This is a song I wrote several years ago, recently after listening to the 2 great albums by zth (please check out https://soundcloud.com/zthmusic on Soundcloud) I got inspired to learn more about Synthesizers and this song seemed a good fit to remix and experiment. Other than messing around with Soundfonts and MIDI keyboards I am pretty illiterate when it comes to actually creating new sounds with synths. I found Loomer’s Aspect to be quite easy to start with and it has a great bunch of presets to start tweaking on. This song was finished in ArdourVST 3.4 (which was surprisingly solid) and Hydrogen was used for the drums. linuxDSP’s PEQ-2A Pultec EQ was utilized with the ‘low-end trick’ to get the fat low end on the Hip Hop drums to manageable proportions.
I am indeed a tele lover and this song has my ‘Old Yeller’ tele, if memory serves I tracked both the guitar fills and the solo with a little Fender Pro Junior tube amp and a Vox wahwah. The Pro Junior has a pair of EL84 output tubes that really give a nice ‘musical’ overdrive when you turn the amp up. Actually for any tube amp geeks reading those are the same tubes used in the Classic Vox AC-30 amps although the AC-30 has 2 pairs but in any case they give a really warm overdrive… Sorry I digress, I miked the amp with a Shure SM-57 and for ome reason I always angle the mic so it is at a 90 degree angle to the speaker cone (which could actually not do anything useful but I read about it somewhere many years ago). The solo was tracked with the wah half-cocked which gives that pronounced midrange notch sound. The solo was one-take and I remember wanting to redo it at some point because of the feedback shriek at the end of the solo but over time I got to like it…
Anyway… enough about me, what kind of guitars/amps do you like?
Hi Glen, it sounds really great and sounded awesome when first heard that first guitar arrangement, mostly because of the reverb or the recording technique you used… it reminded me a psychoacoustics class i got a couple of weeks ago from Alejandro Londoño who is a great venezuelan sound and recording engineer living in Rotterdam (Netherlands), he has produced several artist in europe regardless of the music style, however “his band” is a south american sludge metal band, take a listen to the psychoacoustic properties of this: https://soundcloud.com/cultura-tres/02-es-mi-sangre.
Anyways the song is really great, well performed and nice sounding each instrument but for me the greatest moments are the guitar arrangements because they really give breath and three dimensional space to the song, which doesn’t happen with the guitar solo or the rest of the instruments, i’m really really new to psychoacoustics and music production so i might be wrong but i´d work a bit more on the space given by the drums, guitar solo and the wind instruments, which could turn the song from great to amazing, the voice is well put right there i believe, it sits great in front of the mix.
The songs i’ve uploaded so far aren’t really great, but i hope soon i will upload and share a really nice one.
I disagree… I’ve enjoyed your songs that I’ve heard so far, and I look forward to more
As far as your other comments I agree, this is a ballpark mix and it’s getting close but there is some work to do yet. I used to put up stuff I thought was finished but from now on I want to put up stuff that is getting close and then get some good advice from other sets of ears and perspectives before the final mixing/mastering process so I really appreciate your comments and suggestions.
Thanks a lot GMaq! i think its a thing of … the more i learn the more i want my record-mixes to be better.
Comparing this two songs was an eye openner about psychoacoustics, and how it all works towards the experience of listening to a song instead of caring for each instrument to be heard clearly… those two aproaches are VERY different and only until a week ago i was introduced to this, so i’m eager to experiment on that on my next recordings.
check this out:
The last one seems old but its not, its all on purpose and feels great as a music experience… you can imagine these guys playing in front of you on a very old bar, while the first one is a 2 dimensional song with no depth at all, percussion on the first one is soooo clear yet feels so flat, and the 2nd song you can notice the instruments are not really that clear but all this in favor of the positioning, groove and feel, i went crazy when that producer showed me this to make his point clear.
