Guitar Gear Forum

So I'm trying to get a home studio going on the side. I've been recording some friends of mine for free to build up a small library I can use as example for bands that would actually pay

So I recorded a buddy of mine. He does a solo acoustic folk thing. Nice dude, decent songs, but pitchy as all hell. It took over 2 hours of vocal takes to get a comp track for this single song. And that comp was not great.

I feel like a badass because after a few hours spent tuning his vocals I managed to get them sounding natural and actually pretty good.

My friend and I threw down some harmonies over the rougher patches tone wise which came out really nice.

I'm super proud of the acoustic tone too. I used 3 mics to get a stereo image of the room sound while he was playing. It came out so nice and big sounding. The acoustic is a single track of guitar (except for the leads obviously).

Anyways, check it out. Let me know what you think of the mix and production. I'm not gonna leave it up super long since its his song. But I wanted some feedback from you guys.

https://soundcloud.com/ejendres/first-place-10-harmonies

Wow! That sounds pro as fuck!!!
The guitar, vocals, arrangement, and lyric melody are really cool.
Sounds better that a lot of the crap I've been hearing on the radio.

What did you use to tune the vocals?

ajaxlepinski wrote:Wow! That sounds pro as fuck!!!
The guitar, vocals, arrangement, and lyric melody are really cool.
Sounds better that a lot of the crap I've been hearing on the radio.

What did you use to tune the vocals?

Thanks dude! I'm really happy with it.

And I used the stock Reaper plugin ReaTune. It's actually a really nice plugin as long as you manually use it and ignore the autotune function

gad damn EJ.... that came out excellent.. that acoustic tone is killer.... what guitar and mics did you use???

Marc G wrote:gad damn EJ.... that came out excellent.. that acoustic tone is killer.... what guitar and mics did you use???

Rode NT2 at the 12th Fret, a matched pair of Rode NT5s about three feet back aimed left and right.

Guitar is a top shelf Gibson. Not sure on the model.

_ej_ wrote:

Marc G wrote:gad damn EJ.... that came out excellent.. that acoustic tone is killer.... what guitar and mics did you use???

Rode NT2 at the 12th Fret, a matched pair of Rode NT5s about three feet back aimed left and right.

Guitar is a top shelf Gibson. Not sure on the model.

cool... it really sounds great... very, real... if that makes sense lol

The guitar sounds good - really clear! The vocal tracks sounds also very clear, but it sounds a bit distant in the mix, almost like the room ambiance is slightly overwhelming the vocal just a bit.

However, this is a great considering you said he was out of tune singing. It didn't sound out of tune

Cole

colejustesen wrote:The guitar sounds good - really clear! The vocal tracks sounds also very clear, but it sounds a bit distant in the mix, almost like the room ambiance is slightly overwhelming the vocal just a bit.

I would agree with that, but I think in this case it fits the song.

Great job ej! That must have been some tedious work.

Damn that sounds awesome. Sucks he's so pitchy you had to retune him in post, but you did a hell of a job of it. Guitar sounds absolutely great.

nightflameauto wrote:Damn that sounds awesome. Sucks he's so pitchy you had to retune him in post, but you did a hell of a job of it. Guitar sounds absolutely great.

Yeah, I actually tuned a few notes wrong in my first pass because he was an entire half step flat.

Next time I see him I'm gonna talk to him about vocal lessons. He's really passionate about his music, he's just rough around the edges.

Recording sounds great man! Very nice job!

Reminds me a bit of Mineral.

I don't think I'd be able to tell that you fixed his pitch in post if you hadn't said so. You didn't rob his vocals of his quirky melodic style. So yeah man, good work.

saved for better speakers...

Sounds great, dude. You did great with the vocal editing, it sounds natural. Great vocal harmonies.

That dude has a good timbre to his voice, he should definitely get lessons to sort out his pitch problems.

I'm listening on crappy headphones but my only critiques are that the compression is a bit much on the vocals at times and accentuates too much of the breathiness at some parts (not necessarily just breaths before singing, but also the actual "airy" sound while singing), but that's common for modern production so it's just personal preference. And I feel maybe there's a little too much ambience on the guitars, especially the little lead arpeggiated thing, which I think could benefit from a little more attack.

Great job, man.

Kind of sounds like Aaron Lewis or something.

Thanks dudes!

He asked to come back and actually pay for a few songs, so thats cool.

BroSlinger wrote:Great job, man.

Kind of sounds like Aaron Lewis or something.

so did he do a great job or did it sound like aaron lewis?
you're confusing me.

Wow, EJ - that sounds really great! I do love the acoustic sound, and the vocals (including the harmonies) are perfect! I would never have known that you had to "fix it in the mix" to that extent. It'd be cool to hear at least some of the original take to understand the extent of what you had to do, but I enjoyed the song enough to feel that I wouldn't want to ruin that by knowing the secrets

I do think the harmonies could stand just a bump up a bit, but that's just me. Love it!