Dug up some old tunes I composed!

General Music Discussion
#1

Was just doing a general clean up of my drives the other day and wow, I had totally forgotten that Ive actually made music 3 to 4 years ago!

There are quite a few, but I’m particularly proud of these two!

At the time I was graviting towards more Thrashy/Neo Classical stuff with metalcore elements. I still have those roots even though I’m studying jazz and tbh whenever I think I suck I can at least look back at these songs I made and be confident that I’ve managed to pull of some recording stuff on my own.

Yeah, the mix is very very amateur. Was just using my ears very closely as well as referencing some band’s mixes I listen to. I use FL Studio as my DAW and my Line 6 KB37 for input.

Been using a lot of Drop C for my stuff, but I dunno, maybe I should try out Drop D if I do decide to re-record these beasts.

Lemme know what ya guys think :slight_smile:

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#2

I thought they were pretty cool, I liked Black Tactical the most, I found it more melodically pleasing quite Symphony X like! I thought the solo could have been earlier in the song and longer, maybe build up the tension a bit more with slower playing before you rip into it at the end.

I reckon that you should dive into CTC stuff and after a while, record yourself playing these tunes again and see what improvements you can make and if you think your playing has improved.

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#3

Recording your own music is an awesome feeling, huh? Congrats! :smiley:

What were you using as an amp, some sort of built in emulation in the Line6? I think from a mix standpoint what’s jumping out the most at me is a lot of your guitar tones are EXTREMELY distorted, and way “deeper” than they need to be. All that huge low end is taking up space that really should belong to the bass, and the combination of the massive low end and extreme saturation is making the guitars very “mushy” in this. I think if you could hear the solo’d rhythm tracks from some songs you really like in this genre, you’d be surprised how “thin” they sound alone.

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#4

Previously I used to POD Farm software which came with the Line 6 audio interface, but I checked out a free amp sim called GrindMachine which had the sounds of an ENGL and Diezel. I kept my gain relatively low tho, only boosting it for solos at the end. maybe it was my gauge 10 strings used with Drop C?

Yeah, I didnt really have the proper monitors or headphones to sift those out. I was just going by feel and what I learnt myself from online YouTube videos. Tbh I’m still not sure how to do a proper mix ><

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#5

I doubt it, heavier strings don’t really change the way a guitar saturates (I play a seven string, 10-65 most of the time, in B standard). I susect you were either boosting your DI above unity somehow while tracking, or the amp modeler just puts out obscene amounts of gain :smile:

Mixing is one of those things that if you really want to go down that rabbit hole isn’t THAT hard but mostly takes a lot of repetition to get good (fundamentally, it’s just critical listening and learning how to identify problems, and then knowing what tools you have at your disposal to fix them), but unless it’s something you’re really into, your time is probably better sppent elsewhere on things you enjoy. There are tools out there, like EzMix, that allow you to do “perfecly fine” demo quality recording with little to no specialized knowledge, and get surprisingly good osunding results, so if you want something like that might be worth a look. Or if you DO want to go down that rabbit hole, I’d be hapy to talk and try to help.

But, at the same time, if your main interest is just getting the song fleshed out in a form you can share, these are totally fine, too. :+1:

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