ronws

I can fly the airplane. I do have a box cutter (utility knife.)

Thanks, man. I learn some things the hard way but I do have the capacity to learn. Eventually.

Not a problem. The two briskets I still have in the chest freezer are over 14 lbs. Even after I trim off some of the fat, it is still around 14 pounds. You could feed a regular squad or a SEAL team in training.

I thaw them in a fridge, like you would a turkey. Basic formula is 5 hours for each pound. So, I count backwards from the day I plan to smoke and add a day because I like to put the seasoning rub on the meat the night before and let it sit in the fridge overnight. That way, the following morning, I can wake up about 6, start a fire, throw the meat on, just that easy. I smoke it no less than 12 hours, starting with high heat to sear the outer layer of the meat, which keeps the juices in.

You know, as a singer, I am a pretty good barbecue chef .....

I agree with MDEW. You are letting the note crash at the top. Instead, imagine the note going one, even as you end it. Something else you might think of. As you start the onset, end with the onset. The onset can be bookends to the note. That might work better than imagining the note continuing. So, if you have a QR onset, end the note thinking of that QR onset.

But your range is really good and you have a lot of usable volume up there, something others struggle for years to get.

I could go hog wild about recording instruments and may well do that but I wanted to concentrate for a moment on just singing against karaoke track. Especially for those of us who do not play an instrument or or not well enough to produce a music track for what we want to do.

So, in that case, you bought a track from the link Robert has at this forum. And I would always recommend that link and not for the reason of being on Robert's good side. I mean, it is always nice to get along with your brethren in singing. But also because it is a really good site and you can order the track to your custom order. With or without BV. With or without guitar solo, in case you want to noodle some guitar, as well. And all for about a buck or two. And it is professionally mixed and tight.

So, you drag that into a track in Reaper or Logic Pro, similar actions.

Then all that is left is to sing. All you need is a mic. If you only have money for one mic, get a large diaphragm condenser. Or get one of the home recording bundles on the page in this forum that Robert has provided. The price is right, trust me. If you bought that stuff separately, it would cost you more.

So, how do you make a recording as well and professional sounding as the recordings from Felipe? Well, you have to be a little bit like him. Or a lot. No, you don't have to dance salsa, though it couldn't hurt. 

Here is the Felipe "secret," if I may be so bold to reveal it;

Don't keep crap. Everyone, Felipe, Ronnie James Dio, even you, make mistakes. A bum note. Slightly off time. Garbled word in a lyric. Don't keep it. Do it over. This may take some time. You will get no awards for recording, editing, and posting within one hour by the clock. I have recorded stuff in one take and it was well received. And I have recorded something twenty times over two weeks and it was not well received. And all the variations in between. So, if you think you have crappy recordings, be aware that I am the king of crappy recordings and just offer this advice as a fellow miscreant.

So, 400 takes or partial comps later, you finally have a vocal that sounds like you want. Use shift and tempo tools in your DAW that makes sure it is on the beat and not dragging. And then, to save on processing power, render that comp'd track to a new unified track. With one exception. In Reaper, each section of lyrics or sound can be a separate item. And you can do effects and stuff on each item. If that is not important to what you are doing, then create the new track of pieces into one. This saves processing power and speed.

Now, you are going to do all your mixing stuff. EQ, delay, reverb, or both. And we could go way deep into that and probably will but for brevity, I wanted to talk about the workflow, in general.

Take your time. I have read so many books on recording and mixing and more than once. You really should not record and mix on the same day. Your ears are tuned one way for singing. They need a rest to be tuned to mixing. Don't spend too long mixing. You start second-guessing and doing drastic things. Better to give it a day or two and then listen with fresh ears.

That being said, let me sound contradictory and say that you should set a deadline for release or posting. Here is why: no mix is ever "finished." Especially in the day of digital editing. You could edit and mix forever. Pick a stopping point and let it go. This will cause you to focus on major moves and sounds and not get bogged down in minutae. So, spend maybe a week total on the project but not more than a month.

Don't talk about how long or little it took you to do it. It does not matter and I promise I am not going to be impressed if you recorded in one shot. Because I have done it, too. So, big whoopie ...

Or how long. I don't need to know how dedicated or perfectionist you are. All that matters is how it sounds. I am not a technical reviewer. I want to be entertained. So, make me want to sing along.

6 hours ago, Jeremy Mohler said:

Hell yeah man that sounds awesome.  As long as you guys don't mind having a kid around hahah.. I believe we could pull a pretty mean acoustic version of "Whichita Lineman" between the three of us.  Thanks for listening 

 

We'll be a southern version of "two and half men" with ages approximately close to the actors. Actually, Charlie Sheen is a few years younger than I am and Ashton Kutcher is a few years younger than that And MDEW is one year older than I am. You are probably around the same age as the young-un, though a whole lot smarter, which is not saying much. That is, not much effort is needed to be a whole lot smarter than the kid in the show. Kind of backsided compliment, sorry about that.

The only trick is transportation. I live in a little town with 1 stop sign and 4 or 5 churches (I lose count) about 60 miles north of Dallas, a few towns south of Oklahoma. As I like to brag, if I sneeze to the north, it is raining in Oklahoma. Actually, Ok is a beautiful state with a widely varied scenery from a rain forest in the east to high desert in the west, home of the majority of tornados in the world (partially due to trade winds that create this varied topography, more on that later.)

Greyhound does make stops in Sherman, the biggest town nearest to me. Actually close to the border of Denison. You can catch a taxi to my place but there are no bus stops. But the nearest airport for transcontinental is DFW Intl or Love Field. I mean, here in Grayson county Perrin Field is big enough and Air Force One landed there last year so the pres could visit the Choctaw Nation near Durant, Ok. But that was a military op and it just does not get a lot of long distance traffic. It is used mainly for military training exercises.

But I live close enough to DFW and everything here. With minimal traffic and my cruise control set at 80, it would take just about an hour to get to DFW Intl. That's because Rayburn Tollway (sh 121) goes right into DFW. Love Field, near Mockingbird and Inwood takes more time because of traffic and lights. Love Field is only about a mile or so from where I work.

So, now, we're talking what? Plane tickets or bus tickets or train tickets? Union Station is in the downtown Dallas area but is accessible.

It's either that or we get skype and I have to ship my wonderful smoked brisket. Brisket so good it would tempt the faith of a vegan. Yes, being a vegan is a faith and I would be tempting that faith with brisket that nearly melts in your mouth.

Talk me in to it and I will make the homemade barbecue sauce, though I have some store-bought that is pretty good. Then I can do something with shredded slaw, and steamed corn on the cob. I get the unshucked and break them in half for easier eating. I'll cut mine off the cob when ready. Any choice of spices. Seriously, we have spices everywhere. A cabinet I bought, just to house the spices and mixes. On of the few shelf places in the house not loaded down with cook books.

Still, you really need to be here to smell the burning of mesquite wood chunks in a true smoke. Get a snootful of smoke, choke a little, grab a Shiner Bock to clear the palate.

I really liked it.

I have a fantasy dinner, now. You, MDEW, and me at my house, smoking a brisket and I have a few guitars here and you can bring yours and we would inflict our guitar playing and singing on whoever is near, usually my dog and cat and my wife, Brenda. And yes, she likes all kinds of music. One of her favorite albums is Christmas Polka by Brave Combo. And in her car on the way to visit her mother, we have the radio set on Hair Nation or Ozzy's Boneyard. And, I do have the cd Live and Sleazy by the Village People. So, something for everyone to groove on.

Actually, following Felipe's mixing advice helps, as far as getting the sound. Most people don't realize how much doubling and delay Robert "Mutt" Lange used on Joe for the Pyromania album. 

MDEW offers good advice. I did something similar with a Journey song. Sang it a whole step higher for a while to force myself to break with dichotomy of "head voice" and "chest voice." The sooner I got into one voice, the easier it was to drop back down to the original key and sing it acceptably ,though I would not post because, oddly enough, I do not sound like Steve Perry. And there would be too much comparison. Even I would be guilty of that. I am human, after all.

Sounds like a folk version when you sing it. You just have to let go of the sound of Morten in your head. It's okay if you don't sound like him. I know, because I sometimes trip myself up with the original singer's voice in my head. Let it go and do the song as yourself.

I used Audacity before, which has horrendous latency. And so, I would record with the music panned hard right, left phone off, and sing with the room.

Now, I have an interface with zero latency live monitor but I still tend to leave one headphone can off.

Way cool, Bzean and you have the perfect voice and style for that song.

Weird, now it just shows half a pic and no more vid.

On 6/16/2016 at 4:18 AM, Gsoul82 said:

 

I wonder what he meant when he said he can't play it properly then. Was wondering if he meant he actively practices or hasn't really tried. I've come across a lot of people who just never thought they could really learn.

 

 

It could be humility on the part of Felipe.

Just like, I know there a lot of guitar players who are better than I am.

17 hours ago, Robert Lunte said:

Simon, I am categorically telling you... the mix sucks and the singing needs a LOT of work. PERIOD.

Now buck up and take these guys advise... Part of becoming a great singer is to be able to humble your pride... over and over and over again. We all have done so. It is part of the lifestyle of being a singer. There is no place to be "stubborn" about your ideas in singing, when others are giving you feedback that is contrary to what you believe. The mind will use the ego to protect its esteem. This happens unknowingly a lot when you are a singer.

You have an opportunity to grow, but you have to listen to what we are telling you and stop fussing.

Tough love coach... 

Something I have teach myself over and over again.

26 minutes ago, Felipe Carvalho said:

Here is an attempt to bring what you were doing forward so we could actually hear it, compressed the living hell out of it, multiband included to equalize the voice timbre.

https://app.box.com/files/0/f/0/1/f_70162063853

 

Its all squeezed budy, naive copy of a few maneirisms both from Bruce and Phil, you will end up hurting yourself if you continue this way. But it's the last reply, if you don't care, I am not worried either, its not my voice after all. Good luck.

requires me to sign in. You might check the link.

So muffled and low in volume, I wonder if you are singing through a pillow. Except for the loudest and highest notes, many of which are off-pitch. You may want to work on that song some more and try it for a show at a later date. I think you can do the song, it's just going to take some more work.

I like testimonials like this. From regular guys who are not used to giving testimonials. Not that you would ever script a thing for someone to say. And he is like a lot of singers. Good at singing and entertaining but speaking personally, he is more likely to search for words and expressions, as the rest of us do.

Another advantage I like of directly into interface, especially for recording instruments, is that I don't have to worry about barking dogs, air conditioning, or tv noise from the next room. With my Flying V, I don't really have to turn on the amp for the sound I am looking for. I have a Roland GS-6, a professional rack mount digital effects processor / modeler that I bought used back in the 90's. I have several pre-set amp models to choose from and can change the parameters of any of the effects. I could even save it, at the cost of deleting on of the factory pre-sets. It has MIDI out, XLR out, instrument cable out. Low, medium, and high impedance selector. High for single coil, medium for dual or humbucker (I have humbucker pick-ups on the Flying V,) and low for bass guitar and other low impedance instruments that have the less than line level signal.

I could plug in my dynamic mic into the GS-6 and switch to high (single coil of the mic) if I wanted to do so.

Then, after that, I can choose a cabinet emulator in Reaper. It results in this truly monstrous guitar sound.

The Casio, I can play bass or drums with that in what is always the "perfect" room.

But don't worry, even with all these abilities, I can still mess things up. I have toyed with "Dance the Night Away" by Van Halen, proving that I can take good instrumentation and still make a crappy mix. But I have had so much fun with it that even the doggy doo-doo results have been fun and a learning environment for me. If I have not made a mistake, it is because I did not do anything today.

7 hours ago, Bzean123 said:

Thanks for Felipe and Ron for all the great advice. This stuff is really helpful in creating my home-made masterpieces!

In general I record singing and playing the guitar  together. But its problematic in that, as Ron says, I close mic to get the best vocals. So the guitar sounds like crap. Thanks in part to this thread, I've started experimenting with a mic on the guitar. I have a lot to figure out, but its already a definite improvement.

I have been there, done that, so many times. I may have to force myself, but things turn out better if I record the guitar first. Then record the vocal separately, on another track. Difficult for me because I have always been used to playing guitar and singing at the same time.

And one other thing for a good sound all together. It helps if you can listen to the results on something else other than the headphones you wore in recording. I have a sneaking suspicion that Felipe does that. He may have a set of speakers or monitors, expensive or not, even house stereo speakers. But at some point, he gets the playback into an acoustic space outside of his head and changes balance from there. My car has a USB port. So, I can hear stuff in that, the place where 90 percent of americans hear music. If I have something that sounds good on that, it is good on headphones. The same cannot be said of the converse. Something that sounded okay on headphones does not always sound good in the "real world" of my car, which has a 6 speaker sound system and media center that also takes TRS cable from an ipod and also can link bluetooth to something.

And because most of us do not have the money for a true studio build-out or access to a good studio, we close mic. And because of DAWs like Reaper and Pro Tools having plug-in and routing abilities, you can crank out sound as good as commercial releases. And so, take advantage of direct injection instruments, especially if you are performing on the instruments instead of using a karaoke track.

I am crap as a drummer. But I can play drums on the Casio keyboard. Even though I have a nice house, it is not really set up for me to have a full kit with even only one 24" kick. However, I do have room, should I save the scratch to get one, the Alesis Nitro kit. One of the owners of my company plays drums and he has three of these. It has all the drum sets in it you will ever need. You can MIDI control with it or instrument cord and play "live." It is an electronic drum set, so, all anyone else is going to hear is tap, tap. I make more noise washing dishes. All for $300 and free shipping nearly anywhere.

These days, all the pro studios direct inject the bass. A player may get snooty and want to play through a real Mesa Boogie and the engineer will let him do that, then use the direct inject track, anyway. Also with keyboard and synth parts. We are talking about us singers working in whatever spare room we have, not a pro label recording a 5 piece band with 5 mics alone on the drums.

Also, Reaper has inboard MIDI editor with a piano roll and you can program any musical instrument part and there are free instrument VSTi plug-ins everywhere. It just takes time to program it. Others, like Fruity Loops and Garageband, also have this ability. Then, the only mic you are worried about is for vocals. Word of advice in programming MIDI parts. In order for the part to sound as real as a human playing it, don't make the part so complex that a dummer, for example, with no more than 4 limbs could not play it.

Same if you are programming keyboard or guitar parts. Most guitar players are using no more than four fingers on the left hand and plucking with no more than 2 or 3 fingers with the right hand.

In addition to 2 mics on a guitar, which you can do with a basic 2 channel interface, there is another thing that can be done. For example, my Spectrum Acoustic has an onboard pickup and volume and 3 band equalizer. The mic is piezoelectric, what others call "the bug." It produces a type of sound different than a room. But you can plug in that to one input and a regular mic into the other mic. What kind of mic? Small diaphragm condenser is usually recommended for acoustic guitar, if you have the budget. Otherwise, any condenser mic will work better than dynamic mics. Then you can either pan or sum the inputs and do all kinds of crazy stuff from there.

Dynamics are better for really loud and high transient sounds like live acoustic drums, amplified guitars and bass guitars. Here is the funny thing, the cheaper you go in dynamic, the more iconic. Shure 57 is known to have a boxy sound that accentuates the mids and rolls of lows and some highs. And literally every famous guitar part you know of was recorded with this mic. And they are less than 100 USD anywhere. They are also good for really loud singers who like to eat the mic.

Again, I would like to repeat the wisdom of Glen Fricker. As a singer, do not cup the mic, if using a dynamic. The bottom part of the grill is covering tuned ports that are designed t cancel signal from side and rear directions. They are what makes the mic cardiod. Keep your hand off the grill and your voice will sound its best.

Condenser, especially large diaphragm condenser, has fixed back plate. The flexible sheet of metal that is the front plate picks up your voice. The fixed back plate tends to reject sound from anything behind it. If you put a dampener or something behind the mic, you defeat that purpose. Better to put sound shields to the side, if you must. When I sing, I have a piece of foam that was packing from a pool system controller (picked it out of our trash at work) and put it the right of my mic do deaden sound from the living room. Left side nothing, I am next to a curtain over the sliding glass door the back yard. Back of the mic faces the computer and what not. Then I sing through a pop filter about 6 inches away except for high loud notes.

Then I edit the track, deleting sections of "dead air" between lyric passages that may have other environmental sounds, even me clearing my throat.. What's left is a track where the only thing you can hear is the voice, and none of the rest of the environment.

Another thing about killing reflections in a room. Sound cancellation is about trapping rather than absorbing. So, a curtain over a wall or window does better than carpeting over the same surface. Because the low frequencies go through and around curtain but get trapped back there. The usual problem in a room treated incorrectly is that the highs are absorbed and the lows are not and you get a sonic mudpit.

And to answer G's question, yes, Felipe plays guitar. So, a handsome man with the beauty of youth on his side, a great singer, a multi-instrumentalist, awesome recordings and he could be a recording engineer or his own label, even. It's just not fair to the rest of us. Survival of the fittest, and all that.

Seriously, I do learn stuff from Felipe, even if I am old enough to be his father.

That is a neat effect. Obviously, naturally created chorus because of doubling the melody. But also the phase difference gives the flanger/phasor effect one could get on a guitar effects box or modeler. But it also gives the effect of reverb, without being reverb and that certainly thickens the result. that is a neat trick to know.

Diamonds and Rust was pretty cool though I have never heard it interpreted quite that way. But good effort.