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Old 11-19-2018, 02:34 PM
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Doug Young Doug Young is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Mountain View, CA
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OK, I took a quick look/listen.A few things:

Your levels are quite low. Not a show stopper, but I'd get them up a bit.

The guitar seems to be out of tune, especially the opening notes.

Your "line" track is distorted.

The Rode tracks are stereo if panned hard left and right, but the image is really narrow and the sound is harsh and thin.

I used the akg and lewitt as "spaced pairs" panned hard left and right, and those are much better. Still a bit of a thin harsh sound on top. May be room acoustics, may actually be the sound you're getting on the guitar? I'll PM you a dropbox link with this mix to see what you think. I put quite a bit of reverb on since you seemed to like that.

My guess is that you have room acoustic issues and need work on mic placement. Advice: I'd use the AKG and Lewitt as spaced pairs, put them around 12 inches from your guitar, 15-20 inches apart, and tweak that position till it sounds good. Drop the pickup unless you can get it to sound better and not distort. Carefully listen to your guitar to see if it actually sounds like what you want to start with. If possible, add some sound baffles to improve the acoustics. Figure out why your mix is coming out mono.

One other suggestion: It's great to have a reference track, but it's easiest to compare and learn something from it if you play something very similar, if not the same piece. Your example is radically different from your reference - you're asking about percussive guitar, but your piece isn't percussive at all, so it's hard to A/B between your track and your reference and reach any conclusions. I'd either find a reference you like that's more similar to the piece you're trying to record, or for sound check purposes, play something more like your reference (even if it's just 1 or 2 bars of something in the style). It's just hard to compare apples and oranges when you're making decisions about mic placement, mix, etc.

Last edited by Doug Young; 11-19-2018 at 03:32 PM.
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