New demo song titled No Grip

Acoustic Ep

My band playing a new song the other night, and messing around a little with an Eminem song.

Recently started working on a birthday present for my little brother. It's a single-player campaign with three maps, and to set the mood, I'm composing original music for it. You can find the playlist here. It'll be updated from time to time as I complete more songs.

The songs themselves aren't meant to have lots of drama associated with them, and are mostly designed to include minor cinematic cues for in-game cutscenes. Outside of that, the tracks should fit into the 'easy-listening' genre, as they're very much meant to be in the background as flavor pieces (and some of them are meant to loop as opposed to ending abruptly). You likely won't hear much storytelling in them as a result.

They'll fit much better when not listened to in isolation, but I still find them enjoyable to play while working on the project, so I figured I'd share them hear in case anyone else finds that they like them.

I remixed this earlier using samples I pulled out of a gamerip for Dante's Inferno. I recomposited them by hand piece by piece, alongside with a short loop I yanked from a Sawano track. Nothing spectacular, but it works for what I'll use it for.

https://fanburst.com/iskatumesk/sethis-combat-mix

I sing and play rythmic guitar.
Worked for restaurants and stuff.

A Wishful Night, a composition of mine (written in Spain, recorded in Morocco): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByuAc-A0vAGEZy03VUJrQm5vOHc/view

Hallelujah (cover): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByuAc-A0vAGEWFI2MFVCcXN5X3c/view

Stand By Me (cover, again Ilyass for the solos): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByuAc-A0vAGEZ2h2bExEYXFGY1k/view

"Ilyass Blues" (my moroccan friend Ilyass plays the solo while I do the rythmic guitar; everything improvised on the spot): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByuAc-A0vAGEbktNYVZaeWZhTmc/view
The recording's quality of this improvisation is slightly put off by the fact that the Bass Gain was too high, and that I was playing a Spanish Guitar in front of a mic, instead of a plugged in instrument. But we both nonetheless loved how it turned out so we kept it as it is.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 19 2017, 9:20 pm by payne.

I dunno what I was expecting, but I was actually pleasantly surprised. Sometimes it sounds like your voice is getting a bit scratchy in the first track - I dunno how to describe it but for me it's when I run out of breath (which happens quite a lot now that Pneumonia has destroyed one of my lungs). For the first piece, I might consider it a little repetitive, but I am not really a music critic so I can't really offer insight into why I feel that way. A little melodical exploration as the piece moves might help. Still, I like it.

The second track, sometimes you speak too loud for the mic or right into it and produce pops and crackles. It is actually possible to post-process out pops, but it can mangle the sound, so it's best not to go that route. If you'd like to try, use an FFT or frequency filter and try to cut around 110-140hz. A notch filter can also work since you can try to isolate the pop frequencies. You have a deep voice so it might cause distortion. Beyond that, I felt your singing was much stronger in this piece than the first. It sounds much more confident and the scratchiness is gone.

The bass gain is a little mangled in the third track, yeah. Overall I feel like the audio quality is significantly higher than the other tracks, though. This is amazingly good for improvising, I think it shows how much you two play together.

I think you could certainly benefit from having a dedicated high-quality recording mic. Unfortunately, while I know quite a lot about voice recording, I don't know anything about instruments. I use an AT2020 which you can get for USB probably around $100 American. It's pretty much the best USB mic you can get for VA and it will easily service a professional voice career. More importantly, your recording environment sounds clean in these recordings and that can be a pain in the ass to obtain. It keeps everything consistent for your voice and instrument.

That is great feedback, thank you!

Yeah, that first piece presented is more or less an unfinished work. I have more polished compositions, but I don't like them as much as this one, somehow. I just haven't put energy into trying to develop the chord diversity of it yet.
By "scratchy", you mean like when holding a note ends up sounding as if my voice was failing (inconstant)? It happens from either not putting enough pressure into the exhale, or simply tired vocal cords (I think).
I certainly love the lyrics I made for the song, and the bouncy "gypsy-ish" rhythm that comes with it. I started writing it when I was hitchhiking alone in the dark trying to get out of a small village in Spain, thinking about a girl I wish I was with at that time.
Also, this was literally my second take at recording the song itself, and I ended up improvising the very end (picking up speed, and bit of solo'ing with the fading out voice).

My Hallelujah cover is of much better quality because we had spent probably over an hour tweaking all the little things about the reverb, echo, gain, etc.
I also must have recorded it at least 4 times before finding it to be good enough to my like.
But most of all, I used to play that almost every single time I would go out and play at restaurants for half a year in Latin America, so I practiced it a lot and so my singing is much more correct.

When we recorded that bluesy jam, we probably had only jammed once or twice together, no more. But yeah, I am still surprised at how well that particular jam ended up turning out. I'm not sure if you noticed, however, but there are 2 two times in the song where I, playing the rhythmic guitar, screw up with the timing (though it subtle... I just kind of add an extra time signature due to getting lost into the act of trying to improvise a bit to make the rhythmic a varied since they are basically just 3 chords, with 1 transitional chord).

And I'm not sure you commented the proper song when you mentioned the "third track", since that would be the "Stand By Me" cover, and I think you're talking about the blues jam.
That SBM cover, we spent many hours perfecting it, and I re-recorded very many times the main backtrack of vocals+guitar before finally getting it done (having his family constantly knock at the door to inquire about random things, thus interrupting our session, definitely didn't help speeding up the process).

Oh, yeah, I got mixed up on the numbering. rip

The improv was with an inexperienced duo? Well, I did notice the timing went off a little bit here and there, but nothing compared to what amateur solos have been like that were sent to me in the past. It sounds like you have quite the history in music, though, so that experience probably lends well to doing things a bit out of the norm.

great tread, really need it