haze015 Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 Shite equipment and bad settings for a start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Assassin231 Posted May 29, 2011 Share Posted May 29, 2011 Something I've wondered about for ages... Why is it in more amateur recordings the electric guitar sounds so blatantly amateur when in professional recordings it sounds so much better. Like, I mean obviously there's the factor that one of them is a professional recording, but it's really apparent with guitars. For example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyTIJCQEWps&feature=related compared to Showbiz onwards... Is it because of recording technique, like better microphone placement, or the quality of microphone? Or something else the microphone, placement, preamp, mixing (this could affect it hugely), outboard and mastering - all of this makes a massive difference in quality - if one of these things is altered then the overall sound usually changes drastically Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic. Posted May 29, 2011 Share Posted May 29, 2011 So if you placed the microphone properly, mixed it properly and all, could you still get a good guitar recording with a Shure SM57 or a mic along those lines? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted May 29, 2011 Share Posted May 29, 2011 the microphone, placement, preamp, mixing (this could affect it hugely), outboard and mastering - all of this makes a massive difference in quality - if one of these things is altered then the overall sound usually changes drastically Nah. To the overall recording, yes, but to each individual instrument it is more about the original sound. The song posted above sounds like shit because it is clearly a crap amp/pedal rather than everything after it causing it to sound shit. A decent microphone and preamp will add a gloss to the sound that poorer equivalents won't, but if the source is crap, then it really doesn't do anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milkybar=] Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 So if you placed the microphone properly' date=' mixed it properly and all, could you still get a good guitar recording with a Shure SM57 or a mic along those lines?[/quote'] yes polishing a turd is common, you can do enough editing of audio, through reamping, EQ and dynamic processors to make a shit guitar sound, sound almost-professional. Although to eliminate the almost you need a good original sound source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mobius Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Deadstar/sigma Your soundcloud account seems to be down? Was curious to hear it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic. Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Deadstar/sigma Your soundcloud account seems to be down? Was curious to hear it! Oh sorry! I changed the username of it from deadstar029 to d0mgreen (helps me remember it better as I use the latter more often) http://soundcloud.com/d0mgreen/sets/year-12-assignments/ When I get back I need to remix There There a bit more (spesh the bass levels at the beginning) Also, both of those recordings were both originally intended to have some vocals on top....but I never got round to it Oh and There There was recorded with the Fender acoustic I found in the skip of the Fender European headquarters down my road! It has a hole in the back! (the guitar, not the warehouse) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mobius Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Cheers, they are pretty lush sounding covers. The exp track is oddly familiar and I can;t work out why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic. Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Cheers, they are pretty lush sounding covers. The exp track is oddly familiar and I can;t work out why. Oh yeah I forgot I had those others up. The exp one was just to see what reversing some strings audio from Sibelius sounded like. I think I also have my GCSE composition up there (with a middle section borrowed from Apocalypse Please) and something else which I can't remember, but cheers EDIT: I just played that Exp one and it kind of reminds me of Like Spinning Plates by Radiohead (I swear I don't intend to have everything sound so familiar, really bugs me a lot of the time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mobius Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Yeah LSP might be what I was thinking of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dramatic Hammer Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 So if you placed the microphone properly' date=' mixed it properly and all, could you still get a good guitar recording with a Shure SM57 or a mic along those lines?[/quote'] Depends what you mean by good. The mic is fine but as haze says, the source (tone and arrangement) has way more bearing on the overall sound. Use less gain, layer multiple takes with different amp settings and for really beefy dirt, think about mixing a clean but heavily compressed take under it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic. Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Re-uploading the finished versions of There There and Videotape I did for my Music Tech assignments (finished this years course today!). For the most part they're pretty much the same as before, just with a few tweaks, and you can download if you want. Will edit the link here once they Soundcloud upload finishes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam511 Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 http://soundcloud.com/liam_scott_3/paranoid-android-test Just a quick multi track test for an acoustic ish, clean and overdriven tone? I dunno if im pleased or not Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic. Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Tada http://soundcloud.com/d0mgreen/sets/year-12-assignments-1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord MFC Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Tada http://soundcloud.com/d0mgreen/sets/year-12-assignments-1 but i think you need to make them more unique... and add vocals, its a bit... unexciting, not much variation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic. Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 but i think you need to make them more unique... and add vocals, its a bit... unexciting, not much variation. I don't sing/haven't ever attempted and the person I asked said she would but never did Plus to be honest I don't even think Videotape needs any vocals, I like the way it is, but that's probably because I've played it so many times now I'm used to it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord MFC Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 I don't sing/haven't ever attempted and the person I asked said she would but never did Plus to be honest I don't even think Videotape needs any vocals, I like the way it is, but that's probably because I've played it so many times now I'm used to it oh well. Can you pick me out a nice vintage strat from that skip? Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic. Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 oh well. Can you pick me out a nice vintage strat from that skip? Cheers. K, but it'll cost you a great deal of Mars bars It's quite a challenge tbh, you have to go round the woods at the back, climb over the fence and go through the skips, and occasionally find something (they just chuck out any defected products, and boxes and waste) and the site is guarded, with dogs because it's a big warehouse site thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord MFC Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 K, but it'll cost you a great deal of Mars bars It's quite a challenge tbh, you have to go round the woods at the back, climb over the fence and go through the skips, and occasionally find something (they just chuck out any defected products, and boxes and waste) and the site is guarded, with dogs because it's a big warehouse site thing. :'( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted August 26, 2011 Author Share Posted August 26, 2011 I tried out Reaper for the first time last night. I wanted a simple solution to try and write some strings over one of our songs. It was pretty easy to set up a midi track and VSTi and import my stereo mix. The routing is confusing me a little, but it took me a while to get that in Cubase too. Why can't they just make it like actual gear?!? Anyway: 1. Does anyone have any good tips for string sounds? I asked else where and I was told to use sound fonts instead of VSTis, but i've not done this before, is it fairly simple? 2. Does anyone use Reaper and know the keyboard shortcuts? I could really do witth zoom in, zoom out, left and right locators etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam511 Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 http://soundcloud.com/liam_scott_3/amp-test Thought id share this wee demo of my tone at zee moment, Bridge pickups is overdriven, then switching to the neck cleans it up with the volume rolled down Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beat Poet Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 But, do I need to get the tape measure out? I've been thinking of trying the "recorder man technique" on drums. Do you follow a set of rules you know will work? Or do you just stick a mic in front of an instrument and press record? Or somewhere in between? I have worked hard for the last six months on attaining a thick, balanced drum sound from my small room. Obviously close-miking the individual drums poses no problem, but getting an even balance from all the cymbals by using just two overhead mics has been a cowson to say the least. I've tried every combination under the sun (including recorderman) and what works best for me is nothing fancy, and is to have the overheads directly over the cymbals. I had to watch it though as on the hat side, the crash was blocking the mic's "sight-line" to the snare (I was getting loads of snare and hat on the ride side of the kit), so I had to bring the mic to a position over the hat and angle it back towards the crash. Both mics are the same distance from the snare (I got the tape measure out, to avoiding phasing) and both are about a foot above the crashes. Changing my setup had alot to do with it though, I had to move the cymbals to the left or right, or up or down, so they fitted with where I wanted them in the stereo image and could all be heard at the same volume. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don'tPostThePear Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 I have worked hard for the last six months on attaining a thick, balanced drum sound from my small room. Obviously close-miking the individual drums poses no problem, but getting an even balance from all the cymbals by using just two overhead mics has been a cowson to say the least. I've tried every combination under the sun (including recorderman) and what works best for me is nothing fancy, and is to have the overheads directly over the cymbals. I had to watch it though as on the hat side, the crash was blocking the mic's "sight-line" to the snare (I was getting loads of snare and hat on the ride side of the kit), so I had to bring the mic to a position over the hat and angle it back towards the crash. Both mics are the same distance from the snare (I got the tape measure out, to avoiding phasing) and both are about a foot above the crashes. Changing my setup had alot to do with it though, I had to move the cymbals to the left or right, or up or down, so they fitted with where I wanted them in the stereo image and could all be heard at the same volume. Do i have a chance of producing convincing lo-fi/bedroom pop/garage rock etc. drum sounds from samples? Generally i want the drums to sound really shit, a little "unreality" is not a problem. So far i am thinking about misusing EQ, adding some distortion/grit, maybe "reamping" the drums by playing them through a shitty speaker in a wine cellar or something and recording it and mixing it to the "raw" sound. Some reverb emulating a garage or something would be cool too, i guess. I still couldn't really reproduce mic phase problems, mic bleed, nuances of shitty playing etc. What would you do if you want to get a shit sound? (i have a bit of experience with electronic drum sounds = getting the kick and the snare as heavy as possible but apart from that i know shit bout drums) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beat Poet Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 Do i have a chance of producing convincing lo-fi/bedroom pop/garage rock etc. drum sounds from samples? Generally i want the drums to sound really shit, a little "unreality" is not a problem. So far i am thinking about misusing EQ, adding some distortion/grit, maybe "reamping" the drums by playing them through a shitty speaker in a wine cellar or something and recording it and mixing it to the "raw" sound. Some reverb emulating a garage or something would be cool too, i guess. I still couldn't really reproduce mic phase problems, mic bleed, nuances of shitty playing etc. What would you do if you want to get a shit sound? (i have a bit of experience with electronic drum sounds = getting the kick and the snare as heavy as possible but apart from that i know shit bout drums) So you want to make the drums sound as shit as possible right? Using shit mics would be a start. Second would be to use a shit kit, with shit heads that are poorly tuned. What you say about playing the drums out through speakers and then re-recording them is a good idea, especially if you use shit speakers. Samples will certainly help - people say how wonderful they are for fattening up the snare and kick, but alot of the samples out there are very plastic and electronic sounding, which sounds good for you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don'tPostThePear Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 So you want to make the drums sound as shit as possible right? Using shit mics would be a start. Second would be to use a shit kit, with shit heads that are poorly tuned. What you say about playing the drums out through speakers and then re-recording them is a good idea, especially if you use shit speakers. Samples will certainly help - people say how wonderful they are for fattening up the snare and kick, but alot of the samples out there are very plastic and electronic sounding, which sounds good for you! Sadly i don't have a drumkit and i can't play drums so i can rely on samples only. It would be cool if there would be a "shit/lo-fi drums" sample pack out there. I have quite a lot electronic samples but i don't want to do some electronic drums vs. real guitar stuff here, i want to fuck up the sound of an acoustic kit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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