Sneak Peek at my recordings

[Brasel]

Hey guys. I know most of you aren't too interested, but some of you might be. I'm letting AGN have a sneak peek at what I've been working on the last several months. It's still pretty rough, but we're working at it. Three tracks from our upcoming CD, without vocals and with a few touch ups to go. Let me know what you think.

http://www.lurkingbeneath.net/Tony/01%20This%20Life.mp3
http://www.lurkingbeneath.net/Tony/02%20Alone.mp3
http://www.lurkingbeneath.net/Tony/03%20I%27ll%20Get%20Mine.mp3

[Anthus]

I'm no music critic, but these sound good to me. I like the last one the best.

[jerome]

http://www.lurkingbeneath.net/Tony/01%20This%20Life.mp3
Not sure if it's one of the touch ups you were speaking of, but the guitar solo is slightly out of tune with everything else.
http://www.lurkingbeneath.net/Tony/02%20Alone.mp3
Same thing.

http://www.lurkingbeneath.net/Tony/03%20I%27ll%20Get%20Mine.mp3[/QUOTE]
Pretty good.


For the most part, they sound good and clean. I think on the solos issues I had mentioned it just sounds as though the intonation is off. Maybe just retune at the higher end and re-record. This sometimes comes in a little when the clean guitar moves up the fretboard as well. AND/OR capo at the fifth, tune at 12th, and then re-record. That should keep it to a "minor" intonation issue (hehe, musical joke with the minor).


I feel like an a-hole for mentioning it, but I figured better to mention it now than you find out after 1000 CDs burned if you hadn't already caught it. Good luck with the rest of the recordings. I have 2 songs I wrote myself that were recorded in two different studios. One was so a friend of mine could have something to show for his school project at a Community College (he butchered clean guitar into a wannabe bass track, and he didn't save it before the right way, grrrr). The other was done properly by someone else. Two and a half hours recording time for a 3min 50sec song, and I still didn't get it perfect.

[Brasel]

Thanks for the input man. I kinda thought the same thing, but sometimes it's hard to get guitar players to do what you suggest when you're a drummer. :)

[jerome]

I bet. We're kind of stubborn. :D

EDIT:
If it makes you feel better at all, I didn't hear any problems with the drums! Rub that in their faces! Ha ha!

[Mercy]

Your guitarist has more ego than brains. Try to find a tactful way to impart the synergy of guitarists actually using their drummers to help them stay on track. I am not trying to hate on guitarists, I like bassists. But it irks me when musicians think their drummer is just there to fill time and space rather than learn how to work with them.

Please put up the tracks after touch-ups. It would be nice to compare.

-m.

[Brasel]

It's half a joke, half not. They do consider my input quite a bit on things, seeing as I've played instruments before, as well as the fact that I used to be a pretty big metal head. Sometimes though, they don't quite hear what you're trying to point out.

My biggest criticism is my drumming. I don't sound spot on the whole way through any of the songs, and I miss a couple double bass hits on This Life. Everyone else has said it sounds pretty solid, but I've always been my own biggest critic. I'd go back and retrack drums, but it's expensive, and we're poor musicians.

I did bring up the solo issue with my front man today and he says we'll listen to it again and make sure they sound alright and rerecord if necessary.

[jerome]

Sometimes though, they don't quite hear what you're trying to point out.
Maybe tell them to listen to it as if it's someone else's instead of "playing along" with it in their head and air-guitar. It becomes way too easy to get lost in that. It's kind of like practicing a song all the way through, but getting only part way and playing the rest. You end up making the same mistakes instead of working your way through to correct the issues. Some of us here can do that because we don't have any emotional ties to the song. You can do it because you seem that you can seperate yourself to listen for what to fix instead of just settling for good enough.



My biggest criticism is my drumming. I don't sound spot on the whole way through any of the songs, and I miss a couple double bass hits on This Life.
On my recording of my song, I actually played a phrase a bit off. The rhythm was still the same , but different notes. It kind of annoys me when I hear it, but almost no one ever picks up that I "changed" that spot when they hear me play it myself. I just listened through "This Life" and I couldn't tell anything seemed off with the drums' rhythm. I did notice the cymbal swells at the beginning this time. I thought that was pretty cool.


... I've always been my own biggest critic.
Same here. This is why I don't have many songs recorded. If I'd have listened to my guitar teacher and recorded things when he said I should, I'd probably could be making a dollar or two a month on iTunes or something. But I was always focused on the song not being perfect like Christopher Parkening or David Russell.
Perfectionism is both a blessing and a curse. You CAN always do better, but more often you will make it worse by "fixing" it to death. Just like alcohol, "Know when to say when."