I wrote the guitar parts immediately after waking up, while i was still in bed. Also, i somehow failed to note at that point, that the three bits simply don't belong together, and certainly not just plastered one after the other. Nevertheless, i attempted to record drums to it for shits and giggles.

This is the carcrash that ensued:

(updated somewhat, 3-18-11):
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... D=10404945

I like the first bit and the last bit(yeah errr, basically the same bit), but the two middle bits suck hard. The tempo is all fucked up for them, and the parts make no sense. Just trying to figure a way through it on the drums was sketchy, as you will hear.

The fills in that third section are the sound of utter confusion.

But yeah, add one to the abandoned halfthoughts pile i am building on soundclick.

Oh also, this is the first thing i have poasted with the two mics i am borrowing from Joey.

I could see this being salvageable if the song were much longer, so there could be some time to set up the transitions from part to part...

Nah, fuck that. This shit is weak. I will steal the one part i like(because i think it sounds slick the (only) couple of times i played it correctly) for something else, but i am ditching all that other bullshit.

I also like how you can totally hear me rushing the shit out of everything in the part before the short break, as if trying to WILL the section to end or something. That shit is not good.

Ah, i forgot, but i also banged my head against this one a bit further yesterday as well.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... D=10404945

Updated, but only slightly. Basically i just left more space in between sections, and changed up a couple of them a bit. Still can't really *play* the parts for some reason.

I think that while i don't think that they three fit together, i will probably just continue to mess with them as a unit for convenience. I like playing the guitar parts a bit. But the drums are giving me unexpectedly large amounts of shit. I am hoping that it is just temporary hands-and-feet retardation, and it will pass quickly. I really don't know why i am having trouble with it, the parts are simple enough...

Re: the first one- the two middle bits sound like they belong in two totally separate songs. The first/last bit with the really disjointed guitar is really cool and I like it quite a bit.

The guitars in the middle sections are fine, but the whole thing doesn't flow as an arrangement. So I am mostly in agreement with you, but I do think the middle sections could be developed into something on their own.

EDIT: listening to the updated version. The drum sounds are way better. I like your snare sound quite a bit. I'm assuming you just re-played everything.

Yeah, i just went from scratch. One thing was the first was a little slow in parts, sort of an awkward tempo, that forced me to either go too slowly on the drums and lose the flow of it, or go too quickly and rush stuff badly.

So i just went back in from scratch to speed it up some, which actually allowed me to take the drums with a more laid back approach. I also rejiggered the two middle parts so that they were slightly less thesamethesamethesamethesame in their structures, which helped to get my brain to reassess somewhat, what i want to do there.

This more of the kind of stuff that would be real stupid and easy to suss out with another band member, or a even looper. But i have to do it slow motion style recording scratches(that are in some sort of time, ideally ) and then trying to figure out what i want to play, what i want to do with a part.

Also: This drums mix is as simple as anything. Straight up 4-mic Glyn Johns. Tor's 990s for the 'overheads', CAD KBM412 in the kick, TSM411(vaguely 57ish) mic'ing basically the top part of the snare shell. Actually the snare mic is pretty much pointed straight at the snare rim (and just about even with it, maybe slightly below). I actually recorded close tom mics, but... there are no toms on this, so i just deleted the tracks.

But yeah, basically, this is the drum setup now. I never poasted the many tedious hours of repetition recordings that i did over the last few months, but i had like four quick rock songs that i recorded about forty times with different mic setups, just fucking with stuff. It is actually really helpful to have spent so many weeks fucking with so many setups, because now i am pretty solidly sure that for the way my kit sounds and the way i hit it, and the gear that i have available to me, this is the best sound for it all that i am going to get in my basement.

And the best part is that it only uses four of my precious channels. Seven, if i am doing something with toms on it, but that still leaves room for a (theoretical) live scratch guitar, so i am pleased enough.

Actually no, the BEST part, is that i can stop fucking with it for a while now, and just try to get back into writing some songs.

You're doing this without a click or loop, tracking the guitars first on their own? You poor bastard. When that first part falls into a proper groove it is .

The band member thing is a massive plus. I've barely been writing on my own lately, and it's kinda shocking because I've never been a "jam it out" type like at all.

The drum sound holds up. What are you using re: compression (I know you're a fan ) EQ and the like?

I really wish I had a band.

Aye, the problem is, that a lot of stuff starts as guitar ideas, and i don't actually know what kind of drums i want to hear for it. So i have to just get the guitars down in some form, so that i can go to the drumset and fuck around with the guitar parts and see how i want to approach it. Part of my issue is that i generally don't want to play ALONG with with the guitars, but rather, play OFF of them. For things like this, i wind up playing along more(like the second part) though, just trying to figure out where the hands and feet need to fall to get from one end to the next of it.

I would record the scratch guitars to a click, but the parts don't stay in one time signature, so i might start the click in 4/4, but when it gets further in, the click becomes obnoxiously ill-fitting for the way that i want the guitar to be played, and actually tends to throw me off more than help me. I don't really want to program time changes into the click, and i don't even know what the time changes would actually be. I can PLAY them on the guitar, but don't now wtf i am playing.

As for the drum setup specifics, they are pretty simple.

1. Overheads. EQ Highpass at aboot 140Hz. (Very) slight shelvey boost at 8k to provide a little high end detail. Limiter taking about 4dB off the top.
2. Kick. Scoopy EQ to fix the KBM412's natural(middy/muddy) ranges. Limiter taking about 4dB off.
3. Snare. EQ rolling off below 100hz, with wide-ish boosts at about 1.5k and 5.5k to accent certain qualities of my snare that i like. Also a lowpass starting at about 12k just because. Big limiter on this one, about 10dB. I can get away with it because the hi-hat rejection is pretty okay with the TSM411, so i am not getting as much "SUSUSUSUSUS" sorts of pumping action happening as i would if i had more 'hat bleed to begin with..

And that is it.

The biggest deal seems to have been the borrowed condensers. They need much less eq done to them to sound like what my drums sound like. And the way they pick up the sound in the first place means that i don't need anywhere near as much compression to represent all of the elements of the kit that i want them to be picking up. Just having them as the starting point has made everything else much simpler.

Also, i am starting to get a better handle on what really needs to be removed from my kick mic. I was leaving in too much low mids, even boosting them, and it was throwing off a lot of the mix of the drums. Same with the reallllly low low end stuff. I am finding that you can(and probably should) get away with being kind of brutal about cutting low end out of shit, particularly kick drums. It is one of those things where a solo-ed kick drum that sounds awesome, won't necessarily sound that awesome in a drum mix.

Can you just take out the accent on the one for the click, or program a MIDI track that's just quarter notes, looped, of whatever obnoxion you like for a click sound? I'd assume it would be simpler that way.

I'm surprised you can limit the snare that hard! I've been fucking around with limiting drums lately, and I like what it does to the kick and snare, the snare especially. You get more of the sound of the drum out of the close mic, not just the hateful pong! that a top snare mic, soloed, usually is.

Depending on how you need stuff to sit in a mix, you can take out all sorts of things from drums. There is, I think, a reason a lot of kick drum mics have seriously wacky EQ curves to them that make them more-or-less useless for anything else. A close-miced drum is a pretty unnatural sound to begin with.

Oh, BTW- need some hideous yellow foam rectangles to make a gobo for yer snare mic out of? I nicked a bunch of it they were throwing out at work, and it's way more than I need.

Yeah, i am totally into gobo materials!

As for limiting, it really depends what you are getting into the mic, how hard you can hit it. Also, i have been using the George Yhong W1(waves L1 workalike) limiter for pretty much everything. It doesn't use very much CPU, and for some reason, can be used for even some heavier limiting without getting too pumpy.

That last bit is surprising, because the waves plugin that it is emulating, was one that i found to be one of the pumpiest shittiest things ever. AND it was kind of resource hungry to boot!

But yeah, i couldn't run that much limiter on my snare when i tried it with the Shure PG58, or the MXL2001. Both were picking up too much hi-hat to get away with it. But the TSM411, i was able to move around really aiming to get the hi-hat as much in the blind spot as possible(it is a supercardioid pattern, so it does do this trick better than the other ones mentioned). Once there, it was just a matter of picking what part of the snare i wanted in there. In the end, i wound up mic'ing pretty high up on the shell. And i was happy to find that i could crank the shit out of the limiter on it. I could probably actually even go MORE than 10dB, but i just stopped when it sounded good enough in the mix.