Gamers who play musical instruments

You could try a little opposing reverb for more thickness. (I.e., pan the right guitar’s reverb hard left and vice-versa.) The same can be done with a very small pitch shift for faux doubling in the quest for that wall of guitars sound.

If you try it: Less is more with reverb. Leave it alone for a day and listen again. You’ll likely dial it back.

I am not near my monitors, so no EQ input ATM.

Edit: I’d do the pitch shift doubling first, then play (or not) with reverb.

Or... it sounds like you have the chops to do real doubling. It’s hard work, but well worth it. Record four takes, pan two of them extreme right the other two extreme left.

Then again, this is a riff shootout, you may not want any doubling. Whatever you like is the right choice.

Yes he totally has the chops for that. Pretty sure it’s already double-tracked, one hard left and one hard right. He can do this old-school and keep stacking tracks. You can go crazy and use different guitars, different mics (whether simulated or real) etc. The differences contribute to the thickness of the sound. (Barring phasing errors)

For this style, after that I would take every guitar track and put a slight detune (or a delay) on it and pan it hard to the other side.

Thanks guys! Yeah, NakedHavoc called it, it's double-tracked with hard pans. One side 5150III, other Dual Recto (from the Kemper... I ain't that rich). The template I used in Sonus One had some pre-built eq for the guitar tracks that I decided to use. LPF and HPF and a bit of a bump at ~300Hz and ~3kHz, though I decided to cut the Mesa at 3k rather than boost.

I really like the suggestion about detune / reverb and pan opposite! That's a really cool trick I'll play with.

I've got a little annoying noise from somewhere in my chain that drives me crazy (Kemper instrument-level out -> Focusrite Scarlett Solo -> USB in on PC). I feel like it's possibly graphics card noise. There's some kind of floor but it also gets worse if my guitar is closer to my computer. I might record it to see if you guys have any ideas about eradication.

ColdForged wrote:

I've got a little annoying noise from somewhere in my chain that drives me crazy (Kemper instrument-level out -> Focusrite Scarlett Solo -> USB in on PC). I feel like it's possibly graphics card noise. There's some kind of floor but it also gets worse if my guitar is closer to my computer. I might record it to see if you guys have any ideas about eradication.

Not saying that's what this is, but the Scarlett does have a tendency to develop a really annoying ground loop noise over time - if you google 'focusrite scarlett ground loop' you will get a llllllot of hits.

It's also possible that your pickups are just picking up interference from your PC power supply. I have trouble with this every so often, especially with lots of gain, or instruments with active pickups. Moving away from the PC helps, or turning your chair partly away from the tower, or both. I never used to have this issue when my DAW PC cases were made of all rolled aluminum - I guess this is the price we pay for all those windows and LEDs and stuff.

Podunk wrote:

PC power supply

Ahhh, that makes way more sense than graphics card. And yes, I've rolled my chair away, facing away from it and it does reduce the noise. But there's a bit of floor regardless.

Podunk’s suggestions are all very good.

Check the quality of your USB cable. Some of them have no shielding to speak of. (!) I use this one for radio-related things (that application is super sensitive to noise and the computer hates hates hates RFI coming up the cable) and it’s very good quality:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...

How high is the noise level? For this project you can just gate or automate it out in quiet sections/gaps. For clean and/or more exposed guitar it gets harder to fix.

You can also get tricky and record the noise by itself, then mix it back in out of phase to cancel it out of the track. (You can even do this with a mic’d signal for with ambient noise in a room, if it’s steady and not something transient.)

It is 100% power supply noise. I completely shut down my PC and the noise is completely gone. That, of course, makes it a bit harder to record given that I was using my PC to record . I could use my Macbook and likely should, frankly. Will have to explore.

I switched over to my Macbook. No noise! Yippee! I decided to re-record the thing with this setup to clean it up some, and tried the "panned reverb" trick. Here's the result. I went very subtle with it which I assume is better than in your face.

Hey, that sounds great! Sounds cleaner to me.

Better? Ha! Better is whatever makes it sounds bad ass to you. There are NO rules. Many, many hit records have been made with techniques that were pretty sketchy. You do what you have to do to get the result you want. This is digital - play with it and see what you like!

I threw it into Reaper and played with some EQ real fast. You might play around with the range from 1500-1900Hz, adding a bit in there somewhere. Find a frequency center you like and boost a couple of db. 3 at the most. To me that gives a little more presence and brings out some of the chord tones a bit more.

My disadvantage is that I have to EQ the whole track. You should just try that boost that on the guitar track.

A good way to find frequencies that make the guitar come to life, or that need to be suppressed, is to set up an EQ with a very narrow Q (bandwidth) and crank its gain either way up or way down. Sweep the frequency as you play the track back. All will become clear. I don't think this track needs much at all in the way of touchup - that's just a general tip.

Play around with the EQ - I think you'll find another couple of spots that can really affect the character of the sound. Whether you make any changes to that is totally up to you. I didn't find anything else I would touch, but again I don't have access to separate tracks. Again, no rules. EQ each dry track, or EQ the whole guitar bus. Or just EQ the reverb track. Or all of the above. Have fun with it!

Nice work!

Edit: Also try the panned reverb technique with a pitch shift/detune instead. Super tiny amount of shift - start with a couple of cents. You can do something like shift one side up and the other side down. Options... Anyway, it will feel like you just added another couple of guitars... You can use both of those techniques at the same time - it's not an either/or. Whatever sounds good. I think you'll find a limit as to how much you can do with reverb and still keep the in-your-face sound, so the detune gives you another way to explore the wall-of-guitars avenue.

That was mathematical!

NakedHavoc wrote:

Have fun with it!

The "Like" button is just not powerful enough. Thank you so much for all the feedback and tips! That is truly, truly kind. I'm going to diddle around more and see what shakes out, but your input has been truly invaluable!

You are so welcome! I really enjoy mixing and I am glad to be able to share a couple of ideas.

The creative possibilities are endless. Just try weird stuff and see what happens. EQ the snot out of a guitar track - just leave the lows, or maybe a midrangy hump, then maybe run that through an overdrive - then feed that to a reverb or a slap, then mix it in. Some added “wrongness” can really spice up a track, even if you can’t hear it discretely. Play with automation to pull the levels on it down except where you want tails if it is muddying things up.

I gotta shut up now, haha. I am glad to have helped! I hope you have as much fun with mixing as I have.

Just got an Orba, my first instrument in decades. It's a looper, I guess, with four playing modes and 8 keys and a bunch of movement sensors, with Bluetooth/USB C connections into devices, so I think I'm going to mess around with this and Garage Band to try to get my feet under me. Should be fun!

It's got a heck of a lot of built in features. For example, the Chord mode has a "follow" function, so if you are going up a scale and run past the "last" note of the 8, it'll give you the next one up. Which I need to figure out how to use. But it's got this weird "just one more pattern" feeling to it. It's so easy to put together an interesting beat or a simple tune, it could just be stress relief lol.

Looking forward to messing with it.

I just played guitar with my neighborhood jam band for a few hours. So much fun! Pentatonic scales are beautiful.

ColdForged wrote:

So I'm participating in a casual "riff war" in /r/7string where I'm a mod.

To continue this saga, there were 3 different drum tracks provided to "riff" over. I did the 120bpm one (the slowest, I shared earlier) and had planned for that to be it... I just didn't feel like I had the chops to do the faster ones.

After turning it in it became apparent that only 4 of us were participating. Alright. Then someone said "why don't you guys record something for all of them so we can have rounds". Oh dear.

So I tried, first the 163bpm one. Recall: I've never done anything like this, I consider it a weakness. I just don't do original stuff, I'm literally amazed at people who can. But... I made something that I wasn't too unhappy with! Then I tackled the 180bpm one. And again, discovered something I was okay with. I was pretty stoked.

I decided to try to shoot something more interesting than "Macbook camera while seated", so I got out my DSLR and perched it precariously on a box with my standup desk as high as it would go (I've since gotten a Gorilla Grip tripod for various reasons), and my daughter's point-and-shoot set up for a different angle. Here's what I finished with for both.

I used NakedHavoc's panned reverb trick on both (the panned detune ends up being kind of tricky in Studio One... I haven't figured out a clean way to do it without duping tracks) , and played a bit with some automation on the 180bpm one for a filter sweep (I may have also dropped an 808 hit in there when the low riff hits).

This has been an eye-opener for me. Very fun and pushing me to explore outside my perceived boundaries. I'm not going to be a touring rock star any time soon, but I'm really just having a blast with guitar which is great after 35 years of owning one but rarely taking it "seriously" for any length of time.

ColdForged wrote:

I just don't do original stuff, I'm literally amazed at people who can. But... I made something that I wasn't too unhappy with! Then I tackled the 180bpm one. And again, discovered something I was okay with. I was pretty stoked.

Try humming or scatting original riff and lead ideas. Record your vocal improvisations, then recreate them with your axe. The vocals don’t need to be on pitch or on time, as it’s going to serve as your scratch track to play over.

BTW, those recordings that you posted are great!!

Those are awesome, Cold. Very cool stuff.

Sounds killer! Glad you're having fun with it!

I need some advice on DAWs, producing/mastering. I’m doing a cover version of Do You Realize? by the Flaming Lips for my UU Church. I have about 2.5 weeks to finish it. I can easily record vocals, guitar, keyboard on my own, but I want to get a little more ambitious than that. I’m thinking that GarageBand Mobile wont cut it.

Ironically, a few months ago I started to work on an A cappella arrangement of the song for my UU choir. I didn’t tell anyone that I was working on it. I was Just doing it for sh*ts and giggles. Now, I’ve been called upon to do a version of that very song.

I’m thinking that I might want to call upon a few members of my choir and do a virtual ensemble like you see more often these days. But if I do that, I want to make sure that it’s mastered properly so that it sounds as best as it can.

I want to be the one to do the mastering. But I also understand that there are some really good plug ins for certain DAWs that will do the mastering for you.

Please help?

I'd love to help but I'm a novice. I eagerly await the more experienced responses I know you'll get!

For my part, I'm enjoying my Presonus Sphere membership, which provides among other things access to Studio One. Seems like a powerful DAW. I can't compare it to anything but Reaper which I have some piddling experience with. It feels more coherent than Reaper, but that's about all I can say with any authority.

RawkGWJ wrote:

I’m thinking that I might want to call upon a few members of my choir and do a virtual ensemble like you see more often these days. But if I do that, I want to make sure that it’s mastered properly so that it sounds as best as it can.

I want to be the one to do the mastering. But I also understand that there are some really good plug ins for certain DAWs that will do the mastering for you.

Please help?

Well.. are you talking about mastering or mixing? Those are two completely separate skills. Mastering is transferring the mixed version and finishing the mix. The mix is where you take the raw input and making it shine and sounding awesome.

For mixing, you need a compressor and a EQ at the very least. For mastering, who knows? I have no idea how to master things. Neither have a plug in that will do it for you. It's a skill to learn.

Like ColdForged, I am all in on presonus sphere. It's a stellar deal and I love studio one.

My understanding of what a producer, mixer, masterer does is clearly flawed.

It’s was my understanding that a producer is like a creative director who cajoles and inspires the recording artist to perform to best abilities by listening and leading them in a particular direction.

I thought the mixer was in charge of adjusting the volume levels and effects levels Of each track to make the entire recording to sound balanced.

I thought the masterer was in charge of equalizing each track so that the peak frequencies of each track stood out in the mix. For example, vocals will be EQed so that they don’t muddy the guitars. Or rather each track is EQed so that they mostly peak in different frequency ranges, which results in a stereo track in which you can hear all of the different players in the song.

With the advent of DAWs, the roles of mixer and masterer have been mostly rolled into one, as DAWs make it easy and affordable for one person to do what two people use to do.

Also with the advent of DAWs, hobbyists and amateur recording artists can easily act as their own producers, as well as do a passable job of mixing and mastering their own tracks. Plug-ins can also be used to automate some of those jobs, and can in seconds do the work that would take a hobbyist hours to do, and most likely do it better.

All of this is my assumption of how the modern home recording process works, based on my limited understanding.

What I really want to accomplish is to make a low quality amateur recording sound as best as possible using the most affordable modern tech. I like the idea of that subscription service DAW. I also like the idea of using plug-ins to do post production work.

Please point me in the right direction?

Presonus Sphere is what you want. It gives you the best DAW right now (heap salt on that opinion because I have only tried Studio One and Ableton) and ALL their plugins which will help you mix and master the song AND lessons on how to do it. And you can cancel at any time. I am starting to sound like a shill for presonus. Sorry.

I take it on faith that you’re not a shill. Besides, you’re a Goodjer, not a shill. 8D

RawkGWJ wrote:

I take it on faith that you’re not a shill. Besides, you’re a Goodjer, not a shill. 8D

Oh, he could still be a shill. But I'm not! (Or we both are!)

DAWs: For mixing and mastering, none are really more competent than another. When it comes to certain styles of performance and composition, there are some that have very interesting workflows (Ableton, FL Studio), but for any other purpose it's whatever you like. Reaper is my recommendation. ProTools is still the "industry standard" but unless you're sending your projects to professional mixing houses, that means nothing. Reaper, Studio One, Cakewalk, all similar. Reaper is the most affordable and equally or more capable than any others.

Roles:
Back in the day, the Producer would work on what the band recorded. They helped steer the sound of the album to a cohesive piece and helped with arrangement and instrumentation. They would have input on the structure of songs, the feeling of the performance, and the budget. And yes, they would bring out the best in the musicians by acting as a cheerleader, giving inspiring speeches, staging interventions, etc. Note: The term "producer" is also used interchangeably these days with "electronic artist" who usually makes their music exclusively in the box on their computer.

The mixing engineer would work on how they recorded. The technical bits - where to mic the amps, what mics to use, how to compress the vocals, how to record the vocals, which amps to use, all that good stuff.

The mastering engineer's job was to finalize everything by taking the entire set of songs and making sure they were a consistent loudness and timbre. They worked with the final stereo mixdown of each song. "Fixing it in the master" has always been a misnomer because at that stage the mix should be fully baked. It's the final spit and polish, really. (What you described a mastering engineer as doing is usually what the mixing engineer does.)

The performer's job is to try and resist all of those people by having an Uncompromising True Artistic Vision that they just don't get.

Doing it at home
Reaper is $60. Plugins are cheap. There are solid workhorse plugins that will take care of almost any situation, I'm glad to give recommendations. Software synths are cheap, too. You can make a full commercial- grade album at home for not much money, but it does take a lot of experience and judgment. No real way around that. It's just a long time of experimentation, reading, watching, listening, etc.

The three phases of making an album, tracking (recording), mixing, and mastering all get blurred into one these days. I'd still recommend to anyone, regardless of genre, to work with those three basic steps in mind. It just makes for a good workflow.

The biggest thing you can do to help your work at home is spend the least you can on DAWs and plugins and the most you can on monitoring equipment. Plugins are a slippery slope. Don't get hung up on them, the differences in how you use them vastly eclipse their effectiveness from one to the next. Stay off of plugin-centric forums.

Thank you so much for that, Michael, Coldforged, and Fredrik.

Now I just need to decide how deep I want to get with this thing. I will steer clear of plug-ins. I’ll also try to get the parts recorded ASAP so that I can work on the post production stuff.

I think I’m going to multi track my own voice and do an a cappella inspired thing with just minimal instrumentation. I’m sure I can convince Mrs Rawk to sing some of the higher parts.

Any other advice you might have would be eagerly accepted on my part.

Thanks again, y’all.

RawkGWJ wrote:

Any other advice you might have would be eagerly accepted on my part.

Thanks again, y’all.

Since you are recording vocals, make sure the room you are recording in doesn't bounce sound around. It will be hellish nightmare to work with to try to get anything decent out of it. I am not saying you need to insulate the room completely, but at least consider hanging some heavy fabrics around the room to absorb the sound if it's a pretty empty room.

Really looking forward to hearing what you create!

I’m going to try out our walk in closet which is over stuffed with clothes.