For the past 2 months or so I have been playing the absolute living shit out of some guitar.

Having come up with more ideas and more interesting stuff in that span of time than I ever have on bass (5 years in a very small-time melodic death metal band) I decided to start recording some of it instead of trying to tab it out into shitty-assed guitar pro.
Also, this gave me a reason to burn a small hole in my pocket, so why not I guess.

PreSonus AudioBox USB interface
PreSonus Studio One 2 DAW
Alesis Elevate 3 monitors

Was working on dialing in a decent tone before I called it a night.




What're you guys working with?

Nice. Presonus makes some good stuff, and their DAW is one of the ones I've been considering.

I have several amps & cabs at my disposal along with a Sure PG58, a couple Sennheiser E609 Silver mics, and a Line6 UX2 Pod Studio, which came with Pod Farm and a couple highly rated DAW programs that actually suck, IMHO. Pod Farm is alright for it's clean guitar amps, bass amps, and mic preamps, but anything that has distortion sucks, but my Marshall JVM has a line out that emulates a mic'd up Marshall 1960 4x12, so it makes up for what is lacking in Pod Farm. For a DAW, I'm just using Audacity for now.

I've seriously been considering selling a couple of my heads to help fund getting a DAW program I like, an Axe FXII XL, and a copy of Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0. The DAW and Superior drummer would be first on my list since I can get by with the other stuff I already have. But the tones that guys are getting out of their Axe FXs are great, plus I would love to have that kind of flexibility with signal routing, effects, and the tweakability of the amp models. So one of those is on my must get list.

The Ampire plugin that comes with StudioOne seems pretty decent for being a built-in, but I have yet to really get too much time on it. They came out with a "metal pack" of some sort that adds in a few more amp heads and cabinets as well as a "metal" set of drum samples for their drum machine.

That's the next thing I have to figure out is the drum plugin, it literally looks like a drum machine on screen. Hopefully it's not too bad to program, or at least doesn't sound like shite.

The Audiobox comes with StudioOne Artist, which doesn't allow 3rd party plug ins, so hopefully the ones built in are actually pretty decent. Otherwise I'd need to pay about 100 to upgrade to producer before I could even use outside plugins.




At least when it comes time for bass, I know I have that handled with my Ampeg SVT4 Pro head. You can get all the tone you want out of that fucker.

Presonus   Firestudio , ART Digital Studio Preamp gives me 10 channels for  tracking, Yamaha 02r for more mic channels and submixing
 An old TAC 24-8-2, one  of a very few ever made, for that nice "English" EQ, use it mainly for drum  mic pre's, submixing.

Presonus Studio one Pro for software. JBL 4206 monitors, mainly cuz I'm used to them, had them for 20 years, QSC powerlight amp.
misc out board stuff, verbs, DBX compressors, an old Altec  15676A mic pre mixer for weirdness.

Shure 58's, 57's, SM7b, Beta 52,58's57's 56, Audix drum mic's, a whole bunch of MXL condensers, other oddities, vintage bullets, weird Japanese broadcast mics.
Lots of low watt tube amps, champs, kalamazoo, homebrew stuff, obligatory Twin Reverb, Bassmans,  Mesa Boogie Rocket Reverb. Various and sundry cabinets
loaded with all kinds of different speakers, including vintage jensens, greenbacks, ROLAs,  coupla leslies.

I need to record more often..

I literally wouldn't know what to do with any of that shit hahaha

I def wouldn't call it my "poor man's" studio, since it cost me a decent penny.

I mostly record drums here, but can easily record guitars and vocals etc.

All the tom mics are Sennheiser e904s except the 18" tom which is a Sennheiser 421.
For snares (top and bottom) I have available Audix i5, Shure SM57 or a Sterling ST-31 condenser.  I have a bunch of of extra i5s and SM57s ready for whatever purpose.
Up to three overheads using Shure SM-84s.
I have a pair of Shure SM-91s for hi-hats and ride.
For my kick drums I have a pair of Audix D6s.  (For rock etc I will usually use one kick drum with a double pedal and double mic it, for extreme metal type stuff I will usually trigger both kicks and sound replace with a sample of my kick drums and not mic them.  This is pretty standard.)
For a room mic I have a Neumann TLM-103.  I also use this for vocals and/or guitars depending on the situation.

Running Cubase 5 on a custom built StudioCat PC DAW.  Interfaces are a pair of Steinberg MR816X firewire interfaces (16 channels total).  Some Waves plugins, etc.  Yamaha monitors.





Old pic, before I got the StudioCat DAW and before I set the drums up.

Do you record all of Ikkadian's drum tracking there on your own or do you go elsewhere?


Impressive set-up regardless.

Recorded 100% of the Ikkadian album here...drums, vox, guitars and bass.

Also recorded the drums for my new band, an 80s style hairmetal/rock album, here.  Although for that we used the guitarists overhead mics, not mine.  The guitars and bass we recorded at his studio.  He know what he is doing much more than I do ;)  The drums for that sound frickin enormous, the music allows for mroe breathing room in the mix.  That album is done save for the vocals...waiting for our singer to finish them in HIS studio.  LOL.

Thanks!

That's pretty fucking awesome.

That's one of the cool things about rock compared to at the very least the metal that I play, there's just so much open air in the music.
Instead of packing every bit of a measure with as much insanity possible, you've got room for your ears to rest a bit so to speak.

I still love me some crushing brutality though.

Same here.  I do love metal, but there are big limitations to your mix.  There is only so much room, so more than anything you focus on attack and try to make sure everything is heard.  In rock, because of all the open space, you can focu much more on making the drums etc sound big and full and with great tone.  And since I'm a nazi for natural drums and not samples, the rock stuff is more fun from an ear candy perspective...you can really hear what my kit sounds like vs extreme metal where you can really hear what the attack sounds like.

For some odd reason my guitar's signal is coming through the monitors pretty fucking dirty.
Clean with no distortion implemented through the modeling software, not clipping the input or anything. Bit odd.

I turned the individual inputs as well as the main output way down and cranked the monitors to have somewhat clean sound but it's still a bit quiet and unclear.





It's like Christmas morning figuring out how to use all your new toys.

Might need a nice preamp or DI box.

Yeah this is it apparently.

I'm playing on a Gibson Les Paul with actives, and the inputs on this thing only take passives. Looks like I get to go buy a cheap DI box.

Much appreciated.

I've been out of it for a while. I had been using a couple of creamware scope cards, but sadly they are no longer supported, so it was time to upgrade.

I bought a focusrite 18i20, and have been using the digital performer 30 day trial on a new PC. I have to say, I'm digging it. I've only done one song so far, but I think we are finally at a point where different parts can be done remotely, and easily transferred and put together. We had hoped to do this with midi in the mid 80s, but it really didn't work out.

I'm pretty happy, and am going to purchase DP when the trial is over.

I still have a ton of rack gear, mics, guitars, and even some old keyboard stuff to use outside the daw, but I like what you can do inside the daw now.

Eventide is giving away free downloads of one of their plugins. Here's the thread about it over on the Duncan Forum.

http://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/showthread.php?276929-FREE!-Eventide-UltraChannel-plug-in-Giveaway

Wouldn't even know where to begin with that thing

Yeah, but it's free and a damn nice piece of software.

Awesome. Thanks for the link.

So, the whole reason behind me buying all this shit is because it's far more entertaining for me to record the shitty music that I come up with in my head than typing it into guitar pro.

Note, my guitar playing is not even remotely perfect.
The guitar tone's are far from excellent I'm sure.
I'm probably not 100% in time with everything, but it's pretty close.

I'm working under the artist name of An Idle Mind, because that's what came up with this shit. An Idle Mind.

Anyhow, here's the intro to a song I'll be working on over the next good bit of time if you guy's are at all interested.

The Depths by An Idle Mind (my noob ass)

The Depths

Cool stuff.  If you are going direct, you might want to think about re-amping.  If your home setup is limited, it is an easy way to record everything using a dry signal, and then take it somewhere else to run it back out through a badass amp and mic/preamp.  Essentially spend all the time recording in your home studio for free and then only rent a "real" studio for the re-amping process (a day, max).

Planning on using superior drummer for the drum tracks or what?

I'm going to keep testing the waters with this DAW program first, the one that came with the USB interface doesn't allow for 3rd party plugins.

So depending on how this goes, and if I decide this is something I enjoy a lot, which it seems like I do already, I'll be spending the money to upgrade it and then buy either EZ drummer or Superior drummer. Mostly as an interim until I should decide to go to a REAL studio and then find a session drummer.

Why? Wanna do my drums?

When you have some material pulled together, I'd be happy to take a look at it and possibly collaborate.

Thanks man, I appreciate it.

I'll let you know once I've got a bit more, and we'll see what you think then.

Been busy the past couple of weeks but made some headway none the less.

Most recently, added some hasty bass-work. And I do mean HASTY, it's actually pretty ugly but I wasn't trying to delve to into it for anything other than a bit of backing meat to the guitars.
This is all really still quite "Proof of concept" for me, so there are definitely things that I now understand how to address for the future, but as of now will remain until further.

Things such as random exploding leads because I'm still too lazy to correctly compensate for the added noise and adjust volumes on the other tracks to make it sound normal.

I know now that in the future I'd likely just record 4 tracks:


And then use the hard sided tracks for leads or what have you, that way I wouldn't have to worry about drastic increase volume so much.

At any rate:

The latest "major" iteration of what I've done so far

It's one hell of a learning process.

ETA: I'm also not sure how I feel about that last riff in there. It was kind of kicking my ass to record for awhile there, and now having it done and listening to it, it makes sense why it was difficult. It feels sort out of place and a bit forced, so I may very well (and most likely will) end up cutting it.

Just record two stereo tracks and pan each one accordingly. I don't know how your DAW does it, but some have a an actual stereo track that you can set the spread on, and others will do it with two mono tracks.

Either way, you don't really need to record it four times. Layering too many takes can cause phasing issues like you can hear in the recording you just posted. But on the other hand, layering two takes can really thicken things up, but again, they need to be fairly tight to avoid those phasing issues I mentioned. And don't be afraid to experiment with how far things are spread out. It might be that one song sounds better with the guitars panned 60% and 90%. So experiment with it, and trust your ears.

Also, I would use a mono track in the center for leads, and maybe layer it with a second take if it doesn't sound thick enough. Because you want your leads front and center, not spread out to the outer reaches of the sonic landscape.

Or just invert the phase of the 2nd and 4th track.

I'll have to look into what the "phasing" business you gentlemen speak of, but I assume it has to do with the odd sort of resonating feedback noised I can hear every now and then in it.

I appreciate the advice and input, none the less, now off to google I go.


ETA: Looks like what I thought you meant about phasing is not anywhere close, but something I'll definitely look into regardless.

Bought the Ampire "metal" amp pack that came with a new sample set for the impact drum pad emulator, which is what I really bought it for.

Most of the preset "metal" guitar rigs sounded like shite to me, but I made use of the new head and cab models and went for a sound similar to what I had been using before, with just a touch more edge to it.

Anyhow, added hasty drums to everything that I have written and recorded with the exception of the intro. It makes it feel at least a little bit more like an actual song now, and while I'm not sure if that's exactly the best thing the drums can be doing (as I am not a drummer) I know that for the most part it at least gives a rough estimate to the feel of what the track will be.


Constructive criticism is noted, observed, and appreciated.

It's getting there, and sounds better than the last version you posted, and it would work just fine for a demo to take to your band and say "hey guys, this is what I have in mind", IMHO.

Also, you mentioned that you weren't too happy with your amp Sims, so of you're looking for guitar amp VSTs, here's a rundown of some free ones. They might not be the best out there, but if you're on a budget, the price is nice (free).
http://www.musicradar.com/us/news/tech/the-11-best-vst-guitar-amp-effect-modelling-plug-ins-in-the-world-today-427789

Also, you can download IK Multimedia's Amplitube Custom Shop for free, which comes with a few models. But the cool part is that you can buy additional models a-la-carte. IMHO, Amplitube is one of the better amp VSTs out there. All the details are here: http://www.ikmultimedia.com/mobile/products/amplitubecs/

Part in red is pretty much what I'm going for at this moment, so that's good to hear. I appreciate it.
Once I get the demo phase out of the way and am more comfortable I'll probably bust ass to make it sound like quality work. When that day come's I'll likely do what was suggested earlier by Mike and just re-amp the clean inputs for the tracks.

Listening to it again on speakers that aren't my monitors, and now that I'm awake and not about to fall asleep, first thing I notice is "holy shit, drum volume." Especially that fucking snare.
Second thing I notice is that I may have a bit more going on than what I necessarily want on the drums as well.
Third is drumming into that last riff sounds all fucky. It's off somewhere right in the beginning, probably due to lack of an actual smooth drum transition


The Studio One Artist program doesn't accept outside plugins, I'll have to upgrade to the next one if I want to use those. However, they're getting bookmarked all the same. The issue isn't so much that the Ampire VST is necessarily bad, to my ear's they don't sound bad, it was just the preset tone's they had were almost hyperboles of what a "Metal" tone should be. Way too much fucking drive and gain to the point where the tone's had no articulation. However, using the Amp heads and cabinets but just adjusting the tones on them to something usable yielded pretty decent results.

If I get somewhat more seriously into this recording business for myself, I'll probably look to make the upgrade then to the higher version of Studio One so I can use outside plugins.

I was looking at Studio One and Cubase, but I downloaded the free demo of Reaper and aren't even considering the other two anymore. When the 60 day demo is up for Reaper, I'll gladly pay the $60 it'll cost me to keep using it. I love it. Check out the thread I posted about it for more details.

Will do.

It's getting closer.

Song structure is pretty much done, at this point it's just working on the mixing and such. It's a rough demo, so it's not meant to be gleaming, but this being the first time doing this sort of thing, it's a pretty cool feeling.

Intro feels too long
Clean tone is dildos
Guitar picked up some kind of odd feedback throughout the whole thing, not sure why but I'll address it in later recordings
Too much cymbal work in some places

I agree with all of that.



I would also mess around with the guitar EQ settings, because they're getting lost in the mix at times. It almost sounds like you're boosting the low mids and cutting the upper mids.



Also, I don't know how many layers you have going on, but maybe try using less layers. Layers are one of those finicky things that can richen things up or muddy them down, and this does sound a bit muddy.



 

Just one guitar panned left, one panned right, they're just admittedly not played quite exactly in time with each other

<- still a shitty guitarist

ETA: Also, what frequencies are the higher mids at on a guitar? I believe I may have very well cut them out a bit during the EQing that I did without meaning to do so

 




 

listening through non-monitor speakers the difference stands out a bit more.

I pulled a fucking Metallica.

Did a slight rework on the EQ of it last night after my hockey game. Definitely a more noticable difference through regular speakers for me


ETA: Thanks for the link, that'll prove useful


Also touched the drumming just a bit, but only got to the first two bars of that last riff unfortunately

OK so you've been plugging away at refining this for a while, so I'm going to ramp up my constructive criticism to boot.

1) You've probably done what you can with the mix at this point.  But in reality, instead of try to continually refine the polish, you really ought to go back and re-record it from scratch.  As you've repeatedly admitted, the timing isn't tight, and no matter what you do to the mix, it is still gonna sound janky if the playing isn't tight.  However tight playing will go a long way to making even a rough mix sound heavy.  I think you're at the stage where you should consider laying down a really good take on this.

2) The guitar sounds thin.  Now maybe you're getting everything you can out of your in-the-box amp sim.  This is after all a demo, I get that.  But if you do re-record it, consider that the most important aspect of recording...is recording.  Get the best initial guitar tone you can, because the closer that is to dialed in, the less EQ you have to do later to get it to sound right.  

3) The drums.  Obviously I'm gonna harp on the drums (duh) but you have tow things going on.  It is very obvious programmed sound wise, and again I know you are dealing with a cheap in-the-box drum program.  But besides that, it is painfully obvious that a guitar player programmed them.  First off, there are no fills or toms anywhere.  Second, the drums are extremely staccato, which sucks the life and flow out of the song entirely.  And you make the standard guitar player drum players mistake of pretty much making the kick drums follow the tremolo picking pattern of your guitar exactly.  It may seem like a cool idea, but it turns out to be rather boring.  Worse, when you do it the same way every time, it prevents the drums from taking the song anywhere.  You can play the same riff 4 different times in a song, exactly the same on guitar, but if I throw a different drum riff over it each time I can use the drums to transform the riff, build the song gradually to a crescendo, and take the riff different places.  That's what the drums do.  If you have them playing the same staccato tremolo pick pattern, the song a) doesn't have anywhere to build to and B) has no groove and flow.

Keep plugging away.  I think you have something with the riffs.


Oh and 4) Is there any bass on this track?

ETA: It isn't just guitarists who program drums that way...I've been in shitty band situations where the guitar player is always like "I need there to be a cymbal hit right on this note" or "The snare has to be on these three notes when I do this thing here" and I just want to get up and throttle them.  No, wether I hit that splash on the 7th count when you hit that squeal accent will not make or break the song.  Let me do what I do, and that is make your mediocre riffs sound fucking crushing dude.  I hated that guy.  Alot.

Good points, it's obvious you've dealt with this stuff more than I have.



The guitar in this version does sound a little thin, but cuts better, and I didn't hear any bass either. Adding a bass track, or turning that track up a little would fill in some of the thinness of the guitar tracks, though.



After you, OP, get things nice and tight, It also would be a good idea to record a clean guitar track at the same time you do each track with the modeling software when you are laying down your final tracks. What I mean by clean is the guitar plugged straight into the interface with absolutely no processing between the interface and the recorded track, just signal straight out of the guitar. That way you can reamp to your heart's content later on.



 

Let me start by saying that I do genuinely appreciate all the criticism, it is quite helpful to me.

1. I'm pretty sure I've got the song laid out how I want, so I will definitely be going back and re-recording it. My guitar playing has gotten tight enough in that short period of time that I should be able to get them in sync, it's not like any of those riffs are any kind of complicated or technically demanding at all.

2. Guitars sound thin. I think I keep dicking with the tone and EQ to get that to sound thicker, when in reality it's a combination of things. Not the best amp sim, my not-so-great playing on the recordings, and perhaps only having the one layer on each side. When it comes time to lay down the tighter takes, I'll probably experiment with adding an additional layer or two if the guitars still sound thin. If when the playing is tighter it thickens up, perfect.

3. Shitty drum sim is gonna shitty drum sim. The drums are admittedly very much like a guitarist wrote them, it's a hard habit to get out of, but believe me I know how much good drums can contribute. Drums control a songs feel.

4. No, have not done so yet. Why? I have no idea, I had at one point but scrapped it.


Also, I've spoken with my drummer from Catalyst on long ends about that over controlling shit by the guitarists, it pisses him right the fuck off as well

I REALLY need to figure out where that feedback is coming from in the recordings though. I'm unsure if it has to do with the DI box, or the monitors just being too fucking close to the active pickups, honestly haven't a clue.
Off to question Google, The Great and All-Knowing.

Google, The Great and All-Knowing, has answered my requests and granted me knowledge. Like I thought, it's feedback from being too close to the monitors.



The way I have the guitar recorded is actually a clean signal, then the program adds the amp-sim onto the signal AFTER this is done.




If that makes any sense

Hooooleee dog balls.  Why are you going nuts on the mix if you don't have a bass track in there?  Whenever you add something new, it is going to dramatically change the rest of your mix.  It is either adding frequencies that weren't there, or occupying frequency ranges that were being used by something else.  If you are fine tuning the guitars EQ and mix without the bass there, you're wasting all sorts of time.  Throwing the bass in can fix some of the things you might be trying to fix or negate some of the hard work you've alreday done with the guitar EQ.  Dude, get a bass track in there.  No wonder it sounds thin and wimpy.  BASS!!!!!!

As a bassist... I am ashamed of myself

I even have the head of my cab sitting next to me too...  

I've become the very thing that I hate

LOL.  

 

I really regret not doing this on my last album.  I would have liked to reamp the guitars again.

It's hard as shit to tell where my tone is with these little 3" monitors, but when it comes time to re-record everything there will be extensive work on making it sound the way it's supposed to


In other words, it took me about an hour to add in the bass track, and other than being a noob at this I have no excuse for not having added it in before hand. I'm a bassist for fuck's sake.

Didn't touch any of that shit you guys mentioned before hand, this is literally just the bass track added into it, and it's a bit overpowering since I really didn't really do any mixing of the volume levels.


ETA: This also may be a good excuse to buy one of these babies that I've been lusting over for a year or so

Fuck those drums annoy the SHIT out of me now that my brain has switched back into bassist/rhythm mode...

I didn't think that the bass track was too overpowering, and it definitely helped fill out the guitars.



And as far as monitors go, I would probably get a decent pair of headphones first. Because while they're not entirely ideal, they'll be easier on your wallet than a decent set of monitors and a subwoofer.



 

Fixed.

It was linking to the one without the bass track in it

That would explain why I thought it wasn't overpowering.

I do kinda wonder why I thought the guitars sounded more filled out, though. I must be slipping.



I wouldn't sweat it too much right now, because levels are best left alone until your final mix. The main thing now is making sure you get good clean recordings without any clipping.



 

Just sort of wanted to hear it with the bass in it before I went on and re-recorded everything. I still will, for quality takes that sync up well and are recorded more consistently, just sort of said "fuck it" and threw it in since I hadn't yet for some reason.


I've been looking to buy studio headphones, any good brand's I ought to look at?