First song I've done since switching DAW

Hi all,

It's been a while. Life, work etc. Not much guitar playing of late but that will make it all the better when I get back to it.

https://soundcloud.com/gary_w/…la-and-the-big-brown-bear

So this is a duet with my 12 year old daughter providing vocals for half the song. Don't panic - she's got a decent set of pipes on her already. Better than me actually and getting better by the day so I'm looking forward to getting her involved more in the coming years. As such, I thought I'd better name our little collaboration so we are 'Isabella and the Big Brown Bear'

As to the recording, I've used Reaper for years and I wanted something that is a little more friendly. That's not me being down on Reaper - it's a great program and it's been very good for me. But I'm getting even less intelligent as I age and frankly anything that makes my life easier ticks the box of 'I'll try that'. EZ Drummer 2 was the catalyst and Studio 1 fits right in with that ethos in my opinion.

I've also been a naughty boy and bought some Slate pluggins (virtual tape machine, virtual consoles etc) which supposedly make the mix sound less 'digital'. Not sure if you all buy that explanation or not but what I do know is that putting these things on each channel did *something* that I'm not experienced enough to identify but whatever it is I like it

There's not *that* much guitar on here, but what there is came from Amp Factory. I'm pretty sure it was the Cornell from pack 7 but I cannot find the notes and the guitar was recorded some time back. I've just not had chance to put the rest together until now so hopefully you'll forgive my poor note taking

Hope you enjoy it - let me know and if you do then I'll let my daughter know that 'somebody out there liked it'

Quote from KoMa

cool song and I like the way it sounds. But one thing, there's a nasty high frequency going on in the lead vox. you should cut it out, that'll make the whole mix much smoother. but other then that really cool.

Also bought the slate plugins couple of days ago. hadn't had much time to play with them, though the compressor are reallyyyyy good but with the vtm and vcc you need to mix through them to really benefit form them.

Hi Koma,

Thanks for the comment. I think I know what you *might* be meaning here. It might well be my ham fists giving it too much high end polish on the vox But it might be the fairly brutal compression that Soundcloud seems to do. In Studio 1 or exported as a 320k MP3 into my iTunes it sounds great (I think). But on Soundcloud? There are some weird artefacts for sure and maybe that's what's coming through for you. There's a few bits on the ride cymbal as well that are crazy which are not there at this end. But I'll certainly check out the original mix and tweak that to see what I think. Even if it is Soundcloud doing it, I'll need to be mindful of that as, if that's where I'm sharing it, I need to mix for where it's going as opposed to mixing for me

Thanks again

On a related note, how is Nimbit / other free sharing services? Do they also compress like crazy? And thinking about it, I uploaded this to Soundcloud as a 320k MP3. And then they've compressed that. I wonder if I'd have been better uploading as a wav file and then letting them squash that?

Thanks again KoMa, I've taken some of your advice here

I've just gone to a paid account in Soundcloud and have changed the track I've uploaded to a .wav. I've enabled downloads.

https://soundcloud.com/gary_w/…la-and-the-big-brown-bear

I'm listening now and they've still put a mild phaser pedal on everything, bless them. Most noticable on hats and top end of vocals. If you fancy downloading and seeing what you think of the original that'd be great but if not no worries - I appreciate you having brought it up....

I may still tweak the high end but won't get chance to work on it any more till another week has gone by....

Thank you all so much - I really appreciate you having a listen and taking the time to comment - I'll let Isabella have a read of these tomorrow :). I've already got another song half-written which is just her on vocals - she's got a great voice and it was a pleasure to do this with her. She goes to the school choir and we recently went to watch her do a folk piece (Dalmation Carol). Her and a teacher on piano and she absolutely blew the room away. Doing great at school too and, fortunately, not got the the teenage bit whereby parents are bad She's fabulous company. Her little sister is coming on too but best give her a year or two before I rope her in....... Promising voice but still more interested in 'My Little Pony' which is as life should be - she's 8 :).

In the meantime I'll answer the points you've all raised.

SwAn1 - apart from the Slate Drums, you do need iLok 2 for all of those plugins. I avoided getting one for years but I'm so glad I did simply because there are several manufacturers who insist on it. The iLok cost me around £30 from Amazon in the UK and I just leave it permanently plugged in to my PC - I lose things too ;). I'm a long way from being an expert at any of this stuff but what I can say is that the Slate stuff I have sounds great and is very, very simple to use. I'm really happy with them. Slate have a sale on at the moment and are shortly going to be releasing a chanel strip plug which includes a couple of EQ modules and a couple of compressors. It'll be $149 and my wallet is already burning. I don't need any more compressors but I'm so fond of the things I have from them already it's a no brainer. Well worth the hassle of ilok which to be honest is fire and forget once you have it.

As to Audiodeluxe - if you'd told me 3 month ago I'd have you to blame for my growing number of plugins :). I found them recently (think I saw them mentioned here?). It's my 'go to' place and they always seem cheaper than anywhere else. Good service and communications too.

Raoul23 and Ingolf - thank you :). The program is Session Horns which is a NI Kontakt instrument. I got it as part of Komplete 9 a whole back and TBH this was the first time I'd used it in anger :). As such, I've not even begun to scratch the surface of it and, if I'd learnt how to use it properly it would no doubt have been even better. All I did was turn off the reverb that's built in and instead used Valhalla Vintage. Oh, and I cut a but of notch in there EQ wise so it played nice with the vocals. I played the melody lines on a keyboard and then tinkered in the midi editor because me and a keyboard? I'm like a monkey playing a typewriter ;). It's got lots of options in there (it's a 4 piece horn section and you can say which bits you want to use). I didn't do any of that though! They've now brought out a pro version which I've not investigated but imagine it's cool. I'll certainly play with it more.....

Thanks again everyone