All our songs mixed and or recorded with av linux

[mrufino1]

www.shutterwax.com

Longest project ever...Sadly we are victims of too much other stuff going on in our lives, but as I got the news today that I will be unemployed as of Jan 1, maybe we'll finally finish!

Most was recorded on a korg hard disk recorder, but transferred into AV for overdubs and mixing. Some somgs started out long ago on reaper or even protools, though probably not much of those sessions still exist. OK, I lied, I just looked at the song list- Say When was done on an mbox, 2 channels at a time, about 4 years ago, but may get a re-record now and will fall into the korg/ AV linux mold.

All I really use is ardour, its standard plugins, and the linuxdsp plugins, mainly vc-1, mx dynamics and eq, his reverb, and the graph-eq (not graphic, the parametric that is a graph).

Opinions welcomed!

[rarup]

Hi mrufino1,
I love your songs. Reminds me a little bit on "The Church" "the blurred Crusade", espececially "Mediocre" (I mean this as a compliment).
May I give you some opinion / critics? I beg your pardon if I might sound rude or strange .. I have to use a dictionary to find the words I think I want to say  . And: I'm far from beeing a professional mixer or musician, so this is just my opinion.

Guitar & Bass sounds & mixing are good. I like the warm fat Guitar sound. Is it recorded that way or any plugins used? Vocals could need a little bit more assertiveness (?). Drums are very well played & recorded (how did you do that? Special microphones? Triggers?) but I would prefer if they have less reverb(?) or to say it the other way: they could sound more dry (?).
But the biggest problem for me was your homepage: I'm not able to listen to your music directly from the page (my fault: never enabled this for firefox on linux) so I tried to download the music (I think this is okay? no?). Was it just my browser? The player was always hidden if the mouse was not over it & I had to click through a nested mouse-contextmenu (my configuration) for every download while the player was hidden again. Because this was fatigable I gave up after 4 songs (which I enjoyed as written above).
I listen again tomorrow, at work (hehe .. I'm allowed to listen to music at work  ) . At work I have win7  (where music from browser-plugins is enabled)
greetings, Rainer

[GMaq]

Hi,

Great stuff, I like the range of moods and styles, some pretty intricate stuff going on there! Thanks for sharing!

[peladovii]

Hello,
I listened all the songs and I just wanted to say I enjoyed it so much, keep up the good work!

[mrufino1]

Thanks everyone! Things are in various states of completion up there, but I do appreciate the suggestions. We track in the basement or in the garage, and have put up what acoustic treatment we can- the drums actually have very little reverb on them, I too would like them a little drier at times. But as far as the playing that is there, no triggers or samples on anything, just some really good drummers. The guy that is now permanently with us (permanent when we get together 3 times a year!) gets great sounds out of the drums. Magazine is the last thing we recorded (finishing soon though), and that is where things finally started to come together I think, sound wise, arrangement wise, etc. The biggest difference there was that we took time to tune the drums for what we were trying to get, and it is a step that we will never gloss over again because it made such a difference. The drums are an old gretsch kit for what that's worth, and it sounds great, but the drummer and the tuning made the biggest difference. There might be $200 worth of mics on it? 

Guitars- he has a great sound to start with, and we just tried to put the mic where we wanted it.

Vocals- yes.

But thanks for the compliments, av linux is fantastic. More money coming to you soon from us.

[funkster1]

Great stuff indeed.
I very much enjoy the complete range of your songs there, which is rare.
Many influences are discernable in your sounds & arrangements and even though
the structure of most of the songs is simple (not meant in any negative way, au contraire, it's
quite effective) they never fail to keep the interest going and for some songs there are some very nice
chord changes and little 'add ons' like on 'Paid his passage'. Also I like 'Silence Me'
and 'Demantelez' very much. 
Mix sounds great so far on my system here. Chapeau Mister Rufino.

All the best and keep going with your music, it's certainly worth it,

Raphael