Please critique my playing and recording

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by TBman

…Anyway, here is the tune. What do you think of the playing, where to improve? What about recording quality? (and what do you listen with?)

Hi Barry
You've come a long way. I listen on a small Bose system at my computer desk (without sub), or a full Bose 5:1 system with a decent sub and power amp on our main television.

It sounds like you recorded it in an empty cathedral. If that's what you are going for, then you hit the mark.

If you want better advice on recording, there is a recording section of the forum full of people who love to give specific (and expensive gear) advice. And the folks there are great.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Barry
You've come a long way. I listen on a small Bose system at my computer desk (without sub), or a full Bose 5:1 system with a decent sub and power amp on our main television.

It sounds like you recorded it in an empty cathedral. If that's what you are going for, then you hit the mark.

If you want better advice on recording, there is a recording section of the forum full of people who love to give specific (and expensive gear) advice. And the folks there are great.

Thank you Larry!

[Glennwillow]

Hi Barry,

I think it sounds really good. I like the character of your new mics, and I think the amount of reverb you have on the recording is good for my taste. You could use a lower level and that would be fine, too, but I don't think what you are using is excessive.

With some equalization you could probably thicken up the tone just a little, but honestly, I like it just as it is.

I think the tempo is okay, too. I don't know the piece from any other context, so I don't have the background that other folks have here and who have already commented. So, I suppose I am showing my ignorance and lack of experience with the classical guitar with my comments.

All I know is what sounds good to me. I think your playing has improved significantly over the last few years Barry. As Derek pointed out, you are much smoother in your playing than how you used to play.

There is nothing like getting out there and doing something over and over again to get better. And you are doing that! So good for you, Barry.

- Glenn

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

Hi Barry,

I think it sounds really good. I like the character of your new mics, and I think the amount of reverb you have on the recording is good for my taste. You could use a lower level and that would be fine, too, but I don't think what you are using is excessive.

With some equalization you could probably thicken up the tone just a little, but honestly, I like it just as it is.

I think the tempo is okay, too. I don't know the piece from any other context, so I don't have the background that other folks have here and who have already commented. So, I suppose I am showing my ignorance and lack of experience with the classical guitar with my comments.

All I know is what sounds good to me. I think your playing has improved significantly over the last few years Barry. As Derek pointed out, you are much smoother in your playing than how you used to play.

There is nothing like getting out there and doing something over and over again to get better. And you are doing that! So good for you, Barry.

- Glenn

Thanks Glenn! Any suggestions on how to "thicken" the tone? I'm not a "eq" expert - any advice would be really helpful.

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by TBman

Thanks Glenn! Any suggestions on how to "thicken" the tone? I'm not a "eq" expert - any advice would be really helpful.

Hi Barry,

This thread from KevWind from the RECORD section of the forum refers to an EQ device that might be good for thickening up the recorded sound. I was highly tempted to buy into this plug-in but I never made the move.

There are EQ devices that let you move a cursor around to change the frequency of a recording and either add or cut that frequency so that you can hear, on the fly, how it affects your recording. I have some of those tools in my pile of plug-ins but I don't know what the program is called. But I did think that the EQ device that Kevin was recommending was pretty cool.

He was recommending it for vocals, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for a guitar recording.

If you have EQ devices in your recording setup, you could just experiment to see how adding or subtracting various frequencies might change the sound of your recording. You could just save your recording as a new file so that even if you mess up and save something that affects your recording it won't affect your original.

You could just pick a frequency, let's say 160 hz and boost that an additional 3 db and see how that sounds. Or, boost it 6 db and see how that sounds. Or, try 200 hz, etc. Sometimes just messing around can teach us a whole lot.

Best of luck with this, Barry. I think you are doing great.

- Glenn

[KevWind]

Like Glenn overall I like it a bunch I like a good amount of reverb on solos guitar. But it is right at the edge of almost too much
Something you might try (if not already doing it ) is putting the reverb on a parallel track (Aux /Bus) track and send the signal to Reverb track from the Guitar audio track (send section)
The does a couple things
'#1 it allow a 100% dry signal through to the main outputs
#2 it allows you to experiment with things like putting an EQ before the reverb (for the just the reverb effect) without affecting the un-EQ'ed dry signal from the audio track And with a multi-band EQ you can play with setting the EQ up as a both a low and high pass filter (like roll off below 500-600 Hz ) and (above say 10 k Hz ). so the reverb is working on the mids, and thus not promoting low frequency tails or hiss

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

Hi Barry,

This thread from KevWind from the RECORD section of the forum refers to an EQ device that might be good for thickening up the recorded sound. I was highly tempted to buy into this plug-in but I never made the move.

There are EQ devices that let you move a cursor around to change the frequency of a recording and either add or cut that frequency so that you can hear, on the fly, how it affects your recording. I have some of those tools in my pile of plug-ins but I don't know what the program is called. But I did think that the EQ device that Kevin was recommending was pretty cool.

He was recommending it for vocals, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for a guitar recording.

If you have EQ devices in your recording setup, you could just experiment to see how adding or subtracting various frequencies might change the sound of your recording. You could just save your recording as a new file so that even if you mess up and save something that affects your recording it won't affect your original.

You could just pick a frequency, let's say 160 hz and boost that an additional 3 db and see how that sounds. Or, boost it 6 db and see how that sounds. Or, try 200 hz, etc. Sometimes just messing around can teach us a whole lot.

Best of luck with this, Barry. I think you are doing great.

- Glenn

Originally Posted by KevWind

Like Glenn overall I like it a bunch I like a good amount of reverb on solos guitar. But it is right at the edge of almost too much
Something you might try (if not already doing it ) is putting the reverb on a parallel track (Aux /Bus) track and send the signal to Reverb track from the Guitar audio track (send section)
The does a couple things
'#1 it allow a 100% dry signal through to the main outputs
#2 it allows you to experiment with things like putting an EQ before the reverb (for the just the reverb effect) without affecting the un-EQ'ed dry signal from the audio track And with a multi-band EQ you can play with setting the EQ up as a both a low and high pass filter (like roll off below 500-600 Hz ) and (above say 10 k Hz ). so the reverb is working on the mids, and thus not promoting low frequency tails or hiss

Thanks guys. I'm already doing many of your suggestions. I think I will have to research more the proper way to use those techniques/plug-ins and listen more to what I'm doing before I publish it.

Thanks again, I really appreciate you taking the time to listen and make suggestions.