Progressive instrumental rock

[Ztla]

Hi, this is a kinda guitar-driven instrumental prog thingy that I've finally finished. I'd really appreciate it if you checked it out. All kinds of opinions and constructive criticism is welcome.

I recorded and mixed this in mixcraft though my friend mastered it (and he uses FL-studio). It features me playing the guitar and two of my friends playing bass and violin. Everything else I've programmed in mixcraft using mostly 3rd party plugins.

https://soundcloud.com/ztla/stw

[ZombiePennsylvania]

I don't think anyone could criticize this, its perfect. Amazing job!

[davefk]

Hi, this is a kinda guitar-driven instrumental prog thingy that I've finally finished. I'd really appreciate it if you checked it out. All kinds of opinions and constructive criticism is welcome.

I recorded and mixed this in mixcraft though my friend mastered it (and he uses FL-studio). It features me playing the guitar and two of my friends playing bass and violin. Everything else I've programmed in mixcraft using mostly 3rd party plugins.

https://soundcloud.com/ztla/stw

Fantastic! Loved all of it especially the parts where you brought the mood down. Amazing musicianship on all tracks but the bass, whoa, superb. The mixing was spot on.

[Ztla]

I don't think anyone could criticize this, its perfect. Amazing job!

Oh that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside thank you for the kind words!

Fantastic! Loved all of it especially the parts where you brought the mood down. Amazing musicianship on all tracks but the bass, whoa, superb. The mixing was spot on.

Thanks so much! I can confirm that the bass player is indeed awesome.

[morency]

Excellent work, I love the drums!

[M@rkus]

This is super! Really professional sounding! I like the mix, the balance, the stereo-guitars, the arrengements, the performance...everything! Did you do this by yourself?
I hear a little jazz, some celtic influences and Satriani of course. Is that a fretless bass? Sometimes it sounds like a Rickenbacker?
Ah, I see now that a couple of friends of yours added bass and violins, good job! You must concider yourself as professional/semi professional musicians for sure.

I also like the prog approach!

In my ears this is perfect, I wouldn´t change anything! Good job!

[Ztla]

This is super! Really professional sounding! I like the mix, the balance, the stereo-guitars, the arrengements, the performance...everything! Did you do this by yourself?
I hear a little jazz, some celtic influences and Satriani of course. Is that a fretless bass? Sometimes it sounds like a Rickenbacker?
Ah, I see now that a couple of friends of yours added bass and violins, good job! You must concider yourself as professional/semi professional musicians for sure.

I also like the prog approach!

In my ears this is perfect, I wouldn´t change anything! Good job!

Thanks, really glad you liked it!

Yeah I did the composing, arrangements and mixing myself. My friends played the bass and violin and mastered the track.

This had been in my "work in progress" folder for quite a while because of many things such as the need for tracking bass and violin. But because of that I had lots of time to really think about the arrangements and layers. I think that helped me see the big picture instead of just a series of different parts.

I'm quite sure that the bass my friend (who is actually more of a guitarist) used is this: https://www.thomann.de/fi/harley_benton_hbb1975_na.htm I'd say it's good for the price though it might be that his specimen just happened to be above average. He did set it up properly of course. For the bass tone I used a compressor, eq, and the studio devil amp sim that came with mixcraft. That's about it, I think...

As for influences, I'd say the biggest influence for this track was Plini whose music I. Just. Love. Especially the pure awesomeness that is the End of Everything EP. Even though he makes instrumental guitar stuff that is often quite shreddy, there's always room for other instruments and clear melodies - and the shred isn't at all forced. I was kinda going for that sort of feeling while trying to bring my own kind of a twist to it.

I don't really consider myself as a professional musician yet since I haven't made any money from my music whatsoever but I am starting music studies in a vocational school this week so I hope to be one some day. I do try to be as professional as possible when composing though.

[Ztla]

Excellent work, I love the drums!

Thanks!

This is actually the first track I used superior drummer 2 on. I had no idea how to mix drums since I had only used plugins with preprocessed sounds (in my case the quite decent free MT Power drumkit 2) so the sounds here were done pretty much by trial and error.

I really tried to spend some time programming the drum parts in so that it would sound somewhat natural and that there would be some variation. The only thing that is kinda questionable is that a couple of parts are pretty much impossible to play without having an extra guy to hit the ride