The Wagtunes Corner (Featuring My Best Yet)

[JoeCat]

Sorry, but I gotta crack up on the comment about the drum kit, using round robins. I'm using what's supposed to be the best drum kit out there right now, MODO drums. So if I made THEM sound bad, boy, I gotta be pretty God damned awful.

Like I said, I'm just gonna do what I love doing and not worry, care, whatever words you want to use, what others think. Because some people will always like something I do and some people will always not like something I do. You pretty much said it yourself with the Geddy Lee (who I absolutely love) comment.

But thanks for the listen and the feedback.

You didn't make the drums sound "bad", but you've discussed humanizing your drums; I'm just giving some friendly advice on how to achieve that beyond note placement.

MODO supports round-robin but I'm not sure how much of it I'm hearing - maybe there's some settings. Also, MODO is physically modeled, so their techniques may leave something to be desired (the demos sound pretty good). I think even NI's Abby Road drums use only two samples per velocity, so even though it's round robin...

In any case, regardless of how good MODO id in sounding like drums, you may have to do a little more to sound like a drummer. If you have separate outs, you could apply a little random automation to a filter or a little saturation, etc. Drawing in a few little ghost notes can do a lot to a groove also.

Point is, once you spend the time to have the technique and a few tools down, it'll take a lot less time per track.

It's not black or white - the drums sound good, but humanizing little things helps (for your style of music especially - not EDM necessarily), and you've already got human vocals going on

[wagtunes]

Okay, I don't normally do this but I am posting a work in process.

This is just the backing track. There are no vocals yet and it is not mixed. I am posting for performance evaluation only.

Some notes:

This is just guitars, bass, drums. The only thing quantized is the drums to make sure they're on the beat. Everything else is played as is. In many cases I had to play the parts over and over to get them to sound this good. Also, I kept the track very short (2 and a half minutes) and simple to play, relatively speaking. Even under those restrictions this was very difficult for me.

I guess what I'm looking for here is to determine if this is a more "human" performance. If not, why? It can't be because of quantization. So there has to be another reason. If it is more human but sounds "bad" why? I've checked the MIDI, which I am willing to send to anybody who wants it, and none of the notes are off by that much. In fact, I'm surprised I played this as well as I did.

Anyway, I need you to be honest and I need to know specifically what is wrong, if anything. Then I will determine if it's something that will be easy or difficult to fix and if I want to bother fixing it.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... -tolls-wip

[JoeCat]

Okay, I don't normally do this but I am posting a work in process.

This is just the backing track. There are no vocals yet and it is not mixed. I am posting for performance evaluation only.
...

As a progressive fan - love your progressions (no pun there).

The guitars sound human, and there's nothing wrong (IMHO) with the drum tracking. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's only the snare that "takes me out of it. If nothing else randomize the velocity (just a tiny bit) and take it down in the mix some (I know it's not the final mix, but in general). And if MODO lets you do it, bleed some snare into the kick, and play with mixing the overheads if it has them - that adds a lot of glue to a kit.

The biggest issue with modern production (80s onward) is the "cleanliness" of the mixes tend to leave too much room for the snare - fine for dance music, but loses a bit in a band setting. The snare should cut, but not overwhelm the band.

Bruford's snare in Yes was HUGE (and ringy!) - but somehow stayed just inside the mix enough to sound awesome. And the guy has incredible control. Yet, as much as his hits are controlled, the subtle differences in sound hit-to-hit is enough to clue in to the human element.

For progressive rock reference - the snare at 5:50 in Roundabout is responsible for a number of dashboard cracks in my car - I can't not bang the sh*t out of anything in front of me when that's playing. But somehow it works (one of my favorite musical minutes ever - everyone is killing it!) His snare is almost perfect, but it can't be - the snares will bounce back a bit different, the head tension will change in one spot very slightly after a hit - I bet if you sampled it and looked at a spectrum analyzer you'd see the little clues - subtle but there.

For later on in the process = one thing that will help keeping instruments sitting in the mix in a more human and (gonna say it) analog way is to introduce some noise. When I track my band's guitars (at home, not the studio), we pickup a lot of noise (and even a little feedback from tracking in the same room without headphones) and in general I leave it in (not hum - hum is always bad!) - much to our producer's dismay, cause he skews modern. After compression, the silence between sounds "comes alive" - best I can describe it is this: Painting a picture and using the blackest black looks cool, but not if you're going for realism - almost nothing is completely black, even - and especially - at night. No track emulating a band should be completely "quiet". |

Anyway, in the mood for a rambling brain dump, so there you have it!

In any case, you keep improving; it'll come.

[wagtunes]

Okay, I don't normally do this but I am posting a work in process.

This is just the backing track. There are no vocals yet and it is not mixed. I am posting for performance evaluation only.
...

As a progressive fan - love your progressions (no pun there).

The guitars sound human, and there's nothing wrong (IMHO) with the drum tracking. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's only the snare that "takes me out of it. If nothing else randomize the velocity (just a tiny bit) and take it down in the mix some (I know it's not the final mix, but in general). And if MODO lets you do it, bleed some snare into the kick, and play with mixing the overheads if it has them - that adds a lot of glue to a kit.

The biggest issue with modern production (80s onward) is the "cleanliness" of the mixes tend to leave too much room for the snare - fine for dance music, but loses a bit in a band setting. The snare should cut, but not overwhelm the band.

Bruford's snare in Yes was HUGE (and ringy!) - but somehow stayed just inside the mix enough to sound awesome. And the guy has incredible control. Yet, as much as his hits are controlled, the subtle differences in sound hit-to-hit is enough to clue in to the human element.

For progressive rock reference - the snare at 5:50 in Roundabout is responsible for a number of dashboard cracks in my car - I can't not bang the sh*t out of anything in front of me when that's playing. But somehow it works (one of my favorite musical minutes ever - everyone is killing it!) His snare is almost perfect, but it can't be - the snares will bounce back a bit different, the head tension will change in one spot very slightly after a hit - I bet if you sampled it and looked at a spectrum analyzer you'd see the little clues - subtle but there.

For later on in the process = one thing that will help keeping instruments sitting in the mix in a more human and (gonna say it) analog way is to introduce some noise. When I track my band's guitars (at home, not the studio), we pickup a lot of noise (and even a little feedback from tracking in the same room without headphones) and in general I leave it in (not hum - hum is always bad!) - much to our producer's dismay, cause he skews modern. After compression, the silence between sounds "comes alive" - best I can describe it is this: Painting a picture and using the blackest black looks cool, but not if you're going for realism - almost nothing is completely black, even - and especially - at night. No track emulating a band should be completely "quiet". |

Anyway, in the mood for a rambling brain dump, so there you have it!

In any case, you keep improving; it'll come.

Okay, I'm going to try something simple with the snare (it's a setting for randomizing where the hits occur on snare between the left and right sticks) that I think might make a big difference. I will post it shortly. I will also work on the overhead settings and the snare bleed.

[wagtunes]

Okay, here's what I did. There are a ton of controls in this thing.

1. I spread apart the left and right sticks so they don't all hit in the center.
2. I adjusted the size of the snare.
3. I increased the overheads.
4. I increased the snare bleed into the kick.
5. I lowered the overall volume of the snare.

I may have made it worse for all I know but I think it sounds more varied. Hard for me to tell because I don't hear things in that much detail normally. I tend not to micro manage music and maybe that's why my stuff will never sound professional but I'm at least trying. This is really shooting ducks in the dark because I honestly don't really know what I'm doing with all this tech stuff.

Anyway, here goes.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... -tolls-wip

[JoeCat]

Could be placebo effect but I think it sounds better.

You're not micromanaging but putting extra effort into the drums. The issue with MID drumming - no matter how good the library, whether it's sampled, modeled - is that it's not a kit being recorded. Tracked drums never sound like the some total of individual drum hits. Things like snare bleed help a lot (which is why MIDI drums are so much better now), but you really do have extra work to do to remove the artifice.

Each hit in a library sounds like the end result of a track, even without a lot of effects. I listen to my tracked drums even in isolation, and I'm amazed we get them to sound good in the end. Here, you start with drums that sound perfect, and have to sort-of deconstruct them. It's work, but the opposite direction!

[wagtunes]

Could be placebo effect but I think it sounds better.

You're not micromanaging but putting extra effort into the drums. The issue with MID drumming - no matter how good the library, whether it's sampled, modeled - is that it's not a kit being recorded. Tracked drums never sound like the some total of individual drum hits. Things like snare bleed help a lot (which is why MIDI drums are so much better now), but you really do have extra work to do to remove the artifice.

Each hit in a library sounds like the end result of a track, even without a lot of effects. I listen to my tracked drums even in isolation, and I'm amazed we get them to sound good in the end. Here, you start with drums that sound perfect, and have to sort-of deconstruct them. It's work, but the opposite direction!

In other words, you're trying to make things sound not so perfect. That's not easy to do with something that is perfect. Anyway, I'll be adding a few more things to this plus the vocals and try to post tomorrow.

[Kongru]

try to post tomorrow.

Slow down, take your time

[wagtunes]

try to post tomorrow.

Slow down, take your time

Thanks but I prefer to work at the pace that I work at.

[crimsonwarlock]

Thanks but I prefer to work at the pace that I work at.

Maybe it's time you try to 'get something right' instead of 'get something out'

[wagtunes]

Thanks but I prefer to work at the pace that I work at.

Maybe it's time you try to 'get something right' instead of 'get something out'

Let me worry about that.

[wagtunes]

FWIW, my "Still Out Of Sync" CD took me 4 months to do. It isn't even close to being the best thing I've done. In fact, it was quite disappointing. How long I work on something has no effect on how good it is. In fact, it may have the opposite effect as I tend to labor too long over a song and end up ruining it.

But thanks for all the advice. Ultimately, I have to do what's right for me.

[jethrobull]

Ultimately, I have to do what's right for me.

Exactly. Everyone works a different speeds. Some people can put together a Grammy award winning hit in 4 days (Burial). Others can tweak the hell out of something for months and it still sounds crap. I'm not convinced time is a factor.

[wagtunes]

Ultimately, I have to do what's right for me.

Exactly. Everyone works a different speeds. Some people can put together a Grammy award winning hit in 4 days (Burial). Others can tweak the hell out of something for months and it still sounds crap. I'm not convinced time is a factor.

Thanks. Somebody who gets it.

[crimsonwarlock]

I'm not convinced time is a factor.

Time IS always a factor (without defining 'how long'). If you set a limited time frame, you will only be able to do what fits into that time frame. If you get to the end of that time frame, your track is not magically getting good, if it wasn't that already somewhat just before. To make something sound great, you simply need to put in the time it need to actually do make it great.

If you get to a point where you say 'f*ck it, this is it', then you are basically giving up. You also won't grow beyond that threshold that you create for yourself.

My last track is the first one I did record and produce in my new studio. I worked on and off for about 4 months on this one track. It took that long because I wanted to sound certain parts in specific ways and I basically had to learn how to get to those sounds. So it took a whole lot of time, but I also learned a boatload of stuff during those months that will benefit my future tracks.

The way I see it you should never stop to try to grow

I leave it at that and I'm out of here. Wags, have a nice live