Slowly getting back into it, new recording

Community Made With Ardour
#1

My band has finally relented and agreed to let me try and record a track. Good to get some interest in recording again.

Here is my progress so far. I have midi recorded of the drums but having trouble getting that to work.

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#2

I like listening to this kind of music, even more coming from this community. Cool 90s punk/rock vibe, keep it up!

#3

Thank you, unfortunately it is the bands last gig next week.

#4

What a great song, did you write it yourself ? I know that it’s still work in progress but the vocals need a little compression to make the volume more even, and then a bit of reverb to make it stand out more. Everything else sounds good to me, even the drums. The song made me feel good, thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

1 Like
#5

Hi @Buddhab,

Liked it a lot. Like the interplay between the different guitar parts. Do agree need something to make the vocals “rise above” a little more. It gets buried in parts. Yeah drums seemed good to me. Do hear some 60 cycle hum in spots, but that’s what you get in a live recording. Thanks for sharing… :slight_smile:

#6

Thanks Mikael, no i didn’t write it the guitarist did, what compressor do you use and do you have any go to settings? The more I read about compression the more I get confused.

#7

Thanks for listening, I looked at some video about thickening the vocals as well. any recommendations?

#8

Sorry to hear this is more the epilogue than the prologue, but well in the future who knows a lot can happen.
Lately I’ve fallen in love with zam-audio compressors and limiters, you should check them out:
http://www.zamaudio.com/?p=976
As vocal tone and power changes this much from verse to chorus I would suggest to have verses and choruses separated in two different tracks, with two different compressor settings. You could also automate everything in one track but I’ve found the former workflow to be more intelligible for me.
Also I would check kick to make it less fat, if you find it difficult to hear it without bumping lows try scoping bass around 50-80.

#9

At the moment I use a-Compressor that comes with Ardour. I think I read in some thread that it is based on ZamCompressor. I use Ardour a-plugins for being able to use the same session on both Linux or windows.

When you compress vocals you want to make the volume more even so that the vocals can be more easily heard among the other instruments in your mix. I made a little screen recording to show how I processed my vocals in a rock song. I had to cut lows more and compress more than usual since the distorted guitars in the mix will overpower the vocals otherwise. Normally you want to adjust compressor settings so that it only acts on the highest peaks, but in my mix compressor more or less works all the time. The “threshold” parameter sets the volume point above which everything is compressed. When you adjust threshold value pay attention to the red indicator, it shows how much the sound is compressed. The length of the upside down red block shows the amount of compression. Keep the “Ratio” parameter between 1.5 and 4. Compression will lower the overall volume of the vocals and you compensate this with the parameter “Makeup Gain”. Don’t go over board with compression, use just as much as is needed.

I noticed that in your song the singer probably changed her distance to the microphone a couple of times and this could be heard as a volume change. For the compressor to work optimally you probably need to manually even out the biggest volume changes by splitting the soft parts to separate regions and bringing volume up by region automation or normalization.

In my mix in the video I:

  • cut lows of the male singer with a-EQ (Track “Laulu 1”)
  • compressed the vocals with a-Compressor
  • sent a little bit of vocals to a reverb bus
  • on the reverb bus (Track “Laulukaiku”) is a-Reverb and after it a-EQ attenuates some frequencies in the reverb to make it sound less metallic

Sorry there is no sound in the video, I’m not ready to publish my songs to the world yet :slight_smile:

1 Like
#10

Thanks guys, especially for the video. I have not had time to do any work. Will look at it this weekend. Good new we should out our last show.

#11

Nice song :slight_smile: 1995 is a very appropriate title!

#12

Hi,

Great song, I loved the guitars and the composition is very good, in the punk/pop vein which seems to be the style of the band.

You said the drums are midi but they sound very organic to me. Maybe because the recording itself has a “demo” vibe, and we don’t expect everything to be clean and well mixed. But it’s a good drum MIDI track to me. Great job.