Rain

You can't put the words guitar and flood in the same sentence and expect me not to make the connection... Man, he was on FIRE that night.

I know a lot of adult women who are into the Hello Kitty stuff. Actually, I've always thought they were the demographic HK was marketing to. But I'm really out of touch. The good thing is that Fender won't even have to worry about selling those, anyway - gear manufacturers go out of their way to endorse ladies, regardless of their talent (or lack thereof). Forgive my cynicism, here... Not that there aren't some great, young female guitarists - Gretchen Menn comes to mind, and I know a few here on the local scene too. Japan has a lot of metal girl bands too. Usually quite "kawaii" too.

Even if like me you have no interest in using AI to generate music, it's still interesting to see that in theory, as long as your music's out there on the web, you may be affected eventually.

Thank you guys. I don't often get the opportunity to receive feedback, so I really appreciate. (Big fan of Assemblage 23, too - it's been a while since I checked out the newer releases though, but Failure still gets played relatively often). I've managed NOT to re-record any vocals this weekend (so far). I think I will simply try to comp something and move on. If nothing else, I've learned a lot in the process. I've also started working on my own arrangement for the song - I challenged myself to use nothing but Logic's own synths and plugins for this one. The reasoning being that I suck at mixing but when I come up with something that's my own, I do a little better - as I did for that Billy Idol cover. And that one was done almost entirely with Logic synths (but built around a few key components imported from an old Sonar mix which made abundant use of Zeta and Dimension). In parallel, I've rebuilt the other mix in Luna, which I'm demoing. The reasoning for that is that I won't be as tempted to re-do this and re-record that, and to instead try to draw the line and approach it as an entirely different step and relying mostly on the built-in processing, thereby limiting my options. And, man, that virtual console looks and sounds incredible. I wish I had the talent to really take advantage of it.

Thanks guys. I've decided I'd try to make the best of what's recorded. I must have 6 or 7 takes of each part I've not deleted, and I will try to comp something up using those. Even though I could clearly use it, I refuse to use Autotune/Melodyne. But I should be able to salvage a somewhat ok performance. In the meantime, I was curious to try and see how far I could get just using one of the 'live" takes and pushing a couple of others underneath to reinforce it, adding a bit of compression and such. I've never really mixed vocals (not that I've properly mixed anything, mind you), so that too is a challenge. Apologies for the sour bits. The song's a cover of Covenant's Like Tears in Rain. Since this was about learning, I tried to remain faithful to their arrangement. I might put together a different version with my own twist on it because I have a few ideas for it. Again, it's just a rough balance, I'll work on the actual mix once I'm done with the vocals. There's a few things I'd like to overdubs, bits of synth and whatnot. Here's the original.

Agreed wholeheartedly. As a musician of course, I do have a certain curiosity. Whether it's Justice, or albums like Black Sabbath's Born Again or KISS' Hotter Than Hell - I would love to be able to hear the raw tracks. Every time I hear those two, I try to deconstruct them and understand what went wrong, how did they get that sound. It's become sort of a mild obsession. HTH almost sounds like they recorded part of the mix from the speakers in the studio... In other news though, after letting it cool off for a bit and listening to the previous attempts, and keeping this discussion in mind, I managed to put things in perspective. I went for a few more attempts this morning but remained very reasonable about it. I believe it has more to do with the energy and also the pronunciation (and that part is made all the more complex by the fact that the original was sung by a Swede and that I am dealing with my own French Canadian accent). And then sometimes some words and sentences are difficult to push through or bite into - the soft parts are in all the wrong places, you just can't lean into them properly. The chorus of that song is particularly difficult (to me) because of that. A lot of it is kind of slurred. The whole thing is a learning experience, though. That's not something I usually do. Typically when I do a cover, it takes off in an entirely different direction. This one I am trying to stick to the original arrangement as much as I can - and that part has taught me a lot. Which was the point. Ultimately, that's why I am making music. To learn things. At my age, and considering that most of it will go unheard except by my cat, there's really no other motivation. It's what I do, that's all.

I'm struggling with that addiction. 😁

This. I have a few songs that I have allowed myself to go back to and completely rebuild from my old Sonar archives. To be honest, in most cases, I've lived with them for so long that no matter what I try and how much "better" they should be, they rarely sound right. For all their flaws, I've become used to those so much that something's missing in the better mix. They just feel a little flat and unexciting. But there are 2 or 3 which actually ended up significantly better - although in each case, the process stretched over years and multiple attempts. One of those is a cover for Billy Idol's Flesh for Fantasy that I really dig. The original dates from 2007, but I re-made it in 2013 and again in 2017 I think. The problem is that it's still instrumental, and I would love to record vocals for it, but it's not in a key that works for me. And there's no way I'm spending another 15 years to rebuilt it in the right key. A friend who's actually a real singer offered to help me finish it, and I might ask her to. Sometimes I do miss the days when I didn't know better than to have every synth rendered to stereo with reverb and delay and things masking each other, and I would just shove everything through the stereo bus and call that my mix. And if the kick drum got buried, I would just add yet another track of a different kick... Now I have better gear, a better room to work in, and I pretend that I know just a little better, but I really don't. lol

Thanks for asking. Actually, I only did a few tests but my voice didn't seem to cooperate, so I quickly called it a night. But I did listen to a few takes from the previous week and I think I'm almost there - to a point where I can live with my voice without being particularly fond of it. Part of it is just a matter of singing more. And warming up. Which I've been trying to do a little more regularly. But there's something that's still locked in.

Well, at least there's SOME development. I bought the UAD Studio bundle this morning. And went back for the SSL bundle tonight.

I took me only two years but I finally figured out that I could cut that huge one in smaller pieces and add it to the side walls, instead of just having it taking place in the studio closet. My padded cell is complete. I can go insane now.

I didn't really realize it until I called it a day and sat down and realized that I'd been standing up all night. My feet were killing me.

Not all their stuff was bad. Amusingly enough, I stumbled upon this last week: https://cherryaudio.com/products/surrealistic-mg-1-plus

Being poor sure helped me not to forget the word realistic when I started playing electric guitar. This was my first "amp". We also had a über cheap Realistic keyboard with drum patterns that I used to cut some of my very first "demos". On our Realistic stereo combo, of course.

I'm drinking my "morning" coffee and getting ready for yet another session, and I figured I would re-read this and try to let some of that wisdom seep through that thick skull of mine. I just started the demo period UAD Spark and I'd really like to have time to actually play with those plugins - it's be great not to waste the entire night singing (what little I've tested this morning already compelled me to add the studio ed bundle to my cart).