Back in February, I participated in the RPM Challenge and wrote and recorded my very first album of music. You can find copies of my original stuff at this link.
I sent a copy of my album to my older brother, who is more of a musician than I am. At the very least, he’s much more technical and hi-fi, which probably partly explains why I ended up so lo-fi. He had some fun and remixed a few of the songs. They’re much cleaner, although it makes me want to go back and re-sing everything more than the one time I did it before. I’ve included links to them here – probably not of any general interest to anyone.
Also, here’s what the J-Dog himself says about what he did to my tracks:
Well, I did many things. Here’s a breakdown.
Noise reduction: Used on all percussion parts.
Gating: Used on all percussion parts, also mainly to help with the noise.
EQ: For the percussion tracks, mainly only high-pass filtering at a frequency selected for each instrument to get rid of low frequencies that weren’t adding anything to the mix and tended to get in the way of the bass drum and low end of the guitar and vocals. However, a very large high-frequency boost on the bass drum to add snap so it could cut through the mix better. For the guitar and vocals, moderate midrange cut and high-end boost to compensate for the midrangey tone of the SM57 and to add clarity. I’d say the guitar and vocal EQs were the changes that impacted the overall sound most.
Compression: Used on all tracks as needed to make the dynamics more consistent and punchy. Milder compression on the percussion and guitar, a fair amount of compression on the vocal to put it more “in your face” and to bring out the lower level details. Light compression on the mix bus to add a bit of density and “gel” the mix. Light peak limiting on the mix bus to increase the overall level, but not enough to have audible artifacts.
Chorus: Light chorus (actually micro-pitch shifts) on the guitar to add width and fullness.
Reverb: Light reverb on all tracks – somewhat different reverbs for percussion, guitars, and vocals to compliment them. Reverb is the only actual effect on the vocals. I’d say its level was on the lighter side of moderate except during the chorus of “Little Belle”, where I added a bit more and lengthened the decay.
I also automated the faders in some places, mainly on the guitar and vocal tracks, to achieve what I thought were the most natural-sounding dynamics as the songs progressed through the parts (verse, chorus).