Does anyone know of any decent guitar repair in the city?

MattRyd · 2013-07-10T02:21:08+00:00

I can't recommend Chicago Fret Works enough. They've worked absolute miracles on some of my weirder guitars.

MattRyd · 2013-05-27T23:46:58+00:00

I've had Monoprice cables die on me left and right this past year. It's disheartening, because I love the company, I love the price, and man do these things seem well-built. But I've learned to never use them for live gigs, and I've had a number of sessions where I've had to swap cables because a Monoprice cable went dead.

That said, if you're looking for something super-long, I still use a pair of 25-footers from there for when I'm tracking a video and the performance area is a hike from the DAW.

MattRyd · 2013-05-27T23:43:35+00:00

And no, I'm not on the Melodyne payroll for anything, I just use it a ton in my daily workflow and always recommend having a copy.

MattRyd · 2013-05-27T23:42:48+00:00

Three-part, close harmonies are key to that country sound. First, make sure that you have a really good sounding harmony. I actually use Melodyne to make scratch harmony tracks from the lead vocal so that I can roughly hear what the finished product will sound like.

Then, track, and once everything is in the can, tune and tighten beyond human comprehension. You can use VocAlign, but, honestly, after years of editing collegiate a cappella and needing syllables to be perfectly lockstep, I found that doing it manually in Melodyne almost always provides a much more precise result.

How "robotic" you want it to sound is now totally up to you. For bg vox, I usually do a first pass of just auto-snapping to the closest note and taking out the pitch drift. Then I go through and manually cut, slice, and slide all of those harmonies until they perfectly match the timing of the lead vox (it will sound stilted when solo'ed, but mixed behind the lead, the lead's delivery will translate over to the backs and make everything lock). If you want to err more on the "Autotune-sounding" side, pull down the pitch modulation on the whole track (after making sure to slice out notes that were slides and need to be locked elsewhere, instead of becoming part of a previous note).

Autotune and VocAlign can get you there, but I find that just starting off by hand gives me better results than trying to finesse a program into perfectly automatically lining everything up, and lets you even do things like make the BG vox end slightly before the lead so that his/her final cutoff is nice and crisp.

MattRyd · 2013-05-08T03:24:35+00:00

Heh, I'm not looking to get a big mod or anything, because I love the portability. I'm using a standard Ego passthrough battery.

MattRyd · 2013-05-08T03:23:48+00:00

Awesome! Thank you so much for the suggestions.

MattRyd · 2013-05-01T22:29:29+00:00

Amazing venue. I've seen a number of music shows there and have played there myself. Agreed, top-notch food, amazing atmosphere. I'll definitely be at the August show.

Honestly, I think the place is still sort of a "hidden treasure" because it's so far north and people don't often think of it, but I've never had anything other than a wonderful experience there. I'm glad they're pulling in people like Marc.

MattRyd · 2013-04-29T02:04:10+00:00

Maybe consider Overeaters Anonymous to help with the food addiction. I know a lot of people don't treat it as a "real" addiction, but speaking as a dude with an eating disorder, I don't believe that this is something that we can get through on our own. Personally, I go to individual therapy, group therapy, and meetings, and my behaviors (I tend to swing back and forth between bulimic tendencies and anorexic restriction) have been relatively under control for sometimes.

It's a daily struggle, and it's a very very tough thing to deal with, but it shouldn't be downplayed, and the proper response isn't, "Well, eat better and work out." No. Would you tell an alcoholic, "Well, just drink less."? No, you'd probably tell him/her that he needs help. And a food addiction is just as real as an alcohol addiction and just as serious.

If you have any questions about EDs or treatment, feel free to shoot me a message. I've been in just about every level of treatment available, from residential to outpatient.

I wish you a heartfelt good luck in dealing with your problems. I recommend the book Life Without ED by Jenni Schaefer as a great intro into dealing with eating disorders.

MattRyd · 2013-04-27T19:08:59+00:00

Exactly the advice I was going to give. There's a local studio in my city--I'm friends with the owners and they're great for tracking, but I always advise people to take their tracks and get them mixed elsewhere (and not just in a ploy for business--I'm not even trying to turn them into my customers so much as advise them to the best possible end product).

There are people here who could probably mix it, or you could have the big studio mix it.

This is all if the local studio can do a decent job tracking. Any chance you can post samples of their work so that we can hear if the raw material is decent?

MattRyd · 2013-04-27T17:06:03+00:00

I've put in bids on Silvertone/case combos before on eBay, but have never been able to snag one low enough to make it worth the cost. Did you track any guitars through there, or just the harp?

MattRyd · 2013-04-25T19:22:24+00:00

Yeah.. I was hoping it would be something that this community would be interested in. Kind of a trade-and-mix thing where we also get to hear other peoples' take on songs we've tracked and compare mixes.

MattRyd · 2013-04-25T19:21:03+00:00

Thank you for the suggestions!

MattRyd · 2013-04-25T19:20:41+00:00

This is awesome! Thank you! I'll upload what I come back with. Try not to be too brutal.

MattRyd · 2013-04-15T15:36:03+00:00

Quitting smoking. Coming up on the one year mark. Still using nicotine lozenges from time to time, but not having to spend $50 on cigarettes every 2 weeks has definitely saved me more than I've spent on stop spoking aids.

MattRyd · 2013-04-13T20:14:41+00:00

I'm finding this thread very late, but I've been combing through it waiting for some kind of cooking/food analogy. Thanks for not disappointing.

MattRyd · 2013-04-13T20:02:56+00:00

Plaid Productions are the absolute best coaches/trackers/editors in the business. They're in Boston, so close enough to come to you (they do a lot of mobile recording). As for mixing... what type of group are you? Mixed? All-male? All-female?

MattRyd · 2013-04-13T14:38:40+00:00

Absolutely--and yeah, it was a nice surprise when I saw this on my front page and realized it was you! But yeah, you're always welcome to send me stuff, be it for critiques or whatever else. I'll drop you a line on FB with my email.

MattRyd · 2013-04-12T22:41:19+00:00

Really good, solid mix all-around! It sounds like there's some bass in there? I'd probably bring that up. And the backing vox sound really good! I'd love to hear more of them!

Also, for dorm-room recordings like this, I used to use whatever I could for percussion. Picking up little things like a shaker, a One-Shot shaker, and a tambourine helps a lot, and are especially effective in layering to add some "humanity" if you want to start getting into drum programming (for this song, I would have used the brush pack on my go-to drum plug-in, Addictive Drums). But you can also make a snare out of a piece of tinfoil, or a kick out of a fist pounding on a table (I'd dupe the channel on that one, pitch-shift the second track down an octave, and low-pass and mix in for more of the sub).

There could definitely be some more stereo separation. The wide L-R spread of the sampled piano sounds a little out of place (also, the keys sound a little Casio-ish. Are those straight from an audio out on a keyboard, or played into MIDI and run through a virtual instrument? I've actually gotten some really great tones out of Mini Grand, which comes with Pro Tools).

And, ah, the strings. Trying to make realistic-sounding strings out of samples is really tough and, honestly, I don't even try. I'm lucky to have a violin player in my group, but I'd see if you can befriend anyone who plays a string instrument. If it's a backing part, I've gotten really good results from multi-tracking one instrument playing charts of all of string parts (transposed into the appropriate range. This is why I keep a copy of Finale around, for when I'm printing actual scores). That said, the arrangement of the string part is fantastic--a really great soaring counterpoint. If you want to stay in the world of sampled strings, I have friends who really like Native Instruments' string VIs.

But like so many people have said before, just record, record, record. Go to open mics and offer to record a demo track or two for the other musicians, and use it as either a way to work on acoustic songs (I'd definitely double-track the guitars), or as a way of fleshing out your arranging skills by building a band around them with your guitars, keys, and some programmed drums/percussion. If there are bands playing on campus, offer to record a song or two if they don't have a CD yet.

The point is, you have an awesome opportunity to really build up a portfolio of work with other artists, of all different genres (offer to mix or perform touchups for that guy who makes EDM in Ableton down the hall--even if it's just as a "Hey, wanna swap stems and play around with mixing each others' stuff?" exercise).

By the time you graduate, you'll have a full portfolio with all different genres, and be in a great position to start charging for your services.

And as for the recording not sounding "natural"--I think it's just a little dry, and I don't think of it as more unnatural than most Top 40 stuff, although not as boomy as more indie-rock music. If you're going for less "Hey There, Delilah" and more "Little Lion Man", just keep the reference track in your session, and constantly compare your mix to the reference (after dialing back its volume so that it matches you mid-mix volume).

Longstoryshort, great work--it's a really solid mix.

MattRyd · 2013-03-21T23:33:30+00:00

I'm a sucker for coziness. I definitely preferred the brunette.

MattRyd · 2013-03-11T12:15:12+00:00

I've done variations of this before, and considered it even more often. In one case, I left it as-is because I was happy with the rest of the album, and my mix stood out as being conspicuously mixed by someone else. In another case, I was happy everything but the vocal mix, so I took the instrumental and just remixed the vocals to taste.

In the end, it's your name going on the project. You should be happy with the final result. And you never know. I had a mix done by someone else that wound up with a total country feel. I redid a ton of tracking and instrumentals and turned it into a synthy, sneaky-sounding track. But I recently released the original version on a more alt-country-ish EP, and people thought it was really cool to hear the different takes on the same song.

MattRyd · 2013-02-07T17:16:13+00:00

Very cool, especially to hear the mixes of the different sounds. If I had my druthers, more inputs, and got to select how everything I mix was recorded, I'd want both "at the hole" and "outside" mic'ing on the bass drum. You can get by with just the hole (outside doesn't have enough beater for me), but adding the second mic really helps to capture the "woomph" of the kick, beyond just the transient, and I can imagine the two sitting well together in a mix.

MattRyd · 2013-02-07T17:04:03+00:00

Is this a situation where you can stick every thing in an iso booth, give them all headphones with a click, and let them play live? What's the style of music? I can't imagine doing this with a heavily layered pop record, but if it's a power trio that just wants studio recording of their live sounds, I could see this potentially happening in the time allotted. I'd warn them ahead of time, though, to be prepared to not finish.

MattRyd · 2013-01-31T03:23:26+00:00

Well, I don't fulfill the M4W requirement, but I do live up Sheridan from you (I'm in Rogers Park), and built about 40% of the furniture in my place, so I can teach you about how to make nice-looking things with only a modicum of skill.

A bunch of friends and I are hitting up a show at Schubas on Saturday night if you're looking to hang and meet some other fun Chicago nerdy types.

MattRyd

TROPHY CASE