SuperFreq

Hey if you have a good voice and you're confident with it, then HELL YEA! I say record vocals first. The song will be more organic. It will be more organic, natural and expressive for exactly the reasons msmcloud said above, but I think that's a good thing. (Yes difficult to work with, but not impossible) I refer you to the best songs in the history of songs. When the Levee Breaks... basic tempo 72 bpm, but Bonzo varies it plus or minus almost 10 bpm. The effect of this on expression and urgency is incredible. Varying your tuning, even drifting as far as changing the key. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as all the parts and instruments follow. I refer you to Ladysmith Black Mambazo (famous for singing backup on Paul Simon's "Graceland" album), the song "Beautiful Rain" starts in sorta E, a little sharp, gradually morphs up almost a half step to F. It just flows naturally, and if some producer tried to autotune it to a consistent key it would lose that human touch.... and isn't that what music desperately needs to get back to? So I say GO FOR IT MAN

Thanks for that technical and wooknichal analysis. Ok it's settled then, I gotta do something about this (listen to dry mix below)... Great advice, I can't make heads or tails of my mixing strategy since it's been evolving/contradicting itself for so long, so in frustration I just muted every effect bus so I can start over. A funny thing happened (to my ears). When I muted all the effects, suddenly the bass frequencies seemed to come back in? Particularly the bass drum seems to punch through a lot better. I still feel like I might need to add something (cello?) but it doesn't seem as hopeless as before. I dunno what do you guys think? Here's the whole song including 2 min intro, minus all FX & EQ except what might be on individual clips like the girl & intro drums. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BXqjJH1FXyQQJeRV_FRybRVbQxsOmLTf/view?usp=sharing

Strangely enough I'm not put out by the idea of a new drummer as much as the addition of a keyboard player? Rush fans help me out here, have they ever toured with a (visible) keyboard player before? All the vids I've seen are just a tight 3 piece. I'd hate to hear them lose that 3 piece tightness which is what separated their sound from the more elaborate prog bands.

That's insanely impressive. I wish he demoed chords and polyphonic riffs because that's where I bet there might be some trouble with the software. But for solo stuff, he proved it can track as fast as Keith Emerson at least. One unique feature of the Roland hex pickup & guitar synth combo is each string is goes to a separate voice, so you can adjust the fx or even assign each string to a different sound. For example bass guitar to the low strings and synth to the upper. I recall one preset that's hours of fun: a full drum kit! But I recall installing the hex pickup can be a pain. I'd just as soon use a software converter for most uses. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for these! Fun fact: I'm the proud owner of the mic pair used to record Daron's cabinet on their debut album Pluck (not sure about Toxicity). I bought the set from the late great engineer Gunji Patterson when his family held a fundraising auction to help with his medical costs. It's a pair of Groove Tubes MD1 tube mics, and they still have the printed labels saying "DARON ON" and "DARON OFF"[axis].

BRILLIANT. That would be so effing sweet, especially since I happen to have an earlier model GK-2a as well as a GR-1 synth module collecting dust! From what I recall, the GK installs at the bridge, leaving the regular pickup cavity available, so I can have the best of both worlds. But using it as a MIDI guitar would definitely go with its space age looks!

Hi gang, this is my latest project. A 100% metal (aluminum) guitar based on a Warlock single pickup design. I've never built a guitar by myself before, although with the help of experienced luthiers I've co-designed 2 aluminum gtrs, having them do the labor. This is my first solo build. I have the body and the neck as pictured. That's all I've got so far, meaning everything from electronics to tuners to strings is fair game. If the plan is to stay close to a BC Rich Warlock single-pickup design, what do you suggest for hardware? Spare no expense at this point; the body & neck cost me a pretty penny so why not go for the top of the line.

Tight guitar playing! Great song. Ever heard of a maestro named Stuart Adamson? Your acoustic work reminds me of that ("The Storm" acoustic version, "Shattered Cross", etc).

Dude that would be a dream come true. I just checked tourdates and the closest they're coming to me is Atlantic City this weekend, but unfortunately I'm in a cash crunch and can't flip the 80 bills for the cheapest seats. I've never seen a Steve Howe incarnation of Yes live. It's my biggest regret because to me he is the defining member. Holy smokes, I actually play the cello so that should've been a no brainer but I just didn't consider it. Great suggestion, especially since a cello would cut through the mix better than a traditional bass or bass synth. No joke man, that song is a huge inspiration because the instrumentation is so sparse and yet the mix is so full. Consciously or not, I try to go for that philosophy, but the longer I work on a mix the more crap I keep throwing in there. But I guess that's the story behind When Doves Cry too. Supposedly the original mix was a dense, unmanageable wall of sound until his engineer Peggy McCreary chucked half the instruments, effects & production. Maybe I should start chucking. Thanks! And I totally agree that the muddiness has gotten out of control. The problem is I've been picking at the song for literal years, using a hodgepodge of production strategies that don't really gel with each other. So it's just swamp. Maybe I'll try to strip off all EQ & effects just to make a totally raw mix, then I'll post back for EQ suggestions.

You just named my fave band (Yes) and although I'm not well versed in Starcastle I've heard the name a lot in prog circles. Thanks! Yup I definitely wanted a contrast between the intro & first verse without coming to a full stop, so I'm glad you noticed! Originally I thought I could carry the rest of the song that way, but I think you're right. At some point it needs to build back up and bass would do it. Maybe not an actual bass guitar but I'll experiment with a synth drone like Dave suggested. The "bass" in the intro is sorta that: a low note on organ enhanced with an octave subsynth.

Awesome info & suggestions, gang. It'll definitely be too much work to find & bounce each V-Vocal clip, so I'll probably try @mettelus trick of saving as a bun. If that works then problem solved and I can still tweak the mix (which itself is a nightmare... I was really sloppy in my younger days 😅)

Hey I'm working on a song and wondering if I should add bass. Here's a snippet. The idea was to keep it small, currently it's just drums, guitar, keys & vocals. But I feel like the bottom end is empty. Or is it just me? General crits & comments are welcome too! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GoDbZHospsaZ1WObpqiFO0z2DvtUp4Jk/view?usp=sharing 10/08 update with DRY MIX: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BXqjJH1FXyQQJeRV_FRybRVbQxsOmLTf/view?usp=sharing

Totally man. Yes, AI can crank out some good stuff. But that just forces us real humans to up the game. I consider it a worthy challenge. Now I have to do even better, if I'm worth my salt. If it gets to the point that AI is creating something better than I can imagine or produce, well then I'm not a good musician and I should go back to being the doorman at the Oasis Hotel.

I'm using og Sonar 8.5 to tie up some old projects, wondering if any old schoolers can help with this error (see attached). I keep getting this when exporting audio. It happens about 45% through. Yes, I reinstalled Sonar 8.5 fresh with both the updates. I still get this pesky error about Cronus.dll. If I'm not mistaken, that's V-Vocal, right? So maybe I can troubleshoot by deleting, or deactivating all the V-Vocal clips til I find the offender? Just wanted to ask here first because there are a TON of V-Vocal clips, around 100. So I'd hate to be chasing the wrong tiger.

Yup, that's my situation. Would love to try the new Sonar, but I'm rooted to Windows 7 due to legacy hardware, so CbB is/was my only option. Would love to see them work out the activation issue so I can at least get projects squared away.

Ugh I was afraid of that. I no longer have 8.5 on my computer, and from the sound of it, it won’t make a difference so I’ll just roll back to an earlier backup and start from there. Thanks for checking!

I saw the pinned thread saying the activation deadline has been extended to Sep 30, but as of today (Aug 21) I'm still "Activation required" / "Unable to refresh activation"

I'm attempting to open an old Sonar file from v8.5 and get: "An unknown error occurred while accessing" [filename] On load, after a successful VST scan, after successfully "Loading audio regions", when it gets to "Loading tracks and clips..." it bombs. Does anyone know how to fix this? Here is a link to the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yG5hHmJy2DL824H_bHOGkl_K83gH0q67/view?usp=sharing

First replacement, Billy Shears of course 😉 Yup, I guess that's the problem. They couldn't induct them all so they focused on 1 and happened to pick Carol. Total assumption here: I think they singled out Carol because she's a woman, and recently the RnRHoF has been (rightly) called out for its lopsided male selections. So in the last 10 years they've been scrambling to retcon their image by going back and inducting women who should've been inducted decades ago like Nina Simone in 2018, Stevie Nicks in 2019, Pat Benatar (they waited til 2022??), etc. On paper, Carol was a good pick, but alas they chose.... poorly 😅

Bingo. That's what she's saying. But nobody gets it. "The wrecking crew" was essentially a band. Carol's best work was as part of the band. If my baseball analogy above was too tricky, then let's cut to the chase. This is like inducting Paul while ignoring the Beatles. And if Carol herself, the award winner, doesn't like it then who are we, or anyone, to shove it on her?

Carol's right on the money. To those who are confused about her reasons, don't worry it was never properly explained and there are a lot of incorrect assumptions, but I'll try to sum it up. Imagine you're the left fielder on a baseball team that wins the world series. Then MLB picks you, and you alone, to accept the ring, give a speech and get your name, and your name alone, engraved on the wall. Meanwhile your teammates aren't even allowed inside the building. Get it now? Carol is rightly trying to draw attention to the fact that there were hundreds of studio musicians working as a team, so it's an insult to the entire team if 1 person is singled out to get their name, and their name alone, chosen as the 1 inductee. As for her gripe about being called "the wrecking crew", that has nothing to do with her gripe with the RnRHoF. She just happened to vent about it in her facebook post, and that's what everyone descended on as her reason for snubbing the award. But no, that's just a long standing sore wound that's been poked by the sudden media attention. But make no mistake, she turned down the award because it would've been an insult to all her teammates if she alone took the trophy home.

I think you misunderstood my post. I'm not trying to copy Gabriel. It's just that he is 1 artist who successfully did what I want to do. There's a particular song I'm doing that requires a visceral, tribal feel. In technical terms we might say bottom heavy. But it just feels naked to me, and I think the objective listener would find it muddy or lacking in energy. That's why I asked this question, to see if anyone had successfully done a song or album with that "woody" organic vibe like we get in Gabriel's "Jan Jacinto" or "The Rhythm of the Heat".

This is something that has intrigued me, but I've never been brave enough to do, ever since I first heard of it. I first heard of this regarding Peter Gabriel's Security album. Supposedly he insisted on "nothing metal", meaning no cymbals, no hi hats, nothing that fills in the shimmery top end the way we're accustomed to hearing in rock music. I think his results were the proof in the pudding. It's an amazing album with an organic, tribal vibe, and he even tricked us by using metal-like sounds that actually aren't. Prime example, listen to the track San Jacinto where the background loop sounds 'metallic' but not quite. Maybe it's some sort of koshi bamboo chime, who knows. But I think the effect is a lot more pleasing to the ear than any metal ringing instrument. Also on that same track, when it kicks in at the end you might expect big symphonic crashes to go with the orchestral swells--and probably 9 out of 10 orchestral arrangers would call for that--but Gabriel's track doesn't go there. Instead all percussion keeps to the low end with the only 'crash' coming from the electric guitar. My question is: has anyone else tried this approach, deliberately avoiding metal objects which to me equates to avoiding the super high frequency range? I've sometimes started a project this way, but I always reach a point where it feels naked without filling that empty real estate up there. How did Gabriel pull it off with such a commercial success?

Edit: just noticed a big mistake. Song offline while making revisions…

Sorry for the late reply... There's no chance unfortunately. In the thread I linked up top, Magic Russ said: "due to issues with the developer, this is not something you should expect to see upgraded to 64 bit any time soon." It's a shame because I use the heck outta VC64. Particularly on vocals, there's a setting called Breathing Vox which is like the Andrew Scheps trick of using 2 filters and an LA-2A compressor to make the track pop out. Except VC64 does it all by itself. I don't think I'll ever quit using it.