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duncann
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Hiya all,

 

I'm not much of a poster here (I spend too much time tweaking and composing), but I do read this forum quite frequently. I've picked up quite a lot of useful info from a lot of people here so I have to thank everyone for that.

 

I've been working on a four song EP, Existence, and recently finished the first song, Gravidity. I'd be grateful to anyone who cares to take a listen and offer some words of wisdom, damnation, praise, it sucks, it doesn't suck, words that make me think 'uh oh, that was stupid', or anything else that might have fleeted past my measly brain.

 

http://mikestack.bandcamp.com/

 

The song was done entirely on an HD500 (well, the guitar parts anyway), with an Ibanez JEM 7vwh and an Ibanez SR305.

 

This song no longer exists. I've trashed it. Tried multiple times to do something with it and failed. Oh well. It was a learning experience in a lot of ways. I did save the intro to it which eventually became Ekpyrosis.

 

Here are the HD500 presets I've made.

gravidity.zip

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Very Steve Vai like.  My only suggestion would be to shorten up the intro and maybe the solos a little.  I thought the solo was great but when you listen to some of Vai's music, he sometimes doesn't take them out for too long before going into a differant section of the song.  Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm only trying to be constructive.  Your guitar work is excellant.  Your tones were excellant too.  I noticed on your solo patch that you didn't have any AMP model.  Is that correct ?

 

btw - I could only listen to the first song.  I didn't have access to the others.

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Could only listen to 1st track - others aren't accessible - but it's brilliant!

Thanks for the kind words. I'm getting a little ahead of myself as only the one track is finished. I'm currently working on Radiative Embrace.

 

 

very nice work bro...  I would have liked the bass parts to be a little fatter but really nice work...

Thanks. You would have to mention the bass track.  :lol: I had a damn hard time with that. The HD500 doesn't really seem to like a bass guitar very much. By fatter, do you mean more mids, bass, or both? When I made the preset (in fact all the presets), I did it on a pair of Sony MDR-V6's. Then I listened to it within the mix on some Polk Audio studio monitor 30 series II hooked to a Yamaha receiver with the tone circuitry bypassed. Then tweaked, listened, tweaked, etc. Kind of inefficient, but it's what I have to work with. What kind of speakers/system did you use to listen?

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Very Steve Vai like.  My only suggestion would be to shorten up the intro and maybe the solos a little.  I thought the solo was great but when you listen to some of Vai's music, he sometimes doesn't take them out for too long before going into a differant section of the song.  Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm only trying to be constructive.  Your guitar work is excellant.  Your tones were excellant too.  I noticed on your solo patch that you didn't have any AMP model.  Is that correct ?

 

btw - I could only listen to the first song.  I didn't have access to the others.

I appreciate the criticism, it's exactly what I'm looking for. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't influenced by Steve Vai, but having said that, I'm not trying to emulate him either as far as song structure goes. That part comes more from (unconsciously, I think) years of listening to Bach, Vivaldi, Albinoni, etc.

 

There should be an amp model for all the patches. The solo in particular should use the Solo-100 Overdrive. Which HD do you have?

 

The other three songs aren't written yet. I'm currently working on Radiative Embrace.

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not sure how to describe it but it was a little thin to my ears through my Infinity Reference speakers.  I am not a bass player so can't really tell you how to get there but probably within the DAW, not the POD.    How did you do the drums??

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I used the PODHD500 Editor to bring up your settings.  It showed something confirgured for a Variax guitar and no amp model for the Solo patch.

 

I wouldn't want to see you emulate Steve Vai's song structure.  I was just using him as an example of the suggestions I made.  Sometimes shorter solos and more song structure variations can have a more dramatic effect. 

 

Great job though...

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not sure how to describe it but it was a little thin to my ears through my Infinity Reference speakers.  I am not a bass player so can't really tell you how to get there but probably within the DAW, not the POD.    How did you do the drums??

I think you're right. After working a little on the second song, I ended up boosting the mids, added a little more high end, and increased the bias excursion. All this made it sound fatter, like you said. It also added a bit more hard edged definition. Thanks for that.

 

I used One Small Clue's Poise with the samples that were free from many places on the internet.

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I used the PODHD500 Editor to bring up your settings.  It showed something confirgured for a Variax guitar and no amp model for the Solo patch.

 

I wouldn't want to see you emulate Steve Vai's song structure.  I was just using him as an example of the suggestions I made.  Sometimes shorter solos and more song structure variations can have a more dramatic effect. 

 

Great job though...

What version of the Editor are you using? Is it a version prior to the HD500 2.0 firmware? If so, that could be why because that's when that amp was made available in the HD500. I don't own a Variax so I totally ignore those settings.

 

I think I get what you're saying about the song structure. Not every part of the song has to be an intense, hard to play passage? Increase the contrast a little, or maybe even a lot? If that's close, I guess I have a serious decision to make about this song because that would be a major revision. At the least, I'm going to take your advice (thanks so much, exactly what I was looking for!) moving forward.

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very nice work bro...  I would have liked the bass parts to be a little fatter but really nice work...

After pointing this out to me and trying to hear what you might hear, I have an idea of what you mean. I think it's improved at least slightly, thanks to you. Part of it was the stereo separation, way too much, made it sound thin (not fat, not well enough defined). Added a little eq also. At first I tried changing the HD500 preset but quickly got frustrated, so just did it in the DAW. Let me know if you think it's improved at all, if you have time.

 

If anyone viewing this thread wants a copy of this song, just send me an email ( duncann @ petml . com ), or use the email on the website, and I'll give you a download code. And if it's useful to anyone, the download also comes with the backing track.

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I hope I'm able to convey this well.  First of all let me say the playing was great and impressive.  The song itself has some issues I think.  Mainly it sounds like an 8 minute 39 second blaze fest over essentially the same chord changes over and over again using the same scale.  Now I like to blaze around on the fret board just as much as anyone if not too much.  I used to practice by turning on the radio and improvising to whatever came up.  Fun to play but boring to listen to.  I've played recordings like this for other "normal" people (if ya know what I mean) and they're pretty much bored with them after about 2 minutes if not less.  Again I like and appreciate the skill it takes to do what you did but as far as a pleasurable listening experience for anyone other than a guitar player or your self, then it is lacking.  There is no discernable melody to it to anchor the listener.  And, as I implied before, there is no discernable difference with the chord change throughout the whole song.  Just a bunch of lick playin', riff blazing, technique showcasing notes.  I'm not trying to be mean here and again, I am just as guilty of this.  I hope you take this in the spirit it is given.

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I hope I'm able to convey this well.  First of all let me say the playing was great and impressive.  The song itself has some issues I think.  Mainly it sounds like an 8 minute 39 second blaze fest over essentially the same chord changes over and over again using the same scale.  Now I like to blaze around on the fret board just as much as anyone if not too much.  I used to practice by turning on the radio and improvising to whatever came up.  Fun to play but boring to listen to.  I've played recordings like this for other "normal" people (if ya know what I mean) and they're pretty much bored with them after about 2 minutes if not less.  Again I like and appreciate the skill it takes to do what you did but as far as a pleasurable listening experience for anyone other than a guitar player or your self, then it is lacking.  There is no discernable melody to it to anchor the listener.  And, as I implied before, there is no discernable difference with the chord change throughout the whole song.  Just a bunch of lick playin', riff blazing, technique showcasing notes.  I'm not trying to be mean here and again, I am just as guilty of this.  I hope you take this in the spirit it is given.

 

I think you've conveyed this very well. Exactly the kind of honest criticism I'm looking for. The type that helps improve a person's musical creativity at a fundamental level. It also exposes a person's (namely me) inexperience at this. This is my first real attempt at this after a two decade hiatus from anything musically creative.

 

I know what you mean by 'normal' people. In fact I've played this piece for some 'normal' people, family members who I'm not really close to and some who I am, and both had the odd reaction of it sounding like background music for a movie. I'm sure you can guess how trying to get honest opinions from family members goes though. Certainly nothing close to as what you've given me.

 

I will absolutely take your advice to heart going forward and perhaps even come back to this song in the near future. I'm slowly learning that setting aside something for an extended period reveals things that otherwise would have been invisible.

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I too was tempted to give my opinion, but I was afraid of being possibly misunderstood ..

but seeing that you've had a good reaction to the excellent commentary of brue58ski, I write something too ..

 

what I wanted to say is that you have undoubtedly an excellent technique especially with regard to the precision and tireless speed .. and this is the main aspect that is highlighted by listening to the song that you have brought to our attention ..

 

There are many interesting melodic and compositional ideas, but there's too much stuff all at once .. and many of these individual ideas are not enough valorized..

 

for my personal tastes, there is also too much use of the tremolo arm, it's everywhere, IMO it would be much more dramatic if there was less ..

 

time ago by participating in jazz improvisation/composition seminars one of the best ever advice they have been given to participants was:

"do not put too many ideas and licks that you know in your improvisations

uses less ideas, but develop them more"

 

this helps a lot to make sense of what you play like you're telling a story, and much more easily captures the attention of the listeners, and also yours

 

 

still in the seminars to some people were told: "with all the single ideas that you put in your improvisation/composition you could have done 10 or more different good songs/improvisations, but it is too much stuff for a single tune"..

 

if a listener receives too many inputs per unit of time and for too long, he quickly loses interest and concentration ..

 

imagine someone who says a lot of really interesting things but at the speed of light for 10 minutes non-stop .. how would you react? ..

 

I conclude my comment with 3 words that I always find very useful: less is more

 

More excellent advice. Awesome! I really do have to learn some restraint, which may not be that easy for me. Part of it might be my personality type, which is when I look at ideas that are abstract in nature (I think music falls in this category), I want to rip that idea apart to see the entire composition of that idea, including the many varied and dynamic connections underlying it. So when I encounter an idea that's seemingly absent of these traits or contains hardly anything more than what you see at its face value, I become confused and/or frustrated when I think, that's all there is? Maybe some of that franticness came across in this composition. But that's not to say that a seemingly simple idea can't also be complex. Thus, at least for me, the idea of less is more is probably easier said than done.

 

I also realize that the advice I'm getting is from other musicians, which probably has an influence on the nature of the advice given. You most likely hear something completely different than someone who is ambivalent/a casual listener about music, resulting in an avoidance of information overload? Or maybe not? It would be impossible for you to hear the music as that other person does. Just like I haven't the slightest idea how other people hear this song because I've heard it so many times, and know each and every part of it, and the connection of those part to each other, intimately. In other words, it's impossible for me to hear the song for the 'first time'. The theme of the song, the force of gravity, also has influence on the shape of the song.

 

Anyway, I think I'm babbling a bit here...

 

I agree about the tremolo arm use. I've lost count of the number of strings I broke because of that. But that's this song and it was a conscious choice on my part. The next song won't have nearly as much.

 

Thanks again for the wonderful advice, gives me a lot to think about.

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