
She was a bit unhappy with the ending of the last one so I made her a new one!
It's not finished just yet, however. My gear started malfunctioning and I just wanted to see if this one is any better. :3
It's not finished just yet, however. My gear started malfunctioning and I just wanted to see if this one is any better. :3
Category Music / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 8.05 MB
Right around 1:25 the flute(I assume it's a flute instrument of some kind) hits a low note that very strongly discords with the rest of the song, even carried through. I'd suggest turning that lowest point into a lower octave from the song's key signature.
The rest of the composition is pretty good. Near the opening where the organ, guitar and bass all kick in, I'd like to see some more of that organ coming in. My suggestion would be to bring in the organ and drums, then gradually feed in the guitars before launching off into the rest of the song.
My beef is with your mastering. You have a lot of stuff happening with your midranges, and as a result things can get really muddy sounding and it's hard to distinguish one instrument from the other. Low fidelity is one thing, where blowing out eardrums on a large PA system is another entirely :)
It doesn't help that it sounds like you're using the same sorta overdrive for both your bass and your lead guitars. If you're able to, check out amplitube 2. It's a virtual guitar effects rack that can do a lot for any stringed work for getting brighter, crisper overdrives than I've seen most mid and low level amps and pedals manage to pull off.
The rest of the composition is pretty good. Near the opening where the organ, guitar and bass all kick in, I'd like to see some more of that organ coming in. My suggestion would be to bring in the organ and drums, then gradually feed in the guitars before launching off into the rest of the song.
My beef is with your mastering. You have a lot of stuff happening with your midranges, and as a result things can get really muddy sounding and it's hard to distinguish one instrument from the other. Low fidelity is one thing, where blowing out eardrums on a large PA system is another entirely :)
It doesn't help that it sounds like you're using the same sorta overdrive for both your bass and your lead guitars. If you're able to, check out amplitube 2. It's a virtual guitar effects rack that can do a lot for any stringed work for getting brighter, crisper overdrives than I've seen most mid and low level amps and pedals manage to pull off.
Derp. I'm terrible at mastering. Like, really terrible. Usually it's not too noticeable but in this, there's a ton of stuff going on at the same time. This is also just a demo so far; I'm going to remaster all of it when it's time for the album. Listening to it again, yeah, there's an unusually large amount of stuff in the midranges. I guess that was what I felt the problem was. You seem to know a lot about mastering, so is there anywhere you suggest I could learn about it?
Also, I use Guitar Rig 4, which is newer and (in my opinion) better than Amplitube 2.
Thanks a bunch for the criticism! I really appreciate it. :D
Also, I use Guitar Rig 4, which is newer and (in my opinion) better than Amplitube 2.
Thanks a bunch for the criticism! I really appreciate it. :D
The last thing somebody wants is to make something sound 'overproduced'. it loses it's organic appeal and everything sounds messy. But let's go back to mastering 101.
Go one track at a time. Isolate a track, listen to it all the way through with a simple low/mid/highrange EQ on it and alter it until it sounds' sweet' to your ears. Then you mute it and move on to your next track. Keep yourself about .5db below 0 on each of your tracks. Continue through to the end. The next is to arrange your instruments. Listen to each track and pretend you're listening to a band performing live on stage. And pretend you're standing right in the middle of it. Where are the players? Use that to model out your pans. What would be great is to even move the instruments around.
Try for some automated panning to slowly migrate your instruments around while they play. What if a centered keyboard sound suddenly changed it's pan because it switched to a different instrument more to the left side?
When you have your tracks set up, the next step is to 'send' your sounds to isolate them even further. take your drums that you've properly EQ'd, send them through your send function(which varies what music suite you're using) and tie them in to a compressor. This takes all of those scattered drums and tidies them up into one great place. Now your drums, lead, bass and keyboards are all set up to be demuddied. if you play it straight through chances are good it'll all still sound pretty awkwardly muddled in the midrange, so if you face this problem, try the following.
Check your EQ. Each of those knovbs will(or darn well better) tell you what frequency ranges you're boosting, and how much you're boosting them. Compare your EQs for each of your tracks and try to make subtle adjustments to your EQ to make sure that none of your boosted ranges overlap too much. Some overlap is great, especially for a rich organic sound. The last step, smack a compressor on your mastering track with it's gain to a neutral point, and it's cutoff set to trim off any sounds that go above +0 dB. That should at least help nudge you in the right direction.
The truth is, mastering isn't something everybody does, and everybody has their own tricks. The real point is to continually experiment, because if you're not releasing to the publuic what you consider to be 'the best you can possibly do', then why release to the public? While the public speaks about you, the content artists submit also speaks of the artist :)
I'm not a great musician. I'm not even a very good musician, but I am passionate, and like to see people bring out the best in themselves.
Go one track at a time. Isolate a track, listen to it all the way through with a simple low/mid/highrange EQ on it and alter it until it sounds' sweet' to your ears. Then you mute it and move on to your next track. Keep yourself about .5db below 0 on each of your tracks. Continue through to the end. The next is to arrange your instruments. Listen to each track and pretend you're listening to a band performing live on stage. And pretend you're standing right in the middle of it. Where are the players? Use that to model out your pans. What would be great is to even move the instruments around.
Try for some automated panning to slowly migrate your instruments around while they play. What if a centered keyboard sound suddenly changed it's pan because it switched to a different instrument more to the left side?
When you have your tracks set up, the next step is to 'send' your sounds to isolate them even further. take your drums that you've properly EQ'd, send them through your send function(which varies what music suite you're using) and tie them in to a compressor. This takes all of those scattered drums and tidies them up into one great place. Now your drums, lead, bass and keyboards are all set up to be demuddied. if you play it straight through chances are good it'll all still sound pretty awkwardly muddled in the midrange, so if you face this problem, try the following.
Check your EQ. Each of those knovbs will(or darn well better) tell you what frequency ranges you're boosting, and how much you're boosting them. Compare your EQs for each of your tracks and try to make subtle adjustments to your EQ to make sure that none of your boosted ranges overlap too much. Some overlap is great, especially for a rich organic sound. The last step, smack a compressor on your mastering track with it's gain to a neutral point, and it's cutoff set to trim off any sounds that go above +0 dB. That should at least help nudge you in the right direction.
The truth is, mastering isn't something everybody does, and everybody has their own tricks. The real point is to continually experiment, because if you're not releasing to the publuic what you consider to be 'the best you can possibly do', then why release to the public? While the public speaks about you, the content artists submit also speaks of the artist :)
I'm not a great musician. I'm not even a very good musician, but I am passionate, and like to see people bring out the best in themselves.
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