Rural Blues

[Blooby]

This experiment with the new toys was all about extreme EQ'ing with plug-ins. I also learned how to do automation (the crackling plug-in wouldn't stop otherwise, so I had to time the volume curve of the plug-in to start and stop with the tiny wav files of the record needle drop and lift).

Recorded on my piece of crap 3/4 size Luna guitar I bought for kayak camping.

***If anybody wants to send me a crooning blues vocal as a raw file, I would love to EQ it to match what's here and drop it in the mix. A lossy MP3 would be fine as high fidelity certainly won't be an issue with this. Hell, it may helps matters.

Blooby

[bruno]

Very nice playing - but very quiet???
B

[Speed Demon]

I know you live in the Mississippi delta. Only way you can play like that.

[Hook]

Hey man great playing, fix the volume issue & I would love a crack at crooning over this!
Rock on!

[Farrell Jackson]

Oh yeah Blooby I could hear and see the catfish jumpin' from the banks of the Mississippi. The volume is low but I just turned it up and I'm hearing an authentic delta blues sound here. Excellent!

Farrell

[Speed Demon]

Farrell, with all these blues men on Prozac, what have they got left to sing the blues about?
They're out of a job!

[steelguitar]

Rough low fidelity blues from heart
Love it like that
Great guitar playing
Just a thing : the volume is too low to hear it properly... please, can you send us a version with a higher sound?
Jean-Sébastien

[Speed Demon]

Not too loud, now. Perhaps just enough to shatter a planet.


                                                   

[64Guitars]

Nice playing, Blooby. But, as others have said, the levels are way too low. The highest peak is about -19dB (should be at or very near 0dB) and the average signal level is somewhere between -40dB and -50dB.

Here's how it looks in Audacity:



Normalization helps a bit but there are several big peaks that are keeping the average level quite low still:



This can be improved with compression:



However, it took a lot of compression to bring the signal up to what you see in that last screenshot (-42dB threshold at 6:1 ratio). Compression and normalization are most suitable when the signal is only moderately low. When it's extremely low, as in this case, it's better to go back and correct the problem at the source. Perhaps your recording level was too low when bouncing or mastering. Or maybe the individual tracks were recorded too low.

[AndyR]

Oh cool... I can even hear the porch you were sat on to play it...

By the way, I seem to recall that one of my problems with DAW recording was lack of volume on takes - either it was like this or the wretched thing clipped... I can't remember how I learnt to stop doing it - and it'll depend on your specific kit - but once I did, I never had the problem again.