Critique my playing and/or my audio mixing skills

Here’s a take of Vinnie Moore’s Morning Star that I recorded in March 2017, after about 2y of CTC “treatment”. The first video is the “Raw” audio captured via the smartphone, in the second I tried to do a bit of a “remix” with garageband, adding reverb to my guitar track and trying to sync the backing track by hand.

There are a few things I don’t like about my playing here but I won’t tell you yet, I first want to hear the spontaneous opinions/suggestions of the rest of you codecrackers :wink: – both about the playing itself and about how I did the mixing.

At the time of this recording I was mostly using UWPS with swiping and the occasional TWPS rotation. The camera angle is reasonably CTC -friendly, but the lighting sucks, sorry!

“Raw audio”

“Audio remix”

8 Likes

Sounds great man. Despite what might be popular belief. I don’t see anything at all wrong with UWPS. If you say you are swiping, maybe you could try to fix the cause of the swiping?
I don’t know what your technique goals are, but if you are disliking UWPS because of what you are told, but you are good at it, Maybe you should ignore what’s popular and stay with that! You play great. And there are a lot of killer players that are UWPS.

Mixing is an art in itself. Tastes would vary so much. If I were mixing this. I would like to hear more kick and bass. Maybe more of everything but the snare overall. But when you get all of the tracks close in volume, it’s then EQing that makes everything clear in the mix. That’s when it gets a little complicated.

That’s my spontaneous observation/assumtion for a response. I could be totally off point.
:bear:

2 Likes

Hi @tommo.

I think your picking is very good. The primary UWPS-based system, with rotations introduced for sweeps, etc, seems to be working well for you. I don’t think you’d really need to switch to a DWPS-based system.

If I had to be critical, I’d point to your vibrato, which I felt was too quick and nervy at times. This might be less noticeable to me on another piece, but I’ve always felt that Vinnie has excellent vibrato, with great control and variation. A piece like Rain really showcases his vibrato.

I would have also liked a little more tonal variation between the different sections, but that’s just me nitpicking.

3 Likes

Tommo do you ever use pink noise to help you get your audio levels right? I’m no expert on mixing, and maybe there are better ways, but I’ve found it useful.

2 Likes

Thank you all for the kind words & feedback!

I am quite happy with how my UWPS worked for this piece, but indeed I’m not too satisfied with the vibrato and phrasing of the more “melodic” bits.

Also my timing seems to be off in some places, so I’ll be back in the shed for a bit before I try to record a better take :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Hi @tommo,

I noticed your time moving during the raw take, but I didn’t feel it was too bad in the context of the mix. It sounded more like you were deliberately anticipating or pushing for effect, as a classical player might do.

If that wasn’t intentional and you were trying to maintain a steady pulse, then I’d recommend spending some time learning to lock in with the pulse.

2 Likes

Well that makes it sound much cooler thank you :slight_smile:

Some rhythm practice is definitely in order!

1 Like

@Hanky_Pooh Thanks for encouraging my UWPS - I had a full UWPS noodling session last night, after about 1y of practicing DWPS, and totally enjoyed it :sunglasses: I might try to write & share some UWPS etudes in the next few days to celebrate!

@aliendough The pink noise trick may be just what this bedroom guitarist needs for his mediocre mixes - cheers :smiley:

@Tom_Gilroy Rain is an excellent suggestion of a song to practice my vibrato, I remember transcribing most of it when I was young - will try to take the dust off it, thanks!

1 Like

Sounds great! I know Vinnie alternate picks the main theme but I’m curious to try your pickstrokes and see if I can get the same metric sort of sound as alternate.

1 Like

Very kind @Jakku, thanks!
At the time of this recording I couldn’t get the intro very clean with full-on crosspicking, so I resorted to this kind of sweeping+inside picking solution - then the challenge was indeed timing.
I needed to warm up quite a bit to lock in decently with the beat, but sometimes my time still fluctuated as I mentioned above (more noticeable with the “raw audio”).

Players I am into at the moment, I am surprised to find out, are UWPS and they are complete monsters. I am convinced that UWPS is not a disadvantage.

1 Like

Interesting, I’d be curious to have a few suggestions of UWPS players!

I agree that UWPS is a perfectly valid system, and it probably remains my comfort zone and default orientation for when I want to go full speed. But I also found it beneficial to incorporate some DWPS elements in my playing over the last year or so - I can’t get enough of the EJ descending fives or the YJM 6s, for example!

As for swiping, I know it sometimes happens in my playing but I decided to not obsess over it - I know that if the left hand does its muting job properly the sonic penalty will be minimal in most cases. This attitude greatly increased my confidence in some passages (like: “I may or may not clear the string - who cares!”).

2 Likes

The basic observation here isn’t so much pickslanting as setup. Uwps players use the pronated setup, which you might be tempted to call “neutral” but isn’t really neutral, because you can still be a uwps player like that. See Andy Wood, McLaughlin, and so on. The dwps crew uses the supinated setup. It can be super duper supinated like Morse or Friedman, or just mildly so like Stern. Those are the observations that anyone can make from just looking at someone from across the room.

To know whether they actually clearing on such and such pickstroke, you’d need the closeup shots or circumstantial evidence from the fretting, etc. But knowing the setup is the most important factor in understanding how a person plays, and the first thing you would copy in attempting to replicate what they’re doing.

1 Like

So yeah @tommo maybe that is what matters most. Try playing from the pronated setup for both slants… if you haven’t already. Whatever you feel like for the song. I think your post here is great.

1 Like

A couple of nights ago I gave a shot to Anouk’s nobody’s wife solo (anybody remembers her?).

I transcribed this as a kid (with 90% accuracy I think), but could never play it properly. Now with CTC knowledge I can \m/
In your face young Tommo!

I am reasonably happy with this take, except for the slide + vibrato at 0:22 which came out a bit like a cat being strangled :smiley: . But I am adhering to my policy of not going for a 100% perfect take to avoid going mental!

Notice also that I start the fast pentatonic lick with DWPS and then continue it with UWPS + swiping.

PS: yep the video quality sucks, sorry :smiley:

4 Likes

That’s some really great picking and tone Tommo!

Tho you are doing the opposite of what V.M. used to do when recording - If I remember correct in a mag interview (Guitar player 80’s?) - he said that he got the recording engineer to put reverb on while he was playing but to not record it. Apart from his blazing skills - that’s what he reckoned gave him that unique and super accurate sound and feel.

1 Like

I can’t understand what you mean here. Are you saying there is no reverb on Vinnie’s Guitar on his early albums?

I just realised - I don’t have any Vinnie albums, just the UFO album You Are Here which he had quite a dry sound on.

@tommo what Vinnie album should i get from Amazon? :guitar:

Some Zakk Wylde type picking in that solo Tommo!

2 Likes

Hiya Aliendough!

Apparently Vinnie Moore - when recording his album (it might have been Time Odyssesy) asked the engineer to put some reverb on the monitor speakers while he was recording, but to route it so the track recording didn’t have the reverb. He said that it made him play a certain way, and I think that’s how he gets that super dry dead on accurate sound. If you think about it - reverb makes you play very differently - esp on fast pieces, you have to be much more precise with timing and note duration - else it ends up a mess. I’m sure they put reverb on the guitar after while mixing - just to gel the track together e.t.c. But the point was using a clever trick to change his playing style and feel.

3 Likes

Thank you @shabtronic! Funnily enough the tone (which I also like) is coming from a vox mini classic rock (£35) connected to a speaker and recorded thorugh the phone’s microphone. I think I was using gain at max, mid-boost and a minimum of chorus, and was using the neck pickup with the tone knob around 5.

I have been hoping to record a better version for months now (and that is why I kept the video unpublished) - I would like to make my vibrato a bit more graceful and the rythm of some parts a bit tighter. But it’s a hard tune and haven’t managed yet, even though I feel my technique is better now. That day was after nailing a job interview and I was feeling confident I guess :sweat_smile:

@aliendough glad you asked. So here are my 4 favourite albums from the VinMan

Mind’s Eye - young Vinnie melting faces mercilessly, all the solos are pretty much unplayable by a human. Probably Yngwie inspired, although I never heard Vinnie admitting that. Still, the writing is great IMO

Time Odissey - this is I think the peak of Vinnie’s neoclassical phase, with much greater attention to detail and sophistication in the compositions.

Meltdown - A very cool mix of shred and classic rock/blues. Always puts me in a good mood.

The Maze - Dunno how to categorise it, in some bits it’s almost fusiony, in others more medieval shreddy, in general very cool and mysterious atmospheres.

2 Likes