I have been working with Cubase for a few years now and trying to improve my mixing skills. The early versions of the songs I put together do sound quite horrendous now. Having said that, I still think that I have still a lot to learn and a lot of areas where to improve.
So, how do you find this little guitar piece?
Very nice! I like the 7/8 start and the tones of the guitars are excellent. Nice solo.
Steve.
Really like what’s goin on here…love the guitar playing but sometimes you’ve got 2 axes fighting for space and it would be much more interesting if the drums and the guitar/guitars met on at least some of the the accents, would give it more punch I think, the drums seem to ploughing through the mix bonham style but without that one overhead in an ambient room sound…all in all though an interesting live mix kinda sound…well done…but onwards and upwards to a better mix, cheers, Kevin
I’d pretty much agree with Shadowfax. Very good clear sound basically for the mix. Seemed like you were trying to turn it around at 1:17 and there was a collision of the parts (maybe drum fill) mix issues and then a flute or keyboard fill. Did I hear correctly? When the solo comes in at the end , its volume is basically the same as the verse lines have been… like theres no where to go in order to stand out
On the way to something really good here.
Thanks for all the comments so far. I agree that there are quite many things happening at the same time at places and this has given me some problems also in the mixing phase (not only in this tune but others too). Somehow this seems to be the way these tunes turn out for me but as Mr M puts it there is danger that dynamics get too flat when there is a lot of stuff. Maybe I should try some more minimalistic approaches too or create more variation between the parts.
The part around 1:17 I added just for the heck of it and to add a bit of surprise, but it may be that it is a bit too disconnected and rhythmically not working as good as it could. The fill after the break is a kind of a keyboard fill - I am not much of keyboard player, so sometimes I do keyboard parts by turning guitar parts into midi. This specific part was something totally different on guitar but the midi interpretation failed quite badly. Somehow I liked where the midi part was going though. I then edited the midi a bit to get it going where I thought it should and ended up with this a bit nonsensical keyboard part 
You’ve got a good guitar thing goin on from the outset, so you should take the Jeff Beck approach…don’t do anything to mess the guitar up…that’s the main part so everything else needs to fit around it…make sure no frequencies of other instruments are messin with the guitar, position them carefully in the stereo field, good luck…Kevin
If you want to check out some of the other songs I’ve put together, they are available via my website too. I don’t consider myself really as a singer but I will have try to cope with what I’ve got. The songs lyrics are in Finnish which makes them still a bit more challenging to listen to. But if you have some feedback on the mixes on general apart from my singing skills that would be welcome.
Had a listen, your clearly a very good guitarist and all the songs have a good sound in general…main problem is there are lots of timing issues on all the tracks, least were on “Joki” which I thought was a particularly nice track and sometimes your lead guitar comes in way too loud…but it sounds great, would just be better if it fitted the mix more precisely. this is good stuff but if you tighten your mixes…your gonna be kickin some ass !!!best to you, Kevin
About timing issues: could you reflect a bit more on these with a few examples so that I could address them. I have been working on the tunes for a good while now and have maybe become immune for many issues.
that’s a bit difficult, I would say you just need to tighten up…the riff your playing on the track you’ve posted is not in time with the drums, the riff should start on a bass drum hit and stay with the beat and frequently doesn’t…that’s it really, just concentrate on playing with the drum hits. you have an excellent guitar sound and it seems a pity to let timing spoil the track…good luck, Kevin
Ok, I think it is easy to get accustomed to one’s own mistakes/sloppy playing especially when you have been working for quite a while with the same material.
There is always some variation in the timing but if the timing is all over the place that is of course not a good thing.
On this track, I agree with what others have said. I like the guitar sound. Is that a strat? The only additional suggestion I’d make is in the 7/8 section, the guitar riff and the drum accents could maybe line up. Sounds like a 4/4 drum beat where the last was just cut off, but the guitar shifts the accent sort of halfway through the measure. I realize I’m not describing very well, but it’s what I’m hearing.
The guitar I am playing on most of my tracks is an ESP Telecaster from the 80s. There is photo of the guitar on my homepage (Rock Kokko & Kukot). The previous owner has modded the guitar a bit and added the Seymor Duncan mic in the middle. There is also an added switch which switches the middle mic to single coil set up. I also have a Yamaha SG2000 but for one reason or the other I have not been using this guitar very often on the recordings (at least so far).
I will need to see what I can do about the drums to get them better aligned with the guitar playing in this specific tune and also try to address other irritating inaccuracies to the extent I manage to spot them.