Review my mp3 please?

[Narayan Kersak]

What do you think about the quality of this recording. Thoughts on structure, chording, tune, quality etc are welcome.

http://www.healingeasy.com/Tunes.html

The guitar is tuned to DGDAEE...I can play it like a mandolin!

; )

[JoeGamble]

Sounds great to me! You did an excellent job lining up the two tracks ( I always have trouble with that ).

The only thing I could nit pick is the sixteenths get muted a little bit. But thats just me being over-critical!

Excellent job =)

[Narayan Kersak]

I see what you mean about the triplets. It's good you pointed that out. I usually play triplets like that just by pulling off of hammering on. Thanks! Now I can improve! See how great this board is? I've been playing mandolin with musicians for a long time and no one ever pointed that out to me!

Very nice indeed, and the quality of the recording is excellent. As JoeGamble pointed out, lining up tracks on recordings of plucked instruments is a tricky business. I spend more time clipping and nudging tracks than I do practicing. What kind of recording setup do you use?

The only criticism I have is that if you're going to take as many repeats as you do, it would be nice to hear some textural variety. For instance, it's very nice to hear the guitar occasionally doubling the mandolin melody an octave lower (in the B section). Perhaps it could be brought out more and more as the piece progresses - that would only be a matter of mixing. But it would also be nice to hear an occasional counter-melody from the guitar: just a few notes here and there that would allow the guitar to say, "hey, I'm not just a strumming slave here."

[Narayan Kersak]

I have a boss BR-864 8 track that I use. I run a cheap mic through a mic100 ultragain tube preamp...although I think for this recording I just ran the guitar (gibson CL-30) and the mandolin (Mowry flat top two point) straight from their pickups through the preamp with no mics. My goal was just to get the ideas down so the fiddle player (Mike Attfield) could learn it.

I also used a click track to make sure it all lined up appropriately.

[fwoompf]

Man this is really great!

One thing you might think about doing is mixing up the guitar part a bit. Crosspicking, more varied strumming, maybe not strumming all six strings at every point, playing the same chords in different places, etc...

Seriously though, awesome stuff!

[Narayan Kersak]

Mixing up the guitar would be good. It had been so long since I'd really played the guitar that I wasn't thinking too much about that part. Also, I went out and bought different guages of a single strings for the guitar so I could tune it to mandolin tuning. I also had originally some counter melodies I was playing along, but it is amazing how a 2.5 minute song can take hours to record!

Maybe I'll try to record it again sometime this week, taking into consideration all everyone has said. It would be nice if I could find a decent mic to borrow for the recording the K&K pickup does a good job recreating the sound, but I think a mic would be good to capture all the tonal acoustics of both instruments.

I might even try to get my fiddle player to join in. That would be fantastic, but might take a couple weeks before I can get together with him in that way.

[David Catalfamo]

Ryan , Nice pickin , enjoyed that. Also anyone out there in mandoland who needs to convert notation to tab Ryan is the man to do it. As you can see by his post it is very clear to understand and with the midi he provides with it makes it even easier. He's also a nice guy who goes out of his way to help others! Thanks Ryan.

[Santiago]

Hey, nice job on this! Enjoyed it. Learning a lot from the comments too. Thanks for doing this.:D

[Narayan Kersak]

The fiddler in the Irish group I play with has agreed to lend his strings and bow to assist in rerecording this and a few other songs. Watch for it in a couple of weeks! Also, any other ideas or comments about this tune will be taken into consideration.

What do you think a standard number of repeats should be? I can play the melody on the guitar and mando...he can play a melody and do some counter melodies. Thoughts?

[JoeGamble]

Listening to it again, my suggestion is to have your fiddler chop or do whatever harmony he has to do and at the end of the first go round ( that is to say, after you finish doing the repeat of the B part ) have him do a break. Afterwards go back into the A part skipping the 1st ending and taking the second right into the B part. Do the repeat on the second part and then you take a break on the mando ( or the guitar..or if you're really fiesty that day, split it into halves and do both!) and then finish through with the melody skipping the first ending thing again.

If you want some more length then you can run 'round the first ending and do it out longways =) Though for breaks I recommend doing the whole thing ( first and second endings and also the repeat of part B ).

Hopefully that wasn't all Greek to you! ( unless of course, you happen to speak Greek )

[Peter Hackman]

Sounds great to me! You did an excellent job lining up the two tracks ( I always have trouble with that ).

The only thing I could nit pick is the sixteenths get muted a little bit. But thats just me being over-critical!

Excellent job =)

I agree about the sixteenths. I think it would be very effective to have the mandolin repeat its part several times and let the guitar part develop
towards greater complexity all through the piece,

[mernst@cableone.net]

I hope to play like this soon....