u/tonetonitony

I live in a studio and I don't have room for a lot of the homemade sound booth setups I've seen. But I'm wondering, if I set up a mic on my desk, put a reflector shield behind it, then put like a comforter over that and myself, would I have a good sound booth? It seems like a decent way to go, but I'm not sure if there are issues that I haven't thought of.

I get really obsessed with making music. Often I'll tell myself that I need a break and make the decision to take a day off, but I always feel this strong pull to just keep working. I always hear advice about how breaks are necessary, but I feel like if I have the motivation and energy to work, why wouldn't I?

Wondering what to do here. I'd really like some high octaves but they just sound silly when I try to sing them in falsetto. Do I have any other options aside from synth vocals?

I have a song where the first verse is mainly a vocal, a guitar, and some subtle ambient stuff. I’m happy with the arrangement, but I really want to add more substance to the vocal if that makes sense. It feels a little too sparse as it is. I feel like there’s probably something involving reverb and delay that would help, but I’m open to any ideas.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the second chorus of a song I’m working on more interesting. Do you have any go to tricks you use for your second chorus?

So, I know the importance of using reference tracks. But now that I'm really starting to dive in and learn how to shape sounds, I'm wondering, would you say getting a tool like MetricAB should be a priority? Or would you say it'd be better to just compare the sounds only by ear at the moment?

I downloaded Waves Harmony and the presets in it have been really helpful. It's really helping me see what options I have to make the vocals really stand out. Are there any other plug-ins you'd recommend that also have great presets?

Is it possible to split up the harmonies in a song with a stem splitter? I have Logic, but it only gives you the option of splitting up the vocals as one track.

I'm putting together some rock songs that I wrote on guitar. My punk rock roots tell me to keep it classic, with the standard guitar, bass, vox, and drums lineup, and to get a live sound. But I just finished watching Mark Ronson's masterclass where he mentions how Amy Winehouse's album showed him how modernizing the sound and keeping it from sounding too vintage made it more potent. Of course it's subjective, but I'm looking for ideas that just might make my music more interesting. Do you have any techniques for modernizing your rock tracks?

I searched this sub for any recommendations and must’ve signed up for like 8 or 9 different email lists.

So let’s say a b-list or c-list band needs strings for a recording. Do they usually make room in the budget to hire live musicians, or are synth strings considered strong enough that they generally would use the money towards other necessities?

So I'm new to the Rocksmith CDLC camp. I signed up for Customforge, but it appears that there's no rating for the CDLC songs. I was hoping there'd be a source where people rate the song's accuracy, similar to what Ultimate Guitar does for it's guitar tabs. Is there?

Any recommendations for a MIDI keyboard with great feeling keys?

I’m learning some mix ideas from a book called “Mixing Heavy Music”. He mentions something that I don’t understand:

“When it comes to FX, keep your main guitars dry. Lead guitars can benefit from some subtle

harmonization to widen them in the mix. I usually pan leads and solos dead center, but use a

harmonizer plugin to add just a touch of left and right energy.”

What does that mean exactly? How does a harmonizer add left and right energy?

Do you usually match levels for a comped vocal manually? Or do you find just adding compression later to be “good enough”?

So I think I followed all the steps for using my MIDI keyboard with Waves Harmony, but I still can't get it to work. I added the software instrument track and it reads the keyboard. If I add the Waves Harmony plugin there or a software instrument, the keyboard registers just fine. But, when I try to add Harmony to the Audio FX and then side chain that to the other audio track, Harmony doesn't read any input from the MIDI keyboard. Am I doing something wrong?

I had my bass set up and I only played it for a few seconds when I picked it up. When I brought it home I realized there was a lot of fret buzz. I know some people actually like a bit of growl, but I've never had my bass set up that way. But how much is too much? I'm thinking of bringing it back and asking to get rid of all the fret buzz because that's what I'm used to.