"Have a Nice Visit" - Original by Ted

[Pru]

a bit creepy intro on those single guitar notes then this develops into a fabulous well produced song. those lyrics are brill. i think your vocal sounds perfect on this track so there is nothing to be unhappy about imo. i know nothing about high pass filters or any of that kind of stuff - i just leave it all to my uncle!

[Johnbee]

Haunting music and powerful lyrics.  Loving the use of delay in the guitar.

  John B

[StephenM]

Awesome info Ted.

I loved the analysis graphs.  Those real lows are pretty big. I do this in other ways, ie graphic eq but often not...
You are onto good things here.
Trimming?  Ok..never used it but I saw that...didn't know what it did thanks!
Fading is cool..

Whatever you doing vocally is working

[Ted]

Trimming?  Ok..never used it but I saw that...didn't know what it did thanks!

Just to clarify. I don't use the Trim Audio command, although I supposed I could.

When I say trimming, I just mean Deleting the unwanted seconds at the beginning and end of the recording.

FYI: When I trim (i.e. delete) from the beginning, I always leave about one second of silence before the songs starts. I've noticed that the Songcrafters player needs about a 1 second buffer, otherwise it will cut off the first half-second or so of the song.

[AndyR]

I do remember typing that now!

On the filtering, I also take everything out below 50Hz or so. I even do it during tracking and mixing - I don't want the bottom end clogged up with stuff I can't even hear!

I believe the wisdom is, for the kinds of music I dabble in, it's wasted energy/headroom. I believe this still applies nowadays, even if you're not mastering for vinyl.

But, like you, I just do it - no-one can hear it anyway.

[Ron D Bowes]

An unusual construction, but it works well. Haunting.

[Ted]

I also take everything out below 50Hz or so.

Interesting. Humans can hear 50Hz pretty well – That's just above G1 – 3rd fret on the E string of a bass guitar – which might make sense on a per-track level, not counting bass instruments. But I don't do per-track HPF tweaking. I just do the HPF on the overall mix. These are my settings. I don't remember if these are the Audacity defaults, or if this was some advice I found somewhere.* (In either case, I didn't choose these settings because I'm smart, or because I could hear a difference; I chose it because some actual smart person recommended it.)

30Hz is just below the B string on a 5-string bass (B0) – and that's about where humans start to lose the ability to hear low notes. As you see, I don't cut off sharply at 30Hz, but I roll off 12dB per octave. So by B000 (two octaves below the open B string on a 5-string bass; notes only elephants can hear**) nothing is getting through.

I could probably try per-track HPF tweaking on the Micro BR, but it would be tedious. I'm trying to get away from tedium in my recording process, and to just write and record more – and to consider everything I ever do to be a demo. Future alien archeologists can re-record my songs to their exacting standards.

You getting all this StephenM? You opened this can of worms.


* Most likely when I was learning about my Micro-Thumpinator pedal.

**Elephants, whales, alligators, crocodiles, giraffes, pigeons, tigers, some fish, some amphibians.

[Trist]

spooky and mytsic has a bit of pink floyd feel to it, nicely recorded with the production values

[StephenM]

Future alien archeologists can re-record my songs to their exacting standards.

yeah I am getting it and I loved this line... so all this above made this come out then I really am getting it!  what a hoot!

[chapperz66]

Great song, Ted.  Ethereal and spare but not at all sparse.  Really enjoyed this.

On the subject of High pass filters I do it to pretty much everything on a track by track basis, although less aggressively on kick and bass.  On things like vocals, strings and woodwinds I often go much higher just to clear as much space as possible - unless your vocalist is Paul Robeson it really isn't going to be noticeable if you take out everything below 100hz.

And topping and tailing a song is important to me.   I find it quite sad when I hear a song beautifully captured and mixed only to have a huge click at the end when the artist hits the stop button.