The Wagtunes Corner (Featuring My Best Yet)

[wagtunes]

Your post is quite an example of anti-promotion.

I am not sure why you feel the need to finish songs or a project if you are not happy with the direction they are taking.

Anyway, I listened to the first song "Top Of The Mountain." The production is clear and punchy. One of your best rock mixes I think. The guitars sound pretty convincing.

I think the best bits are towards the end when you added backing vocals. I would have enjoyed more of that throughout. The lyrics are straightforward setting up the story to come.

Overall, I think it's a very good song easily exceeding the low expectations I had based on your description.

Thanks for the listen and the feedback Frantz. To answer your question, OCD. Once I start something, I have to finish it no matter what.

Maybe it's my burnout itself that made me look upon this work as less than optimal. Thus the reason why I'm taking a much needed break.

[Bansaw]

I like Top of the Mountain too. Mix sounded good to me , although I am traveling and on laptop speakers.
The arrangement was good. The thing that stood out to me was the better bassline. Did you just get hold of Toontrack's EZBass, or is it something else?
Those little touches with the bass for example, really do add value to the track.

[wagtunes]

I like Top of the Mountain too. Mix sounded good to me , although I am traveling and on laptop speakers.
The arrangement was good. The thing that stood out to me was the better bassline. Did you just get hold of Toontrack's EZBass, or is it something else?
Those little touches with the bass for example, really do add value to the track.

The bass is still just MODO Bass. The bassline was just a little more inspired than most. Happens once in a while.

[wagtunes]

Another oldie. This one from my CD "Welcome To Hell" from 2010. Another catchy hook. Bad recording. Way too loud. So be warned.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... within-you

[wagtunes]

I just heard from the group leader yesterday. Their next album is coming out in September and 2 more of my songs are going to be on it.

Here are my versions of them (previously posted)

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... ut-of-sync

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... the-sunset

So maybe my next check will be $150.

[aaron aardvark]

wagtunes,
What was the name of that group again? Just kidding. Congrats. "Doctor Doctor": if that's not real guitar, it sounds pretty real to me. Catchy guitar riff during the verse is my favorite part. Reminds me a tiny bit of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel". Melodies during the chorus are my second favorite part. Electric Bass/Modo Bass is good because it doesn't just follow the guitar exactly; and has a very different tone than the guitar. Nice song; some of your nicer singing.

[wagtunes]

wagtunes,
What was the name of that group again? Just kidding. Congrats. "Doctor Doctor": if that's not real guitar, it sounds pretty real to me. Catchy guitar riff during the verse is my favorite part. Reminds me a tiny bit of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel". Melodies during the chorus are my second favorite part. Electric Bass/Modo Bass is good because it doesn't just follow the guitar exactly; and has a very different tone than the guitar. Nice song; some of your nicer singing.

The album itself was probably one of my better works, which is what got me the gig in the first place.

Thanks for the listen and the feedback.

[seismic1]

Another oldie. This one from my CD "Welcome To Hell" from 2010. Another catchy hook. Bad recording. Way too loud. So be warned.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... within-you

I could see from the SoundCloud waveform that this track had very little dynamic range relative to the two newer tracks, and playing it confirmed my suspicions. I note that this was recorded in 2010, so improvements in your current mixing and mastering process should be able to correct this. If you have the original DAW project files, it would be worth doing because there is a decent song in there, which could sound much better if cleaned up a little.

I have been recording music at home on the computer for 12-13 years, but only started mixing tracks 10 years ago when I started posting them online. I think it took me about 5-6 years of mixing and mastering the tracks myself to get a good handle on the relationship between mix levels and the mastering process. Consequently, I spend a fair amount of time polishing old tracks in order to make them more presentable. It's a never-ending labour of love.

Good work

[wagtunes]

Another oldie. This one from my CD "Welcome To Hell" from 2010. Another catchy hook. Bad recording. Way too loud. So be warned.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... within-you

I could see from the SoundCloud waveform that this track had very little dynamic range relative to the two newer tracks, and playing it confirmed my suspicions. I note that this was recorded in 2010, so improvements in your current mixing and mastering process should be able to correct this. If you have the original DAW project files, it would be worth doing because there is a decent song in there, which could sound much better if cleaned up a little.

I have been recording music at home on the computer for 12-13 years, but only started mixing tracks 10 years ago when I started posting them online. I think it took me about 5-6 years of mixing and mastering the tracks myself to get a good handle on the relationship between mix levels and the mastering process. Consequently, I spend a fair amount of time polishing old tracks in order to make them more presentable. It's a never-ending labour of love.

Good work

The original of this track is long gone. It was done on an 8 track digital recorder. No compression, limiting, EQ or anything was used. It was just recorded live one track at a time, on take for each instrument and called it a day. No "mixing" per say was even done. Just set the levels for each track the way I wanted them.

Yes, I've come a long way.

[aaron aardvark]

wagtunes,
"Riding off Into The Sunset": the drums stand out nicely (the opposite of me, ha ha); one of the best parts of the song for me. The arpeggio guitar part during the verse is my favorite part melodically (good!). Everything else sounds good too! "The Evil Within You": it is loud. Looking back on it, do you think you went too far with the compression/limiting and maybe distortion? Apparently not on the compression; I just read your recent reply. Yes, you have gotten a lot better mixing and recording. Do you tinker with EQ much nowadays? Can you briefly summarize how you made improvements in that regard, or too many things to mention? The song itself is nice.

[wagtunes]

wagtunes,
"Riding off Into The Sunset": the drums stand out nicely (the opposite of me, ha ha); one of the best parts of the song for me. The arpeggio guitar part during the verse is my favorite part melodically (good!). Everything else sounds good too! "The Evil Within You": it is loud. Looking back on it, do you think you went too far with the compression/limiting and maybe distortion? Apparently not on the compression; I just read your recent reply. Yes, you have gotten a lot better mixing and recording. Do you tinker with EQ much nowadays? Can you briefly summarize how you made improvements in that regard, or too many things to mention? The song itself is nice.

Aaron, I want to reply to this in detail but right now I don't have the time. Thanks for the listen and the feedback. I'll get back to this as soon as I can.

[wagtunes]

wagtunes,
"Riding off Into The Sunset": the drums stand out nicely (the opposite of me, ha ha); one of the best parts of the song for me. The arpeggio guitar part during the verse is my favorite part melodically (good!). Everything else sounds good too! "The Evil Within You": it is loud. Looking back on it, do you think you went too far with the compression/limiting and maybe distortion? Apparently not on the compression; I just read your recent reply. Yes, you have gotten a lot better mixing and recording. Do you tinker with EQ much nowadays? Can you briefly summarize how you made improvements in that regard, or too many things to mention? The song itself is nice.

Okay, I've got some time now before bed time.

When I first started recording, and for a long time afterwards, I didn't use any kind of anything. No EQ, compression, limiting, nothing. I'd use reverb and delay so that everything wasn't so dry but that's about it. I didn't even know what EQ, compression and limiting did.

Fast forward about 40 years. I decide maybe it's time to learn about some of those things that I was clueless about. Problem is, I didn't know where to go or where to begin. So I started with YouTube. But there was so much conflicting information there that it just left me more confused.

So I started asking questions here. At first I was stubborn because I didn't understand why I was being told what I was being told and didn't understand why those things would make a difference. Plus, I couldn't hear any difference. So I first had to train my ears. That was brutally difficult. But eventually I began to recognize what EQ, compression and limiting was doing. From there, some of it was tutorials and some of it was experimentation.

As far as EQ specifically, the best thing I ever did was use SPAN on the 2 buss. Layzer helped me out with reading it and explaining what a well rounded EQ curve should look like. Because I can't hear anything over 5k, I really needed to depend on SPAN to get things right.

Eventually, I went from using straight EQ to fix harsh or non existent frequencies to using a combination of that and multi band compression.

Finally, I began to take advantage of presets once I understood what everything did. A lot of these EQ, compressor and limiter presets are just what I need to get the sound I want even though I've been told so many times, "never use presets", that you have to "dial it in yourself" to get it right. Personally, I think that's an elitist attitude and bad advice. Yes, learn what the stuff does and how to use it but then take advantage of the developers who went through the trouble of actually making presets that give specific results, many of which may be just what you need.

Then I started making my own presets when I saw that there were settings I was using for almost every song of a specific genre. For example, I made a preset on a deesser that is perfect for my voice frequency. The ones that came with the deesser weren't quite right. So yes, sometimes I do dial things in myself. But I'll take a shortcut where the shortcut works.

After 44 years of recording music, I've finally reached the point where I can get just the sound I'm after. And most of the time, it's a few mouse clicks. I have my favorite plugins, know them inside and out and can thus spend more time making music than futzing around with plugin settings.

As a result, my songs are cleaner and the volume is pretty much consistent from song to song. I'd go back and redo some of my older songs (actually I have if you listen to restoration) but there's just too many to do them all.

Don't know if this answers your question. If you have any others or want to know about something specifically, ask away..

[aaron aardvark]

wagtunes,
Thank you for your elaborate reply. I downloaded SPAN a minute ago; pretty sure I've done that before. My Cubase AI 10.5 has some sort of EQ analyzer thing. For better or worse, I just use my ears to EQ things normally. I have tried multi (EQ?) compressors a bit; have yet to have good luck with them so far. Long ago, I knew I could at times hear hyper-sonic (if that's the right word) alarm system (probably above 20 kHZ?), but don't think I can do that anymore. Without checking right now, I guess I could hear close to 20 kHz. I will give the SPAN factory presets a whirl & see what happens.

[wagtunes]

Another song from my early years. Sometime in the 90s. Again, bad recording but real catchy.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/the-only-one

[htcnext2]

Another song from my early years. Sometime in the 90s. Again, bad recording but real catchy.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/the-only-one

These organs just kick ass. A journey to the seventies regarding vocals. Nice song!