Recording Magazine is reviewing a song I did in X2!

Congrats!....it's a great sounding tune!

Fantastic job ryan, really enjoyed the tune. Best of luck in your future efforts.
 
Regards,

Great track and great well-deserved review.  Congratulations!
 
It is odd that Recording's one suggestion was about the drums: I noticed immediately that the drums sounded great and fit the track perfectly.  The reviewer suggested a deeper snare, but that could quickly muddy up what is a very clean and balanced track.  And I don't think a live player is needed.  In fact, I did not know that the drums were not live.  No doubt the reviewer is a very smart guy and probably much smarter than me; but for what it's worth, I think the drums are fine like they are.

I agree: it's definitely got that rock anthem thing going. Well done, sir!

Ryan, congrats.  And everyone is a critic.  If someone is talking about a snare drum needing depth in a rocker it is most likely a small difference in taste, or less generousl,y the writer needing to something to pan in order to justify the review.  Good job, sir.
 
@

Badass!

Hi Bitflipper, if you PM me your email, I'll send you an mp3. It's not up anywhere just yet.

I'm really glad you all like it. I'm feeling like a real rockstar now that I know the mighty Dan Gonzalez thinks it's "Badass".
 
Thanks again guys,
 
Ryan

It is awesome! The drum sits in there perfectly. Again, like Konrad said, I can't tell the the drum is programmed if you haven't mention it.

Congrats!

pagec
He Ryan,
 
It's not my sort of music really, but I think the quality of the recording and the production is absolutely fantastic. I've been seriously producing music now for 3 years with Sonar and before that, just playing for quite a time. However ,your production has made me think. I can certainly learn from you. Would you have time to post some of the 'vitals' on your production used in the song.
 
What vocal chain did you use ?
Pre-amp
What plugins
Outboard
Processing ?
Reverb/delay application
What about the mastering.
 
I know its (and can hea ) its not about just the kit used but the methods and skill you used also, so just hints really on how you got that superb sound ?
 
Really Appreciated.
 
Chris in a flooded UK.

Hi Chris,
First I want to say thanks for the compliments. You and I have a lot in common, as I have also only been seriously producing music for about the past 3-4 years as well. I don't know if I have any "tips" that immediately come to mind, but I'd be more than happy to go through how I got the sounds I got. A lot of the techniques I used I learned right here on the forums, so I'm happy to help a fellow Cakewalker.
 
I wrote "Be somebody else" on an acoustic guitar. It's my experience that if it translates well on an acoustic, for the most part it will sound good when all the pieces of a band come together.
 
My vocal chain: My singer (Lauren) and I auditioned several mics for this song, but it was a simple SM58 that sounded best to our ears. We set up a primeacoustic voxguard behind it. The mic went straight into my M-Audio Profire 610 pre's. I added a reverb send to the track using 112 db's Redline reverb for tracking, but there were no effects, or compression going in. A lot of people talk about using effects on the way in... I could never get that to work for me the way adding effects post tracking does.  So I guess my tip here is to get a solid recording before you start applying any effects.
After vocal tracking was finished, I used the Cakewalk VX-64 plug on all the vocals. I started with the "Male Rock Edge" preset, and fine tuned it to my liking. After that, I fine tuned the reverb send to my liking as well. There was no voodoo magic here. Lauren is a great singer. I think the number one element of good vocals is a good singer. I try not to "fix it in the mix". It never comes out as good as a amped up vocalist who's just killing it. Also, it seems to be too easy to go a little overboard with compression on vocals. I really have to watch myself in this area when doing vocals. I should also mention that I changed the key that I had originally written the song in to better suit Lauren's voice.
Backing vocals were recorded and processed the same way. I recorded 4 passes of backing vocals and panned 2 each at about 70% left and right. Backing vocals did have more reverb on them than the main vocal. I did this to make them sit behind the main vocals.
 
Plugin's: Probably the biggest one here was Steven Slate Drums 3.5. The kits are awesome right out of the box. Very little tweaking required, and super bang for your buck. I tapped out the drums on an M-Audio Axiom 25 midi controller using the "Never" kit, then edited on the Sonar PRV. If I had a "drum tip" it would be when quantizing rock drums, don't quantize 100%. It sounds far too robotic. I went with 75%. If you look back through my forum posts, it was here that someone taught me how to route individual drums in Kontakt to separate tracks. Thanks!
 
In my opinion, the most difficult instrument to record well by far is bass guitar. It's super hard to get that focused round bass sound. I ran my Ibanez bass straight into my profire and tracked using the NI Guitar Rig 5 plug on the "fingered bass 1" preset. I used IK Multimedia's T-Racks compressor and EQ after the NI plug. I spent hours tweaking the EQ getting this how I liked it. The biggest problem I found was that after a few hours with bass frequencies I would go tone deaf, and need to stop for awhile.  I constantly checked the sound i was getting against a reference track. (Which in this case was a Nickelback track.... fire away Nickelback haters) I don't have the luxury of a live room to mic up a bass cab, but I suspect that a decent sound would be much easier to come by that way.
Guitars were much easier. I used an LTD EC-1000 and a PRS straight into my Profire, and tracked with Amplitube 3 running through Amplitube's version of a Marshall head and a 4x12 cab. I recorded 4 passes of the distorted guitars and hard panned 2 on the left & 2 on the right, then ran them all into a bus. There are no effects on the electric guitars. I bussed them together simply to be able to control all four volumes at once when mixing. The active pickups really make these guitars growl compared to some passive ones i tried.
Lead guitars were recorded with a Behringer V-Amp pro- my only piece of rackmount gear. I used a rectified amp model and recorded with no effects straight into my Profire. I added chorus, delay, and reverb post tracking.
 
The acoustic guitars were recorded with a studio projects C1 mic aimed at the 12th fret. I recorded 2 passes, and panned them at 85% left & right so that the electric guitars would not be stomping all over them. I sent both tracks to a bus where I applied compression at 3:1 with a 22msec attack time via T-Racks Compression. I also applied EQ here. I added a HPF with a 148hz cut off, and a 3db boost at 2khz.
 
On the master bus I mixed with the Cake LP-64 Multiband compressor with very light compression, and that was followed by Steven Slate's Virtual tape machine, which adds some warmth. The track was mastered at a local mastering house. The mastering engineer added a slight bump in the bottom end, and a reduction at about 4k to reduce some sibilance. From there he added some limiting to bring the overall volume up.
 
That's an overall of what I did. If there's anything specific you have questions about, I'd be happy to answer. Thanks again for listening.

I'd like to chime in too and say great job Ryan...!  And to Lauren too..!