Second Home by the Sea (Genesis cover) and Dreams (Van Halen cover)

[finotti]

It had been a long, long time since I recorded anything, and since I ran out of originals, I decided to do a few covers (until I get the courage to try to write something new).

I recorded "Second Home by the Sea", by Genesis, and "Dreams", by Van Halen. I've heavily "cheated", though, as I used MIDI files I found online (although some parts were heavily modified).

The MIDI editing all done in Muse, recording and mixing in Ardour. Synths are all ZynAddSubFX, drums is DrumGizmo. I mostly used LSP, OvertoneDSP and u-he plugins. A lot more details can be found at Second Home by the Sea and Dreams entries in my website.

I am really not very good at mixing, so my apologies in advance. But any constructive criticism is very welcome!

[GMaq]

Hi finotti!

Uhm Bud,,, For you to drop a couple of tunes like this here and then say "I am really not very good at mixing" is like Einstein saying "Sorry I'm not so great at physics"... I only listened to SHBTS so far and it's mixed tremendously! Great work, great sounds and yes great mixing! I read up a bit on your gear at your website, some fun toys in there!!

[finotti]

Hi finotti!

Uhm Bud,,, For you to drop a couple of tunes like this here and then say "I am really not very good at mixing" is like Einstein saying "Sorry I'm not so great at physics"... I only listened to SHBTS so far and it's mixed tremendously! Great work, great sounds and yes great mixing! I read up a bit on your gear at your website, some fun toys in there!!

Thanks, GMaq! I really appreciate it!

I spend a lot of time in mixing, and spent countless hours reading about it, but it always seems to fall short somehow... I usually get a mix that I like in my headphones (I don't have real monitors), but usually when I listen to it somewhere else it always seems not that great. But, since I'm mostly the only one who listens to my recordings, that's OK.

[tavasti]

They both sound great!

[milo]

These are super solid recordings! I am impressed all around with your playing, sound engineering, mixing, etc. Very nice work!

[finotti]

Thanks @tavasti and @milo ! I really appreciate the encouragement! Maybe my headphone mixes do not translate as poorly as I assumed in other systems, which makes me very happy. Thanks again!

[Rainmak3r]

Wow, the "Dreams" cover is amazing! Great technique and the guitar sounds are incredible, are you using Guitarix/Rakarrack or something else? Out of curiosity, which drumkit are you using in DrumGizmo?

[finotti]

Wow, the "Dreams" cover is amazing! Great technique and the guitar sounds are incredible,

Thank you very much!

are you using Guitarix/Rakarrack or something else?

It's a real amp, a Mesa Boogie DC-3. It has a direct out and I'm using a Celestion IR for speaker simulation.

Out of curiosity, which drumkit are you using in DrumGizmo?

Crocell Kit.

Thanks for taking the time to listen!

[folderol]

Enjoyed both of these, but 'Dreams' is my preference. I'm by no means a mix engineer, but nevertheless everything sounded just fine to me.

[finotti]

Enjoyed both of these, but 'Dreams' is my preference. I'm by no means a mix engineer, but nevertheless everything sounded just fine to me.

Thanks, @folderol, I appreciate your feedback!

[Rainmak3r]

Out of curiosity, which drumkit are you using in DrumGizmo?

Crocell Kit.

Thanks for taking the time to listen!

@finotti is there any chance you can share your Crocell Kit template for Ardour, and/or Hydrogen if that's what you used to script the patterns? I've heard good things about the kit (and at 5.5gb size samples must be impressive!), but on the drumgizmo website the only thing you can find are Reaper templates. For most of the other kits (like the Muldjord kit I've used so far) I managed to find templates for both Ardoud and Hydrogen, which made them much easier to test, but for some reason I never managed to find any for Crocell. Preparing them myself from scratch seems like a daunting task that I don't think I'm ready for yet...

[finotti]

@Rainmak3r: I don't really have a template, although I should have.... I just tried to make one for you, but hit some snags... I will try again later, if I can.

[finotti]

@Rainmak3r : Try the attached file. (Untar it first. You might also need to change ownership...)

You might have an error with the DrumGizmo plugin not finding the CrocellKit, but after you load the kit, I think it should work.

[Rainmak3r]

@Rainmak3r : Try the attached file. (Untar it first. You might also need to change ownership...)

You might have an error with the DrumGizmo plugin not finding the CrocellKit, but after you load the kit, I think it should work.

Thanks, this is really appreciated! I know what I'll play with this weekend

[Rainmak3r]

D'oh, it looks like it's an Ardour 6 session, and I'm still on 5, so I can't use it... Tried "hacking" the .ardour file to make it think it's an Ardour5 session, but that obviously crashed the whole thing. I'll have to keep digging to find another solution, thanks anyway!