Back after 10 years of music hiathus, but my sound is not great .. need help .

[maxit]

I'm sorry but the feedback is making it sound cooler to me;-) I'm useless on this topics, butI sure can say welcome back!

[Ferryman]

Welcome back, I too have retired since you were last on here, being retired is fun!

I can only echo what others have said. I think your playing sounds damn good, some really nice touches and it shows a really good feel. You will have more time to practice now you're retired, but one issue I face with getting old is arthritis in my fingers, so maybe you may have to accept that you can't shred as much as in the past....

I didn't hear any major static or sound issues, but as Greeny says, some of the onboard effects are very "noisy" (and that is part of their charm sometimes). So maybe what you are hearing is coming more from the effect than your playing.

On the mixing and mastering side of it, Steve gives good advice. Headphones are good for the initial stages of mixing IMO, especially placing instruments in the stereo image, but you need to be mixing on speakers (preferable some form of studio monitor) in the later stages to make sure the mix isn't getting muddy.

For the BR800 I would suggest you do mixing on that and when you have a final mix ready to go, then use the mastering process on the BR800 and try different mastering effects (use the Master FX button). These will "glue" the mix together and give it a bit of a polish. Try various of the different effects and see which one you like.

[Jean Pierre]

Re bienvenue!
J'ai vu sur votre profile que vous veniez du Québec  ! Formidable...j'adore les chanteurs quebecois et j'ai fait sur ce site plusieur reprise de Beau Dommage et de Michel Rivard

J'ai écouté votre demo et je n'ai rien entendu de choquant ? ...j'adore le grain de cette Godin
___________________
Welcome back!
I saw on your profile that you are from Quebec! Great...I love Quebec singers and I've done several covers of Beau Dommage and Michel Rivard on this site.

I listened to your demo and I didn't hear anything shocking? ...I love the grain of this Godin

[Hilary]

I've no idea about recording but it's lovely playing and I'm glad you are here - welcome back!

[Gritter]

Wicked licks, Love your chunky and warm guitar sound. Sounds really good to me!

[T.C. Elliott]

Sounds like hot pickups to me. Maybe the string a hair too close to the magnet? Regardless, it was cool. And yes, it was in the guitar. Backing off the distortion might help a little. Maybe a compressor could help as well, maybe.  But it definitely didn't sound like static or a cable problem to my ears. (Unless I'm missing something, it's when you have notes playing on the guitar that are "breaking up" a bit. Sounded cool to me, though.

Cool playing. I liked the laid back groove.  You're welcome to share more.

[godinqc]

Thanks for all the feedback ..

Now I will have to work my next song 

Cheers/A bientot

[64Guitars]

I joined this group about 10 years ago (how time flies) and had great fun following and posting in this group.
But I stopped playing music for quite a long time but now that I'm retired (yeah), I started playing again, I forgot how much fun it is to create music and listen to other people's great songs.

Welcome back!

My problem is that my songs do not sound good, I recorded a quick demo to show what I mean.
I use a Godin LG (that's my only guitar now) but I find that I hear a lot of static/feedback regardless of what effect  I use on my BR800. The song I included shows lots of static noise at about 25,32 and 1:16 seconds into the song (I'm using the SmoothLD effect)

I didn't notice any problems at the points you mentioned (25,32 and 1:16). However, your overall levels are much too low and the guitar sounds very thin and weak to me. I don't mean your guitar playing, which is excellent. I just mean the sound quality of the guitar. If that was an artistic choice, then that's okay. But if it was an undesired accident, then I suspect that it's because the input sensitivity and/or recording level was set too low on your guitar track.

Here's a screenshot from Audacity showing the levels of your recording:



And here's what it looks like after I used Audacity's normalize effect to increase the peak level to -0.1 dB.



This has increased the levels by over 9 dB which is equivalent to about 1.5 times louder.

But you shouldn't depend on normalization alone to correct your levels. Instead, it's important to learn how to set your levels properly when recording so that they don't require normalization, or at least the normalization should have to make a relatively small change in level.

It's important to understand that there's a chain of several level controls in the signal path and changing one control will affect all of the others that come after it in the chain. So you have to start at the sound source (your guitar's volume control, for instance) and progress to each level control that comes next in the chain (input sensitivity, then effects level, then record level). At each stage you should set the level as high as it can go without clipping. For example, while playing your guitar, turn up the input sensitivity until the PEAK indicator lights only occasionally while you're playing your loudest. The PEAK indicator represents a level of -6 dB, so it's okay if it lights occasionally. Clipping only occurs when the level exceeds 0 dB. If the PEAK indicator is lighting too frequently, then it's quite likely that your levels are exceeding 0 dB and clipping. If it's not lighting at all, then your levels are consistently below -6 dB, which means they're too low.

When levels are too low, the difference between the desired signal and any undesired background noise is smaller, and therefore more noticeable. Increasing the level can make the difference bigger so that the undesired noise is less noticeable. However, it depends where the noise is coming from. For instance, if the noise is coming from your guitar, then increasing the level will increase both the desired signal and the undesired noise, so there will be no change in the signal to noise ratio. On the other hand, if the noise is coming from the BR-800's effects, for example, then increasing the input sensitivity to get a stronger guitar signal will help to make the noise less noticeable since the clean guitar signal will be much stronger than the noise generated by the effects.

To adjust the recording level of your track, first make sure you've properly adjusted all the levels that come before it in the signal path (your guitar, the input sensitivity, and the effects level). Adjust the REC LEVEL control so that the levels on the corresponding INPUT channel of the meter display are as high as possible but seldom, if ever, hit 0 dB. Technically, a single sample that hits 0 dB is not clipped. Clipping only occurs when a contiguous range of samples hit 0 dB resulting in a square wave top. However, there's nothing in the BR's display to indicate when clipping occurs, so it's best to avoid hitting 0 dB at all.

I'd recommend loading your finished recordings into Audacity so you can better evaluate your recording levels and see if there's any clipping. Audacity has a "Show Clipping" option in its View menu. When it's on, any samples at 0 dB will be shown in red. You can zoom in on these areas to see how many samples are affected. As I said, a single sample at 0 dB is perfectly okay, but 2 or more contiguous samples means you've got clipping. If there are, say, 10 or more contiguous samples in the red, then the clipping will almost certainly be audible as distortion. By using Audacity in this way to evaluate your recording levels, you will eventually get better at knowing where to set your levels and the quality of your recordings will improve.

Audacity is also a great tool to normalize your recording (if needed), trim the unwanted silence and/or noise from the ends, fade in and/or out if desired, add ID3 tags for your name and the song title, and export to MP3 format. See this post in the Help board.