Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Actually, it's not our first recording, but it's the first to have most of the tracks recorded so I made a rough mix and this is the result.
Lots of work ahead but this is fun.

Recorded in our rehearsal room with my home studio equipment, 2 guitars, drums and bass live, vocals were recorded separately (using the same place & equipment).
Our lead guitarist sings this one as this is his song, the singer moved to the lead guitar position.
I play bass and I do half of the vocals.
Level is a bit low, will get it fixed in the final mix.

I don't want to sound too apologetic but this is really a rough mix, the balance is a bit off and there is much more to do, due to the late hour here (4am) - I didn't have the chance to hear it with my monitors and used only my headphones... I expect some extra ooomph and lows... Sorry for that

Would love to get comments (negative as well - this is the only way to improve).

http://gil.disatnik.com/dktm.mp3

EDIT: Almost forgot, I used my 4003 here

Cool, I like it! It has a nice Sixties feeling for me, enhanced by my impression that the singer sounds a bit like Ringo. My only suggestion is that the intro seems too long. If it was my song I would start the vocals right after the second time the guitar plays that opening pattern. But take that for what it's worth; that's just me. I like the way it builds and builds to a peak at the end. Nice songwriting and nice job of playing overall. Your bass sounds great and you remind me a bit of Macca here. Very cool, Gil!

Great song, Gil. I am looking forward to hearing the final mix.

Cool song Gil. It reminds me a bit of a huge band out of Liverpool oh so many years ago.

The bass sounds good, but if it was me I'd put a low-pass filter it to take off some of the distracting pick noise and snappy string sounds. I do this all the time to get a smoother, rounder sound, especially when working with roundwound strings.

Thanks guys, getting a "it reminds me a bit of mecca" is a true compliment.
Kira: will sure look into it, there is a buildup, but my opinion is that it is far from perfect and has some unrefined positions that we should either move or add something in between if we wish to make it a more graduate buildup.
Wes: thanks, I will checkout how it sounds with a low pass filter

1965 wrote:The bass sounds good, but if it was me I'd put a low-pass filter it to take off some of the distracting pick noise and snappy string sounds. I do this all the time to get a smoother, rounder sound, especially when working with roundwound strings.

That's what flatwound strings are for.

gibsonlp wrote:Thanks guys, getting a "it reminds me a bit of mecca" is a true compliment.

Have you been there?

Is Macca mecca for you?

Great sound, Gil.

I like it, great atmosphere... some great moments. Bass is great. Vox is a nice performance but it needs to be in the center and not hollow... it sounds like you either recorded in a small poorly dampened room or you put it through some choruser to give it fake depth or something. Recede it into the center and give yourself some deep verb and it'll be really cool... I want to hear the vox emanating from the center of a large chamber. This has the makings of a great track, would love to hear this thing mixed to perfection

I'm not much of a producer, so really can't comment on the technical aspects. But I can say that I was duly impressed. You have a very good song on your hands. I like the backing vocal arrangement very much.

JimK

jps wrote:

1965 wrote:The bass sounds good, but if it was me I'd put a low-pass filter it to take off some of the distracting pick noise and snappy string sounds. I do this all the time to get a smoother, rounder sound, especially when working with roundwound strings.

That's what flatwound strings are for.

Which is why I only play flats!

I use flats on most of my basses.

Jeff: in our neck of woods we pronounce McCartney as "mekartni", this is where the Mecca comes from and besides, we also say that you don't repeat the same joke twice and you already made fun of me writing mecca a year ago
Jimmy: Thank you very much for your comments, Actually - our rehearsal room is a professionally built room with great acoustics, I used my AKG C214 to record it but I do understand what you mean - I used waves trueverb for the reverb and it came out hollow and off center, I used a different reverb and mixed much more of the dry track with a hint of the wet track (instead of relying on the reverb to mix the dry track as well). I remixed it and uploaded it to the same location, please tell me what you think
JimK: Thanks This is my part of the song, I am the backing vocals fanatic although the other guys are almost as bad

I uploaded a newer version, a bit more polished, I took Wes' advice and applied a low pass filter on my bass at 2.5Khz, I will play with it a bit more. I also mixed in some more guitar parts that we wanted to scrap, I liked them so I fixed the bad parts (cutting and pasting from other locations) and of course, as I said - I changed the vocals as per Jimmy's advice.

gil,that was a great song,a little slow at the beginning,that's the only thing i might change....but i loved the solo interlude with the buildup after. i thought the bass playing was really nice,and liked that you could tell it was a rick bass,so i dunno about changing the tone that much....also dug the guitar work,made me think of peter banks,always a good thing......