Everything Broken(HALO)

[mirev]

It's like, an introduction.

https://soundcloud.com/journeyjay/everything-broken

[Michael_Lochlann]

Arrangement:

The arrangement is pretty good, it develops and has a lot of interest in it. The ending leaves something be desired, the cymbal crash at the end doesn't have enough finality to it and seems half done.

Production:

Fake guitar has got to go. It sounds like it's being ran through Sonar's built in Amp sim, the tone is very harsh and not convincing. If you can't play guitar and don't have any convincing distortion guitar libraries (I hear people mentioning Shreddage a lot) I suggest replacing this with a saw wave or something similar. It's maddeningly hard to get a good guitar tone with an actual guitar, so using a midi guitar and running it through a second-rate amp sim or VST is not going to cut it.

I'm not in love with the Violin sample either, an investment in East West symphonic orchestra for about 300 bucks will do you better. Or perhaps synth strings instead. The great thing about synth instruments is they're not trying to emulate anything, so they never sound fake. For instance, the beginning of the track sounds good because it's all synthesizers.

The rest of it sounds ok, the drums are mixed well and the balance is good. But the fake violin and guitar are killing this track for me.

[mirev]

Arrangement:

The arrangement is pretty good, it develops and has a lot of interest in it. The ending leaves something be desired, the cymbal crash at the end doesn't have enough finality to it and seems half done.

Production:

Fake guitar has got to go. It sounds like it's being ran through Sonar's built in Amp sim, the tone is very harsh and not convincing. If you can't play guitar and don't have any convincing distortion guitar libraries (I hear people mentioning Shreddage a lot) I suggest replacing this with a saw wave or something similar. It's maddeningly hard to get a good guitar tone with an actual guitar, so using a midi guitar and running it through a second-rate amp sim or VST is not going to cut it.

I'm not in love with the Violin sample either, an investment in East West symphonic orchestra for about 300 bucks will do you better. Or perhaps synth strings instead. The great thing about synth instruments is they're not trying to emulate anything, so they never sound fake. For instance, the beginning of the track sounds good because it's all synthesizers.

The rest of it sounds ok, the drums are mixed well and the balance is good. But the fake violin and guitar are killing this track for me.

GR5 would be the amp I'm working with.

[Michael_Lochlann]

guitar rig ain't bad, but again, distortion guitar is probably the #1 hardest instrument to emulate. I used to run a MIDI track through amp sims too when I first started, but there's not a hell of a lot you can do with them to make them sound good. you really need either a real guitarist (plenty of them at OCR for you to ask), or find a sample library designed to recreate the sound of a guitar. Just like violin, having a sample patch with only one sound will not get you a realistic result because the instrument is just too complex.

again, you're better off using a saw wave or something that has the harmonics and edge of a distorted guitar. you can even try running it through a light distortion like a Tube Screamer sim to get it a little nastier. but right now, it just doesn't sound good, and it's messing up what might otherwise be a pretty good track.

[Rozovian]

Your intro synth is great. I hope you know how to recognize both good and bad elements of a mix. Your intro synth is a good element. Your guitar isn't.

Faking electric guitar isn't easy, but it's much easier than bowed strings, or brass. You can do a lot with just a decent amp sim, a well filtered saw wave with some vibrato and pitch bends where appropriate. A recommendation.

Knowing that the distortion will distort combined waveforms (whether multiple actual strings or just multiple voices or oscillators from a synth or sampler) means you can construct your rhythm guitar elements more convincingly that way. With a half-decent grasp of real electric guitar, you can emulate a lot of tricks, like writing octaves and fifths into the distortion/amp plugin for a stronger rhythm guitar sound. It's also easy to turn up distortion too much, where a better input sound would produce a much better guitar sound.

As for source sounds to feed into the amp/distortion, I've had success running piano samples into it. The spectrum and dynamics of the source sound matters a lot more than whether it says guitar in your sampler/synth.