Jondy

All right! I haven't given up on this track, I just had a lot of life happen all at once. A solder point coming undone on my guitar, and then my bass strings were just dead and couldn't afford new ones for a bit, then I started a new job and am now working 2 part time jobs and today is literally my first day off in 3 weeks. Guitar fixed, new strings all around, time to get to work! So to address some of the points you guys made, I'm making some pretty significant changes that basically means I'll be rerecording the whole track. I just finished rerecording the bass guitar. 1. RE: it sounding blocky, like a stream of conscienceless: I've altered the arrangement to feature some repeating parts (but not identical) to give it a kind of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-finale structure, so it's not just a series of nonrepeating riffs. 2. RE: a lack of emotion, it sounding like I'm "playing along with something" or looking down to make sure I'm playing the right frets, this made me realize something. What was actually going on is I was being really careful not to strum too hard, because if I strum too hard I clip right into the red on my interface (2i2). Input is turned down all the way, and yet it's still super easy to strum not even that hard and clip. So while not ideal in terms of tone, what I'm going to do is turn down the volume on my guitar a bit to give me some room to be more expressive with strumming and not have to constantly worry about clipping. With this level of distortion you don't lose thaaat much tone anyways. Better to have a better performance. 3. Somewhat related to #2, I decided I thought the song sounded a little bit "draggy," as in, it's just a tad too slow. I've upped the bpm a little bit. It's not overly dramatically faster, but it just seems like it "fits" better now. 4. I had a lot of effects on my bass buss to try to make it sound less like shit, and I even had some kind of weird distorted second highpassed layer thing going on. Well the problem was my strings were just dead. It's really amazing how much difference changing the strings makes in the tone. I have now removed a ton of plugins from my bass chain, it's really pretty bare-bones now, and sounds way better. What's in the works now: 1. Rerecord everything. The bass guitar is done. Everything else (except drums) is still just timestretched to fit, and has the old strumming and whatnot, so I'll be rerecording all guitar next. 2. I'm not satisfied with the outro drums, going to reprogram them. 3. When it's all said and done the mix will be a little different, I can't even remember what some of my levels were at before when I felt I had a mostly balanced mix in terms of levels, so I'll be needing your ears for that soon. I hope to get at least most of #1 done today, and the rest of it and #2 done tomorrow, and then throughout the week tweak the mix and rerecord parts if necessary.

Sorry for the late reply, life suddenly got very busy because I finally got a job offer after 3 months of searching. Friday night, should have some time to finally work on it again. I do play to a metronome, though I had originally tried playing just to the drums after I finished them. I think the 3rd version was a mix of playing to drums and playing to drums + metronome. I've been thinking of how to tweak the arrangement itself. I know one thing I want to do is just shorten the part with the sustained chords, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the parts prior. Part of the emotion loss may have (hopefully) just been from me getting burnt out after playing the song over and over and over, and I've had some time away from it now. edit: ...My guitar is experiencing some technical difficulties...

Thank you for the feedback fellow Renoiser! I know what you mean, I really liked the other drum kit, and I want to use it for something, but after trying both I really think the metal kit just works better. I think the kick in the rock kit sounds a little too abrasive when used for metal double kicks. I was considering trimming some of the fat so to speak on the arrangement, but was going to see what people said first. Some of the sections might feel like I'm killing my children to trim down but an easy one is the part with the sustained chords. I'll see about tightening it up a bit more.

New version for feedback: https://www.dropbox.com/s/brctvu4p8di9s32/notalone_3.mp3 Ok so: 1. I rerecorded a ton of parts. I found a bass part that had a note slightly off so I rerecorded it, I found another part I thought sounded too boomy so I rerecorded it just to make it sound tighter. Almost all the rhythm guitar got rerecorded. All the lead did get rerecorded. 2. Different drums. I think these drums fit metal better. Considering changing out the crashes though. Opinions on the 2 different drums? 3. I embellished some of the outro lead that I thought sounded a little too repetitive and too identical to the original melody. 4. Removed the reverb I had on the lead and just put a send to my reverb bus, which is very low and subtle. Tweaked the delay to have less wet more dry. Brought the lead gain up. Again, your feedback so far has been extremely helpful. Thank you very much, and any more feedback is welcome. edit: something seems off about some of the cymbals upon a followup listen...

Thank you both for the feedback. I definitely have some timing tightness issues. Someone on another forum even suggested I might have some rewire latency issues, since I programmed the drums in rewired Renoise, but I really think it was just my playing. I'm going to rerecord large chunks of the rhythm guitar, and probably all of the lead. You're right about the lead, there is way too much reverb on it, and I might not even need any at all. As for the drums, I'll bring them down a bit, and I'm also considering using a different set of samples that are more suited to metal. I really wanted to use these, but now that I have a rough draft I think I might prefer the samples I usually use for metal. I'm going to swap them out just to see, and get feedback on that as well. The ones I'm using now, the snare sounds a little weak to me and the kick's high end is just kind of weird and bright. It may take me a few days to finish addressing these items, but I should have a new version up by Wednesday or Thursday.

Ok, I turned it way down until I could barely hear it. Using your method I brought the kick down a bit, it ended up being a 5.5 db cut. I also brought the gain up on the snare just a tiny bit, and then I also cut a notch in the bass at 200hz to give the snare a little more room. I brought the lead up a bit. I also boosted the highs a little bit on the guitars. Some other minor tweaks here and there also. New version for critique: https://www.dropbox.com/s/civ14t8u2u9touz/notalone_2.mp3

Thank you very much for the feedback, I will make some adjustments. I didn't realize my kick seemed that loud, I can certainly bring it down a bit.

Hello, I have a track that I would like some feedback on. Any suggestions and criticism welcome. https://www.dropbox.com/s/g57mlun3da9k3im/notalone.mp3 edit: new version https://www.dropbox.com/s/civ14t8u2u9touz/notalone_2.mp3 edit: new new version https://www.dropbox.com/s/brctvu4p8di9s32/notalone_3.mp3

This track is so good, I would love to hear a remix of it.

First time I listened to this album, I went on an 8 win streak in league of legends.

I've listened to the whole several times now but it's realllly hard to listen to the whole thing because every time I get to The Nightmare Oath I keep clicking back at the end of it to hear it again. "Just one more time, then I'll continue."

Listening to this album is like being buried alive in kittens.

Have to wait all day to get home to work now. But now I'll have something to do all my Java homework to.

"maybe after I get out of the shower" hope springs eternal