[at_leo_87]

hey everybody!
we recently had a flamenco composition challenge. a cd was formed using all the entries. you can check it out here:
Various Artists | International Composition Challenge for Flamenco Guitar, 2010 | CD Baby

GJ, the mastermind behind this all, has given some instructions and notes:

HOW TO VOTE:
CDBaby will allow you to listen to 29 seconds of each track. You may vote simply by downloading the track of your choice, after listening to these short segments..
However, because this is a competition, we hope that you will download the entire album -which for the two (2) month voting period will be priced at only $4 (instead of $8.00). After you will have enjoyed all eight compositions, you can then cast your vote for your favorite track by downloading it (or more than one, if you so choose) from the single-track-roster (for $0.99). The three compositions receiving the highest number of downloads will be honored as 1st 2nd and 3rd place.

THANK YOU: for supporting this competition and the effort each one of the artists has made to participate in this challenge.

SPECIAL THANKS to: Simon Shearston and Ron Mitchell for managing and maintaining ForoFlamenco, Kevin O’Donnel for mastering the CD tracks, Kozz for the album graphic design and to the aficionados at ForoFlamenco for their advice, support and friendship.

[dillonpape]

Hey, man, this sounds good! I am about to download the album. I see that Jason McGuire is on it (which is a good sign), and from a little bit of reading on the ForoFlamenco forum, I see that you are as well. Just from the samples, yours actually sounds the best to me . I think I can cough up another buck to the $4 download to make a vote. Maybe I will join the forum soon as well. It looks quite extensive, although not quite as aesthetically pleasing as Falseta haha This project of y'all's is quite inspiring to me already. Great job. Keep it up, man!

[at_leo_87]

yes, i am on the cd as well, but dont let that influence your voting.
jason mcguire is a monster and somebody should have gave him some horse tranquilizers before he composed and recorded the piece to make it fair for everyone else. lol.
andy (deteresa) from this forum is on there as well.

[dillonpape]

Of course not, but if yours is the best then yours is the best. haha but yeah, I was thinking that about Jason too as soon as I saw his name in the album notes down there. I mean, I'm sure that all of the rest of y'all are great guitarists as well, but Jason McGuire, man...he's legit, as a friend of mine would say haha.
Ah, apparently I have not yet had the pleasure of talking to him, but perhaps one day I will.
It seems so far that all of these songs have really pretty good production value. I mean they certainly don't sound like they were recorded on a phone or anything haha. I guess all of y'all are pretty experienced, long-time musicians, so I guess it would be reasonable that y'all have acquired some pretty good software and whatnot over the years. I have Fruity Loops, but I unfortunately have not yet spent much time recording with it and my other software that I used for about one song (Music Creator, and the song was with electric guitar) doesn't work too well on my laptop, so I wouldn't really know whether or not it is even very hard to get such a good acoustic sound while recording. But whatever the case, the sound quality is great, especially for a compilation of disparate musicians from across the world and basically put together in an online forum. I hope to major in sound engineering in college in order to be a music producer as a career, so I would be interested in knowing what kind of software/hardware you used or any other types of advice/etc. that you could give to me as far as the recording, mixing, etc. process goes? Not only to get a headstart on necessary knowledge for my major, but also to assist once I get back into really spending a lot of time writing, and thus recording, songs.

[at_leo_87]

well i've only been listening to flamenco for almost 2 years and playing for 1.5. so im the newbie of the bunch. the other players have much better technique, as you can clearly hear.

regarding software, i recorded mine with adobe audition 3. fruity loops is more for creating electronica type music, imo.
the final mixing was done with pro tools.

i used a cheap behringer preamp with mxl 991 condensor and an audiotechnica clip on mic. not the best equipment.

recording music is really fun. i'm in granada at the moment and been hanging out with a producer/sound engineer here. he seems to have a very enjoyable life, so maybe this could be the path for you.

[dillonpape]

haha high five for being the newbie and still getting yourself out there! Just purely from your prominence on even this forum alone, I got the impression that you had been around and about being masterful for a while haha.

Yeah, Fruity Loops does conduce best to repeated loops, especially of electronic nature, and I have made a good amount of material of that description. But 1) my friend told me how to download it free 2) it actually works marvelously on my laptop unlike Music Creator (which would play everything that I played, except twice) and 3) the audio recording on it seems to be quite simple and intuitive, although perhaps not as in-depth as other softwares as far as what to do with it afterwards, but that is yet to be seen. Apparently I got myself into a band recently and just today I jammed with the other guitarist for the first time since joining the band. We started working on a song, so perhaps soon I will see what Fruity Loops can do.

As far as preamp and mic clips and that stuff...I havn't figured that stuff out yet. I don't even know what a preamp is, even though I have heard the term many, many times. Laptop microphone for me

Yeah, I love messing around with this software (especially Music Creator when it actually worked because I was using it on a desktop) even though I don't completely understand it all yet, not nearly. But I teach myself little by little and it feels great. Man, Spain and being a producer at once? Sounds like a pretty good life to me

[at_leo_87]

Originally Posted by dillonpape

As far as preamp and mic clips and that stuff...I havn't figured that stuff out yet. I don't even know what a preamp is, even though I have heard the term many, many times. Laptop microphone for me

preamps are used to basically turn the volume of microphones up to a usable level for recording. you definitely need a good preamp. for condensor mics, you need phantom power in order to use them. a lot of preamps will have phantom power. you dont need phantom power for dynamic mics but you need a preamp anyways to control the gain and levels.

i was using a computer mic a few months ago as well.

[dillonpape]

Condensor/dynamic mics?

Phantom power??

haha hope you don't mind handling my questions even though i could be researching it on my own I prefer information from a more personal source it it all possible. Somehow a lot of times it is easier to remember that way...

But the preamp part makes sense. Normally for singing into mics, one is supposed to get real up close to the mic, right? Since the guitar cannot get that close (at least while your hand is in the way, and especially with all the hand movement involved with flamenco), preamp makes up for the distance. Is my logic correct? Or is there a different reason why preamps are necessary? I was recording a little bit yesterday, and I found that I actually needed to turn down the master volume in Fruity Loops to around 80% or less just recording the one guitar part to keep the "master peak meter" (apparently that is the name of it; I just checked) from going into the red and causing crackles from volume level override. I was strumming rather hard and was pretty close to the laptop, but anyway, the point is that that seemed to be kind of opposite from the preamp scenario (where the mic volume needs to be increased rather than decreased). But I am assuming that laptop mics and actual recording mics are a little bit different haha...

[Payul]

WoW!

You guys did a wonderfull job! It is not easy to get all the recordings from all over the world and make it in one cd.
Very high level of playing too.

Payul

[at_leo_87]

dillonpape,
you sort of have the right idea. just think of the preamp as something to set the sensitivity of the mic. if you're going to get serious about recording, then you'll need a sound card specifically for recording as well. you can find some very nice external sound cards.

i won't be able to explain it all to you here, or maybe we should start another thread because it'll go on forever, lol. the best way, i think, is to go to your local library, get a bunch of books and prepare to have no life for a couple of days.

hey payul!
did you get the cd yet? i just got it last night and was able to listen to it only through my crappy laptop speakers, but yes, these guys are incredible! of course, there's some sound differences between each recording but overall, i think it worked out well.