bands try to get.
I'm trying to do something more stylized and different-sounding, mixing hi-fi and lo-fi sounds together.

A friend of mine is in His Name Is Alive, Warren DeFever.
I dunno if you ever heard of him.
But, he's got some neat gear at his place I'd like to borrow sometime, like an ancient wire recorder.
It makes everything it records sound old and musty.
He once did an album of old labor & communist coal miner's folk songs from the 1800's and it sounds fabulous with that recorder.

I try to avoid competing with people with more resources than me.
In fact, I try to avoid competing AT ALL.

When your business is making music, you are competing with other people making music whether you realize it or not.

That might not be your primary interest, but it's true nonetheless.

Nope, making money is not my primary interest.
Making music & art is.
I let the business side stay in the business side and deal with that when I absolutely HAVE to.
But, I am always aware that I gotta make enough money to feed the music machine and keep going.
So, I try to keep a handle on that nonetheless.

The only competition I might see between me and other artists is when we both play different venues on the same night.
Our audience cannot be in two places at once.
So, I try not to have the same audience as other artists.
I try to build up my own.
If I am the ONLY guy who does what I do, then NO ONE is competing with me.

As far as the market for recordings goes, there's always room for more.
There are millions of recordings from all over the world from every period of music history.
It is humanly impossible to listen to it all.
I'd like to try.
But, one more album here and there won't hurt.
I don't feel threatened or intimidated that ALL THAT music is out there competing with mine.

Just FYI, I have friend in Gnashvile who has mastered hundreds of hits, and his work is guaranteed. It's not that expensive to have it done by the best.

If you want to go that way, Brian Foraker is at 615 477 8400. Tell him I said he'd do the whole project for $600 and Merry Christmas.

I'll consider this...

Homemade remedies sounds really good. Better than Bench imo.
I was wondering if you had additional BG vocals that weren't used in the final mix?

There were no additional vocals, but its quite possible the ones I had were not as boosted as they were in the pre-master versions... Its very frustrating...

Grant I just ran this song thru my flat response monitors. I would like to hear the base guitar just a tad bit more pronounced and your acoustic track guitar needs to be a little more gated to reduce the hand slide as you change chords. Also the lead you are playing needs to be a little more pronounced. Grant these are not big changes any PERFECT mix always needs a little tweaking. Welcome to the music Biz! Your songs are like your children and you always want everything to be perfect for them!

Yeah , I told george a million times that his bass needed to to come forward. He'd fix it...Then later, if he had to remix something he'd draw it back again . He's really an excellent bassist...I never understood why he shys like that... In the end, he won out.
The lead was pronounced... but then we fell into the 'great compression'..Times were so tough then , for all my notes...

Yes My Children need so much attention... Then somebody came in with a semi automatic compressor.... dayum!