mark skinner

Rex , That was So Relaxing. Wonderful job on the vocals . I hope to hear more with your background singer. Those were beautiful harmony's. mark

Jack , I too had trouble understanding the lyrics. Boxy and maybe just too much processing on them But .. I think the song title alone is worth a Grammy ! mark

Bjorn , I agree with Tom , this one had me glued. The vocal bits keep pulling you back and really make you reflect . The seasons and years are Flying by now. It was Very well played and recorded . It left me feeling a little somber so I guess everything worked very well . Great job .. mark

Exactly right. This can be done Without the input echo on . When I said to use direct monitoring I meant on the interface itself . ms

The easiest way I've found around this is to have the track you are recording , output to your interface instead of master. You can then turn down the master (while recording) and still hear your signal . Direct monitor should be On if your interface has a switch. I've had to do this recording a low volume acoustic when going direct in. I can't jack up the input high enough because of the introduced noise. mark

I've done it with some success depending on the type of tracks. Slightly moving one track like Sidney suggested works if you get it right . Sometimes it sounds like it's sweeping from one side to the other. Different EQ on each track helps and sometimes delay on one helps. I've also had pretty good luck using Melodyne to "slightly" change the timing of All of the notes on one of the tracks(easy). How you use reverb will also effect the separation. A wide reverb on a left track that carries all the way over to the right side will hinder the separation. I think it's better to use a Send to a reverb bus so you can control the panning of the effect. It's always trial and error. Good luck mark

Lovely , I really liked the silky sounding low notes and the bite on the attacks. The entire chord structure was very relaxing. I think this is another stellar performance from You and your friends. Loved it .. mark

Treesha , Very nice ending. It felt Way more structured and good use of a fade. No feeling of left hanging at all. It really Completed the song making All of it better. Great improvement. mark

I needed my battery charger today, and it is definitely "Fried" and probably the culprit for my incoming voltage problem. New power supply is installed. Lesson learned. I managed to find a power supply (and only one) on E-bay instead of waiting on a slow boat. No power conditioner yet.. The first thing I noticed after installing was the increase in fan cooling. I think the CPU fan was overriding it . The old one was pulling air into the case , this one is blasting it out. I Really appreciate your help. I'll do a long test in the morning. Thanks .. mark

Thanks to All of You for all the great comments. It's Definitely staying an instrumental. To @PhonoBrainer I will admit that if I'm doing my own midi drums , I don't spend time on toms. That may be why I'm rarely happy with my drum tracks. Thanks .. mark

Fantastic ! This took me back to my Al Di Meola days but with a fresher sound. Loved it . mark

I've still got my old Tascam 8 track model (2x speed) and a suitcase full of cassettes. Someday I'll take it apart and see why the tape drive just clicks. ms

Freddy , Good one and Great advice in the lyrics. I really liked the phrase "too much time for thinking". Sometimes I think too much freedom (in your time) makes your reflective thinking time , a little less impactful . Enjoyed it .. mark

It's the difference between the quiet parts of a song and the louder parts of a song. Even if it's just short phrases. Like when a singer gets a little quiet on certain words or when a guitar backs off a little on notes during a run. Nothing should be distorted , even a guitar using distortion. It sounds strange , but I think there is a difference. If it's just loud everywhere and the waveform is real thick and Flat , it lacks dynamics in most cases . Some people like it , I'm not one of them. I think it is a real Plus to be able to achieve these levels cleanly but I wouldn't if I could. I have a volume knob and not afraid to use it. PS- I've asked for , and gotten help on Every song I've ever posted here and the other people responding to you have helped me greatly. mark

The graph is showing me it's having to squash it a good bit to bring up the overall volume. I'm only listening on a laptop so I'm not going to try to evaluate the fidelity of your mix or the reference track , neither one sounds bad on this system , but the reference track is pretty fatiguing at that level and has hardly any dynamics. Just loud start to finish. It's a lot harder to get a song sounding Good at -6 than it is at say -10/12. If this song is part of a project like a cd of your own , bear in mind you'll have to go thru this on Every song if your dead set on keeping everything at these levels . mark

Marcello , -6 db on the mix should be good . I normally export the mix out at -6 and import it into another project for mastering. Easy then to see the main waveform and clip it If I need to before hitting Ozone. The thing that's bothering me is when you said when you dragged the threshold down to raise the volume , that it's moving around when the drums and bass kick in. It should stay where you put it Unless you've still got the "learn" button on. That's why I jumped in late on this conversation. Sorry if I'm off base on this one. mark

First off Cool song and playing ! One thing to note is If you're using the "learn threshold" feature with true peak turned on and running it from the start to the very end of the song before turning learn off , If it sets the threshold at -2.7 for a -14 lufs song you don't have much headroom going in for mastering . Especially a Loud song. It's also helpful for me to keep "burn" and "stream" folders depending on what I want to do with finished songs. Enjoyed it .. mark

Miguel , I Really liked the sparseness of the clean mix , and the Great vocals. I loved how the backing vocals "felt" thru my headphones when they came in. Totally surrounding and immersive. I my opinion , I do think from that point forward , the main vocal should be wetter and brought up a little to match the power of the backing Vox. Another Fantastic production Loved it .. mark

It's a pretty consistent problem now after a couple of hours. Ordering a power supply And a proper UPS. There sure are a lot of choices to sift thru. Thanks for the feedback. I'll give an update when I get the problem resolved. I'm back to XP and Sonar for a little while .. mark

Keith , you did a great job on this. I liked the places you brought in the harmony. It all sounded very Beatle ish. Very good job on the high vocals. Nice listen .. mark

Very nice. It's pretty wet but I don't think it's too wet . I can't get very objective I was born wet. Loved it and the length was perfect. mark

Here's a good one. It stayed on for 2 hours this morning and I managed to record a little. Leaving my music room I saw the display on a battery charger flashing wildly. (This and a fish pond is on the same circuit) The circulation pump in my pond was plugged up but not kicking anything out. I fixed it , battery charger back to normal , pc fired up. I'm not ruling out the power supply yet . Might be an incoming voltage problem. ms

Hey guys, Thanks for the feedback thus far. @Mark Marshall Welcome to the forum . Good observation about needing to box it in more for vocals. I unboxed it when changing it to an instrumental. It was just boring without the vocals , thus the extra bridges and guitar stuff. @Wookiee Any positive feedback relating to "anything" from a keyboard from You is a big plus for me. To @David Sprouseand @Bert Guyand @DeeringAmps Thanks for the compliments. Don't work too hard Tom , you've been pretty quiet lately. Thanks .. mark

Thanks Jack, I blew the case out , cleaned connectors and re seated the ram cards. It booted right up and stayed on about 20 min. before shutting down. I'm going back in and see what power supply it has. Nothing appears to be getting hot and it's giving me a "shutting down" screen instead of just dying. I'll keep looking. ms

I went into my studio yesterday and this morning and my my Lenovo SSD Tower was powered up with a warning on the screen about not starting correctly. It went thru a self diagnosis and eventually loaded up and then shut itself down after about 5 min. I always power everything down when I'm finished working. Now it wont power up. It tries about 4 times off/on before it stops. One odd thing is that it tries to start by just plugging in the power chord without pressing the power button. This is my main studio pc and is only about 2.5 yrs. old. No real problems up until now. Any basic ideas ? I've got "most" of my projects backed up so , I'm not "crying" yet Thanks mark