I'd pick the hotel for sure. I don't trust those japanese doctors one bit!
Nice tune for a weekend quicky!
Nice stuff. I would love if there was a second guitar though, at least on the studio recording. It could really spice up the long stretches to add some excitement to the overall sound. I think that's important especially for your type of growling vocals which only provide a rhythmic and not melodic component to the music.
H4n you can use as an interface with your computer, tascam you can't but tascam has switchable line level input... So if you want to record keyboards and stuff tascam might be better option.
Decide on a monitor mix that works for you/your band if you're in one and maintain it for further shows so you can hear what you want to hear clearly on stage. Discuss with engineer to set it up. A set of in-ears can be good for larger gigs and venues and if you really want an isolated monitor mix.
Try installing an audio recorder app on your phone. Hum/sing some tunes that come to mind, often vocal tunes are easier to make up than on a different instrument, record them and see what you can come up with.
If you're looking for DI, go for passive if used with active source, instruments like keyboards, active>passive DI. Same for opposite if using passive source, example an electric guitar with passive pickups, opt for active DI, passive>active DI. Though with acoustics it's common to use active DI. Below are some I recommend ranging from higher quality/more expensive to cheaper/still good:
Honestly saturation plugs are your friend to enhance harmonics, comp and eq to manage dynamics and some tone, with separate fx sends of plate reverb alongside short and long delays. Parallel processing can do some pretty cool things too. No plugin is a magic fix/jazz it tool.
I'll give it a look, thanks! I found a comment today that said "if you're using a lot of EQ, you might not have compressed it enough" so I'm gonna crank the compressors on my vocal tracks a bit more and see how that treats them. Tempted to copy them, pitch shift, and then hard pan left/right with a big reduction in volume for a cheap way to increase thickness.
You shouldn't have to compress it a lot though, compression is a tool to tame the peaks in the dynamic range a bit otherwise a vocal performance can sound unexciting, however there's no wrong way to do it if you want to give that effect of over compressed vocals then no wrong in doing that either as its taste and the creative goal.
Huh. For screams everyone on youtube seems to say I need to compress the shit out of them, which I have no problems doing. My performance isn't exactly amazing which is why I'm looking for all of these helpful plugins. I'm def a studio man.
There's compress the s*** out of vocals or there's other techniques you can use, like dual compressors eg. VCA/Opto into a FET with each comp doing a different job, to control levels and then peaks, or do some parallel comp and be a bit more aggressive.
That's one I've seen people use, I think. I did end up downloading a free saturation plugin called Temper that's doing a nice job of adding some size to my voice without a lot of effort. I do think a big part of it is just trying to balance out the 300hz range. Well that and I was maybe overcompressing in a few places and just muddying things up.
Try bell cutting 500Hz ish mild Q on your drum bus by a couple of dB combined with a high shelf boost on the drum bus in around 8-9kHz range by a couple of dB also to free up some of that mid muddyness on the drums.
