United States

Hi there.

I have posted my first home studio bound partial track. I could say a lot about it but I'm hoping for some very critical people to step up and tell me what is wrong with it apart from timing. It's all recorded in analog style through my home studio PC, there are 5 tracks in all.

Equipment used:
Cakewalk Music creator 3.
Starfire (Cheapo) Dual neck 5 string bass /12 String.
Casio CT-607 Keyboard.
Yamaha DD50 Electronic drumkit.

It is not mixed to any real extent, just panned here and there. Timing was a real issue on the drums since and although they are a great substitute indoors just don't respond like normal skins, you cannot get that light touch from cymbals either etc.
(I hate drum machines).

This is a portion of one song on which this intro lasts around 1 minute. It's called WABBIT, the whole song is around 8 - 10 mins long.
Please be as critical as possible and if anyone has suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Too much talk, here's the partial track. Let me know what you think yeah?
http://chipfryer.com/muso/wabbity.mp3

Best regards.

Chippy.

Hi Sentient, thank you seriously.
I know its crap but I had to put it out like we all do.

The bass is not the best in the world and I'm thinking of dropping that for a while until I learn enough about this stuff to form a compromise. I read a little about just what you are saying I suspect, 'Frequencies' knocking each other out?

I'm a drummer and this doesn't say the best about me but if you saw my setup you would understand why I hope?

Very constructive and many thanks for replying too.
It's going to be a long hard week for me right now since I've decided my path.

Drums talk, sadly mine are whimpering on this piece of...............

Many thanks again Sentient.
Can I scrub it now? It's really annoying me.

Cheers

Chippy.

Wow. Not bad for a first timer. Seriously.

The one most obvious thing I'm noticing is a quite a bit of "mung" in the lower frequencies. What I mean by mung, is that the bass, across the board, affecting all instruments, isn't very crisp. I think that may be a result of too many bas instruments "stepping" on each other's frequencies. My first guess is the keyboard itself is doing quite a bit of stepping on the bass drum sounds, and the bass itself. That's pretty common.
http://www.music44.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Session_ID=1864C20C205A3EF86E18B0F87AEFE188&Screen=PROD&Store_Code=X&Product_Code=183503-H2

Well worth the 13 or so bucks!

I like it chippy.
The timing seems syncopated, is it supposed to sound like that?
Prehaps it's some drag in the recording process.
Keep at it!

Hi Sentient.
Thanks again. I hear you loud and clear and thanks for the advice. I've just bought different software which has a built in mixer so I can track the demon frequency issues. I don't know the technical terminology for where it goes into what I call muffle? These are great comments Sentient and very helpful too.
Best wishes.

I cannot count how many times I got so sick of trying to iron out every fault out of a recording that I took a long break from it to work on other things, only to return to the piece that was driving me nuts and find out it was a hell of a lot better than I thought it was, and actually worth the effort to improve it!

Work something else for a while, then come back to it. It works, trust me.

Hi Sanshouheil.

Sometimes I get way to clever for my boots. There is a timing flaw on the second keyboard string which throws everything. Timing here is shot but the rest yes is intended to move about the way it does, the next phrase where all of this leads to is much more standardized but again will have my oddities thrown in there.
Hearing what Sentient wrote too its time to nail both timing and sound problems so I'll rewrite sometime today.

Many thanks one and all for comments on this. As my boss used to say, and I live by this. "Self praise is no praise at all" Hence I threw it out there.

Cheers Sanshouheil and folks.

I like it chippy.
The timing seems syncopated, is it supposed to sound like that?
Prehaps it's some drag in the recording process.
Keep at it!

Sentient you have it in one and thanks so much for all this valuable information too. I thought edirol would work on analog too enabling me to cross out and change any errors so I became complacent.

Everything I am doing is analog so far since using both midi and analog is a problem as regards latency but it would not stop the obvious errors in what I have written so far.

One thing I am learning is that cues taken in LIVE situations can cover up a whole host of bad playing techniques so it's really down to me to nail the timing and track and stop playing with it.

I have a eurorack UB802 and a Delta 2496 pci card. 1 Gig of memory and a Athlon 64 3000 cpu.

Seems to work ok.

I'll read your post in more depth this evening and have a look at my REAL cause of failure. Thanks very much indeed for all of this. It's invaluable knowledge that everyone should read.

Very best regards.

Chippy.

Absolutely not Sentient. This is great information for anybody using midi for writing. I do wonder however if I could cheat the system slightly and use edirol on analog after converting it somehow? It's only takes one wrong note to screw up things which costs several hours if you've changed volume settings for example to another instrument.

No worries mate thanks for the info.

fer sher!

Sorry 'bout all the midi talk. An ass-umption on my part. Didn't occur to me you might already be doing it all analogue.

My advice may have lead you barking up the wrong fire hydrant!

OHHH, DOPEY MEEE!

It's a nice little ditty. The frequencies of the instruments are too close to each other, imo. I am in no way an expert on midi, or recording techniques. I did some that I thought were pretty okay, but I doubt that I'd be able to do them exactly the same way twice.

It's pretty good, for a drummer, I must say. There is definitely a bit of something there to be kept & expanded upon, as a piece of new age type music. You trying to be the next Chip Davis? That's a very worthy goal.

Hi Sentient.

No this is just 'Line In" stuff. Sorry I confused you. Working on a rewrite today so I'm hoping as long as I don't screw up again I can concentrate on the mixing part.

I don't have a mixer as such even in software

Thanks Sentient.

then you are using midi in the process aren't you? In other words, are you playing the DD50 to a midi track, then playing it back through Edirol?

I'm not understanding clearly how you are generating your initial drum track apparently.

Hi philbymon
(Sorry for bludgeoning other people with this).

I think that's what I am trying to do. Know my stuff and play it the same because I need to owing to many time changes. (I've not even got there yet) LOL hahaha

The frequencies of the instruments are too close to each other, imo.

I agree totally philbymon you and guys are a massive help to me for listening and providing comment.

Do you chord wise or just frequencies? I know frequencies are a royal pain.

Thanks very much one and all. Again sorry for the burden, I just love learning about all of this.

Many thanks....

It's a nice little ditty. The frequencies of the instruments are too close to each other, imo. I am in no way an expert on midi, or recording techniques. I did some that I thought were pretty okay, but I doubt that I'd be able to do them exactly the same way twice.

It's pretty good, for a drummer, I must say. There is definitely a bit of something there to be kept & expanded upon, as a piece of new age type music. You trying to be the next Chip Davis? That's a very worthy goal.