If Tomorrow Never Comes - Garth Brooks Cover

[Ronniejm]

Was and still am a great fan of Garth Brooks, and always liked his version of this song
Ronan Keating did a cover of it a while back.

Just for ***** and kicks I started playing around with the MASTER FX on the BR800 on this one.
Big mistake, my head ended up spinning with all the different sounds......
Is there any logical process I sould be following when it comes to mastering?

Cheers
Ronnie

[Groundy]

One of my favourite Garth songs Ronnie,
You have done a great cover,
I know what you mean about the Master fx on the 800.
Well done...


Alex.

[Jean Pierre]

very nice song, beautiful voice bravo Ronnie
is the guitar recorded in direct drive (electo acoustic)?

I did not know Garth Brooks and suddenly listened if tomorrow never comes on YT and read the biography on wikipedia (thank you wikipedia)

PS your version is quite up to the original

[Hilary]

It's just perfect the way it is.

[Mach]

This is a really nice version. I don't know a lot of Garth's tunes, but I've heard this one. I use to have a Garth Brooks song book and never really opened much so I gave it to someone who was a fan of his music just starting to play guitar. Good job on this Ronnie.

Mach

[64Guitars]

Was and still am a great fan of Garth Brooks, and always liked his version of this song
Ronan Keating did a cover of it a while back.

I don't know the song but I like your performance. Very nice.

Just for ***** and kicks I started playing around with the MASTER FX on the BR800 on this one.
Big mistake, my head ended up spinning with all the different sounds......
Is there any logical process I sould be following when it comes to mastering?

On the BR-800, the only mastering effects are compression and equalisation (a simple tone control, really). There are 19 presets with different levels of compression and EQ. I don't have any details on the settings, but you can guess which ones might be suitable for your type of music by their names. For example, preset 13 is "Acoustic" which might be a good choice for you, whereas 15-Orchestr, 18-DJsVoice, and 19-PhoneVox are probably useless for your style of music. Personally, I'd probably leave the mastering FX switched off. If you want to improve your recordings, you'd be better off concentrating on improving your levels as I've noticed that they're much too low on all of your recent recordings. I suspect that the problem might be that you don't realise the importance of the Master fader when you're mixing. The Master fader controls the overall recording level. So when you're mixing, regardless of whether the mastering FX are on or off, you need to set the Master fader so that the "L R" meters at the far right of the display are fairly active. You want the level to be as high as possible without letting the top-most segment light. The top segment represents 0dB. Anything louder than 0dB will be clipped which will cause horrible distortion. So, to avoid clipping, make sure the top segment never lights.

I'd also recommend that you export your final mix as a stereo WAV file and load it into Audacity. Then you can easily trim the ends and use Audacity's Normalize effect to maximize the levels, then export it as an MP3.

Here's a screenshot of your song, as posted, in Audacity. Notice how low the levels are.



And here it is after I applied the Normalize effect. The levels are now maximized according to the loudest peak.



This will sound much better. However, it's still best to set your recording level properly with the Master fader when you do your final mix.

[Ronniejm]

Thanks very much for the info 64, much appreciated.

Cheers
Ronnie

[Ronniejm]

Thanks Again 64 for your help and advice.

I've done a remix of the various tracks taking onboard all you said, and I hope I successfully removed the old mix and uploaded the new one.
Let me know what you think if you have time for a listen,

I hope I'm not out of place here, but this is one of the things I hope to get from this site, from the the people who know way more about multi track recording than I do.
Don't get me wrong, its great to get comments from folks who say they like what you have come up with, who dosen't like a pat on the back?
But speaking for myself I would also like ideas and advice from others as to how they think my stuff could be improved.

Even if its just simple things like "the drums sound a bit loud to me" or the more in depth stuff like 64'S advice to me today.

I want to learn, and I'm way past reading the books, I've tried, just get confused, so I'm looking to the knowledge thats out there in songcrafters.
Nothing wrong with a bit of critical critique in my book.....

Ok rant over

Thanks Again
Cheers
Ronnie

[64Guitars]

Much better Ronnie. The levels are just right.

[Jean Pierre]

back again on your song...

very impressed by the quality of your voice