The Guitarman-original country song.

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Hi folks,

I haven't posted anything in a while so here is a little original country song called "The Guitarman"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTIib1NmUjw&feature=plcp

Realtracks used are two 12 string guitars,
RT 1031 12 string finger picking,
RT 1118 12 string strumming
Fiddle background country swing (chops)
RT 412 Guitar el soloist cowboy 165
Real drums are Nashville skip^02
Bass and paino are from midi style C_cowboy-country style

Still learing on the mixing side of things, so hope I am making a little progress.

Thanks very much for having a listen and feel free to comment.

Musiclover

Hi musiclover

I love the up-beat, driving rhythm. You had me tapping my feet from the start. I also found myself singing along with the chorus - even now, I'm humming it while I'm typing! You sure pulled me into the song. I find mixing incredibly challenging. The more I practice, though, the better I seem to be getting. If I can do it, I'm sure you can too! Great writing!

All the best,
Noel

Hello Noel,

Thanks for the thumbs up. I had a listen to your latest song That's What I Believe yesterday and loved it, seems it’s the way to go now to put a song on youtube.

Since you are a prolific songwriter could I trouble to ask you what speakers you use as studio monitors as I am finding it a bit of a nightmare mixing on conventional speakers?

When mixing on my small speakers it sounds not too bad, but once I try to play it on anything else well let’s just say it doesn't sound good.

I was looking at these studio monitors, wonder what your good self or anyone else thinks of them?

http://www.maudio.co.uk/products/en_gb/MAudioBX5D2New.html

Maybe buying them won't make much of a difference to me, I really don't know, I already have the m-audio fast track pro.

Cost about £180 sterling the pair.

Thanks
Musiclover

thanks for sharing!

computer monitors are horrible to mix on. even studio headphones would be better than computer monitors, IMO.

but they're all subjective and you have to learn each of them and how they relate to other systems.

Hi musiclover,

I use a 7-year old set of Altec Lansing speakers that have a separate subwoofer. The below link will show you what they look like.

my speakers

From what I've read, M-Audio make excellent gear for the musician and studio musician. I would have no hesitation at all buying the speakers that you're looking at.

I've found that for mixing, I get the best results when working with the music at conversational volume. Once I've got a mix that sounds ok'ish, I then turn the volume up a bit and listen to how it sounds. I'll make a couple of tweaks and then go back to conversation volume. I've found that my hearing tends to tire out if the music is too loud. That's just me.

All the best with your songwriting!
Noel.

P.S. Thank you for listening to "That's What I Believe" and for the positive feedback. It took a while to get that song together.

Thanks very much Noel for the infomation about your speaker system. It has made me think again about trying proper stands for my existing speakers, before I would buy the M-audio, as you are getting great results with your mixes, and splashing out £180 for dedicated audio speakers might make little different to myself. If I thought it would I would buy straight away, but I think I will try stands first as I am in a confined space.

Its only this last week or so I have coped on that a lot of audio speakers dont have bass or treble controls so as to not sweeten the sound, maybe I am wrong in that.

I know what you mean about how much time can go into a song, it can take a good few hours from first idea to a song finish, in cases like myself a good few years...lol

BTW did you ever join the International Songwriters Association in Limerick Ireland that you enquired about a while ago, was a member many many years ago when I was younger, but let it lapse.

Thanks again
Musiclover

Hi Musiclover,

I didn't join it in the end but I've kept mulling over the idea. Where it's good is that it offers some copyright protection which is excellent. One of these days!

All the best,
Noel

Musiclover,

Good song! The volume was a little low, and the bitrate seems to compromise the quality of the sound a bit. I'll bet the song sounds pretty good on your system, or on a cd though!

Thanks for sharing this.

Steve

Quote:

Musiclover,

Good song! The volume was a little low, and the bitrate seems to compromise the quality of the sound a bit. I'll bet the song sounds pretty good on your system, or on a cd though!

Thanks for sharing this.

Steve

Thanks Steve, You are absolutely correct, TBH I am not atall happy with the way the mixdown sounds, and that mixdown is the best of a bad bunch, I have spent hours on it trying to improve it but with my (at the moment) limited expertise at mixing down, + bad reference speakers (the old adage come to mind "a bad workman blames his tools)

I have ordered a pair of speaker stands off ebay and hopefully that will inrpove the listening sound as at the moment they are stuck behing the monitor.

I do like the song ok as its generally the kind of simple country song that goes down well where I live, but as regards the mixdown the more I listen, the worse it sounds. I have even used ozone mastering plugin.

On listening I think that the top treble frequencies are boosted far too much, what do others think?

When I have got a better mixdown I will post again for some more advice

The bitrate is 128.

Thanks all for your advice,

Musiclover

Musiclover,

What DAW do you use? I use Reaper and I find it very useful to put Ozone in the "Master Volume" FX slot so that it works with the final, mixed signal. I then usually use the "CD Master" preset to automatically compress, equalize, widen the stereo field, etc.

Regards,
Noel

Hi musiclover,

Agree with Steve about the volume an bit rate.
Very nice song sir. Kept me interested till the end.
Look forward to hearing more from you.

Tim

Hello Noel,

The way I do things is I have the song finished in my head both lyrics and melody (found it very interesting how you write yourself in your other thread) I probably find this the most enjoyable part as well

I then lay out the chords in biab use a suitable midi style and may or may not try out a few realtracks then save and open in Realband. I select the realtracks that suit best and generate a whole bunch of them, probably six or seven full tracks for say the lead guitar. I save in realband and then open the lot in Cubase 5.

I use an m-audio fast track pro with its asio drivers in cubase with the sound outputed to a pair of old goodman speakers I have.

I like using cubase because its very easy to edit the realtracks using the scissors tool and muting the parts that I dont like. A lot of cubase I don't understand because so far there is no need for me to go into the advanced stuff.

I do the vocal, listening through headphones and becuse I'm not a great singer will export the audio give it a very quick pitch correct in melodyne and reimport into cubase.

I then do the panning and try to get the levels right, and use a few instances of the Ezmix plugin.

I check that all the track levels are below 0db and then in the master stereo out I stick in the Ozone and used the country basic preset for this song, although I have started changing a few of the settings in ozone and may even adjust the EQ in the stereo out in cubase.

The mixdown usually doesn't sound too bad to my ears at this stage.

I export the mixdown, and get it to playback in WMP though the computers own set of logitech speakers (it sounds very bassy) and this is where I notice a difference compated to the goodman speakers mixdown. As a commerical CD plays fine thoguh the logitech speakers (and usually ok as well if imported as an audio file into cubase) I probably take the logitech as more of a true reference of the mixdown then the goodman speakers. (I have turned the bass controul up full in the goodman speakers and vey little treble) so as to try and calibrate the sound between the 2 sets of speakers.

There is another opton to me which is to use asio4all in cubase instead of m-audio asio, that way I could use the logitech speakers to listen to the mixdown.

I have actually asked about the speaker issues in a different thread with lots of good advice from different posters. Its probably a case of seeing what is going to work best for me.

Before I upload to youtube I use audacity to make a 128 bitrate mp3 and and make a quick picture and muusic video with Muvee auto-producer.

I must try that Ozone preset of yours Noel

Thank you Tim for your commets about the song.

Musiclover

I have re-uploaded it,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTIib1NmUjw&feature=plcp

Soundcloud link,

http://soundcloud.com/donegaljoe57

I think it sounds a little better, well hope it does.

musiclover

Hi Musiclover,

Nice little song with a catchy chorus.

The little guy in the song reminds me of my grandson aged eight, always keeps saying to me "you don't do it like that I will show you the right way" and usually he does!

He wants an Ipad for his birthday,only £400 in Leeds UK!

Regards
Jan