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Old 05-28-2018, 08:14 PM   #2476
fred garvin
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 791
Default Stick(y) it!

Wow, I can't believe this hasn't been cleaned out and stickied. Seriously, if not this, what does deserve a sticky?

Since it hasn't, I at least owe it a bump and my appreciation. Bumpreciation?

I recently was struck by inspiration and set out to record a song for the first time in too long. Remembering this thread, I returned for advice, inspiration, and just plain help.

With "Finished is better than perfect" as my mantra, I finished the lyrics, finished the arrangement, finished scratch tracks, finished basic tracks, finished screwing around with the guitar sounds, finished a vocal track I can live with, and... finished it! I've by no means stopped screwing around with it, but I have a "finished" track I'm reasonably happy with, I've played it for people and they declared it to not suck. Hoo-rah.

Keeping in mind the lesson on gain staging, I carefully made sure to have no overs and plenty of signal on everything. Actually, I record most things much hotter than yep recommends, tape habits die hard. But no overs and appropriate preamp use. Other semi-pro "experts" have declared that gain staging is irrelevant now as there is so much headroom available in current tech. They are wrong. Yep is right. Maybe next time I'll leave a lil mo headroom, I am sure it will sound better. Just not ready for all the lesson yet I guess.

Finding that my mixes were hazy and mushy, I topped and tailed and highpassed my tracks, remixed and marvelled as the fog blew away and something almost like punch emerged.

I did stray from the true path here and there. Running out of patience with my limited vocal skills, I went looking for software fixes... and found them! GSnap and Bittersweet are a-ma-zing and free. It's great advice to invest in classic high resale value gear but Mic Room took my 57 and made it sound, well, different and better. And I over-limited. It's just so easy to do, so much easier than explaining why your song is so quiet and you have to turn the volume up so high and it's actually better, really, and make sure to turn it back down QUICK or the next song -will- destroy your speakers... sigh oh well. I don't hear any phones ringing in it.

So thanks a bunch, yep. I coulda done it without ya, but it just woulda sounded like ass.

Um ok I'm lazy, but this thread is soooo long and I know that at some point it got hijacked and basically abandoned and I know that people have cleaned and archived it. Can someone point me to the final cut? And maybe anyone with some pull around here could lobby to get -that- put on a sticky, with maybe a few sample pages for an intro? Cuz it -would- be kinda silly to archive the 20(?) pages of that uh, difficult and inconsiderate person who jacked the thread complaining that he bought a EVH amp sim but still doesn't sound like EVH or w/e his problem was, but there's sooo much good stuff in here besides that.

Thanks again man, and also to the other participants who helped make this such a great thread.

Last edited by fred garvin; 05-28-2018 at 08:24 PM.
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