mattplaysguitar

Danny Danzi


Jonesey: Use the Sonitus delay brother...it's a great delay and will work perfectly for this. :) No need for anythning else really. I think the Sonitus stuff is some of the best stuff out there and to be honest, I think it's the best "come with a DAW" stuff out there. I use it on everything. The only Sonitus plug I'm not crazy about is their multi band limiter. But everything else gets use over here.

Matt: Aww you're too kind brother, thanks so much! Yeah I had a feeling this was a different thing you were going for. But now that I've heard your stuff, I know what we gotta do man. :) Let me give you a run down.

Foresake: Makings of a really good tune brother. Don't dare scale anything back. Do what you do and enjoy it. The thing I'd do if I were you that will make a huge difference in your "wall" would be to double you instruments and pan them. For example, play the acoustic guitars 2 times and pan tighter...like 60/60 or 70/70...play the rhythm electric guitars two times and pan 85/85 or 90/90 and you'll hear things get more sound instead of the mono instruments with stereo effects you have going on. Put your keys in between the guitars or inside them and experiment. Or, if you want, run the keys out hard left/right and see how it sounds.

Cheese.....no such thing as cheese in my world brother. Use sounds, lyrics, styles and whatever else you feel and forget about what people say, cliche's and everything else. Do what you do because you feel it man. Two words I hate when talking music...the words "cheese" and "sell-out". No such thing when you do what your heart tells you and you remain happy/content. :) 

In your name: Love it! Same as above....double your parts and pan instead of ths single instruments. Even if you just double this stuff for the chorus parts and leave it as it is now for your verses etc. One thing that caught me...if you don't mind me mentioning...in this song...the main keyboard line where it starts the run A G# F# E....you know like at like 2:06...it sounds cool but somewhat strange due to you singing major and that A playing a somewhat minor starting sequence. I'd experiment there and either use a Bb instead of A or try this sequence:

B Bb G# F#, E F# G# Bb etc. This makes it more major sounding and enhances your killer major hook line in the vocal. Subjective, but just something I heard that I felt was worth sharing. :)

Still Here: Leave that intro with the single guitar like that. It's intimate like it is...when the music comes in, bring in another with strums in stereo...when its just guitar vocals and that bell/key sound...back to one acoustic again to keep it intimate...pan it away from the vocals. Right idea at 1:07...we need a bit more power. I'd add another acoustic in as well as another electric until 1:28. Then kill the electrics and let both acoustics be there. Stuff like that. You just need more of your instruments doubled and panned bro...the ideas are great. A little orchestration here and there and you'll be in good shape. I hear a little gritty guitar in these for a little power if you decide to add it. Nothing extreme or metal...just a bit o' grit to give you a little power in the chorus sections if you want. Just for the sizzle part of it. This would work really well with those acoustic guitars. I was half tempted to play along and show ya what I mean...but I think you know what I mean. :)

Just to clarify, when I asked for samples....I meant of pro bands you felt had "the wall". However, it was a pleasant surprise to hear YOUR stuff come on. LOL! I only heard a few small snippets of your stuff all the time we've been talking on the forum, so it was nice to hear some tunes man. Really good job considering you're not done with them yet. I wish you all the best Matt...hope some of this stuff has been helpful. :)

-Danny

Thanks man! That was very useful. Certainly got some great ideas from that which I'll def play around with. I don't know why I didn't think of putting my keys centre with guitars filling in the sides!! Duh! That would actually solve a lot of balance issues I'm hearing with a lot of a my songs! I like it. Also I think in a chorus maybe keeping left and right a little more balanced will allow it to be less distracting and let you focus on the vocals a bit more, which is obviously the important bit.


And yes, have been hoping to play around with a bit of a grungy guitar in some of my choruses actually, so I'll make sure I experiement. I see what you mean, it could really help. Dist guitars can be really nicely carved to fill in any blank spots too especially if they are not the highlight - can be get away with being quite heavy in processing.




Haha, I didn't think that maybe you meant some pro bands! I'm actually still trying to determine this. The band which I think most closely reflects the kind of style I'm going for is Athlete's first album - Vehicles & Animals. But they don't really have a wall of sound. But I really like their jumpy bouncyness. Maybe you can't really have that AND have the wall together? Dunno. Anywho, an example of them - unfortunately the quality is terrible though...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAqwNDhkYfE

I do like the big full sound of Coldplay's new stuff. But it's a bit too reverby for my style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6ZWlDks0nQ


Evidently, I'm still attempting to define what I want and I don't really know yet! But I guess you kinda get that on your first album ;) I know how I want it to feel when it hits. I just want massive oomph. Hell, maybe that's more dynamics and volume control to get me there! But I do feel when the choruses kick in on Coldplay's stuff, it's just massive. Everything is full. But it then does sound a little weak if your volume knob is down. I think the major thing is distinction from the verses to the choruses. As long as I keep my chorus full and verses sparse, it'll hit you hard due to the DYNAMIC CHANGE, as opposed to the absolute biggness of the chorus. Sheesh, I can see why people spend their whole lives developing a sound and style.... Haha!

Glad it was helpful bro...you'll get what you're after with a little trial and error with some direction along the journey.
 
I couldn't play the first tune as it said it wasn't available in my area.
 
On the Coldplay stuff....power synths and vocals are what you're after if you want that sound. Power synths with sizzle that have some drive or a bit of fuzz/fizz to them. This is what we'd add if we brought in some heavier guitar...it's that same thing. Remember I mentioned adding a little sizzle to your tunes if you added a little driven guitar? It's the same thing here with a different texture. Since you are more of a guitar type artist, I'd try the driven guitar thing first with the synths you are already using. If you find it sounds too "guitar oriented" and is giving you a different type of power, mute the driven guitars and go for those power synths with the fuzz/fizz for your chorus parts and you'll be right where you need to be.
 
If you listen to Coldplay closely, the string sounds are wide panned, the fizzy synths are in between to keep the power tight with the bass and drums. The core of your stuff (in my opinion) should always be a little tighter so that it gives you impact. The more you spread power type instruments, the more they literally take AWAY from the impact and can become too separated. Your orchestration instruments can be a bit wider...but keep the power core (drums, driven guitars, bass, fizzy synths) of your instrumentation tighter if you can. I'm not saying don't pan...just don't go nuts.
 
Ever listen to something in mono? It always seems to have more power...yet of course we don't enjoy it as much due to the lack of separation. However, one thing to take away from a mono listen is the power and impact. That's because everything is glued together and not as wide spread. This is a good thing to consider when mixing. I have restrictions on my pans from trial and error. Record a short song clip...something with a bit of instrumentation so you can experiment with pans. Make a few mixes with wider pans and some with tighter pans. See which ones have more impact to you. Once you find out what your "power core" (as I like to call them) of instruments are, they are the ones you want to try to keep a little tighter if possible. This leaves your ends open for enhancement and shock value for effects, fly-ins or anything else you may want to sneak up on the listener.
 
Some guys will fight me to the death on that and swear by hard pans or the LCR thing. I just don't like it. Great for headphones, but in real monitors...mixes like that do nothing for me and DO sound a bit disconnected in my opinion. When you have that core nice and tight, this is where you kick people in the face with those side fills and hard pans on a chorus. It fills things out much better.
 
Think of it like this Matt. You know how we all try to make sure we have dynamics in our mixes without hyper compression, right? Ok, you know how we also automate things to also control dynamics and paint a picture too, right? Ok...think of what I'm saying with panning as a way of dynamically controlling the impact of your mix.
 
As an example, let's say we have a mix going on where we know our power instruments are going to stay tight. Say our drums do not exceed 50% pans. Our bass down the middle, kick snare down the middle, vocals down the middle...etc. We use a few stereo effects with imagers on them like I showed you in that pdf before.
 
Ok, so let's say this entire mix at this point does not exceed a 75% pan field with guitars included. When we hit on a chorus and add two more guitars in at say 85% L/R and then some keys hard panned and maybe a fizz/fuzz synth sound that spreads 30/30 right in between the drum kit, you have created a wall of sound that jumps out at you and takes up the entire stereo field. When the chorus is over, these instruments back down and we're back to a 75% over-all pan. Get it?
 
We keep those sides open so that when the other instruments hit, we have that impact that spreads all across the board. If we just used a LCR or hard panned guitars etc, there's nowhere else for anything to go. We're fatiguing the listeners with wide pans no matter how dynamic the instruments may be. When we use the pans and bring in instruments that are not occupying those pan fields, something magical happens and thus, your wall hits them in the face like they are hitting a wall. LOL!
 
I bet you realy got your wheels turning now....I can see smoke coming off your head after reading this becaus it just opened you to loads of ideas, didn't it? Hahahaha! (At leas that's what I'm hoping for over here!) So keep some of this in mind...it can be incredibly helpful. :)
 
-Danny

I am back talking about drones again. The rest of this thread topic is pretty interesting though. Sorry to divert.

On the drones, I bought Dronos which trimph1 recommended. I am glad I did so thanks to trimph1. It is great for a single note thing and I think it changes rather well over time too which can only add interest. I have done a track posted up at Soundcloud here:

http://soundcloud.com/jeff-evans 

It is called Dronos and Space Drone (original eh!)

I have used three Vst's in this one. First Dronos but widened up with a stereo delay and Dimension D. It is basically mono which is fine but if you want it wider you have to get to work in it big time. Dimension D is from Empty Room Systems and it is meant to be as good or better than the UAD version. I used to own Dimension D and know how it sounds and the plugin is excellent for sure.

I have added Space Drone in here doing some textural stuff and finally a VST called Crazy Diamonds which is a VST dedicated mainly to the organ sound at the start of the so named Pink Floyd tune. 

My track could be just the backdrop to more sounds and musical ideas. I have uploaded a 16 bit 44.1K Wave file to keep the quality high and made it downloadable for your enjoyment. It has got some serious bottom end all created by Dronos alone so be careful please. Being based on a low E that gives us the every amazing 41 Hz tone. 

Hi trimph1. I am playing octaves with the Dronos drone on that track. So the bottom one adds a fair bit of weight nicely. It does have a great bottom end.

But here is a great way to get a very wide stereo effect from Dronos. This approach also does not use any effects. I used effects to create a wide sounding Dronos. The trick is to use two of them. Set up Dronos VST's on two tracks and pan one hard L and the other hard R. Setup your DAW so you can play them both from the one controller. 

The result is very wide and sounds huge. There is enough information going on separately in both of them to create quite a lot of interest in the overall drone itself. Because there are two, it's twice as interesting! There does not seem to be any drifting in tuning so they are both very close to each other frequency wise. (ie no detuning effect much) Mono compatibility works a treat too. This is a good time to vary the settings from each of them. 

The controls are explained in the read me document. Slope controls the attack and release times which is nice. Good to setup different attack/release settings on the two Dronos Vst's and then play them. Its good to release notes and let them fade away and bring in a new slow attack envelope after that. If the two Dronos have different settings for Slope you get nice stereo imaging when you release and replay notes. The A/B switch alters the sound a bit as does the Tone control. The 0/1 switch brings in a rhythmical quality to the drone. It is an eight note thing so slow the tempo down to 60 BPM if you want this to be slower in its effect. The tempo of your DAW does effect this rhythmical quality. All the controls can be automated so writing some different curves for the two Dronos Vst's will also yield interesting sounding results.