First song demo from the studio...

[andy474x]

Much sooner than I anticipated, my band has put together our first demo in my wee basement studio! Two guitar parts, our drummer brought his electric kit to do drums, and our vocalist stopped by lastnight and did a rough cut of vocals (he's still working some things out). No bass yet, and our other guitarist hasn't been able to come by either, so I did both guitar parts (unless you hear any sloppy parts, then it was DEFINITELY him )

Of course, there's still a lot of room for improvement in my mixing and editing, but I'm floored at how easy it was to put a whole song together, edit, add effects, etc., with just my little setup, and hardly any experience. Pretty incredible the quality of sound one can get out of budget recording equipment these days. Certainly not pro studio quality, but a HUGE leap forward from anything I've been able to do before!

So, here it is, first rough cut of our new song "Home".

 

[László]

I think you did a terrific job with this. One suggestion I'd make is to put less compression on the snare (and toms?). The drum sound is a little blatty.

 

[andy474x]

Thanks Les! I did put a touch of compression on the drums, first time using the effects plugins in my software so I'll keep that in mind going forward. I'm not very familiar with compression, never used it even for guitar. We recorded the drums on a single track from the line out on our drummer's Roland kit, I think I may have been a clipping a tad as well, which may have contributed.

 

[László]

Thanks Les! I did put a touch of compression on the drums, first time using the effects plugins in my software so I'll keep that in mind going forward. I'm not very familiar with compression, never used it even for guitar. We recorded the drums on a single track from the line out on our drummer's Roland kit, I think I may have been a clipping a tad as well, which may have contributed.

Could be. What you might try re: the compression is to set the threshold higher (that is, closer to 0) so that the squashing doesn't come as soon, but set the ratio a little higher so that when it is triggered by higher volumes, you don't overload things. Most folks will set the compression threshold too low, thinking they need to control the drums more, but then you lose some of the attack of the drum kit. Of course, all this depends on the compressor's controls, and they're all a little different.

 

[toothace]

Nicely done!