Songcrafters.org

Hi,

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.

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)
Do I need to get my guitar tuned up ?
Are my playing abilities decreased with age  ;D

Any feedback is appreciated.
Also any tips on the mastering is also appreciated, when I listen to the mix via headphones the mastering is not too bad but when I listen to it via speakers there's too much bass .. also I have not used the BR800 that much so I'm kind of new to it. I mainly used the MicroBR80 in the past.

Thanks again ..

Wow, heck of a "test"! You still have your guitar chops I'd say, wow!

I know what you mean by music sounding fine through one medium but not another. I test on cheap computer speakers, some AV570 Advent monitors (connected to my BR600) and multiple quality headphones. Even on different cars systems. Anyway, it's all a compromise I guess getting the correct balance between sounding good on different systems.

That said, for static, try to isolate it to the guitar, cables, etc. by swapping out items of suspect. Example: I recently kept getting static in my Sennheizer wireless headphones which wasn't in the music or there yesterday. Turned out I'd replaces a light bulb nearby with a florescent one that turned out to be the cause.

Static can be different enemy then hum. I had to add copper grounding shielding around the electronics in a couple guitars to fix hum troubles.

My only criticism about the test track is the gain seems low which can cause a higher noise level in the signal to noise ratio (a guess that others no doubt will have better opinions about).

Your playing sounds great to me :) Welcome back, I hope more from you soon. Also, I personally think the bass could be brought up a little more. I couldn't tell it was there until I put headphones on. But other than that I think this is a pretty excellent start back up again

I am planning to buy a Godin LG myself,  I own a Godin Shifter bass.   Godin makes GREAT guitars.

Welcome back.

first off, glad to see you back GodinQC...I don't hear what the static you are referring to , sounds pretty darn good to me, nice playing and tone.....

I have recently come back after a few years away also...I also just retired last month so I am getting back into the music again...it feels great

haven't listened yet...will...but wanted to say...glad you are back!!!!

listening and I don't hear anything that worried me.... then again... I'm 61 and have 35 db loss at certain frequencies so.....  at the times you mentioned it sounded sort of like something an effect was doing to the signal????  The static may be in your listening device because i don't hear any... second time through...
I recommend you go to LANDR and you can read their quick guides on recording and mastering... I learned alot since i joined this site in august and one suggestion i received is LANDR...there are others as well... As far as mixing to prepare for mastering...  1.  GET A SET OF REFERENCE MONITORS TO MIX BY.... this was the single most important thing in improving my mixes... you can buy a set of Presonus 3.5 inch for about a hundred bucks a set....
2...  Don't mix above -4 db... if you need to hear it louder drive the speakers harder or turn up the headphone volume if mixing on headphones (which can be done but it isn't easy and it takes practice)
3.  The reference monitors will help ensure you don't get too much bass... they are very accurate over the 20 -20k hz range... and there are no low end embellishments like a lot of speakers have (and why you should not mix with home speakers or PA speakers.)
4.  LANDR is a mastering service and you can get 2 free masters a month... I ended up purchasing a yearly subscription around 100 bucks because i do so much music now that I needed it...
5.  There are alot of good tips on this site.... another I learned was to remove the frequencies below 125hz on your guitars if you are playing bass and drums too (or using bass and drum tracks)... the low frequency from the guitar pickup will drown out or mask the bass and bass drum... this tip alone brought my bass to life and there is one other..
6.  EQ everything below about 65 hz off the bass guitar... and everything below about 50 from the bass drum... or drums overall.... you can bump up the bass guitar above 70 hz a bit if needed and the low drum too .... here's an example of drums and bass before I incorporated these concepts (I believe it was Andy R that taught me that)....

https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=29876.msg354157#msg354157     no bass hardly or kick drum heard.... bad eqing...

https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=30717.msg364464#msg364464   a better eq and you can hear the kick and bass well...

btw... your playing sounds very good.... can't wait to hear your stuff going forward....

Hello! I listened closely on headphones and there wasn't any noise I'd consider unacceptable if it was me doing the recording. If that 'Smooth' guitar patch is the same one on the Boss MBR, it's very 'noisy'. So much gain that it has an inherent noise to it even without playing - especially on single coils. In fact, I only use it when it can be disguised by the rest of the song.

I don't think it's the guitar you need to worry about either. Maybe try some different cables etc (as Hardlock says), or experiment with the patches and gain levels you use.

Main thing is don't get hung up on that kind of detail if it gets in the way of creativity.

Welcome back! :-)

Thanks for all the feedback .. really appreciated .

Hardlock .. good idea , I will try different cable and I was also thinking of grounding shielding around the electronics ..

StephenM .. I will look at LANDR and try to learn more about mixing/mastering ..

WarpCanada, the Godin LG is a really good guitar, I've been looking for a Humbucker version on Kijiji (Canada - Ottawa) but have not found one yet .. I saw one recently that has Wilkinson Mini Humbuckers, but not sure if these pickups are good or not..

BluesBerry .. welcome to the retired club .. I've been retired for about 1 year now .. it's great  ;D

BerryPatch/Greeny  .. thanks for the suggestions/inputs

Also I find that a lot of the patch effect needed to be tweaked on the BR800, on most of them I had to increase the Noise Gate to about 75 .. Would this be an indication that the Godin P90 are too noisy ?
I played around with the MicroBR80 and I find the guitar effects are a bit better. I will try to match them on the BR800.

Is there a way to download (from the Boos Tone Central)  preset patch effect (ex: to sound like Gilmour) to the BR800 or MBR80 ?

Thanks again and have a great day

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

Thanks for all the feedback ..

Now I will have to work my next song  ;D

Cheers/A bientot

Quote from: godinqc on March 01, 2021, 02:02:07 PMI 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!

Quote from: godinqc on March 01, 2021, 02:02:07 PMMy 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 (https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/BR-800_e05_W.pdf#G9.1069667) 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 (https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/BR-800_e05_W.pdf#G9.1069670) 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 (https://www.audacityteam.org/) 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 (https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=30188.0) in the Help board (https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?board=112.0).