Just did my first complicated arrangement.

Moyabek, really nice, really nice. Nice melody, nice arrangement. I'd maybe shorten up the intro a little, also maybe adding a little percussion such as a bongo, conga, even tamborine during the chorus where you sing ".....sweet lover of the night......." and through the little jam part to bring up the tension and then releasing it when you hit the outro of the song.

However, if you continue to experiment and learn to work MC even better than you can now, I don't see why you can't get a professional sounding recording. The only thing I would figure to need professional assistance would be in the mastering phase of the recording process.

Yes, Beagle and Robomusic helped me out a lot too, and I've finally been able to produce some quality sounding music (rock) using MC. Once you get a grip on using this program (and others like it) it's really a lot of fun and a great tool for songwriting musicians to demo their songs without spending alot of money. I'm going to hook up some links here and on garageband as soon as I'm done mixing my stuff.

Cheers.

Adding/deleting measures: I needed to do this on one of my tunes, because I needed the intro to be longer before the drums kicked in.

I think Robo or Beagle can explain this better than I can, since I don't have MC in front of me now. Personally I was able to....by accident....by total necessity.....and total luck!....... add measures by right clicking in the measure bar, like where you would go to set a flag point or punch point, and in one of those options that come up there's a way to add/delete measures. I don't have MC open here at work, so I can't tell you exactly what to do, but later on when I get home I'll tell you how I did it.....although by then, I'm sure Beagle or Robo will have responded here with the answer......which I'm still interested in hearing how they suggest it be done.

Hey, debi and tom! thanks for the kudos! glad to help. I'm off from work today - I get every other friday off! (wooo hoo!). I'm at home rearranging my studio/office to make work flow easier.

Nice sound on the song, debi! I definately hear floyd and janis - benetar kicks in later in the song! You might want to move the guitar back in the mix some around 2:00 - there are times it overwhelms the vocals. How much reverb did you use on the different parts? the guitar especially sounds a little dry. the vocals sound pretty warm I don'thave much to add for them. tom's advice of adding some drum sounds occassionally might help the overall feel of the song, but don't overdo it. this song probably doesn't need to much on the percussion. overall, very good job!

OK - adding/deleting measures...not easy. Cutting parts out of a song is a cakewalk. it sounds like you've probably not got any MIDI in your song - so it's easier to add/delete stuff without MIDI than it is WITH MIDI.

for audio tracks, simply choose the place you want to cut and place your cursor there by left clicking on the timeline.
note: you might need to adjust your grid resolution by clicking on the little grid icon above the track information. You'll also want to make sure that the 'snap to zero crossings' is also selected, or you could have popping problems with the results
right click on the track that you want to change and choose SPLIT. a popup window will allow you to verify the exact time you want to split and other parameters.
click ok, then you can either delete a part of the clip before or after the split, or you can make another split to take a section out of a track (or you can do that to COPY a section of the track for looping or pasting in another area).

If you want help with MIDI add/delete measures, let me know - it's a lot more detailed and not nearly as easy to do.

good luck!

Great writing and arrangement, aisde form some mixing techniques (basically what you said in the first post) and maybe playing with some EQ'ing of the different tracks - it sounds really good.

Is there bass? Doesn't sound like it, that would fatten it up and give it some body, and you have a very nice voice - I would like to hear those vocals a wee bit louder, maybe a tiny bit of compression to even out some of the more forceful portions would enable you to get a dB or 2 more out of them.

Great job.

Thanks again for your suggestions and comments.
I am recording in mono. I think I can do stereo by changing the input, right?
There is some bass on there, but it's way back. I tried doing the percussion on the keyboard, but I thought it sounded sloppy, so I pulled it out.
For vocal effects, I am using reverb and parametric eq.. the default settings. I tried the other settings, but it sounded like I was recording in a chamber.
I'll keep messing with it and see what I can do.

Beagle,
Most excellent advice, and so appreciative of the specifics on how to do it. I'm going to try that right now. Thank you PR, also. Hell, thanks to all of you!
Debi

I took a peek at the techniques forum, and there is a ton of information. Right at the moment, it's all making my head spin! I will have to devote some serious time to learning techniques, but I think it's worth it. Thanks for the pointers.