My first "Modern" Song

[raphazzz]

Hi Guys,

That is the first song I wrote and recorded in more than 15 years. Yes, I am a terrible guitar player. Yes, I'm learning how to record. And yes, I'm ready to hear every single advice... Lol

The song is from my roots in the early 90's punk rock scene, like Face to Face.

Gear Used:

Mackbook Pro + Presonus iOne + Studio One 3 Artist
Guitar: LTD M400 + Guitar Rig 5
Bass: Squier Jaguar + Guitar Rig
Plug In: Post Eq (Provided by Presonus)

https://soundcloud.com/raphael-jaber/demo5/s-0H9Am

[Lt. Bob]

nice .... I'm not a punker so I can't comment from that perspective but just as a recording, sounds pretty good to me.
I'd like a fatter snare and kick personally .... guitar sounds pretty good actually. Nice definition to it ..... pretty good mix.
Some of the drum fills are a little awkward sounding but overall the drums sound good to me.

Greg'll be along shortly I imagine ...... this kind of thing is his specialty.

[WhiskeyJack]

Hi Guys,

That is the first song I wrote and recorded in more than 15 years. Yes, I am a terrible guitar player. Yes, I'm learning how to record. And yes, I'm ready to hear every single advice... Lol

The song is from my roots in the early 90's punk rock scene, like Face to Face.

Gear Used:

Mackbook Pro + Presonus iOne + Studio One 3 Artist
Guitar: LTD M400 + Guitar Rig 5
Bass: Squier Jaguar + Guitar Rig
Plug In: Post Eq (Provided by Presonus)

https://soundcloud.com/raphael-jaber/demo5/s-0H9Am

I am a huge face to face fan and other stuff like this. I can hear the potential here!! Very cool. You do, however, have a ways to go. But this is a fantastic foundation.

I would start here: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=111

Your drums sound noticeably "fake" not so much in sounds but in the way that they are programmed. I think maybe the sounds will come more to life once you fix the way that plugin in playing the midi.

What software or plug in did you use? I think you need to zero in on making that part of the performance more believable. I am a user of fake drums myself. It sucks. But if that's all you have, that is all you have.

Read miners thread fully and ask questions there. He has spent a lot of time fine tuning the art of the fake drum. Focus on this first as i feel it needs the most amount of your work, time and effort at this point. the guitars and bass we can work on after as they tend to be a little bit easier.

And the cool thing is, once you get the drums sounding how you want you can just save a template or preset and use that every time. you only have to really do this really hard part once sort of. everything after that is just minor tweaks to new midi and on a song to song basis.

[JD01]

Raph,

This is lot better than my early efforts so you don't have anywhere near as far to go as me - its important that you get to down about your ability at first and that you take the time to really practice -

I agree with Whiskey Jack the first thing you should do is read minerman's tips on fake drums. This will take you some time, but once you've got the sound right, you just template it for all of your projects. Get these drums sorted first, then re-track everything as well as you can, playing along with the corrected drum track.

Bass sounds pretty good to me.
Guitars sound alright too - they sound like a sim, what one are you using?
The main rhythm guitars might sound better if they were hard panned L/R.
The riff that comes in sounds cool, but its out on the right on its own.

It sounds like there's a lot more reverb on the guitars that on the drums - the drums sound really up front to me.

Does sound a bit like Face to Face. I only heard them for the first time quite recently and I like them.

[Greg_L]

Yeah the drums are a mess. You committed the the cardinal sin of drum programming - it's totally inhuman. How is that "drummer" playing those hats so fast while also rolling on the floor tom in the intro? He must have many arms! Lol. A drummer will often tap the hats with his foot, and that's fine if you wanna keep that in with the tom work, but you'd have to half-time the hat beats and lighten them up a lot. The rest is programming touch ups to keep the drums from sounding so robotic.

The timing on the guitars is pretty bad. You're not keeping up with the drums, or you're rushing, I can't tell because it's that far off in some spots. The sounds are all okay, not great, not terrible, but the performance must be much better to sound good. Good sounds are one thing, but good sounds die a quick death if the performance is bad. No one wants to hear a bad performance.

The mix has a lot of muck buildup in the guitars and bass. The floor toms are too rumbly for as often as you go down to them.

The good news is that this seems like a pretty decent foundation for a punk rock song, and it is all very fixable and a good learning experience if you're just getting started. You didn't actually play the drums, so you can fix those without making a ton of noise. You didn't record any amps, so you can just go back in and retrack the guitars. Just getting the guitars and drums tight will go a long long way to making this sound better.

[Minerman]

Not too bad, but you do need to work on your drum programming skills a little, it sounds like the velocity is the same on every hit, so IMHO, the drums are what you should square away first, then re-track the guitars to the new drums...

There's a lot of low-end in the mix too, but a simple eq tweak can fix that...

I will say your guitars sound pretty decent for Guitar Rig, you can use a tape simulation plugin sometimes (very lightly) to help 'em sound a little more real...

I'm assuming you haven't been recording long, so it's only natural to have to change/fix things dude, that's how you learn...

Good job, keep at it!!!

[raphazzz]

Thanks you guys, very good tips so far. I will work on every single details and then post and updated version for you guys!!!

[rayc]

I'm listening on headphones and the one guitar sounds R and uppish while the other sounds right and lowish if that makes sense,
not a bad effort. definitely need to reprogram the drums - play air drums to it & if you can't pretend to do everything that's happening then you've too much happening.
Guitars sounds like sims of LA punk to me - I'm really old so punk sounds like the Pistols asin rather slower and less gainy than yours - but that's my age & problem not yours.
Follow the suggestions of the league of gentlemen above & you'll improve very soon.