First Cakewalk project

Submitted for your review, my first-ever Cakewalk project. The only audio I've ever mixed before this was voiceover demos on a $30 program I got at Best Buy (which is great, too).

The song might be too samey for some, but I go for these highly-repetitive, droney tunes. Some lyrics and vocals could help. But stay tuned for the interesting (I think) spaceship effects I got off my SG, and do not miss the big rave-up at the end!

One thing I do know is I'm going to have to drop some money for some true monitors or studio headphones. I've driven myself nuts burning several versions of this one tune and checking it on the car, the upstairs stereo, the downstairs stereo...and it sounds vastly different on all of them. So try this on every stereo you own until it sounds listenable .

All comments welcome and eagerly anticipated.

First Cakewalk project here.

Thank you! I'm pretty pleased with it and hope to only get better.

One thing I'm curious about, which I've mentioned in a post on the Home Studio forum, is that what I hear on the radio just sounds a little sonically tighter than this. Maybe it's just the difference in the tones of the CD player and radio on my Corolla; they do sound different. And also maybe I'm presuming digital is digital, but there's still a difference between a bedroom recording and a pro sound studio (?).

Yeah, I'm thinking about lyrics. There's a girl out in San Francisco who is a stellar writer and I'm thinking about sending her a MP3 link and seeing what she could sprinkle on this lyric-wise, then deciding on a vocal approach. I'm sort of thinking a plainspoken Lou Reed or Johny Cash style because that's the best I could do vocally .

At any rate thanks for the compliments!

Thanks for listening and taking time to comment. I agree with you on the EQ. I was actually afraid the low end of the acoustic might meld with the bass and create a super bass. I took some good advice from this forum to point the mic at about the 12th fret of the guitar and back up some, though, and think I avoided that. But they could use more separation as you said.

It does sound sort of centered, but I've got the acoustic panned 27% left and the electric at 33% right. The fuzzy guitars at the chorus are 73% left and 68% right, with the one on the left coming in to 38% on the last chord. On the Who-like part the electric is 18% left and the bass is 73% right (to mimic Tommy/Live at Leeds production ).

I may have been tepid with the use of compression, too. I didn't know to compress a bass until I read it here. The bass is actually my MIM Deluxe Nasvhille Tele on the rhythm pickup and I turned the compression on my Pod 2.0 to about three or four for most of the track and five for the rave up at the end. I'll have to experiment with that knob more.

I'll experiment with the complimentary EQ and bass compression this weekend. Thanks for the input!