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Old 03-26-2008, 11:51 AM   #1
jalan
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Default My first track in Reaper -- let me know what you think

Hi, all. With Reaper's help, I just completed my first recording in years and wanted to share it with you to get some feedback.

Basic specs are Reaper (of course), EZ Drummer for drums and POD XT Live for guitar and bass. Vocals are waiting for some ambitious soul out here... ;-)>

Please take a listen and let me know your thoughts, opinions and advice on whatever -- recording, mix, writing, performance, etc.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks in advance!

Direct download here:
http://www.30sos.com/extras/sammy.mp3

Stream (or download) here:
http://www.soundclick.com/tonemadness
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Old 03-26-2008, 01:16 PM   #2
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This sounds excellent to me. I love it.

Great playing. The rhythm guitar is rock solid.

I still remember this from your earlier post.
http://www.cockos.com/forum/showpost...38&postcount=1

Which amp sim did you use? I think you said you were using an amp from the Line 6 Metal pack.

btw. Great drum programming and bass as well.

Pete

Last edited by stratman; 03-26-2008 at 01:31 PM. Reason: Forgot to mention the drums and bass
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Old 03-26-2008, 01:43 PM   #3
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Default Real Nice Job

It is very tight and sounds like it was performed in a band setting. You are the man for drum/rhythm programming. Very nice!!! You don't sing? Vocals will definitely sound nice with that.
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Old 03-26-2008, 01:56 PM   #4
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Very nicely done, indeed.

As Pete has already mentioned, great bass & drums. I especially enjoyed the bass tone - yummy!

Are we to take this as a finished track or is this still unfinished (waiting for vocals)?

Something I thought of while listening to it was that perhaps you might want to consider adding a few colours here and there? Perhaps a couple of ringing clean guitar parts or whatever... just my personal opinion though. I think it helps to keep the listener interested.

Very tight and round sounding as it is, anyway.
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Old 03-26-2008, 02:40 PM   #5
jalan
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Thanks for the comments!

stratman: I'm using the "Criminal" model from the PODxt Metal pack for the guitar. I can't remember off the top of my head which model I used for the bass, but it's one of the stock guitar amp models in the XT (I don't own the bass expansion)

labyrinth: Thanks much, but I can't really take any credit for the drum programming -- about 90% of the drums are preprogrammed beats that came with EZ Drummer. I tweaked a couple of patterns and fills along the way, but EZD did all the real work.

saulopv: Glad you dug the bass tone as well. I'm pretty happy with the track as a whole, but I'm especially please with the bass since I had to use a guitar model to get the tone (plus, my strings are probably 2 years old).

And yes, the track is intended to have vocals. I sang in my last band and have largely given it up so I could (hopefully) regain my guitar skills. I might try and add something at some point, but there aren't any lyrical ideas jumping out at me. If it was an instrumental, I'd definitely add some embellishments to keep things more interesting.

Thanks again for all the great comments. Any other thoughts or suggestions?
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Old 03-26-2008, 09:14 PM   #6
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This is great.. love the guitars
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Old 03-27-2008, 12:57 AM   #7
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Holy crap, that was good!!!!!!
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Old 03-27-2008, 01:05 AM   #8
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Great tune, great sound. i love it !
Maybe you should ask Zack de la Rocha to sing for you


As far as the drums you should try to seperate the bd, sn, hh, toms and oh to their own midi tracks and send each through their own schwa/midi_humanizer to the ezdrummer and play with the position / value parameters of each track to squeeze some additional life in there.
i fooled around with that a lot and got astonishing results afterwards.

hb
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Old 03-27-2008, 06:21 AM   #9
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What a great track! Loved it. As others have noted great tones all around. Guitars especially: wide and fat. Could you post more info on exactly how you recorded the rhythm parts? Did you double track? Compression, eq? Thanks -cool way to start the day. Snskrt
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Old 03-27-2008, 08:47 AM   #10
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Thanks, guys! I spent a lot of time on the guitars (got a bit fixated on them for a while), but you'd be surprised how much of the guitar tone is coming from the bass guitar. When I drop the bass out, the guitars actually sound pretty weak. Good complimentary tones was the key in this case.

hannebambel: Hell yeah! This was intended as a full-on Rage ripoff... er... homage (though I suppose Chris Cornell might work too) And that's a great idea for the drums. EZD is pretty good about human sounding patterns, but I'd love to make it flow even more.

Sanskrit: Thanks, man. Yeah, the guitars are double tracked (which is mandatory for me, as opposed to using a doubler or cloning a performance) and are panned 100% L/R (I think 100%, I may have backed it down to 80% or so). No compressioon added in Reaper, though I think there may be some on the patch. But I did use ReaEQ to shape the track. Don't have the exact specs in front of me, but it was basically a hipass @ 120Hz to make room for the bass, a deep & narrow cut around 5.4k to get rid of the infamous POD 'fizz' and then a lowpass around 8k (I think) to get rid off the direct modeler hiss and other hi-end weirdness. I can look later if you want more specifics, but I think that's pretty close.

Thanks again for all the comments -- they're really inspiring. Let me know if you have any other suggestions, questions, etc.
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Old 03-30-2008, 10:55 AM   #11
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I enjoyed this a lot! Very cool groove.

Mix is very good! Everything sounds great together. I absolutely love the guitar and bass guitar tone! You may have convinced me to buy the expansion with these tones for my Line 6 UX1!

Really awesome! The riff at 3:23 is my favorite! Very "stompy".

Media Player is on repeat for this one!
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Old 03-30-2008, 11:33 AM   #12
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Excellent! Very cool.

Last edited by Lawrence; 03-30-2008 at 11:35 AM.
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Old 03-30-2008, 08:17 PM   #13
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Default Hell yeah!

Very Collective Soul/Corrosion of Conformity with a bit of Rage mixed in for good measure, I absolutley love it! Great riffs, great tone, and great mix!

Gives me hope as I am using the Line 6 Gearbox for guitar/bass and I was curious how it could sound, and this track sounds awesome!

Also might have to pick up EZDrummer now. I had been using Soundfonts that I found, that kit sound really great.

Just what I needed, more toys to buy...
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Old 03-31-2008, 07:02 AM   #14
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When I heard the first few bars I thought we were going into something like Stevie Wonder's Superstition, not quite eh?

The other posters have said it all, tight, clean, funky and very well performed. The guitar sound is one that stands out on it's own, like if you heard the same tone again you'd say hey that's from...... what's it called anyway?

You asked for our thoughts though so I have just a couple, firstly, and probably only because of how I am, I felt it was missing another guitar in places, some searing highs trebly noodles and divebombs wouldn't go amiss, you know like a quiet bit after the second verse and then WHAAANGGG!!

I also reckon a girl singing/yelling her socks off would transform a great piece of work into a masterpiece

I haven't finished a Reaper project yet but it's great to hear other's are getting it together.

Keep on rocking
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Old 04-02-2008, 11:45 AM   #15
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jalan-
Wow! really good stuff! The mix is impressive...sounds like it was done in a professional studio (IMO). Love the guitar tone and the riff. Definitely hear some Rage or Audioslave influences. Just my 2 cents, If you decide to lay down a vocal at some point, consider trying something that would be completely unexpected. In other words, DON'T do a Chris Cornell or Rage sounding thing....because that's exactly what you'd expect to hear from the musical feel you've got going. I'm going to play around with the track and see if I can think of a vocal idea/melody. If I come up with anything that I think is half-way interesting or useful, I'll send it over to you

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Old 12-30-2008, 09:20 PM   #16
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sonofabiatch, that's good stuff. sounds pro to me.
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Old 12-30-2008, 09:27 PM   #17
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man that is friggeennnnnnnnn sweeeeet
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Old 12-31-2008, 12:51 PM   #18
jalan
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Thanks, guys. It's ironic that you just bumped this thread -- I should be posting my next track in the next couple of days.

I'll add the link on this thread so you can check it out -- it's a bit of a different style, so I'd love your feedback again.

P.S. Good lord. Nearly nine months between posting tracks? I need to start staying up later or locking the kids in their rooms or something...
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Old 01-01-2009, 03:43 AM   #19
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I agree with lots of what have been said.Great sound for this genre.There's are lots of this kind of stuff around now so as someone else has said when you add vocals I hope you don't go for the standard low growling death and destruction type as it's literally been done to Death-metal<grin>.It would be great to hear this type of sound with something different in the vocals to make it stand out from the rest
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Old 01-05-2009, 12:13 PM   #20
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Sounds great. Looking forward to the new track.
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Old 01-06-2009, 10:25 AM   #21
jalan
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New track up for those interested. Thanks!

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=271064
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