I tried to write a Southern Rock song and found it very difficult to get a good crunch tone since I usually play clean or high gain stuff. Anyway, I am happy with the lead tone but had trouble with resonance either from picking too hard or not fingering on my center tip. I did learn how to create some panning and volume envelopes on this mix. I also wanted to try to learn how to play a solo over a complex verse part. Sorry, no vocals yet. The unsung lyrics is about a southern boy and an upscale New Yorker girl. I'll return to this mix after I get more experienced and I might just go high gain on the rhythm parts next time.
Should I even post? I am way behind all of you. Mix no. 5.
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Cool riff. Your thread title makes me sad that you're not thinking positive here. Absolutely you should be posting, also don't be a perfectionist! Make mistakes, make them often, and learn from them. You can always revisit songs once you've learned new tricks. Biggest mistake I see here is people revising and slaving over a song to try and make it perfect. That doesn't happen. You can refine the writing the way but the production is all about just you having practiced it a tonne first.
My thought on this tone is that while it's a nice raucous aggressive tone it's taking up too much of the frequency with the flanger on it and is too hot now. One thing I've slowly been learning is that to make something stand out more often it's about less of everything else rather than more of *it*.
Sometimes also what you want up front isn't what you think you want up front. e.g. to make something aggressive on the guitar it can be (counterintuitively) about making the snare drum sound more punchy. The punch comes from arrangement and how you synchronize on the beat with the other instruments. The tighter that is, often the less guitar is in there, the bigger the guitar can sound. Also (something I rarely do but should) always have a reference track going, that way you can compare your balance to the track, your sounds to that track.
Anyhow, sounding good so far, just be brave! Churn out lots of stuff. Share it all here! -
Absolutely you should be posting, also don't be a perfectionist! Make mistakes, make them often, and learn from them.
This. All of us have been beginners / starters at some point in time. No matter how far we are with it here and today. But that doesn't matter. Ambition is good but practice matters. So keep practicing BayouTexan ... and sharing here if you like
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My thought on this tone is that while it's a nice raucous aggressive tone it's taking up too much of the frequency with the flanger on it and is too hot now...
...Per No flangers were used in the harming of this video.
I had the Mimiq Doubler on with a Chromatic Delay and just reverb. But the Flanger is like my all time favorite pedal to use. I just love that sound!Thank you for your comments guys as always. They help me a lot.
I actually got pretty excited after I did the second version because it came much closer to what I wanted the end result to be. I definitely need more experience with Kemper finding good crunch tones though, and using my volume knob more for tonal range which I kind of just started doing.
I'm still confused on using a reference mix the correct way. I can either import a MP3 song into DAW and try to match frequencies against a whole mix (which I was trying to do), or use one of my better mixes and match frequencies to each individual instrument since I can solo out specific tracks. But can you use a reference mix from like a "country song" to make a "rock or metal song", or do you need a reference for each specific genre?
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Your reference track isn’t so much about using tools to match it. It’s about just listening to it, then listening to your own mix and making adjustments in light of what you hear.
e.g. you might hear that it uses a certain drum sound you like, so you switch that out. Or maybe you hear the balance is different, so you copy that. Maybe the guitars are further back, maybe they use an effect you didn’t notice before etc.You just go back and forth, listening and adjusting, taking the best bits till you’re happy.
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Your reference track isn’t so much about using tools to match it. It’s about just listening to it, then listening to your own mix and making adjustments in light of what you hear.
e.g. you might hear that it uses a certain drum sound you like, so you switch that out. Or maybe you hear the balance is different, so you copy that. Maybe the guitars are further back, maybe they use an effect you didn’t notice before etc.You just go back and forth, listening and adjusting, taking the best bits till you’re happy.
Exactly. And try activating a low pass filter to compare your low-end to the reference track as well.
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This is a great (paid) video about reference mixes:
https://www.puremix.net/video/…nt-reference-edition.html
It's not what everybody thinks - you're not trying to make your song sound like another song. That's a losing battle! You're just using reference material that you know well (and that holds up on different systems) to define the boundaries of what's acceptable in your mixes. For instance, I have a Fountains of Wayne song that sounds great, but it's juuuust teetering on the edge of being too bright. If I put that reference up next to a song I'm mixing and I find that my mix is brighter, I know I have a problem.
