Help my sound quality?

[Cardboardowl]

Namely I want to make my guitar sound more realistic, but any other tips you can give me on this mix I would greatly appreciate. Sound quality/mixing is where I hurt the most. so i need everything I can get, but I think the guitars are what needs most attention.

Thanks ahead of time.

[Rozovian]

First of all, the guitar. There's free amp sims out there, use them. You'll get better results than what you've got here with just a single clean guitar sample and an amp sim. Better yet if you've got a multi-sampled, expressive clean guitar sound. There's no way of getting a realistic sounding fake electric guitar out of the box, because there's so much involved in creating the sound - good performance->decent guitar->effects box (optional) ->amp -> mic -> daw. But start by using an amp simulation, two sampled notes combined won't sound the same as two notes run thru an amp, even if it's a sim. Then you should use the mod wheel and pitch bend for some cool solo-y effects, stuff like that. Study music with guitar, learn how it sounds, and why.

Then for some writing stuff. It's a rather empty arrangement (probably quite close to source, I won't check) which worked all right on the snes and its limited hardware but you don't have that limitation so you can't blame your writing on that. Write it rich and good. As someone brought up in the common mistakes thread, you can't write just anything and expect the eq to fix everything later.

Soundwise, you should try to have more sounds of the same quality (a consistently "bad" set of sounds are more cohesive than a mix of good and bad, unless you know what you're doing). The smooth filtered pad is nice, the drums and guitar (especially the guitar) aren't. Mixing them right helps a lot, too; there's both volume and eq fixes you should do here.

Hit me up on aim if you want further advice, I have some reading material for you.

[Cardboardowl]

First of all, the guitar. There's free amp sims out there, use them. You'll get better results than what you've got here with just a single clean guitar sample and an amp sim. Better yet if you've got a multi-sampled, expressive clean guitar sound. There's no way of getting a realistic sounding fake electric guitar out of the box, because there's so much involved in creating the sound - good performance->decent guitar->effects box (optional) ->amp -> mic -> daw. But start by using an amp simulation, two sampled notes combined won't sound the same as two notes run thru an amp, even if it's a sim. Then you should use the mod wheel and pitch bend for some cool solo-y effects, stuff like that. Study music with guitar, learn how it sounds, and why.

Then for some writing stuff. It's a rather empty arrangement (probably quite close to source, I won't check) which worked all right on the snes and its limited hardware but you don't have that limitation so you can't blame your writing on that. Write it rich and good. As someone brought up in the common mistakes thread, you can't write just anything and expect the eq to fix everything later.

Soundwise, you should try to have more sounds of the same quality (a consistently "bad" set of sounds are more cohesive than a mix of good and bad, unless you know what you're doing). The smooth filtered pad is nice, the drums and guitar (especially the guitar) aren't. Mixing them right helps a lot, too; there's both volume and eq fixes you should do here.

Hit me up on aim if you want further advice, I have some reading material for you.

Honestly I don't even really understand most of what you are talking about in the first paragraph. I woudln't even know where to start.

As for the writing, I don't understand how you can say it's too close to the source without listening to the original. I think I added quite a bit of stuff to it, without completely leaving the source. Some stuff on Ocremix sometimes gets so far you wouldn't even know it's from the game unless you knew ahead of time and were listening for it. I really don't want to do that.

That's the original. I mean it's only barely over a minute long... then it loops. I think my mix flows a bit better then that, maybe it's just me.

And as for the third paragraph, are you saying I should download my sound quality to make it more cohesive instead of trying to improve the ones that sound worse, since I can't really get my guitars up to a good enough quality without live performance?

I would however love some reading material, I'm desperate to improve and i'll take as much info as I can get.

Does anyone else have anything else to add or agree/disagree with?

Also I work with garageband, for future reference.

[Rozovian]

Honestly I don't even really understand most of what you are talking about in the first paragraph. I woudln't even know where to start.

If you can get your hands on one, try out a real electric guitar and amp. Friend's place, church, school, music store, whatever. Study the sound. What makes it different from what you get out of the GB presets?

Amp sim= amplifier simulation, a plugin that simulates a guitar amp. As you're using GB, you've already got one of those, so make sure to tweak it until it sounds more like the real thing (and if you don't like it, get AuraPlug's free guitar effects, CamelCrusher, and maybe mda's Combo). Make sure to write the guitar so it sounds more like a real guitarist playing.

I had some success with using a wah effect, the aforementioned camelcrusher, and an amp sim to produce a half-decent lead., and as recently as yesterday toyed with a piano source for a rhythm guitar. The thing is, most things can sound a bit like a guitar when it's run thru an amp sim, so experiment. If a different instruments gets you the sound you want (and you should learn to know what you want, or at least to know if what you get is good enough or not), use it.

All that said, there's still no viable way to convincingly fake a real guitar. Especially not for free. That I know of, anyway.

As for the writing, I don't understand how you can say it's too close to the source without listening to the original. I think I added quite a bit of stuff to it, without completely leaving the source. Some stuff on Ocremix sometimes gets so far you wouldn't even know it's from the game unless you knew ahead of time and were listening for it. I really don't want to do that.

That's the original. I mean it's only barely over a minute long... then it loops. I think my mix flows a bit better then that, maybe it's just me.

It was a guess (hence the "probably") based on the writing. When I actually compare them (which makes this more of a wip thread, which belongs on the wip board) I hear you've done a nice job making your own thing out of it. Still, the writing sounds rather empty at times, and the sound has the problems I mentioned before.

And as for the third paragraph, are you saying I should download my sound quality to make it more cohesive instead of trying to improve the ones that sound worse, since I can't really get my guitars up to a good enough quality without live performance?

halc is not Vampire Hunter Dan, they've got very different sounds, but they're consistent and their songs have a cohesive sound. Also, they both make cool music. I'm not saying you must bring down the song's quality (especially as just mixing it right will make it a lot better), but you should think about sound design some more. And listen to stuff by other artists, see how their sounds compare. For instance, listen to AeroZ, Willrock, The Wingless, Beckett007, BGC, bLiNd, Sixto... They've all got a sound, a style that you can study.

I would however love some reading material, I'm desperate to improve and i'll take as much info as I can get.

Hit me up on AIM.

[Cardboardowl]

Ah I now I understand what you mean with the guitar. I can work with that a bit on sunday.

What do you mean by an empty sound? you'd like to hear a bit more harmonic structure?

I've actually listened to all those artists while working on this remix to analyze how they move through the songs and how things are stacked up on each other and all that junk. I listen to stuff almost non stop and try to get things ingrained.

My AIM is actually Cardboardbeast, but you have to add me first cause pidgin is stupid and great at the same time.