Lots of changes in my setup. First I just got my KRK Rokkit 8 G3 speakers set up. First time really listening to music on speakers in over 20 years. been on headphones and laptop speakers for a while now. Forgot what i was missing
Then today I moved my main amp into the adjacent bedroom. So now I have this cool setup where I am playing thru the amp in the other room and it is mic’ed with the door shut etc and I am listening thru my monitors…no headphones needed even for tracking (until I do vox of course)
So this is my first jam done with this new setup. The benefit of this new setup is how quickly and easily I can record now. No disconnected stuff and dragging stuff into the living room where the amp used to be. Now I can chill and lay back in bed and record lol
No vox or solos yet but feel free to comment on everything else. I didnt do anything fancy as I am mainly just trying to learn to get a good basic mix going.
Edit. just noticed the cymbal crashes are almost non existent lol
Hi Energy 3 Mix 1
Mix 2 Turned up crash cymbals on EZD2 kit. Added Ferric TDS Tape Simulator on master track
intro
verse 1a
brief interlude :28
verse 1b
chorus :48
interlude before verse 2 :1:01
verse 2
chorus 2
bridge 1:33
solo section 1:46
chorus 3 and 4 2:02
outro 2:29
I think “Hi Energy” is a good description. Very strong positive energy in this one. Enthusiasm, even. Kind of reminds me of early Scorpions in the tone and riffs, mainly the “Taken by Force” album. Yeah, cymbal crashes aren’t really coming through.
Given that, as you stated earlier, the drums are basic EZD2 patterns, your jamming to the rhythm is quite good. I’m guessing it’s the same BPM throughout, but tightness to the “grid” is pretty good. With Vox and Solo this could be something really engaging!
Thanks for checking it out. yeah, dunno if i can sing my vowels like Klaus though lol. Im not SUPER familiar with the old Uli Roth stuff but ive listened to it some
“Hi Energy” is just what I called the midi drum template since its short and 174 bpm. This is the 3rd configuration of it. I just grabbed it at random as it caught my eye for something to try with this new reaper template I made
The bpm and grid: yeah its interesting, one of the very first songs I ever did (to put on wikiloops) featured a whole breakdown thing where it actually slowed down gradually lol. Its funny because I havent done that since. Not sure why. If u listen to Bonham or most classic drummers, they sped up noticeably on the chorus. Then with Bonham you could hear him abruptly slow everything back down coming back into the verse. It would be pretty easy on a song like this to make the overall song, say, 170bpm and then the chorus and bridge etc 176 bpm or whatever.
Playing to the grid. It actually helps a bit to be sloppy sometimes to try to add some life to our mechanized reality lol. Im usually way behind the beat. Especially on bass it gets quite entertaining when i simply can NOT get the first note to land on the grid
I can’t find anything to bash. LOL This is a really nice recording – everything sounds balanced and together.
My listening conditions are just plain old speakers on a PC at lowish volume. Maybe if I put on headphones and cranked it I’d find some flaw.
But the thing is, when you are mixing and mastering something like this, it is supposed to take into account that someone might listen on crappy almost-mono speakers at various volume levels.
Oh yeah, this is rockin good. Love the screamer power chords then back to the stabbing. ha ha This is beggin for a vocal now. congrats on your new set up
Thanks, yeah they make it a bit easier. Now the phones sound really weird.
Ill probably find some new life now in some of my older songs if I get some confidence to remix them. im sure that they all basically have suffered from a similar low midrange muddiness amongst other things
You can watch some reruns of Hogan’s Heroes … it might help. Klaus speaks pretty good English, though with a strong accent. But when he sings, he can really mangle some words. Sometimes I think he makes them up. Uli sang a few of the songs he wrote, and boy those are even more challenging. His English is not quite as good as Klaus’. It’s not so much the vowels, more the consonants. The Germans pronounce “v” like “f” (soft “v” actually), “w” like “v”, “r” is a bit softer, “s” is like “z” many times especially at the beginning of a word, “j” is a “y” sound, though many consonants can be strong and guttural.
The Uli Roth stuff is awesome. He had this Jimi Hendrix legacy thing going on, and in fact his girlfriend Monica Dannemann had been Hendrix’ girlfriend and she was the one with him the night he died. The songwriting changed after Uli left, and while I still like some of that Scorpions stuff, the Uli era is much superior in my opinion.
Right. I have done manual beat matching on some cover songs, in order to do covers that sound close to the original. Most good drummers kept a pretty steady beat but would speed up 2-3 BMP for chorus and quickly but smoothly back down. It could be more dramatic for some songs, but it usually sounds better if gradual and not too extreme. I will usually change the tempo slowly over 1-2 measures, if possible.
ive heard most of the Uli stuff…just not repeatedly to the point of really knowing it. Like most people my age, we first heard of the Scorpions on MTV with “rock you like a Hurricane” lol. I dig the Uli stuff but some of it just sounds a bit old with the production etc. The way I see most of those albums is they have 2-3 really good songs but then lots of sort of b-level stuff. The classics for me are from around Lovedrive to Savage Amusement
Sometimes I overlook the Scorpions a bit but really they are pretty close to what I want to do. I really like Euro-metal along the lines of Yngwie Malmsteen and Michael Schenker and UFO.
I think I first heard the Scorps “Taken By Force” album on Rock (AOR) radio. My first purchase was probably Lovedrive on 8-track tape. So I was right on the crux of Uli to Michael Schenker (Lovedrive) to Matthias Jabs (Animal Magnetism). I know I had the 8-track of Virgin Killer, and also IIRC Best of Scorpions, so I further explored Uli’s time in the band in retrospect and found that I tended to like it better. That’s not unusual for me though, usually the energy of a band’s earlier material resonates more with me. With the change in lineup, and maybe even record companies, the Scorps seemed to get more commercialized. I still liked them, but the music just changes as a band follows (or creates) commercial trends. It was a by-product of the big record company ethos, sell more records and make more money. I did enjoy Lovedrive and Animal Magnetism as there was a certain freshness there from the guitar lineup changes, but after that it became more about the hit songs and MTV videos. I guess the upside is that RYLAH really put them on the world stage and got their music out there to more people. Great song, and one of my favorite guitar solo’s of all time.
Congrats on the new speaker’s set-up. I would like to get a new set myself to replace my logitech computer speakers, but I need to buy an interface first because I’ve been using my computers sound card to mix and lay down song ideas tho.
AS for the song idea, I like it, has that Judas Priest feel along with some other 80’s bands. The sound of the mix is comparable to the sound back then also. I think you are heading in the rt direction looking forward to hearing the finished song.
I like the end slow down progression too, i reckon some more of that, make it longer , could do some interesting stuff in it then an outtro chorus perhaps.
Well, things go in phases. So hopefully I am coming into a “lyrics and vocals” phase since I have many songs that need vox.
My voice was really strong starting around the middle of last year. I was doing a lot of singing training at work and confidently hitting nice David Coverdale and Chris Cornell stuff. BUT I HARDLY DID ANY RECORDING !!
Then about maybe 2-3 months ago I noticed I was having some issues on occasion hitting certain higher notes and also doing some of the exercises I had been easily doing for months. I was thinking it was just because they had turned on the air conditioner at work and I DO know that has an effect because I drive a stand up forklift at work and as I sing I get an air blast in my mouth and nose all day. So if the air is cranked I do get dried out pretty quick.
That being said, im pretty sure I had pushed a bit too far and gotten some swelling and irritation in my vocal cords. I started to worry if I had done some sort of damage since I just started singing in 2016. Maybe I had pushed too far/too fast? I thought about going to visit an ENT to get a laryngoscopy.
But then I started checking out this guys vids and website. Vids like this one.
and this one
He has lots of QnA on his website and since I could hit my higher notes and clearer notes with no trouble SOMETIMES, I concluded that I hadnt really damaged anything, but rather that I just had some swelling and tended to make it worse by not warming up or cooling down properly etc.
So I have changed my training around a bit to where its a LOT of warming up and then cooling off with only a smaller period of intense activity in between
My voice has gotten a LOT of the freshness and ring back in it that has been missing for a few months.
So hopefully, as I said, ill be coming into a nice phase of laying down vox.
For a brand new setup, you are already discovering your zone, dude! I just discovered this year how to change the tempo in Reaper, but I didn’t think about such incremental changes being effective, perhaps adding more humanity into the drive.
I’m no guitarist, but I feel you have a good handle on your sound. That must help inspire this style of rock, too. And it sounds like you are striving for those big vocals of the olden days to be stressing your voice so much. Hi Energy is a good working title for this, but you don’t have to do it all the time at this intensity. I am confident you sound great on softer progressive stuff and make your mark there as well.
Klaus speaks pretty good English, though with a strong accent. But when he sings, he can really mangle some words. Sometimes I think he makes them up. Uli sang a few of the songs he wrote, and boy those are even more challenging. His English is not quite as good as Klaus’. It’s not so much the vowels, more the consonants. The Germans pronounce “v” like “f” (soft “v” actually), “w” like “v”, “r” is a bit softer, “s” is like “z” many times especially at the beginning of a word, “j” is a “y” sound, though many consonants can be strong and guttural.