NEW ALBUM TRAILER - "Scotch"

thomasross20

http://tommysixstring.com/album/

Vibetronic

that's great dude, love the riff that comes in at about 45s Definitely do a voice-over, cheesier the better

thomasross20

Thanks, @Vibetronic - appreciate it. 

thomasross20

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thomasross20

After initial disappointment that nobody but vibe listened (or commented) I've decided to just put this back up. Support or not, I'm going to do this. I do try and listen and comment on other peoples' material but I guess some people like to post about themselves/their own work and not comment on others. Onward and upward, I wont let it stop me (doing my own thing and listening to yours)! As Freddie said, the show must go on.

not_the_dj

I'll make sure I have a listen later, soundcloud is a blocked site where I am at the moment   :x

thomasross20

Thank you, @not_the_dj - appreciate it (really!)

Moe_Zambeek

I had a listen earlier. Your playing is technically excellent, you can play rings around me.


From a musical PoV though, the teaser felt like 2 demos joined together - I wondered how the first section related musically to the second, and then after a while I wondered when the 'song' would start, in the sense of some form of melodic theme that would link everything together, in the way a vocal melody or other melodic hook might. Maybe the remainder of the track would answer that, of course.


I should add that generally I don't listen to a lot of instrumental shred stuff so I'm not the target audience!

thomasross20

Yes, another reply, at last, there is a God!!

I've definitely had varying views on the track. One other person said exactly what you did and felt the song started when the drums kicked in. I actually wrote it the way it sounds - it's meant to be this big into to the start of the album, then kicking into that more rocky section... and maybe add some voices at the start. It's not standard stuff so it's a bit of a musical risk. I fully get what you're saying and appreciate your comments! I've said to one other person that if I ever do a second album... I'm going to stick to more conventional writing styles. Others have said there's a lot going on, lots of licks and would like to hear slower and fewer guitar lines (something I'll do second time round) - it might sound like a cop-out but the theme for the album (genuinely) was that since there would be no main vocals (instrumental album!) I would do it differently and put in multiple harmonies, dual (and more) guitars and really knock you off your feet. I grant it might be a bit much but hopefully after listening to whole tracks all the way through it will all come together. I kept the technical stuff down a little and made sure to throw in lots of musical ideas (big influence being Slash - melody over fast noodling) so hopefully it all comes out in the end....

Much appreciated - will definitely follow these points for next time (if I'm not dead by the time I get through with this one!).

monquixote

It's not my kind of thing so I don't know if my opinion is all that valid, but for me there seems to be so many tracks of guitars all shredding away at the same time that I can't hear what's supposed to be going on and there doesn't seem to be any strong melodic element holding the track together.

thomasross20

Thanks, monquixote - maybe my tastes are just weird or this track is guff lol! Points noted. There are actually 5 out of 12 "normal" songs on the album - I've just got to get around to finishing them off. 

Maybe I'm involved too deep into it - I thought the n.o of guitars was ok - I don't think it's the sort of thing you can sit back and relax - I think it's almost like jazz where you have to focus on what's going on, but this time to more than one thing at a time - I've always loved that in similar sorts of tunes. 

I wonder what the more "shred" or "instrumental" listeners think. TBH I wouldn't have classed this as shred - I toned it down to the point were I thought I was below that line! Appreciate you commenting!!

monquixote

I wouldn't normally comment for the sake of being critical, but I saw that you were disappointed not to get many responses. 

I think one of the issues might be that all the guitars seem to have a very similar 80's shred sort of tone so perhaps if they varied a bit more it might be easier to pick out the individual parts.

thomasross20

I appreciate you taking the time comment - seriously. I can take criticism. Unfortunately this is so far ahead now I wont be making major changes (other than to drums or bass, but from comments it seems drums and bass are ok). Regarding tone, it's definitely another thing I'm aware of... largely high distortion bridge humbucker.... these days I'm veering more toward single coil sounds which really mellow things out, and less distortion. So... that will be for project two (maybe in a decade's time!). 

Many thanks!!

thomasross20

If anything, I'm learning lots by doing so much of this, and will get many lessons learned. I'm only 30 so there's time for more

Drew_TNBD

thomasross20;780072" said:

After initial disappointment that nobody but vibe listened (or commented) I've decided to just put this back up. Support or not, I'm going to do this. I do try and listen and comment on other peoples' material but I guess some people like to post about themselves/their own work and not comment on others. Onward and upward, I wont let it stop me (doing my own thing and listening to yours)! As Freddie said, the show must go on.

You can't force people to care dude.

GuitarAndy2

Hey Tigger, you can still definitely hear the old Vivify tracks thing of loads of ideas crammed into a small space with this snippet and that's not a bad thing. But finding ways to let each of those ideas breathe & be heard could do with some work. The sample from 1984 by comparison seems to have the elements far more balanced with room for everything.

It's difficult to tell if this also down to the bitrate of the stream, but all the instruments seem to be fighting for frequency space and both the bass & drums seem lacking in low end punch as a result. A high pass filter on the rhythm guitar parts around 150Hz & a little higher for the lead parts might be a good place to start to help the rhythm section get it's punch back. The only exception is the floor tom hits that overpower the rest of the kit, could do with dialling those back a touch. With the bass it might be worth finding out what kind of frequencies the part has it's it's midrange bite in & making a couple of 2-3dB cuts in the rhythm guitar there, to give the bass a bit more clarity with note definition.

I'd echo Mon's comments about the most of the guitars sounding perhaps too samey tonally. If it's too far along to change the amp tones so there's a greater variety of sounds for the ear to pick out melody lines, then there's still other ways to improve the separation without losing that feelings of all the parts washing over you.

One of the biggest things you could try would be programming some volume automation on the lead guitars much like you would with vocal melodies, pushing the fader up a touch to highlight a part and also pulling the volume back a touch on other tracks when they take less priority. More than 2-3 melodies fighting for attention as the primary part at any one time can been really fatiguing on the ears, so even little tweaks like that can make it much easier to hear things clearly.

Tried listening to Scotch both on headphones & regular monitors. It's kind of expected to be able to pick out parts easier on headphones, but the difference between the two was larger than I expected. The process highlighted you could be using a greater amount of the stereo field to give everything their own place, if you don't mind me asking how are the parts panned currently?

thomasross20

@Drew_fx, it was just a little disappointing. I listened to your clips and although it wasn't my bag, I at least took the time to do it. I do that for most peoples' stuff on here. There are a few who's stuff I've listened to and commented on and they said they'd do similar but never have. That, in particular, stinks and I think they know that I know who they are lol. It sucks but it's human nature. If you can't get comments on a guitarist's forum then it's like "bugger this, what's the point." Pretty poor. 

@GuitarAndy2 (Noodles???) - how's it going? Thanks for the comments. 1984 is definitely more of a breather. So when I say I lost the masters, what I mean is I have just the one audio file for that track - no separate tracks for guitars... tricky to work with. I don't know if there's much I can do with that. I could re-record those parts or maybe I can do some post-filtering to try and bring certain parts to the fore. Agree it sounds much better through headphones.. you think maybe too much panning is going on? I don't have the master to be able to tell you. That's one of the most helpful posts, lots of constructive criticism and suggestions for change. Will look into the floor tom and see what I can do without having to re-record the whole thing - loathe to do that but will see. I think one of the things I could do is put a HPF on at the start as the drone sounds pretty droney/overpowering at the start. 

- EDIT: had a quick play with filtering the master track and it definitely sounds better cutting out some of the low-end... on the monitor I was was using. Will play around with this when I have time.

DLM

Pleased you've put a proper title back on this thread, Tigger.

I still need to listen to your stuff on proper kit – I went through something you posted (dunno if it was what's in this thread) once on a Bluetooth speaker a few weeks back, but that's no good for music. Whatever it was I listened to, the clips were too short to see where the individual tracks were going.

thomasross20 said:

@GuitarAndy2 (Noodles???)

Pretty sure @GuitarAndy2 is not Noodles. Noodles is here: https://twitter.com/imakec02

GuitarAndy2

thomasross20;787490" said:

@GuitarAndy2 (Noodles???) - how's it going? Thanks for the comments. 1984 is definitely more of a breather. So when I say I lost the masters, what I mean is I have just the one audio file for that track - no separate tracks for guitars... tricky to work with. I don't know if there's much I can do with that. I could re-record those parts or maybe I can do some post-filtering to try and bring certain parts to the fore. Agree it sounds much better through headphones.. you think maybe too much panning is going on? I don't have the master to be able to tell you. That's one of the most helpful posts, lots of constructive criticism and suggestions for change. Will look into the floor tom and see what I can do without having to re-record the whole thing - loathe to do that but will see. I think one of the things I could do is put a HPF on at the start as the drone sounds pretty droney/overpowering at the start. 



- EDIT: had a quick play with filtering the master track and it definitely sounds better cutting out some of the low-end... on the monitor I was was using. Will play around with this when I have time.

Not Noodles, back in the Intermusic/Guitarist forum days before the crash I was just plain GuitarAndy, bought Jammy's fretless experiment off you if that jogs your memory at all? Only ever wrote & recorded one full song with it to date, but I'll probably get round to using it more eventually.

With the high pass filter, global changes might well help the mix overall but I was more specifically meaning just on the guitars to give the bass & kick drum space to punch through.

Not having separate audio stems for each guitar will make things rather tricky, but I actually meant you could be doing more with panning to separate things. If you've got two opposing lead guitar parts for example, having them panned 90-95% L&R makes it easier for listeners to choose which to focus on. Dead centre you'd want bass, bass drum & snare, plus any single lead melody (or to your ears the most important if you've got an odd number of lead parts simultaneously). If you double tracked the rhythm guitar then having those 30-40% L&R gives a bit of spread whilst preserving the stereo image. Everything else you spread around the stereo field to taste (programming automated panning is sometimes fun to add a little spice but can sound gimmicky if overused), but ideally you'd want to try & avoid having multiple elements occupying the same position so everything has a little room to breathe.

The drumkit sounded like it was left as default (EZdrummer?), which can sound impressive in isolation but might be too spread out within a dense instrumentation context like this. By that I mean it currently sounds like if this were a gig the drummer has his kit spread over the entire stage from one PA stack to the other, bringing it in a little might tighten things up & make it sound more cohesive.

Hate to sound negative, the intro might be workable making global tweaks; but if you want to make significant changes to improve the second half onwards it's probably going to be easier to re-record the parts.

thomasross20

No probs, DLM! Maybe I should lengthen the demos....

Ah, I remember - god that was so long ago!

OK I totally get you... 

I'm going to make adjustments with the existing track but if it still sounds pants I'll re-record - I'm assuming you're talking about the whole thing there and not just the intro. 

Drums all done in jamstix but no EQ or panning or anything applied to those as yet. 

This is the sort of feedback I like - good and constructive - thanks!

Drew_TNBD

thomasross20 said:

@Drew_fx, it was just a little disappointing. I listened to your clips and although it wasn't my bag, I at least took the time to do it. I do that for most peoples' stuff on here. There are a few who's stuff I've listened to and commented on and they said they'd do similar but never have. That, in particular, stinks and I think they know that I know who they are lol. It sucks but it's human nature. If you can't get comments on a guitarist's forum then it's like "bugger this, what's the point." Pretty poor.

The thing is dude, you're always going to be facing something like that; people not listening to your stuff. It's just the way of the world.

We got started in 2009, and spent years of people not really caring what we were doing. It was only since 2012 that people started to remotely care. I've been making music since I was 13, and the vast majority of that time nobody gave a shit about what I was creating.

We just have to learn to live with it. Do the thing... put it out there, and then forget about it and move onto the next thing. It's how all the best artists tend to operate. You can't be beholden to your feelings of inadequacy or disappointment. That's not going to help anyone.

----

I think this stuff has potential, but it doesn't quite sound finished to me. The production is a little ropey and flat, but I can forgive it for that and just listen to the musical ideas. I'm not hearing any "songs" as such... and I'm unsure whether that's just because this is a trailer or what.

Either that or I guess it's just not my cup of tea musically.