I need recording tips - My mp3 sounds bad on small spkrs

[John]

Well . . . I made an mp3 of my playing. It sounds fine on my computer speakers at home (2.1 setup), my friends computer speakers (4.1 setup), my mom's speakers (two cheesy speakers that came with her computer), but it has some serious problems on the extremely cheesy speakers at my office.

I can hardly hear the bass or the drums. I recorded the bass by pluging in my Fender P-bass and going at it. I recorded the piano from the mix out's of my K2500XS and the drum track I sequenced. I used some compression on the bass & piano tracks. Without the bass & drums, I don't like the way it sounds. Is there a way that I can be assured that it will sound decent out of just about any speaker?

I'm in the process of putting together some samples I can use to promote myself. This is my first time I've ever recorded my playing and I'm going to redo this (this is my first run at it), but here's a link to the song:

http://www.johnolin.com/music/samples/bluebosa.mp3

The comping is choppy, rushed at moments, and the solo could use a little bit more melodic direction. I'm more concerned, at the moment, with getting my mix to come out Ok regardless of the listeners speakers.

[Taurus]

Sounds really great man. Could use some quantizing but its really well done.
Maybe use another basspatch, perhaps that'll fix your problem with the speakers a bitmore too. IF the bass after that doesnt come through, then just increase the lower frequencies with an Equalizer.

Maybe those speakers' treble and bass-knobs are buggered too or smth. Make the listener turn them UP

[lighthouse]

Well.. mastering is a complicated bussines,you need a room with the correct acustics and mastering monitors to make it right ....but still you can make an aproximation at your home studio. Mastering is about to make your music sound the way you want in every sound system you can, but it`s not posible in all of them, so considering that you already achieved to make your mix sound good on a lot of systems, and I suppose you don`t own a mastering room, you can leave it like that. I`ve not downloaded your song yet though, but if you really got it like that it`ll be ok.

Juan Pablo

[John]

Could use some quantizing but its really well done.
Maybe use another basspatch

Bass is definitely not my first instrument, but the bass part is me playing a Fender P-bass guitar. Can you quantize that?

[pHaTaL_eRrOr]

I've got an SB Audigy II AZ Platinum with a Higer end set of Logitech 5.1 speakers.... Is that enough for now, or would monitors be a better idea earlier on?

[Deceit]

See man, now I understand why my mp3s and jams get no feedback or negative comments...because I suck and your playing is absolutely CHARMING! Change speakers and audiocard if you notice problems, but the recording quality is cd-like and, hey, the content ROCKS! Or BLUES! Or JAZZ! (not very much into those kinds of music to determine if it's B or J) Or whatever (quoting our Wiz)...
Deceit.

[hephiroth]

can you run the bass through perhaps a compressor? and maybe the drums, too...i don't know if you have anything that can do that....

-jeff-

[Mastah]

...your playing is absolutely CHARMING...

Agreed! I'm very much digging this track. :D

[Taurus]

yeah its some latin jazzy thing, its really cool. Reminded me a lot of that track Alex Argento posted not long ago. Same kind of feeling, you done a great job composing this one man.

[John]

can you run the bass through perhaps a compressor? and maybe the drums, too...i don't know if you have anything that can do that....

-jeff-

I applied some compression to the bass track after I recorded it. Should I be trying to run my bass through a compresor while I'm recording it? Does it make much difference if I do compression before or after recording?

I have a K2500XS with KDFX. When I'm recording live instruments should I be trying to run them through my Keyboard? Maybe I need some kind of affordable preamp with some effects built in? I have no idea. I'm really new to this recording stuff.

PS - Thanks for all the kind comments about my playing. I feel like my playing is Ok for live application. But for studio type work, It doesn't even touch the professional guys. But I'm looking forward to improving my playing by listening to myself on these recordings (and hopefully some lessons). Maybe someday I'll create something that I feel is good enough for the masses.

[Cary]

Tigerfolly or Rexx could probably help you a lot more than me...but my .02

nice playing.

Compress after you record if you need. That way you can always change it.

The mix sounds pretty good on my system, bass I might have recorded a little "flatter", or if you added eq after you recorded, maybe try taking some/most/all of it out. My experience from recording bass makes me lean toward a "less is more" approach. I got to the point where I would plug the bass directly into the recorder and do any tonal shaping afterwards. More in the midrange freq's might help a bass stand out a bit more.
I do all my mastering thru a Dennon home stereo and a set of MCS speakers that I've had for about 20yrs. I really messed up a jamtrack at progsounds once trying to master thru my computer speakers (and a couple adult beverages) at low volume. It took me a while to learn how to get things to sound good in the car, too. I think it's a matter of practice. IMO knowing how things should sound thru your stuff is more important than what the stuff is.
I am no expert, but there's a couple things to try anyway. Maybe PM Tigerfolly or Rexx or someone who really knows what they're talking about.

[John]

, bass I might have recorded a little "flatter", or if you added eq after you recorded, maybe try taking some/most/all of it out. My experience from recording bass makes me lean toward a "less is more" approach. I got to the point where I would plug the bass directly into the recorder and do any tonal shaping afterwards. More in the midrange freq's might help a bass stand out a bit more.

The only adjustments I made to my bass track was a little compression. My bass (Fender P-bass) has a single knob for tone control. I had it pretty much all the way to the low end to get a smooth feel (no string noise, not too much of the harmonics). Should I be recording with the tone towards the trebel and then applying eq later?

[lighthouse]

I think you should record the bass with more treble, cause in that way you`re using the whole spectrum of sounds of the instrument, then when you have it recorded you can Eq it or chop off the frecuencies you din`t want.


Cheers
Juan Pablo

[Tigerfolly]

Well . . . I made an mp3 of my playing. It sounds fine on my computer speakers at home (2.1 setup), my friends computer speakers (4.1 setup), my mom's speakers (two cheesy speakers that came with her computer), but it has some serious problems on the extremely cheesy speakers at my office.

I can hardly hear the bass or the drums. I recorded the bass by pluging in my Fender P-bass and going at it. I recorded the piano from the mix out's of my K2500XS and the drum track I sequenced. I used some compression on the bass & piano tracks. Without the bass & drums, I don't like the way it sounds. Is there a way that I can be assured that it will sound decent out of just about any speaker?

I'm in the process of putting together some samples I can use to promote myself. This is my first time I've ever recorded my playing and I'm going to redo this (this is my first run at it), but here's a link to the song:

http://www.johnolin.com/music/samples/bluebosa.mp3

The comping is choppy, rushed at moments, and the solo could use a little bit more melodic direction. I'm more concerned, at the moment, with getting my mix to come out Ok regardless of the listeners speakers.

Finally! Someone asking something about bass! As a bass player of 16 years, I rarely get asked anything about the instrument or recording it.. it's always drums, guitars, and vocals, and live keyboards. Or computer stuff, of course.

First off, good bass track. Good melodic choices, good phrasing, and good timing. The track pushed the groove forward and kept the song interesting. I personally thought the tone was perfect for the track, although you definitely will have problems getting it perfect for every listening application, just because of it's tonal content. My desktop has a 4.1 CAW speaker system, and my subwoofer really dishes it out.. I have to keep it turned down fairly low to accurately represent what is really there, but it brought the bass out -really- well in your track.

In my opinion, there are few things more useless than passive tone knobs, like the tone knob on your P-Bass. All they do is roll off the high end at a specific frequency, and that just destroys any chance of having any presence in a track. I prefer to EQ at the bass' preamp, or on the track itself.. I'm a big fan of capturing the raw sound of whatever it is I'm recording, and then only EQing it to shape where it's going to sit in the track. But in the case of this style, this particular tone, it works quite well.

So since you're happy with all the sounds on a good system, now master it and try to make it work for everyone. Mastering opens up a whole new can of worms, but essentially mastering is "putting the final touches on the piece". Some people will say you need incredible speakers, the perfect monitoring room, seventy Urei compressors, a Neve console to mix it.. yeah, if you're working with perfection, then you want the perfect setup to complete it. If you're working with a huge complex piece of music, then you're going to need a complex setup to tweak everything. But this song, like most of our songs, is simple and to the point. Three instruments, and they're not stepping all over each other's respective sonic space. Mastering is just as simple as a little overall track EQ, and some compression, and you just work with it until it sounds right.

I was bored, and looking for something to do, so I threw this together for ya. I didn't even break out the headphones, or really delve into this too deeply, because that's a 128k bitrate mp3, and those sound absolutely awful no matter what you do. They sound like an 8 track tape to me.

But here's a couple things I use for quick and dirty mastering. If I've got a demo of something, or I'm cleaning up a track for someone else or myself, this is what I'll use. The programs used are Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge 6.0, Waves LinMB (multiband) compressor, and Waves L2 compressor. First, let's see what we've got:

http://exit3.i-55.com/~tigerfolly/media/bluebosa.jpg

On the top, your song. On the bottom, a reference to a familiar track just for comparison. Normally what I do is find a track to use as a point of reference, to know exactly what direction I need to compress or EQ. In this case, I didn't have any piano comps over a deep latiny/bossa nova kinda groove, so I just grabbed a familiar song to the forum, Jordan Rudess' Interstices from Feeding the Wheel. I used that one, because I wanted something featuring the piano up front, that still had a lot of dynamics to it. Track volume is one of the first problems you run into, and one of the last ones you solve. But if I just throw this through a compressor and be done with it, the bass will get really loud and heavy, and will eat up some of the rest of the track's sonic bandwidth. To keep that from happening, I'll use a multiband compressor first, limit the dynamics just a bit, smooth out the bass, and hopefully end up with a track that I can just bring up to level, and be done with!

http://exit3.i-55.com/~tigerfolly/media/bluebosa2.jpg

This is the Waves LinMB, a multiband compressor. I tried to keep the pics small enough for the forum, but big enough to be seen and understood.. so hopefully you can see what I'm talking about here. At the bottom of the plugin are five vertical bands. The little arrows next to the bands show the compressor's threshold for that frequency. The only thing to really notice here is that the lowest frequencys' arrows are way down below the track meter, while the others are above it, or right on it.

http://exit3.i-55.com/~tigerfolly/media/bluebosa3.jpg

After the multiband is done, here's the plugin I use to "master" a song. The last thing I do is run the track through a compressor plugin like the Waves L2 to bring up the track volume, add a little compression if need be, and add that top end sheen. This plugin works really well to open up mixes that are too dark. I'm compressing at around 6.5db, and limiting my output at 0.2db.

http://exit3.i-55.com/~tigerfolly/media/bluebosa4.jpg

Notice the final track volume. A louder signal is the most important outcome, but we've also tamed the bass a bit, added a little compression on the top, and hopefully didn't screw anything up.

http://exit3.i-55.com/~tigerfolly/media/bluebosa.mp3

I usually convert mp3s as VBR mp3s, with a minimum bitrate of 128k, and a maximum of 256k. That's what this is here. Of course, it doesn't really matter in this case, because everything was started with a 128k bitrate mp3.

The bass is kind of loud and robust on my setup. If this was one of my projects, I'd save this as a mix, burn it to a cd, and play it everywhere I could. On every stereo, on every computer, in every car.. etc. I usually come up with a mix that I like, save it, and then continue fiddling a bit. I'm never happy with anything I do, so I'm always putzing around with it. I'll make a cd full of different mixes and listen to them all over the place, and mentally take notes to work on later.

This was a real quick and dirty approach to mastering, but in most cases, if you've done your job right as a tracking engineer and a mix engineer, you don't need to do too much on the mastering end of things. If this was a master recording for a release with some money and advertising behind it, you'd definitely want to go with a more professional approach and a more expensive and extensive setup. What matters to me is getting the final result sounding good, and there's quite a bit of trial and error involved. I'm working in the studio right now with some friends, and we're pretty much recording the entire catalog of this band I was in a couple years ago, because we just don't have good copies of the songs. After five or six studio albums that the band paid a lot of money for in professional studios, I demoed a song for them in their basement rehearsal studio a couple years back that blue all of the other songs away. Not because I'm that good, but because the other stuff was that bad. The engineers just threw mics up at their gear and didn't try and get the right tones for the track. The producers didn't even listen to the songs before he recorded them. The producers tried to cookie cutter a band that really doesn't fit in a cookie cutter, and the recordings suffered for it. I put a little time, effort, and common sense to work and the results were definitely rewarding. There's no wrong way to do it, you just keep working with it until it's the right way for you.

And finally, here's a PDF file I ran across a while ago on some website. It's actually a book that came with a TC Electronics processor, but it contains some great pearls of mastering wisdom in it.
http://exit3.i-55.com/~tigerfolly/media/Bob%20Katz%20-%20The%20Secret%20of%20the%20Mastering%20Engineer. pdf

Hope this helps!

Another excruciatingly long post by Tigerfolly

[Tigerfolly]

I applied some compression to the bass track after I recorded it. Should I be trying to run my bass through a compresor while I'm recording it? Does it make much difference if I do compression before or after recording?

I have a K2500XS with KDFX. When I'm recording live instruments should I be trying to run them through my Keyboard? Maybe I need some kind of affordable preamp with some effects built in? I have no idea. I'm really new to this recording stuff.

Just saw this and thought I'd reply to it real quick as well:

I wouldn't worry about effects. For recording, the best thing to do (in my humble opinion, of course) is run into a good tube preamp. Some of those have compression built in, but I rarely like to compress the input.. I like to record what I'm hearing and compress later, but compressing as you record definitely has it's advantages. This is more of a trial and error process though, as it doesn't work for every situation. I've got some pretty good bass gear, and one of the guys I'm working with is primarily a bassist as well and has some good gear as well, so I'd rather get the raw, natural signal, mistakes and noise be damned in some cases ;) With two good bass players and great gear, I'm actually hoping for "god to walk through the door" as Quincy Jones says.. in other words, leave room for magic to happen on the track. I like that :)

Here's a pic of all the guys involved in our tribute band project, and they're all involved somewhat in our recent recordings.. but I'm just throwing this up here to show that we'll all jamming around on basses! Three 4 strings (one tuned CGDA), two 5s (one tuned EADGC), and an 8 (tuned DADG, always!), and this still leaves a couple out. We're all bass nuts, and all of us can play bass fairly well.. and by that I mean -real- bass, not just guitar players noodling around an octave lower :) I'm the goof with the Steinberger.

http://www.holeintheplot.com/thefakething/fakeimages/showpics/mc1house1.jpg

Another excruciatingly long post by Tigerfolly

[lighthouse]

Which ne is the Steinberger? :oops: :twisted:



Juan Pablo

[Tigerfolly]

Which ne is the Steinberger? :oops: :twisted:



Juan Pablo

The little red one without a headstock.

[lighthouse]

oh...cool.....nice to meet you! haha

So much bass in a song must sound amazing!! do you have a sample we can listen to?

Juan Pablo

[Tigerfolly]

oh...cool.....nice to meet you! haha

So much bass in a song must sound amazing!! do you have a sample we can listen to?

Juan Pablo

I don't have anything where the basses are layered, but we're working on one that's going to have most of those basses in the track. It's a song called "The Villian", and only the guide bass and click are recorded right now. I have tracks of all of those basses individually, but nothing with more than one it at a time.

My little demo page is up at www.soundclick.com/tigerfolly. I have a few random tracks thrown up there, but there's nothing really finished there. I put that page together because I don't have hosting space for a ton of music, and I just wanted the space for sharing my stuff with friends. Unless you pay for it, the site doesn't allow you to put more than 128k bitrate mp3s up.. And my music is more of a hobby these days, so paying for a page very few people see doesn't make much sense.

But let's see.. basses on each song:

Songs with the 8 string:
TRO
College Rock
Soulvasq - Jezebel (Demo)
Soulvasq - Medicine Man (Demo)


Songs with the Steinberger:
Pi
Satch #7
TRO - (Demo)
College Rock - (Demo)
Pi (Demo)
Camera Three (Demo)
Upbeat (Demo)
Nastyfunk (Demo)
The Duel (Demo)
Rain (Demo)
Attrition (Demo)

Songs Mark played with the 5 string SG
Soulvasq - Aliens Ate My Buick (Demo)
Soulvasq - Two Dollar Bill


Songs Mark played with the '78 Kramer
Soulvasq - Territory
Soulvasq - Misery
Soulvasq - LMNOP

[John]

Thanks for all the suggestions and the rework of my recording. I think in the future I'll try recording the bass with more treble and then EQing it and adding a little compression post recording.

Thanks again, John O.