Need Advices To Improve This Take, Full song, 5 guitars, drums, bass, voice, piano |
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Mar 3 2011, 08:46 AM
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Hi Guys,
i would like to have a few advices on how to improve this song. I recorded this from scratch and it contains: - 1 piano, kind of synthetiser during all song with autospan effect - 1 rhytmic guitar on channel left - 1 second rythmic guitar on channel right - 1 guitar that plays natural harmonies - 1 guitar that plays arpeggios - 1 solo guitar - 1 drums channel - 1 bass channel - 2 channels of voice, 1 full, and another that just repeat a few words This is a cover of a French song called "ca mousse", from a band called Superbus. I recorded all that with the software REAPER First of all: what do i need to do to make it sound more professionnal ? Are the volume levels correct ? Many Thanks in advance. Here is the song: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7084686/songs/ca-mousse.mp3 -------------------- My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/flymosquitofly
Myspace url: MySpace Amp: Fender GDEC 3 15 Guitars: Gibson Les Paul Studio, Greg Bennett Avion 1 |
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Mar 3 2011, 02:55 PM
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Congrats on getting a complete song recorded. It's not easy, especially at first. There are TONS of factors that go in to making a recording sound pro as Tony Miro can tell you. I hope he posts a response here. The quality of your gear will have at least some impact, as will the mic placement and the room you are recording in, in addition to how you EQ/compress the tracks and mix, etc. It's an involved process. The best way to get better at it, is to do it more often, and to experiment. It takes time, just like playing guitar, and it takes practice, also like playing guitar.
I"ll give it a listen and see if I can suggest anything specific. Wanted to put a reply up so you got at least one asap  Todd QUOTE (jeanv @ Mar 3 2011, 02:46 AM)  Hi Guys, i would like to have a few advices on how to improve this song. I recorded this from scratch and it contains: - 1 piano, kind of synthetiser during all song with autospan effect - 1 rhytmic guitar on channel left - 1 second rythmic guitar on channel right - 1 guitar that plays natural harmonies - 1 guitar that plays arpeggios - 1 solo guitar - 1 drums channel - 1 bass channel - 2 channels of voice, 1 full, and another that just repeat a few words This is a cover of a French song called "ca mousse", from a band called Superbus. I recorded all that with the software REAPER First of all: what do i need to do to make it sound more professionnal ? Are the volume levels correct ? Many Thanks in advance. Here is the song: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7084686/songs/ca-mousse.mp3 |
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Mar 3 2011, 04:27 PM
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Only had time for one quick listen to it as an mp3. Sorry very busy in the studio this week.
The overall track sounds like there´s some digital distortion so I think you´re peaking too high either on individual instrument/vocal tracks or when summed on the main. You need to lower your recording/tracking level and get clean and undistorted takes. You can then mix them but you still need to make sure that the additional processing and summing doesn´t take the main level in to the red. Based on the mp3 - one of the guitars and the vocals sound inconsistent in level. I´d suggest that you look at using compression to even things out. I´d also consider some de-essing on the vocals as there is some sibilance on the ´´s´´ - some of it is fine for the song but I think there is too much. There´s also some plosives on other consonants so again look at them. Seems to be a lot going on below 80Hz. You´ve got a keyboard and normally I´d advise against cutting the low bass because of it. Here though I think at the least you should pass filter all the guitars to clear up some of the excess bass energy. Personally I also think there are also too many guitar tracks and because of it it tends to sound a little muddy in the low mid and the stereo image lacks a bit of focus and seems to wonder about a bit. Some more stereo depth, front to back, whilst recording would be a plus. -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Mar 3 2011, 06:12 PM
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Wow thanks guys for givingd so many details, this is exactly what i was expecting but wooow ! its seems to be very very complicated and i'm wondering if i will be good enough to understand all that first and then to apply all that on my rec !
Yes i heard that sometimes i have distorsion in sound, and yes it comes from the input level, when i'm recording on my mac there's no problem but this time i did it on a PC and even if i checked input level before recording i got distorsion. Many too many guitars, that's interesting to read. I thought that putting many guitars would have given a good style to the song but it seems to be too much. I have a huge problem with the voice channel and the way to manipulate it, i really don't know how to get compression, what plugin can i use ? and the most important: how does compression work !!!!??? he he ! I am also playing a guitar as a bass guitar so maybe it's too much and it gives a lower sound to the track? I really appreciate your comment guys, but i d'ont where to start, i am a newbie to recording, well i did a few rec but none of them had as many instruments (see my youtube channel). I know you all are experts and furthermore you are very busy, but if someone can help me step by step to improve this take (and of course to understand the process, that's the most important) that would be awesome. I am ok to send the original file to those who would like to help me ! By the way MANY THANKS ! -------------------- My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/flymosquitofly
Myspace url: MySpace Amp: Fender GDEC 3 15 Guitars: Gibson Les Paul Studio, Greg Bennett Avion 1 |
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Mar 4 2011, 01:24 AM
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It's a very cool sounding song, I enjoyed listening
Here are some suggestions: - You could try to skin down those guitars a bit, they are taking up too much range. Try to make them a bit thinner and let the bass and drums go through and become more defined. - Try to program the drum MIDI track a bit, insert velocity according to the part of the song, and make some fills. This will already sound much more natural compared to looped, fixed-velocity drum midi track. - try to insert compressor on the master bus, and play with the settings a bit. Don't put too much compression in mixing, but focus on making the levels right. - drums would benefit from some soft ambient reverb. - guitar on one channel could benefit from soft slap back delay set to 1/8 of the tempo. - vocals could be dessed by cutting the higher frequencies. -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
- Check out my GMC Profile and Lessons - (Please subscribe to my) YouTube Official Channel - Let's be connected through ! Facebook! :) |
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Mar 4 2011, 09:21 AM
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Thanks Yvan, do you have any tips for the compression ? what VST to use ? Free or not ?
Thanks QUOTE (Ivan Milenkovic @ Mar 4 2011, 01:24 AM) It's a very cool sounding song, I enjoyed listening Here are some suggestions: - You could try to skin down those guitars a bit, they are taking up too much range. Try to make them a bit thinner and let the bass and drums go through and become more defined. - Try to program the drum MIDI track a bit, insert velocity according to the part of the song, and make some fills. This will already sound much more natural compared to looped, fixed-velocity drum midi track. - try to insert compressor on the master bus, and play with the settings a bit. Don't put too much compression in mixing, but focus on making the levels right. - drums would benefit from some soft ambient reverb. - guitar on one channel could benefit from soft slap back delay set to 1/8 of the tempo. - vocals could be dessed by cutting the higher frequencies. -------------------- My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/flymosquitofly
Myspace url: MySpace Amp: Fender GDEC 3 15 Guitars: Gibson Les Paul Studio, Greg Bennett Avion 1 |
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Mar 4 2011, 03:53 PM
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QUOTE (jeanv @ Mar 4 2011, 09:21 AM) Thanks Yvan, do you have any tips for the compression ? what VST to use ? Free or not ? Thanks For compression you need to decide if you are using it 1/ to even out significant differences in level or 2/as a processing effect. Much of your mix needs compression on specific tracks - i.e. vocal. - for the former. I´d suggest that you experiment with a gentle ratio of about 10:1 and start with a moderate release of about 100ms, use a soft knee if available. Adjust the threshold so that the compressor just kicks in on the syllables that you want to affect. Then drop the ratio to about 3:1 and from there listen to how the audio is affected as you adjust the attack and release times. Much the same for guitar but your compression ratio etc will differ. You can also try to EQ sidechain a compressor to de-ess. VST compressors for mixing- they differ partly depending on whether they are meant to glue a track or compress individual takes or meant for the 2 bus. They also differ according to if they are trying to emulate a type of analogue compressor ie opto or VCA or digital. What is right for you depends on the tune and what you are trying to achieve and so to a great extent you need to experiment. -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Mar 6 2011, 05:30 AM
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Advice doesn't get much better than Tony's, but there are some things I can mention (Which ironically Tony probably taught me awhile back anyway
 )There is some clipping, but its not too bad. The best thing I have found to do is mix low, and use limiters and clipping VST's to incrementally increase volume (Only to a certain point). Its always better for the listener to just turn up the volume than having a loud mix, a commercially loud mix I find out is hard to properly get without proper equipment. And that gets expensive (Ask tony how much his stuff is worth  ) and I have spent a few hundred dollars on soft/hardware myself and I still don't bother with getting the mix commercially "high". It's mostly stuff to have better control over the mix.Don't worry about the volume of the mix, at the early stage you want to learn how to increase the quality of the mix. Which like said before, is all about experimenting and learning. Now you mention free VST's? This my friend, is an area I excel in. I will hunt down any and all free plug-ins and pretty much try to use them all, (I have well over 125 installed right now). Classic VST plug-ins (Free) All those are very user friendly and can get you good results, I still use some of them now. You will also see a 'Classic Master Limiter', use that in conjunction with this: GClip (Free) A good way too brighten, and clean up a mix is to, 1) always get mix as close to 'perfect' as possible before you render it. Then, when you render (.wav is the best to preserve quality) you can open up the rendered track in a separate reaper project and use EQ as necessary, and 2), you can use the Classic Master Limiter and GClip incrementally to increase the volume. So the signal chain would look something like this (this was typical for me) EQ> GClip> Master Limiter > GCLip > Master Limiter Thats just some stuff you can experiment with to figure out what works best. |
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Mar 7 2011, 08:24 AM
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Many many thanks! Guys, i work on it and i post a modified version of the track asap to see if i can improve it !
a last question: is it better to work on a mac or a PC ? does this mac a real difference? and what softwares do you use? is REAPER a good software ? I use it because i find it very friendly compared to ableton live or cubase. -------------------- My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/flymosquitofly
Myspace url: MySpace Amp: Fender GDEC 3 15 Guitars: Gibson Les Paul Studio, Greg Bennett Avion 1 |
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Mar 7 2011, 11:59 AM
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Mac and PC are both fine. The choice between the two often comes down to other software/hardware requirements.
We use sadie here as our daw. That´s mainly because it has a very good trim editor and can do both full red and scarlet etc burns and full DDPi2. Put it another way it´s a professional mastering and broadcast DAW rather than a recording or mixing one, albeit that you can also use it to record and mix. For recording and mixing Reaper is fine - like any daw it´s usually a case of getting used to how it works and then deciding if the workflow is good for you. So if you find it to be friendly and intuitive and it works for you then stick with it and learn how to do advanced tracking and mixing on it. You will almost certainly get more benefit doing this than trying to learn a whole new daw. -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Mar 7 2011, 02:48 PM
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Ok, i'll stay on Reaper, and i will try the free VST mentioned above and i come back to you, one again thanks for your time and your patience!
QUOTE (tonymiro @ Mar 7 2011, 11:59 AM) Mac and PC are both fine. The choice between the two often comes down to other software/hardware requirements. We use sadie here as our daw. That´s mainly because it has a very good trim editor and can do both full red and scarlet etc burns and full DDPi2. Put it another way it´s a professional mastering and broadcast DAW rather than a recording or mixing one, albeit that you can also use it to record and mix. For recording and mixing Reaper is fine - like any daw it´s usually a case of getting used to how it works and then deciding if the workflow is good for you. So if you find it to be friendly and intuitive and it works for you then stick with it and learn how to do advanced tracking and mixing on it. You will almost certainly get more benefit doing this than trying to learn a whole new daw. -------------------- My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/flymosquitofly
Myspace url: MySpace Amp: Fender GDEC 3 15 Guitars: Gibson Les Paul Studio, Greg Bennett Avion 1 |
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Mar 7 2011, 10:34 PM
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I'm just not that good with mastering, Tony will for sure have more detailed response, based on more experience. I'm just using couple of compressors on the master bus, both very subtle, but working together nicely.
For me, it's usually a combo of one transparent compressor, such as Waves L3, and one "make-up" comp, like stock Nuendo's Multiband Compressor, or PSP Vintage Warmer. They add coloration and make it sound a bit more "expensive". This would not be the way it is done, I just found ti gives me best results for now. For multimedia production, I usually filter mids and highs so I can hear what is going on. Not a lot of people will hear the bass properly, so it's important for me to hear it well on poor reproduction systems as well. If all is well there, then I can render, if not, I mix it a bit better, insert the sounds of what is missing in that limited range. -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
- Check out my GMC Profile and Lessons - (Please subscribe to my) YouTube Official Channel - Let's be connected through ! Facebook! :) |
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Mar 8 2011, 08:55 PM
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hi, thanks for the links, but it seems there are not working, that's a shame!
QUOTE (The Uncreator @ Mar 6 2011, 05:30 AM) Advice doesn't get much better than Tony's, but there are some things I can mention (Which ironically Tony probably taught me awhile back anyway )There is some clipping, but its not too bad. The best thing I have found to do is mix low, and use limiters and clipping VST's to incrementally increase volume (Only to a certain point). Its always better for the listener to just turn up the volume than having a loud mix, a commercially loud mix I find out is hard to properly get without proper equipment. And that gets expensive (Ask tony how much his stuff is worth ) and I have spent a few hundred dollars on soft/hardware myself and I still don't bother with getting the mix commercially "high". It's mostly stuff to have better control over the mix.Don't worry about the volume of the mix, at the early stage you want to learn how to increase the quality of the mix. Which like said before, is all about experimenting and learning. Now you mention free VST's? This my friend, is an area I excel in. I will hunt down any and all free plug-ins and pretty much try to use them all, (I have well over 125 installed right now). Classic VST plug-ins (Free) All those are very user friendly and can get you good results, I still use some of them now. You will also see a 'Classic Master Limiter', use that in conjunction with this: GClip (Free) A good way too brighten, and clean up a mix is to, 1) always get mix as close to 'perfect' as possible before you render it. Then, when you render (.wav is the best to preserve quality) you can open up the rendered track in a separate reaper project and use EQ as necessary, and 2), you can use the Classic Master Limiter and GClip incrementally to increase the volume. So the signal chain would look something like this (this was typical for me) EQ> GClip> Master Limiter > GCLip > Master Limiter Thats just some stuff you can experiment with to figure out what works best. -------------------- My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/flymosquitofly
Myspace url: MySpace Amp: Fender GDEC 3 15 Guitars: Gibson Les Paul Studio, Greg Bennett Avion 1 |
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