yo TL, after posting our first song and getting some good constructive criticism the band (Shallow Skies) thought it would be cool to come back, and see what you think of our progress!
We've narrowed down our sound a bit more, it's a mix of between the buried and me, protest the hero, threat signal, kill switch engage, avenged sevenfold ect We also tried different recording methods as still were still really experimenting in this department.
New song:
1st song for reference:
We recorded in our studio - basically a laptop, cubase 4, mixer and vocal mic/drum mics. (anyone know the next logical upgrade? lol)
The recording isn't perfect, but it can only get better from here as the band gets tighter, musicianship improves, and we learn our way around the recording process!
Feel free to leave opinions/suggestions, were pretty critical of ourselves and curious to hear what people think regardless of what genre of music they typically listen to
The recording itself (individual parts) sounds fine. The mixing and mastering part of it is what you will want to get good with. Sadly i was a cubase 5 user for a while, and it doesnt offer much in ways of this. I swapped to mac based Logic, and its a wonderful piece of software that gives you more options in this.
You'll need to listen to some professional recordings and try to emulate it with the sound your going for. The vocals clearly need more definition. Good preamp and a good microphone can go a long way.
When everything is happening there is a crunched feeling between the parts, comes back to mixing and balance. You'll have to spend some time in your song arrangement to figure this out as well. You honestly dont need everyone playing at all times. A good band to listen to for this sound, would be In Flames. They use heavy heavy guitar parts, 3 or 4 usually playing at one time but your never like feeling overwhelmed or suffocated by them. This can go back to song writing as well, having the guitars in different ranges doing harmony up the octave to help cut out the frequency crunches.
Vocals sound better on the first song, mainly because the bass freq/bassdrum arent killing the track.
I have like around 10 years of home recording exp now... And have been working on a music degree for a while.... The thing you want to emphasize is getting a "clean" recording.
Also i wouldnt put a label on your band like we sound like blah blah blah. Usually does more harm than good when someone is like, "Bro, you sound nothing like blah blah blah." Just gets confusing, just play what happens, happens.
*Edit
One tip about recording, generally you want to record everything above the level you plan on using it at. You can always make things softer easy, but its hard to get good sounds when you try to take something softer and dial it up.
We agree that the vocals need to be much more defined, we tried cutting most of the compression on the instruments, I think that could be causing some of the crunching too. I had trouble getting the bass drum to sound defined without having dial it up, I'll experiment with a different sound next song.
Seems like we generally need to get a better volume balance between everything. Getting rid of the fuzz will be one of the main objectives in the next song lol
Compression is a good and bad thing. I usually record without it, and add it in mastering, if its needed at all. I generally only use compression on bass guitar and the toms. When using it on EVERYTHING can cause the problems of things feeling crunched. There shouldnt be a global compression because things need to be naturally softer and louder.
I think cubase has some generic compression tools to add in on the track, and you can always buy the plug ins for the quality ones.
Main thing is just keep recording and trying out different things. I started out as a drummer/bassist myself, and spent loads of time just recording between the two by myself to get a good sound.
Interesting, will diffidently take that into consideration for the next song
Anyone have any comments on the music itself? I know there are other metal heads on here lol We really tried to keep this one interesting the whole way through, with little synth fills and other variations.
EPT
