Hey!
Here’s a short song I put together, no name yet.
I’d like to hear your feedback on anything from tones and overall engineering to mixdown and mastering, please.
Thanks!
Hear the MP3 song here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3814277/BassFull5.mp3
The bass sounds good. Real good.
nice one!
Love it
The drums sound live or are they coming out of hydrogen ? If it is the case, it’s really stunning
The base get a bit to much in the background after the initial intro for my taste. Perhaps a finer EQ on the other instruments can help to let it shine through a bit more
You did a nice job on the pan spatialization, the spectrum is large but not artificial, (for my taste again)
Hey!
Thanks a lot for those comments, guys!!!
@arthursucks: Glad you like the bass sound. Believe it or not, it is a cheap 5 string Ibanez (one of the lower BTB models), through a KORG PX4D, straight into an ART preamp. Funny thing is that I was playing around with it to see if I could get a good signal into the recording, and found some tones out of the Pandora (even if it is guitar aimed) that I liked. I am thinking of buying a bass POD, though.
@t_sysimetsa: Thanks!
@phdemartin: Thank you! It is hydrogen, yes. As for the bass getting lost in the mix a bit, I have to agree, trying to find a way to get it up front, but nothing worked so far. I tried the EQ thing on other tracks, but other than getting them thin and lifeless, no luck. Suggestions welcome on how to do it!!!
In my experience, you’ve got two way to let the bas come up front
1 Make place in the stereo spectrum for it and if the spectrum is to busy,
2 using analyzer and EQ to find out in witch range of frequency it sound natural and make room in those frequency in other instrument who are in the same panning , or place the bass in the panning with an instrument who don’t use those frequency
sounds really good - I’d agree with the other posts about the bass, sounds good in the intro so its a shame it gets lost a little later on. I don’t know what EQ you’ve already tried but you could give my graphic EQ a try and see if you can pick the bass up a bit with it - there are two versions, the JACK client which is free or the LV2 version which requires a donation of some (small) amount…
Hi,
since the bass is playing nice melody, it could be louder + the bass could have less high and more bass frequency 
I’d second linuxDSP recommendation for his plugins, I have great results with it especially with bass signals.
Overall a great mix!
Best
Benjamin
Wow…that was a great song…even without a name. The hydrogen output seems great…how many tracks do you have playing? Also if possible, could you provide a screenshot of the hydrogen beat and also a screenshot of the Ardour mixer showing all of your track and see what plugins were used
Keep it up man…and thanks to Paul and team for providing us with a quality DAW that is free in Linux and can’t wait for Ardour3.
@linuxdsp: Thanks a lot! I want to try once again with my current setup, but if it doesn’t work, I will definitely give your EQ a try.
@Benjamin Scherrer: Cheers, man! I agree that the bass can take a bit more volume, but since the mix is already a bit too hot during the choruses, I may need to make some extra adjustments.
@rpatros: Thank you! I use Ubuntu Studio for my recording, a dedicated partition exclusive for that, and have kept the network applet disabled in order not to have any impact on my recording. In other words, I need to boot into that partition, take the screenshots and send them out, so will be posting them here shortly.
If I remember correctly, I have 16 tracks playing out of Hydrogen. When you say “hydrogen beat”, do you mean a groove specifically, or just the main screen?
I will try to get a couple screenshots from my mixer, not sure all tracks would fit into one.
Thanks for your words and yeah, BIG KUDOS to Paul and the rest of the developers for such an amazing piece of software!!!
ARDOUR ROCKS!!!
Hi again,
I have modified the song slightly, trying to enhance the bass sound and bring it up a bit. It is hard, because I don't want it to take too much space. After all, the main melody is played by the acoustic guitar. Anyways, here it is, let me know what you think:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3814277/BassFull6.mp3 (Just download it again if you already have)
As for the screenshots, here they are:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3814277/HydrogenMain.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3814277/ArdourMixer1.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3814277/ArdourMixer2.png
Thanks again!
GodLikeCreature thank you for posting the pictures and again great work as it truly shows Ardour is a great DAW and can compete well against the likes of Protools, Cubase and other ones out there.
Keep it up.
@phdemartin: I think you are using the wrong URL? The file is called BassFull5.mp3.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3814277/BassFull5.mp3
@rpatros: Thanks a lot!!! Ardour really is a top notch application!
By the way, I have updated it trying to incorporate everybody´s feedback, hope you like it!
I decided to call the song “If”, after the great Rudyard Kipling’s poem!
Yep, now it’s more balanced, I like it.
I’m still amazed by the drum part, it fell really alive, it’s hard to belive it come out of hydrogen.
Congrat…
Thanks a lot!
Funny enough, I am also getting some people saying that my drums suck big time!
It´s interesting what personal taste can add to the picture!
Cheers