A couple songs from a new cd . . .

My wife and I just finished a cd we’ve been working on for a long time. Most of it was actually recorded about 5 years ago (with ntrack) in our kid’s playroom, with some of the the worst equipment imaginable! We then built a house with a studio in the basement. By the time we moved in I had lined up a few local bands to record, and so I finally got around to mixing these songs and getting them to cd.

Any feedback would be great (good or bad).

I can’t change anything, but we are getting ready to start our next project (the rough tracks already sound way better IMHO)), so input about what you like with these songs and don’t like will be very helpful as we try to get started on new stuff.


Greg & Sandi Gray

Thanks.

The singing on your recordings is great, and it is well recorded. I especially like the harmonies. Is the Judas song original? If so, it is a nice bit of songwriting.

Some suggestions for your next recording:

I think that the two weakest points in the sound that you are getting are the drums (snare and cymbals) and the lead guitar sound when you are playing up the neck.

The snare just doesn’t have the pop that I like to hear. If you are working with drum samples (what it sonds like to me), the solution is probably just as simple as working with some better samples. The new drum machine in n-track actually sounds pretty good to me. There are two cymbal sounds that I hear, one which has a lot of high frequency sizzle but not much body. The other cymbal sound has much less sizzle, more low frequency, and decays away quickly. Personal opinion here, but I just don’t like that sound. Again, maybe the solution is just a different set of samples.

The guitar parts are in general well done. Again personal opinion, but… The sound that you are using on the high lead part is the one that everyone gets when they select a factory preset on their amp modeler, kick up the gain, and go to it. Not to say that this is a bad sound, it is just a bit trite to my ear, and doesn’t do justice to an otherwise excellent arrangement and sound. Probably it won’t hit everyone the way it does me, but unless I work at it, all of my effect pedals tend toward that sound until I start tweaking, and I’m just tired of it. Been hearing it for years. Anyway, I’ll bet that you can come up with a sound that has a lot more character. A first step might be to back off a bit on the distortion (gain) so that more of the character of your guitar’s unique sound can come through.

But the big picture seems to me that you’ve got some good music here. There is much more that is excellent than is weak.

Good luck on your next project.

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The singing on your recordings is great, and it is well recorded. I especially like the harmonies. Is the Judas song original? If so, it is a nice bit of songwriting.


Thanks for the compliments. Yes, it is an origional piece.

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I think that the two weakest points in the sound that you are getting are the drums (snare and cymbals) and the lead guitar sound when you are playing up the neck.


I agree with your observations. The drums are not samples, but This was one of my first atempts at recording drums, and I compressed the kick and snare on the way in unintentionally took some of the snap out, so there wasn’t much I could do with it, besides what you hear.

As for the guitar. Again you are right on. These were only slightly altered presets from a korg ax1500g. And also I recorded this direct (something I rarely do now - to me recording an amp almost always sounds better).

Thanks again for listening and giving your comments.

Solafide - At one time I thought that I had to mic the guitar amp to get a good sound. But I’ve changed my mind. The trick is that what you hear through the amp is not the way it sounds when you use DI. If you tweak your sound while listening live through n-track, you still should be able to get some nice sounds. With my own set up, I’ve found that if I want a sound that is airy or crystaline, sometimes DI actually works better. My experience is that the way that the amp modeler interacts with things is a bit counterintuitive, and it takes a lot of trial and error to get what I want.

Tim